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Oral Answers to Questions
(6 years ago)
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Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Jeremy Wright)
The Government are committed to ensuring that there is high-quality mobile coverage where people live, work and travel. We welcome the opportunity that Ofcom’s forthcoming 700 MHz spectrum auction offers to extend coverage across all parts of the UK, and we continue to work across Government with Ofcom and the mobile network operators to support investment and deliver coverage to 95% of the UK’s land mass by 2022.
Mr Carmichael
That all sounds very well, but it would appear that we still have some way to go. Recent research from Which? and OpenSignal showed that 4G phone users in Scotland can get a 4G signal only 50.4% of the time on average, compared with 69.7% in London. In Wales, that figure is as low as 35%. What are the Government doing about that?
Jeremy Wright
The right hon. Gentleman is right that there is considerably more progress to be made—I do not need to explain to him the particular geographical difficulties in Scotland—but it is worth recognising that considerable progress has been made. He quoted those figures, but there are slightly different figures when one looks at 4G coverage from at least one mobile network operator. The increase from last year to this year is considerable. In June 2017, about 50% of Scotland was covered by one mobile operator at 4G level; that figure was up to 75% in May 2018. I agree with him entirely that there is more work to do, and we intend to do it.
Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)
It is good to hear the Secretary of State say that there is more work to do because there really is. My constituency runs along the M4 corridor. Some villages just two or three miles from the M4 simply have no coverage—not just no 3G or 4G. Will the Secretary of State set out what additional investment he will provide to ensure not just that there is 4G, but that there is basic mobile phone coverage for many of the villages in my constituency?
Jeremy Wright
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. There is more that we can do in relation to the road network. The aspiration is to get to a point, in 2022, where all major road networks are covered. As he mentioned, there will then be a knock-on benefit to areas near those roads. One way in which we can do that is to make maximum use of the emergency services network that is being rolled out by my colleagues in the Home Office that is producing increases in coverage, but as I said to the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael)—I make no bones about it—there is a good deal more work to be done.
Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
We have some of the worst networks in the advanced world. We heard yesterday that download speeds in Gloucestershire, for example, are 2,000 times slower than they are in Birmingham. Frankly, it adds insult to injury for those struggling to get on to universal credit, which is of course a digital-only benefit. The National Infrastructure Commission and Ofcom think that it is going to cost something like £11 billion to bring our networks into the 21st century, so will the Secretary of State assure the House that that is the full sum that he is seeking from Her Majesty’s Treasury?
Jeremy Wright
The right hon. Gentleman has gradually shaded into the subject of broadband from mobile coverage, but it is certainly right to point out that considerable progress has been made on digital connectivity of all kinds—both mobile and broadband—over the last few years. There is a radical difference between the position that we are in now and the position we inherited in 2010 but, as I have said a number of times this morning, there is a good deal more to be done; the right hon. Gentleman is right about that. We will ensure that we are making full use not just of the market roll-outs, but of the extra support that needs to be provided to the parts of the country that will not be covered by a market roll-out. The right hon. Gentleman will have carefully read the future telecoms infrastructure review that we produced in the summer, which deals exactly with how we reach parts of the country that will not be reached by a market roll-out.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Mims Davies)
We are taking decisive action to ensure that we have a responsible gambling industry that continues to contribute to economic growth while protecting the most vulnerable in our society from gambling-related harm. Such commercial arrangements are a matter for the industry and were not a factor when the Government determined their policy to reduce the stakes on B2 machines.
Bob Blackman
I thank my hon. Friend for that answer and congratulate her on her well-deserved promotion. When the offshore gambling company GVC bought Ladbrokes for £3.9 billion, £700 million was contingent on the date on which statutory instruments were submitted by the Government on reducing the odds on fixed odds betting terminals. Does she think that the shareholders of Ladbrokes, including UK pension companies and employees, should get that £700 million, or should the offshore gambling company GVC pocket it and use it for irresponsible gambling adverts?
Mims Davies
I thank my hon. Friend for making an important point about being responsible in this industry. We have been very clear that we were going to be acting in this space. As the Secretary of State said during an urgent question on 1 November, when determining policy in this area, it would not be
“proper for Government to take account of such commercial arrangements”.—[Official Report, 1 November 2018; Vol. 648, c. 1064.]
Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)
The Minister for Digital and the Creative Industries (Margot James)
The Government take the protection of data extremely seriously and want the UK to be the safest place to live and work online. The Data Protection Act 2018 makes our data protection framework fit for the digital age, with increased powers and funding for the Information Commissioner. Additionally, we have invested almost £2 billion in our national cyber-security strategy and opened the world-leading National Cyber Security Centre to protect the public and industry.
Mary Robinson
Last month, I held my first ScamSmart event in my constituency, bringing together police, charities and banks to inform residents and discuss with them the dangers of online scamming and the importance of data protection. What steps are the Government taking to ensure that my constituents’ data is safe from these unscrupulous companies and that they are informed about how they can protect themselves?
Margot James
I congratulate my hon. Friend on holding that event, which is a very important thing to do. The new legislation strengthens people’s rights to access their data, to object to the way it is being processed, and to seek erasure of data where appropriate. For those that break the rules, we have increased the fines to 4% of global turnover—a dramatic increase. We have also substantially increased the resources available to the Information Commissioner to investigate scams like those that she seeks to eradicate.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Some years ago, the addresses of my staff in this House were released due to a data breach. The danger to safety posed by these breaches demands that we address this issue, so will the Minister do so in the strongest terms? Will she also outline the funding that has been allocated to cyber-security and to the personal safety and security of people in this House?
Margot James
The hon. Gentleman will be reassured to know that had that breach occurred since the Data Protection Act was put into law, the Information Commissioner’s Office would have had substantially increased additional powers to take measures to address it. The Government are investing almost £2 billion in cyber-security, and the National Cyber Security Centre is there to help individuals, Members of Parliament and businesses.
Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)
Documents published last week by the Select Committee show that Facebook was offering privileged access to user data to some commercial partners without those users’ knowledge, and was cutting off some other companies’ access to data altogether. Does the Minister feel that this should be a matter of investigation not only for the Information Commissioner but for the competition authorities?
Margot James
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. I congratulate him and his Committee on the work that they have done. His exposure of the information that Facebook engineers have reported the mass harvesting of data since 2014 is certainly worthy of continuing investigation.
Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Michael Ellis)
Libraries support people, communities and society as a whole by providing access to books and literature, and, increasingly, to modern technology. My Department, DCMS, established and funds the Libraries Taskforce to implement the Libraries Deliver strategy, which helps to support and reinvigorate England’s public libraries service.
Alex Burghart
I thank the Minister for that answer. There is considerable concern in Shenfield in my constituency that the local library will close, and residents have already put together 1,000 signatures. What steps is the Department taking to ensure the future of local libraries?
Michael Ellis
Local authorities in England have a statutory duty under the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964 to provide a “comprehensive and efficient” library service. I caution all local authorities that I will challenge them about their proposed library service reductions in each case, before deciding whether a local inquiry is needed, as it may be in some cases.
Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)
Will the Minister take a trip up to Matlock, where the county offices are for Derbyshire? The Tory-controlled council there has recently announced the closure of 20 libraries and a reduction in the hours of every librarian in the whole county. Something needs to be done urgently. Get up there to Derbyshire and sort it out.
Michael Ellis
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his charming invitation to Derbyshire. I am always pleased to visit. It is a beautiful county, and I look forward to my visit. I would say to local authorities of any political party that they have a responsibility under the 1964 Act, which this Department takes seriously and has proven so in the past.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
When the library in Lichfield was too costly to maintain, the Tory-controlled Staffordshire County Council sold it and moved the library to a museum in the centre of Lichfield. It will now be bigger and better than before. Will the Minister congratulate t’Tory-controlled Staffordshire Council?
Michael Ellis
I congratulate my hon. Friend and his council. In fact, councils of all political hues around the country are investing in libraries, building new ones and reinvigorating them. I have opened several myself and visited others that have been renovated. Local authorities are doing that across the country.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
I can give the Minister the example of Glasgow City Council, which has a multimillion-pound investment programme in refurbishing libraries, including the 93-year-old Partick library, which has served communities in my constituency for that length of time. Does he agree that that is welcome investment and shows that it is important to protect libraries and reinvent them, so that they can continue serving communities into the 21st century?
Michael Ellis
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman and his local authority. I am pleased to say that I have visited Glasgow. The reality is that many libraries need reinvigoration, which needs investment. Local authorities have the resources to do that, and they need to make those choices. We know in this House, across the political divide, that libraries have a high value in our communities and our society, and they should be invested in.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
Mobile libraries are a vital lifeline for rural communities. Will the Minister give an assurance that when he is considering whether to push local authorities further in their provision of services, he will consider that the provision of mobile libraries is essential?
Michael Ellis
Yes. Mobile libraries, particularly in rural areas, can be extremely useful. They can visit different villages on different days of the week and be very productive. Many local authorities use mobile libraries, and they are a good thing.
David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)
We know that the roll-out of universal credit and the shutdown of many jobcentres has put a huge amount of pressure on libraries. What discussions has the Minister had with his colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions about the impact on libraries of the UK Government shutting those jobcentres?
Michael Ellis
I understand that the DWP made that decision with regard to jobcentres in order to rationalise, with larger jobcentres rather than smaller ones. Libraries are used by our communities for myriad reasons, and that is a positive thing. We want to encourage multiple uses of libraries. They are important community hubs and centres. It is important that they are for the loan of books but are also used for a multiplicity of reasons.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
Northamptonshire County Council previously planned to close most of its libraries but has now announced ambitious plans to maintain county-wide library provision. Will the Minister welcome that development and offer the county council whatever support his Department can provide?
Michael Ellis
Yes, I will. I welcome the county council’s position. It has an ambition to save all 32 libraries in the county, which I am pleased with. I appreciate that there are challenges, but it is right that the council saves those libraries. I have recused myself from making a decision under the 1964 Act, for obvious reasons—it is my home county—but the reality is that libraries around the country should be supported.
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
The Minister for Digital and the Creative Industries (Margot James)
The Government are working with industry and regulators to ensure that consumers receive clear and accurate information to help them make informed choices about their broadband. The Advertising Standards Authority has recently strengthened its rules on broadband advertising to ensure that speed claims in adverts are not misleading. A new Ofcom code of practice on broadband speeds will come into force next March.
Ian Murray
I am grateful to the Minister for that answer, but a High Court case has been raised today to try to overturn the Advertising Standards Authority’s decision to allow broadband to be advertised as fibre when large parts of it are of copper. Given that Edinburgh, where my constituency is, has just become a fibre city and that the Minister herself has called this advertising “misleading”, what can the Government do to ensure that when fibre broadband is advertised, it is indeed fibre end to end and does not have copper?
Margot James
I have great sympathy with the hon. Gentleman’s point. As we know, the judicial review of the ASA’s decision, brought by CityFibre, is expected imminently, and we will continue to monitor that issue. In the meantime, however, I hope he can take comfort from the new Ofcom code that comes into effect next March, which will considerably strengthen the situation.
Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)
Good broadband services are essential for so many businesses throughout Taunton Deane. Sadly, however, owing to the difficulties with Gigaclear, many are still not getting the services they deserve. While Infracapital has revised the plan for the roll-out, it is going to be much longer and slower. Its success will depend on extending the rate for state aid beyond the March 2020 deadline. If we do not do this, many businesses will be jeopardised and homes affected, so will the Minister meet me to discuss the issue?
Margot James
I am aware of the issues raised by my hon. Friend. Indeed, I will meet her and the companies she is concerned about in the new year to discuss the issues she has raised.
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
We call it t’internet in Yorkshire. Broadband suppliers are responsible for the universal service obligation. Will they be required to use wireless technologies where those are the most cost-effective solutions?
Margot James
We are aware that, no matter how successful our full fibre programme—and we have our target, as my hon. Friend will know, of full fibre coverage across the UK by 2033—there will be premises for which fibre will never be the optimum route of connection. We will of course consider and urge others to consider wireless technologies where full fibre is not effective.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Jeremy Wright)
Broadcasters have made significant progress in increasing coverage of women’s sport in recent years. The events covered include the women’s football World cup and Euro championships, the women’s rugby world cup, cycling and tennis. With the success of so many of our women’s sports teams, we should be looking at how many more events can be broadcast to inspire future generations. I will meet broadcasters in the new year to discuss exactly that.
Deidre Brock
While it is good to hear that UEFA has pledged a 50% increase in funding for women’s football from 2020, particularly in view of the terrific news that the English and Scottish women’s football teams have made the World cup, that translates to only €50,000 extra for each of the 55 member associations. Will this Government commit to match funding that amount for the UK’s associations, with the specific aim of broadening the appeal of women’s football to the broadcast networks?
Jeremy Wright
Of course we will consider that. I know the hon. Lady will be just as excited by the fact that, on 9 June, England and Scotland will play each other in that World cup; all of us will be looking forward to that. She makes the good point that we must make sure that the attractiveness of women’s sport—and, may I say, of disability sport as well—to broadcasters and to everyone is increased, so that we can inspire those who can then see themselves or people like them playing sport and doing so at a high level. That is exactly what I will discuss with broadcasters in the new year.
Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)
Women’s Twenty20 cricket is a fantastic spectator and TV sport. May we have it in the Commonwealth games?
Jeremy Wright
We will certainly consider that. I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s advocacy for the game. He is right to say that women’s cricket is starting to take off, and he will know that recently, viewing figures for women’s cricket have increased substantially. It is important that the Commonwealth games showcases in the United Kingdom—and more specifically, he would want me to say, in the west midlands—all such sports in any way we can. He will recognise that decisions on which sports are included are not solely—or indeed at all—a matter for the Government, but I understand his point of view.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
My constituent, Amy Tinkler, won an Olympic medal for gymnastics. How can the Secretary of State increase coverage of women’s gymnastics to celebrate our success and inspire the next generation of girls?
Jeremy Wright
I am grateful to the hon. Lady, and I congratulate her constituent. It is important that in gymnastics, as in many other sports, we demonstrate to girls and women that they can participate at a high level, and they should be granted equal coverage and respect for what they do. Broadly speaking that happens in the Olympics, the Commonwealth games and elsewhere, but as I have said, I shall ask broadcasters and sports representative bodies what more we can do to increase the prominence of women’s sport.
John Grogan (Keighley) (Lab)
It is notable that there are no women’s team sports on the list of protected events that must be offered live to free-to-air TV? Should not events such as the women’s World cup, which is on the BBC next year, be protected so that the whole nation can watch women’s World cups in the future?
Jeremy Wright
I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point, and as he says, the protected list is designed to ensure that people have access on free-to-air television to these important sporting events. As he pointed out, that is already the case for the next women’s World cup, but we must keep such matters under review, and ensure that if there is a risk that big sporting events will not be covered in that way, we do something about it.
Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)
I welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Mims Davies), to her place. She has big shoes to fill, but I am sure she will do the job well. I am pleased to hear the Secretary of State’s positive comments, but only 7% of sports media coverage is of women’s sport, which I am sure he will agree is a disgraceful statistic. Will he meet me and my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mhairi Black) to discuss what more can be done to get perhaps 50-50 sports coverage for women’s sport by 2020?
Jeremy Wright
I am happy to meet the hon. Lady, and I share that ambition, as do many broadcasters. Let us take the BBC as a good example. She will know that the BBC has committed to broadcasting 500 extra hours of sport next year, 50% of which will be women’s sport. It is important to recognise that progress is being made, but there is further to go and I am happy to discuss with her what we can do.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Jeremy Wright)
I meet the BBC regularly to discuss a range of issues, including the licence fee concession for the over-75s. The BBC has published a consultation that includes a range of options for the public to consider on the future of that concession, and we expect it to make a decision by June next year. I have made it clear that we expect the BBC to continue the concession after 2020.
Diana Johnson
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for that answer, because that popular initiative was introduced by the Labour Government in 2000, in recognition of the fact that that TV is a lifeline for many elderly people, and to give them something back for their contribution to this country. Does the consultation so far indicate that the cost of administering a new system that might include means-testing would far outweigh the savings that the BBC seeks to make?
Jeremy Wright
The hon. Lady makes a fair point about means-testing, and whenever means-testing is proposed, that consideration must be accounted for. The right approach is to allow all those who wish to do so to comment on those consultation options, and for the BBC properly to consider them and decide what to do next. That is now its responsibility. The Government’s expectation is clear as, I suspect, is that of many Members across the House.
Tom Watson (West Bromwich East) (Lab)
Mr Speaker, this will probably be the only chance I get to wish you, your family and the staff of the House a happy Christmas. We are very grateful for the work you have done for us this year. Thank you. I welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Mims Davies), to her new position. I am sure she will fill the big shoes.
The Campaign to End Loneliness found that four in 10 older people say that television is their main company. That is a sad Christmas story indeed. Is the Secretary of State aware of how many older people in his constituency are set to lose their free TV licence if the provision becomes linked to pension credit?
Jeremy Wright
It will not be my last opportunity to wish you a happy Christmas, Mr Speaker. I will get to that later.
I am sure the hon. Gentleman is about to tell me the answer to the question he has just asked, which of course supposes a certain outcome to the consultation and the decision-making process at the BBC. I do not think we should make that supposition. It is right for the BBC to consider its options. It is now its responsibility to decide what to do on this matter. It is right for it to consider its options and then propose what it wishes to do. We will all have the opportunity to contribute to that discussion. I know he will do so, and I will too.
Tom Watson
As the Secretary of State does not know the answer I will tell him, because I think he needs to know: 6,060 households in his area could lose their free TV licence if it is means-tested. Many thousands of people in Kenilworth will lose their TV licence despite a Tory manifesto, on which the Minister stood for election, promising that a Tory Government would maintain all pensioner benefits, including free TV licences for everyone over 75. The Government may have devolved welfare cuts to the BBC, but the Secretary of State will not be able to devolve responsibility for this impending policy disaster. Will he now admit, on the record to this House, that the Government have broken a manifesto pledge and he has broken his promise to all those people in his constituency?
Jeremy Wright
No, of course not, because that has not happened. Let me just say again to the right hon. Gentleman that he is positing a hypothetical situation. It has not happened. It is important that the BBC gets the chance to consider the right way forward. All that he says about the importance of television to those who are elderly, particularly those who are lonely, is quite right, but no decision has been made yet. It is right to give the BBC the space in which to make it. That is the right way forward.
Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Jeremy Wright)
Tourism is an incredibly important part of the UK’s economy, generating approximately £68 billion and employing over 1.5 million people. Visit Britain and the GREAT campaign, backed by Government support, continue to successfully promote the UK internationally. The House will know that the Government will now take forward into formal negotiations a tourism sector deal which will benefit tourism across the country. That is the result of a good deal of hard work by people across the tourism sector and, if may I say so, others including my hon. Friend the tourism Minister.
Helen Whately
Some of my constituents have bought park homes only to find that they are actually leisure home owners, with very few rights against their landlords who charge extortionate fees and rent rises. I have heard that the mis-selling of leisure homes and the abuse of tenants is happening across the country. Will my right hon. Friend look into this matter and take action to ensure that leisure home owners are not subject to the whims of rogue landlords?
Jeremy Wright
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that important matter. It is vital that anyone engaging in such transactions does so in full possession of the information they need and understands the consequences of their decisions. No one should be taken advantage of in this way. She will understand that this is a matter predominantly for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, which has policy responsibility in this area, but I will certainly discuss it with colleagues there. We will see what more we can do.
Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)
The 2018 Leicestershire Promotions tourism and hospitality awards were held at the end of November. Will the Secretary of State join me in congratulating the almost 800-year- old Loughborough fair, which won the best free event category? Perhaps next November, rather than joining the rollercoaster here, he would like to join the rollercoaster in Loughborough.
Jeremy Wright
That sounds a lot more fun. I agree entirely with my right hon. Friend and congratulate all those involved in the event that she mentions. As she suggests, the importance of what we are doing on tourism, and I hope that this will be reflected in the sector deal, is that tourism can be a hugely successful career—not just a summer job or short-term employment, but a career, and a satisfying one at that. It is important that we make that position clear to all those who seek to enter the workforce, so that we have a high-quality workforce offering a superb tourism product to a large number of people around the world.
John Mc Nally (Falkirk) (SNP)
The Minister for Digital and the Creative Industries (Margot James)
The regulation of broadcasters’ political coverage is a matter for Ofcom, the independent media regulator. Any televised material is subject to the provisions of Ofcom’s broadcasting code and Ofcom has strong rules in place to ensure the impartiality and accuracy of political coverage.
John Mc Nally
I thank the Minister for that answer. Many of my Falkirk constituents complained to me that the now doomed Brexit debate would have placed two leaders in a head-to-head format, with no input from any of the devolved Administrations. At a time when politicians often complain that the public are not getting the full, balanced picture, does the Minister really believe that this helps to dispel or remove that belief?
Margot James
The debate that the hon. Gentleman referred to did not happen, but it was going to be just between the two main parties—that is true. With regard to Scotland, the BBC will be launching its Scotland channel next year to improve the coverage of Scottish life and Scottish affairs. As regards impartiality, the code will guarantee impartiality across the United Kingdom.
Gillian Keegan (Chichester) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Jeremy Wright)
As advertised, Mr Speaker, may I wish you, and indeed, all Members of the House and all the staff of the House, a very merry Christmas and a happy new year?
Last month, we saw a poignant programme of events to commemorate the centenary of the world war one armistice, at the end of four years of moving moments of remembrance. I thank again all those who were involved in the organisation of that programme, including officials in my Department and several Members of the House, including—if I may single him out—my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison), who played a pivotal role.
I am also pleased to announce today that Black Cultural Archives, the UK’s largest archives dedicated to the history of black people in Britain, will be given a £200,000 cash boost by my Department to help to secure its immediate future. We are continuing to work with the archives, Lambeth Council and others to ensure that there is a sustainable long-term funding strategy to enable its work to continue.
Finally, on behalf, I am sure, of the whole House, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate David Dimbleby on his last appearance chairing BBC’s “Question Time” tonight and on his 24 years of service to the programme, and to offer our best wishes to the incoming chair, Fiona Bruce, who is, of course, the first female chair in the programme’s history.
Gillian Keegan
Growers and farmers in Chichester are very high-tech— we have cows wearing collars that upload real-time health data, and computer-controlled hydroponics—but all that requires high-speed connectivity, and many businesses are now taking a hit. A business recently told me that it had invested £16,000 in connectivity improvements. What is my right hon. and learned Friend doing to improve access to superfast broadband for rural businesses?
Jeremy Wright
My hon. Friend raises an important point and a matter of concern to many of us. She will know that in relation to the existing superfast programme, there is further to go, and some of that additional benefit can be delivered in rural areas. She will also know that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has allocated £75 million of grant funding from the rural development programme for England for these purposes. She may also be aware that in relation to further technology, we will seek to test out what can be done in rural areas with a test bed and develop 5G technology, which can deliver further benefits, particularly to agriculture.
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
I add my congratulations to the new Minister for Sport and welcome her to her place. I look forward to working with her.
Moments of sporting history were made during the London Olympics, with billions of pounds invested in what was meant to be an everlasting legacy. Since 2016, 800 grass pitches have been sold off, 100 swimming pools have been drained, a dozen athletics tracks have been closed, and 350 sports halls have been shut. The Olympic legacy is in tatters and it is fuelling our country’s obesity crisis. We need urgent change, so can the new Minister confirm how many new sporting facilities will be opened in 2019?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Mims Davies)
I very much welcome my welcome to the Dispatch Box. I will have to write to the hon. Lady about her question, but I dispute the premise that London 2012 is not delivering a legacy. My Eastleigh games has been going since 2012. You can try out boccia and rugby, and get involved in all sorts of different sports. As a local councillor, I set up a staggered marathon, which is still going on and bringing people into running.
Some of the legacy projects, particularly those in the park, will not finish their benefits until 2020, so the inspirational power of London 2012 continues. We also have the stadium. The legacy of 2012 is there in the fact that so many sporting events are coming to our shores. We are leading in this area, and are perhaps looking at having the Ryder cup going forward. I understand the concern around grassroots and we will look at the new sporting strategy next year—we are three years on. It is absolutely right to question London 2012, but its legacy is there in many constituencies.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
The Minister for Digital and the Creative Industries (Margot James)
I think I know what has driven my hon. Friend’s question. I should like to take this opportunity if I may to apologise to the chairman of the 1922 committee. He apparently issued a rule about last night’s election, news of which did not reach me. It appears that I may have been in breach. I apologise to my hon. Friend if that is the case.
John Mc Nally (Falkirk) (SNP)
Jeremy Wright
I will certainly join the hon. Gentleman in wishing the teams well, and congratulate them on reaching this point. The fundraising question was an ingenious budget bid, but not one that I should answer now.
Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)
Margot James
I assure my hon. Friend that many measures are being taken. The forthcoming universal service obligation should ensure that households that have a speed below 2 megabits per second have the right to request high-speed broadband of at least 10 megabits per second. That will come into effect in 2020. There is more to be done through Broadband Delivery UK—there are numerous voucher schemes. If my hon. Friend wants further information, I am happy to meet him to discuss the options available to him.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
Margot James
I am not aware of the report to which the hon. Gentleman refers, but I am aware that the UK and Scottish Governments are working together to bring about better speeds and access to superfast broadband, which is already at 93.5% in Scotland.
Sir Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Michael Ellis)
Britain is rated No. 1 in the world for soft power, and my right hon. Friend is absolutely right about its importance. Our Department works very closely with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in this regard. We have a large number of bilateral seasons of culture with other countries, we promote UK culture globally through the GREAT campaign, which is an extremely successful marketing campaign—one of the most successful in the world—and, of course, we visit countries on a cultural basis. For instance, I was in Rome recently, and I have also visited the United Arab Emirates. A great deal goes on.
Mr Stephen Hepburn (Jarrow) (Lab)
Mims Davies
I have already met representatives of the Sports Ground Safety Authority, and a small analysis is currently under way. This is a hot topic on my desk, and I will make further announcements in January. In respect of sports ground safety more broadly, I have asked the authority to work with those in charge of the Qatar 2022 World cup to ensure that travelling fans also have a safe experience.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
The Attorney General (Mr Geoffrey Cox)
The institution of court proceedings for contempt is by me in relation to each case on its own merits. I institute proceedings when there is sufficient evidence, and when I, as guardian of the public interest, decide that it is in the public interest to do so.
Lyn Brown
Contempt of court proceedings are very important to ensuring fair trials and the rule of law. Contempt of Parliament proceedings have been crucial in enabling the House to have the information to which it was entitled. Is the Attorney General not ashamed that his Ministers were found to be in contempt?
The Attorney General
It is always a serious matter for any Minister to find himself at odds with the House, particularly over an important question of constitutional principle. On reflection, and the opinion of the House having been tested twice, the Government took the decision to disclose the advice, but I must stress to the hon. Lady that successive Governments have defended that principle robustly. I have a list of very eloquent articulations of it by Opposition Members who have defended it against demands for the disclosure of confidential advice. It is an important principle, and I hope that the House will look again at the procedures relating to the motion for a return.
Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
May I perhaps return to the question? [Interruption.] Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that there is a real need to revisit the standard directions that judges give to juries in relation to the use of social media? Generally judges are well alert to the issue, but, as we know, there have been instances in which convictions have had to be set aside because juries have, in effect, researched the case outside the jury room using social media.
Mr Speaker
Order. For the avoidance of doubt, the previous exchanges were entirely orderly, and I would have ruled otherwise if they were not. That is the position, which, frankly, the Solicitor General ought to take to heart, and upon which he might usefully reflect. I will be the arbiter of what is orderly, not the hon. and learned Gentleman.
The Attorney General
The impact of social media on the integrity and fairness of the trial process is obviously of considerable importance, and we do need to grapple with it. As my hon. Friend knows, we have a call for evidence on social media, and I am currently studying the responses to it.
Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)
On the subject of contempt, the Attorney General was meant to disclose the full and final legal advice on the withdrawal agreement. What was actually disclosed was a letter to the Prime Minister dated 13 November exclusively on the legal effect of the protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland. Is the Attorney General seriously saying he did not advise on the remainder of the withdrawal agreement?
The Attorney General
As the hon. Gentleman knows, his party colleague the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) refined and defined the request, which was for the final and full advice that was given to the Cabinet, and that is what he has had.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
The letter refers simply to the legal effect of the protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland, but let me then ask the Attorney General this: the Prime Minister said last night on the steps of Downing Street that she is seeking “legal and political changes” to the withdrawal agreement and the backstop, so as a matter of honour if nothing else, if the Attorney General advises on any changes or additions that the Prime Minister brings back, will he disclose that advice to this House?
The Attorney General
As the hon. Gentleman knows, the principle of the convention applies and must be upheld. Of course the Government will consider very carefully, particularly in the light of the House’s expressed wish for assistance on these matters, what assistance they and I as Attorney General can give.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
The Attorney General (Mr Geoffrey Cox)
As noted in “Erskine May”, it is a long-standing convention observed by successive Governments that neither the fact nor the substance of Law Officers’ advice is disclosed outside the Government without their authority. That authority is very rarely sought or given.
Michael Fabricant
Given that recent decisions of the House might mean a return to Tony Blair-style sofa Government, does my right hon. and learned Friend think the Humble Address procedure needs revisiting?
The Attorney General
Of course, the corrosive effect of the disclosure of confidential advice is that in future Attorneys General will not be able, without risking and fearing its publication, to give frank and robust advice to the Cabinet or the Prime Minister when it is needed, with the point and emphasis that might be needed at that particular time. The risk if it is published is that it is taken out of context, parts of it are seized and plucked and dwelt upon, and the particular moment and context of the advice is ignored. I do think we need to look very carefully at the procedures of the House in this regard while paying due respect to the legitimate desire of the House to have all of the information that it requires.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
I think we all understand what the Attorney General’s preferences are in this matter. In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds), he said that the advice in his letter to the Prime Minister was full and final. It is credible that it is the final legal advice, but it is not credible that it is the full legal advice. Is that seriously what the Attorney General wants us to believe?
The Attorney General
The request of the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) was for the final and full advice. As I understand it—I read what he said in Hansard—he requested all the final advice. In other words, he requested that it should not be summarised, and it was not. The House had all the final advice given to the Cabinet.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Will the Attorney General further outline when the legal opinion on changes to the withdrawal agreement sought by the Prime Minister will be released, to clarify any change in his legal advice?
The Attorney General
As I have just said, I will of course consider what assistance the House might require. Indeed, I shall listen carefully to the House on any changes that are introduced to the withdrawal agreement and on what the Government should do about publishing legal opinion on it.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
The Attorney General (Mr Geoffrey Cox)
The United Kingdom has a long tradition of ensuring that rights and liberties are protected domestically, and of fulfilling its international human rights obligations. The decision to leave the European Union does not change this.
Deidre Brock
I am proud to say that the Scottish Government announced plans this week to introduce a new statutory human rights framework across Scotland. That will help to ensure that Brexit does not lead to an erosion of human rights in Scotland, while enshrining rights already included in the United Nations treaties. Will the Attorney General join me in welcoming this progressive step? Will he also confirm what measures he will be recommending to his own Cabinet colleagues to ensure that human rights are protected in the event of Brexit?
The Attorney General
I am always interested to see the measures that are being introduced in the Scottish legal system, because Scotland has a sophisticated and highly effective administration of justice for which I have the greatest respect. Indeed, we can learn a good deal from Scotland in that regard; the same applies to both traditions on both sides of the border. In England and Wales, we are fully committed to the human rights framework of the European convention on human rights, and we have a proud common law tradition of defending those rights. I would expect that common law tradition to continue to evolve, and I would expect that the courts of this country, freed from the European Union, will start to develop their own jurisprudence, making even more effective the protection of those rights. However, I will look at what the hon. Lady has spoken of today with the greatest interest.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
In the hurly-burly of the Brexit debate, there are a number of things to be concerned about. However, this country is very much the creator, cherisher and nurturer of human rights, and we have a proud record in that area both domestically and in leading on the international stage. Does my right hon. and learned Friend therefore agree that this is one area of public policy that Brexit should not create any anxiety about?
The Attorney General
I quite agree with my hon. Friend. This country was at the forefront of the development of civil liberties and human rights. We have a robust, fiercely independent judiciary, and we have an effective legal profession on which the vindication of those rights often depends. We should be very proud indeed of the tradition that we have inherited.
Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)
The Human Rights Act 1998 is one of Labour’s proudest achievements in government, and we will fight to protect the rights and protections that it affords. I noticed that the Attorney General did not mention that in his answer to the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock). Will he join us in making a commitment to preserving the Human Rights Act?
The Attorney General
It would be unwise for me to think that any Act of Parliament could not benefit from review and subsequent improvement as time goes on, but I can assure the hon. Lady that this Government—and, I am sure, successive Governments—will be wedded to both the rule of law and human rights in this country.
Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
The Attorney General (Mr Geoffrey Cox)
The decision of the European Court of Justice clarifies a question of EU law, and it does not in any way change the Government’s policy. The Government’s firm and long-standing policy is that we will not revoke the article 50 notice. The position has not changed and, as is well known, the case will now revert to the Scottish courts for the final decision.
Martyn Day
Will the Attorney General take this opportunity to confirm that he advised the Prime Minister that the ECJ’s ruling means that voting against her deal does not automatically mean a no-deal Brexit, and that revoking the article 50 notice and remaining in the EU under current terms and conditions is a third option?
The Attorney General
The Government’s policy is that we do not intend to revoke article 50. We intend to leave the European Union on 29 March, and the fact or otherwise of the irrevocability of article 50 is wholly irrelevant to that question. The truth, however, is that the giving of notice under article 50 would not just be an easy matter of pressing a button and the revocation taking effect.
Alison Thewliss
Does the Attorney General believe that legislation would be required to revoke the article 50 notice, or could it be done by a simple vote in this House?
The Attorney General
That matter is under review. Let me say clearly that the question of what legal route would be required to trigger the process has not been considered at any length because there is no intention of doing so.
Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)
The Government fought this case tooth and nail through the Scottish courts and in Luxembourg. Will the Attorney General tell us why the Government were so desperate to prevent Members of Parliament and the public from knowing that article 50 could be unilaterally revoked and that we could stay in the European Union on the same terms and conditions that we currently enjoy? Will he also answer a question that Cabinet Ministers have so far failed to answer? How much taxpayers’ money was spent trying to keep this House and the public in the dark?
The Attorney General
As the hon. and learned Lady knows, the Government’s position throughout was that the case involved a hypothetical question. It does raise an important matter of constitutional principle as to whether courts should be able to be seized of issues under live debate in Parliament, when Parliament does not ask for an opinion, simply in order to inform debate. The Government took the view that the matter was hypothetical—we still do—but the truth of the matter is that the ECJ has ruled and we are where we are.
Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)
Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)
The Solicitor General (Robert Buckland)
The Government are committed to tackling economic crime, and we know that that requires a multi-agency response. That is why both the SFO and the CPS play their parts alongside others, including through their support for the new multi-agency National Economic Crime Centre.
Jack Brereton
What assessment has been made of the UK’s ability to tackle money laundering?
The Solicitor General
My hon. Friend is right to raise that issue, and I was glad to see the recent financial action taskforce report, which reflected substantial progress and referred to the world-leading role that the UK plays in the fight against illicit finance, particularly the risk of money laundering.
Rebecca Pow
Nothing annoys the constituents of Taunton Deane more than people getting away with things they should not, so will my hon. and learned Friend outline some further detail on how we are cracking down on money laundering? It is a priority, and the Government have promised to tackle it.
The Solicitor General
My hon. Friend will be glad to note the introduction of unexplained wealth orders following the Criminal Finances Act 2017. That is already sending a clear message to those who seek to use the UK to wash their illegal proceeds that we will track them down, ask the right questions and conduct confiscations. Using Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 powers, the Government have recovered more criminal assets than ever before, with £1.6 billion taken from wrongdoers between April 2010 and March 2018.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
The Solicitor General (Robert Buckland)
CPS performance in Northamptonshire is above the national rate in several areas. The latest figures for the first quarter of 2018-19 show that the conviction rate for Northamptonshire magistrates courts was 85.7%, which is above the national rate of 84.8%. Figures also show lower hearing numbers per guilty plea case than the national rate, which reflects the fact that the CPS is putting cases together efficiently.
Mr Hollobone
I thank the Crown Prosecution Service for its work in Northamptonshire. Which aspects of its work does the Solicitor General think are in most need of improvement?
The Solicitor General
The CPS in Northamptonshire and the east midlands, like in all other regions, acknowledges that it should never rest on any laurels it might gather. I urge my hon. Friend to meet the chief Crown prosecutors and staff to focus on particular areas where he thinks the CPS in Northamptonshire and the east midlands needs to make progress. Recent quarterly and monthly figures show that in many areas, such as burglary, it has been above average, but I am sure it would welcome his constructive input.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
The Solicitor General (Robert Buckland)
Corrosive substance attacks are unacceptable. There is no place in society for these horrendous crimes. Last month, the CPS successfully secured the conviction of nine men for carrying out a violent attack in which a corrosive substance was squirted at bystanders who tried to stop an assault in the street.
The Solicitor General
My right hon. Friend is right to raise the sad connection with gang offending. Sadly, corrosive substances are sometimes used as weapons by gangs in retribution and as a means of enforcement. The CPS guidance identifies that phenomenon and encourages prosecutors to apply for criminal behaviour orders to prevent such gang-related offending.
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)
The Solicitor General (Robert Buckland)
Earlier this year, the Charity Commission wrote to the former Attorney General requesting consent to refer five questions to the first-tier tribunal concerning the registered charity that runs the Royal Albert Hall. Although the Charity Commission has the power to refer questions to the tribunal, it may only do so with the consent of the Attorney General, as set out in section 325 of the Charities Act 2011.
Mrs Hodgson
The Attorney General promised that he would make a decision on this matter by the end of the autumn. I am sure we are now in winter, so that decision is overdue. The majority of the Royal Albert Hall’s ruling body own a quarter of all the seats. Those seats are valued at up to £25 million, and they are allowed to sell tickets for the seats on the secondary market, making huge profits. Does the Attorney General not consider that a conflict of interest, and will he allow the Charity Commission to refer it to the tribunal?
The Solicitor General
The hon. Lady has identified the core of the concern in this case. Before assessing whether I or the Attorney General should consent to the Charity Commission’s request, we invited both the corporation of the Royal Albert Hall and the Charity Commission to make further representations. We have received those representations, and we are in the process of considering them with a view to issuing a decision in due course.
Business of the House
(6 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
Will the Leader of the House give us the business for next week?
The Leader of the House of Commons (Andrea Leadsom)
The business for next week is as follows:
Monday 17 December—My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will make a statement, followed by a motion to approve the draft Online Pornography (Commercial Basis) Regulations 2018, followed by a motion to approve the draft guidance on age-verification arrangements 2018, followed by a motion to approve the draft guidance on ancillary service providers 2018.
Tuesday 18 December—Second Reading of the Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [Lords].
Wednesday 19 December—Debate on a motion on disability benefit, followed by debate on a motion on mental health first aid. The subjects for these debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee.
Thursday 20 December—Debate on a motion on Rohingya. The subject for this debate was determined by the Backbench Business Committee.
Friday 21 December—The House will not be sitting.
Andrea Leadsom
I am sure the House will not be sitting. The House decided.
The whole House will want to join me in thanking the police for their swift action following the incident in New Palace Yard earlier this week. We are enormously grateful for the work our police and security officers do to keep us all safe.
I am pleased to be able to spread some festive cheer to the House this morning, as the new edition of “Erskine May”, which is due to be published in 2019, will be publicly available on Parliament’s website, as well as on Parliament’s intranet and in hard copy, as normal. The first edition was published in the mid-19th century and new editions are published approximately every six or seven years, but this will be the first one publicly available online.
Finally, I encourage all hon. Members to visit the 209 Women exhibition on the first floor of Portcullis House, which begins tomorrow and will run until 14 February. It is being unveiled in time for the centenary of some women voting for the first time. I will be heading to the launch later to see the 209 photographs of female MPs, photographed by female photographers and curated by women. It is a fantastic way to round off the Vote 100 year.
Mr Speaker
It is very useful to have the fact of the prospective publication on the Parliament website of “Erskine May” advertised more widely, but there is nothing by way of news about it; I agreed to it, in consultation with Clerks, several months ago. It is very good that it is happening but there is absolutely nothing new about the fact of it.
Valerie Vaz
I agree with you about “Erskine May”, Mr Speaker; the public will now be able to see what the Government are up to, so that is good. May I also acknowledge that the House has a female photographer, Jessica Taylor, who is absolutely marvellous? She does us all proud, because we all look better in her photographs, for some reason.
I thank the Leader of the House for giving us the business for next week. I do not know whether I heard her properly, but has she given us all the business for next week? I did not hear when the debate on the meaningful vote will resume. Obviously, it is not listed for next week, so when will it come back? Each week we stand here and we trust what the Leader of the House says and we trust the agreements we make. How can we continue to trust this Government? Their mantra is, “Nothing is agreed until it is agreed”, but it should now be, “Nothing is agreed ever.” Even now, the Prime Minister, having made an agreement with the EU, is saying that she will go back and find another way. The Government spent money, and Ministers spread out around the country, but the people they had to convince were here in Parliament. What did the Government do? They did not listen to Parliament—in fact, they told Parliament to shut up. The Leader of the House said this was “Parliamentary pantomime”, but it is not. The Opposition have used settled rules of Parliament to hold the Government to account. At each stage of this process, we have had to drag Ministers back to the Dispatch Box to give us financial information and other impact information on what is happening.
The Government have ridden roughshod over the democratic rights of Members. Mr Speaker, you sat through all the contributions and on one of the days we were here until 1.30 am. Hon. Members were here until then. Time limits were applied, showing that hon. Members had to be curtailed in their speeches. One hundred and sixty-four hon. Members were heard, and almost the same amount of other hon. Members had written their speeches and their contributions were stymied. The Leader of the House must say when they will be given the chance to make their case. Will the debate be resuming or will we have a debate on a new deal—which is it? The Prime Minister cannot amend the agreement, so it is, in effect, just an explanatory note, is it not? Can the Leader of the House clarify whether it will be an addendum or an explanatory note?
The Leader of the House said on Monday, and other Ministers have said this, that we will have our meaningful vote “soon”, “shortly” and “before 21 January”. She said five times on Monday that she is Parliament’s voice in government. Parliament spoke with the vote on the emergency debate on the cancellation of the vote—the vote was won by 299 to zero, which is more resounding than 200 to 117. So on Monday will she make a business statement to say when the meaningful vote will come back before Parliament?
We have had a number of statutory instruments given in the business for next week. I note that the new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has said that she will look at the draft Universal Credit (Managed Migration) Regulations 2018. Can the Leader of the House confirm that those regulations have now been withdrawn? We will also have the Draft Markets in Financial Instruments (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018 to consider. That statutory instrument is one of a large volume of items of secondary legislation. It sets up a functioning regulatory framework if the UK leaves the European Union without a deal. The size and scope of that SI are completely different. Because of the volume of potential legislative changes, the Treasury has set out a Keeling schedule, and it spent time and money setting out that schedule. As the Government are going to all that effort, will the Leader of the House please confirm that we will debate those regulations on the Floor of the House?
I note that a written statement on immigration is to be published today. So far, it has been impossible to access it; is it the immigration White Paper?
While the Government have been distracted in Committee Room 14, local councils have been waiting to set their budgets. I know that you get upset by points of order, Mr Speaker—or perhaps you do not; perhaps you like them—but my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) made one yesterday on the local government settlement, so I am pleased that there will be a statement on it later. I am also pleased that there will be a statement on the police settlement. I, too, offer my thanks to the police officers who contained the incident on Tuesday, and who keep us safe every day.
Yesterday, at Prime Minister’s Question Time, the Prime Minister said that the Government are establishing a 10-year plan for the sustainability of the NHS. Where is it? The plan was promised in September, then in autumn, and then in early December, but still there is nothing. Will the Leader of the House say when it will be published?
The Government are running away from their responsibilities and leaving the country in a mess—so much so that the Prime Minister has said that she will not be around at the next election to be held accountable for her policies so far. There is something to celebrate, though: the tax on visiting Wales has ended, because the Severn bridge toll will end on Monday.
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) for all her charitable work on the carol service—it all seemed to get lost on Tuesday. She has raised an enormous amount of money already, but is encouraging us to organise carol concerts so that we can all contribute and add to her charitable work. We have to hurry, though, because we have only 12 days till Christmas.
Andrea Leadsom
I am certainly grateful to the hon. Lady for mentioning the lovely concert that my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) arranged in St Margaret’s church. It was really wonderful, and we were treated to the rather amazing singing voice of my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince)—who knew? It was a very enjoyable experience and was for a fantastic cause. We heard some extraordinary and heart-wrenching stories about the current plight of Syrians, so it was incredibly important.
The hon. Lady asked when the meaningful vote will come back to the House. As my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster said on Tuesday, the Government will bring the debate and vote back to the House by 21 January at the latest.
The hon. Lady asked about the Prime Minister. She will understand that the Prime Minister came to the House to make a statement to say precisely that it is because she is listening to the debate in this House that she is going back to the EU, because she recognises that hon. Members require not only reassurances but legally binding reassurance that we cannot be trapped in a backstop permanently. That is what the Prime Minister is seeking. Hon. Members should rest assured that the Prime Minister is very much seeking to address the concerns expressed by the House.
The hon. Lady asked about statutory instruments. She will be aware that it is a matter of parliamentary convention that, if a reasonable request for a debate has been made, time is allowed for that debate. We have demonstrated during this Session that the Government have been willing to provide time, in line with the convention to accede with reasonable Opposition requests. I know that the Opposition would like to debate a number of statutory instruments on the Floor of the House, and we are looking at them carefully.
The hon. Lady asked about the immigration White Paper. I assure her that it will be published next week, before Christmas, shortly followed by the immigration Bill itself.
The hon. Lady asked where the NHS 10-year plan is. It is being drawn up by the NHS itself. The Government have provided the biggest ever investment in our NHS, and we are very proud to be doing that. It will transform services for all patients right across the country.
Ms Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)
Will the Leader of the House please arrange for a Minister to make a statement next week on the preparations for leaving the EU without a deal, on World Trade Organisation terms? Perhaps she will arrange for such a statement to be made every week until we leave. No-deal preparedness is vital for the UK. So far, the Government have been shy in setting out what they have been doing.
Andrea Leadsom
I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend as someone who has worked very hard in Cabinet to make sure that we are doing absolutely everything we need to do to plan for every outcome. I sit on the sub-committee that is looking at day one readiness in all circumstances, and I can assure her that the Government’s preparations for no deal are well advanced, and that the Government will come forward with further information as soon as it is necessary to do so. However, to be very clear, the Government do not intend to have no deal with the European Union. We intend to have a withdrawal agreement that this House can support.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
I thank the Leader of the House for announcing the business for next week.
Well, it is the morning after the night before, and, as the hangovers start to kick in, they will all be asking themselves, “What on earth did we get up to last night?”. As they survey the wreckage of the night of mayhem, we now find that we have a Prime Minister who has the confidence of only 200 Members of this House. She is a lame duck Prime Minister who would give waterfowl with walking sticks a bad name. A third of her party do not want her to lead them. Her credibility is in shatters and her ability to lead gone forever.
The main item of business next week should be a motion of no confidence in this rotten, divided Government. They are there for the taking, divided, wounded and unable to govern, and I have no idea what the Labour party is waiting for. We could be shot of them pretty soon, so if Labour is not going to put in a motion of no confidence in this Government, it will be left to the other opposition parties of this House to do so.
History will judge the decision to cancel Tuesday’s meaningful vote as probably the single biggest act of political cowardice this House has ever witnessed, particularly when the Leader of the House said to me definitively last week that under no conditions would the vote be withdrawn. If we look at the diary, we can see that there are only two weeks left to have that meaningful vote when we return in the new year, if it is not the Government’s intention to bring it forward next week. It cannot be the last week—the week leading up to the 21st—so that leaves the week that we return. I want the Leader of the House to come to that Dispatch Box and say that we will have this vote in that week.
Finally, we need an urgent statement about the decision of the Supreme Court to uphold the Scottish Government’s view that the continuity Bill is indeed within devolved powers. This Government are now developing a habit of losing constitutional cases to Scottish interests. Hopefully, this will now mean the end of the power grab and the attacks on the democratic institutions of our democracy in Scotland, but looking at Members on the Government Benches, I very much doubt that.
Andrea Leadsom
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for setting out the fact that those of us on the Government Benches do have confidence in the Prime Minister. Perhaps I can just set the scene for him: the Prime Minister won 63% of the vote, against 37% who did not support her, which means that she won that vote by a significant majority. In June 2016, this House decided to ask the people whether we should leave the EU or remain within it. A total of 52% said that we should leave, and 48% said that we should remain. That means that leave won, which is why we are leaving the EU—just for his information. He will recall that, in Scotland, there was a vote on whether Scotland should leave the United Kingdom, and 55% voted to stay in, 45% voted to leave. That means that a majority voted to stay in the United Kingdom. I hope that that explains to him what a democratic vote is all about. [Interruption.] I say to the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald), who is shouting from a sedentary position, that he will recall that his no confidence vote in his leader was 81% for no confidence, but the Leader of the Opposition is still there, so the Opposition party also does not understand what democracy is all about; at least we on this side of the House do. I say to all hon. Members, once again, that the Prime Minister did not call the vote on the meaningful vote because she had listened to the very clear concerns of hon. and right hon. Members, and has gone back to the European Union to seek to address those concerns.
The hon. Gentleman asks about a no confidence motion. This House has confidence in the Government. If the official Opposition dispute that the Government have the confidence of the House, it is for them to test it via a motion under the terms of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011.
Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend find time for a debate on the stress and anxiety caused by scam telephone calls and emails? Wicked individuals try to extort money from the most vulnerable people in society—the elderly, the frail and the simply too trusting. Surely this House could do something to prevent that from continuing to happen.
Andrea Leadsom
My hon. Friend raises an important matter about which all Members are very concerned. The Government fully understand that nuisance calls are quite stressful, particularly for vulnerable people, and we have been clear that there is no place for nuisance calls or texts in our society. In March 2017, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport provided a £500,000 grant to the National Trading Standards scams team to run a project that would provide telephone call blocking technology, particularly to vulnerable people. We continue to work closely with industry regulators and consumer groups to try to find effective solutions to this concerning problem.
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)
I thank the Leader of the House for telling us the forthcoming business, and for the cordial meeting and welcome mug of tea yesterday afternoon.
After the famine comes the feast. We are blessed with two days of Backbench Business debates next week. I would like to put the mind of the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) at ease; before we knew that we had been awarded time in the Chamber on Thursday, we had already determined that we would hold the three-hour pre-recess debate in Westminster Hall, so that debate will still go ahead in Westminster Hall.
The Backbench Business Committee had been starting to feel a bit surplus to requirements, and I was reluctantly considering making an application to an employment tribunal for constructive dismissal, but I am glad to say that that is no longer required.
Andrea Leadsom
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for having a cup of tea with me yesterday, and for clearly setting out the needs and desires of many Back-Bench Members for particular debates. I am delighted that we have been able to accommodate some of them.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
Funeral poverty blights our nation. That some of the poorest Britons cannot afford to give those they have cherished, and now for whom they grieve, a decent final farewell pains them and shames us. The bereavement fund was frozen a long time ago by a previous Government and is no longer fit for purpose, so will the Leader of the House arrange for a Minister to come here and give details as to how that fund can once again be made effective? Perhaps that Minister might also provide a reply to the letter written by me, the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) and others, requesting details of when the children’s funeral fund that was announced by the Prime Minister will actually begin to have effect. Each day’s delay adds fear to the heartbreak already felt by those who have loved and lost.
Andrea Leadsom
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise this issue in the Chamber. If he would like to send me the details of his inquiry, I would be happy to take the matter up on his behalf.
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
“She’s so cute. So sweet. I can’t wait to beat her.”
“Can she take a beating?”
Those are not my words, but the words of the hon. Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths) while barraging two of his female constituents with thousands of sexual text messages. Last night, the Leader of the House’s party gave him and the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) the Whip back without any due process. What message does this send about how any process in this place can ever be trusted? I ask the Leader of the House to answer that question and also to tell me what matters more—political power or tackling victims of sexual harassment and abuse?
Mr Speaker
Order. Before I ask the Leader of the House to answer that question, which is an entirely proper question, can I just say to the hon. Lady that I trust that she notified the two Members concerned?
Andrea Leadsom
The hon. Lady will know that I am absolutely committed to changing the culture of this place and to seeing that everybody here is treated with dignity and respect. There has been a process that has been undertaken. It has been a decision by the Chief Whip. It is not something I have been privy to. But I absolutely assure all hon. and right hon. Members that the independent complaints procedure, which is not involved with any party political processes whatever, was established and designed to enable everybody who works in or visits this place to take any complaints that they have to an independent place for proper investigation and proper sanction to be applied.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
On 15 March a private Member’s Bill in my name is scheduled; it would create a commission for a general election leaders’ debate. I know that on the first day back a Westminster Hall debate on this will take place because more than 100,000 signatures were provided to the Sky News petition. Will the Leader of the House confirm that the Government intend to support my private Member’s Bill on 15 March—and, by the way, could we make it a sitting Friday?
Andrea Leadsom
I am always delighted to take up the requests of my hon. Friend and neighbour in Northamptonshire. He will be aware that I have tabled a motion to provide the House with an additional six sitting days—something that he was keen to see and that the Opposition sought to reduce to five. I do intend and wish to bring that back as soon as I possibly can. As to his request on whether the Government will support his private Member’s Bill, I actually do not know the answer to that yet, but I am very happy to meet him and discuss it.
Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab)
Not all heroes wear capes—indeed, some of them wear aprons. I want to tell the House about David Jones, who has a butcher’s shop in Earlsheaton in my constituency, and has offered to provide any families who are struggling at Christmas because of universal credit with some food in order to see them through. He says that what he has seen is cruel and barbaric, because, despite Government assurances, people are going into his shop who have nothing—they have no money and they are forced to rely on food banks. Could we have an urgent debate on this?
Can I also repeat my plea of last year for all Members and staff of this House to include in their “out of office” messages for constituents the numbers for the Samaritans and other helpful organisations? This can be a very, very difficult time of year for many people, who sometimes turn to their MP as a last resort, so can we at least signpost them towards help while we are away.
Andrea Leadsom
The hon. Lady makes a really good point. I am sure that most hon. Members have helpful numbers for constituents to call—I certainly do, and also an emergency number to get hold of me as their local MP. I absolutely pay tribute to her for raising that. It is a very good idea.
I would also like to thank David Jones for his efforts, and all those who give so generously to contribute to, or indeed run, food banks. It is a fantastic contribution by our communities to those who are vulnerable. The hon. Lady will appreciate that we are seeking to ensure that nobody has to wait to receive money under universal credit. There is now a new contract with Citizens Advice to deliver universal support to make sure that everybody who is applying for universal credit can do so easily. As the Government have said, we continue to look at this roll-out, which is why we are doing it very slowly, but nevertheless I think we are making progress. It will be a very significant improvement on the legacy benefits system.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
At the last Transport questions, I raised the vexed issue of Crossrail funding and did not get a very satisfactory answer. We have now heard that the Department for Transport is loaning the Mayor of London £1.3 billion, which has to be repaid, in addition to the £300 million provided in the summer. Worse still, this vital infrastructure project for London and the south-east has no opening date. Could we have a statement from the Secretary of State next week on what is happening and what controls will be imposed, so that the Mayor of London gets on and delivers this vital project?
Andrea Leadsom
I agree with my hon. Friend; that is a vital project. We have Transport questions on 10 January, and it would be appropriate to raise that then.
Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)
The Leader of the House will be aware that managed migration to universal credit is due to start in July 2019. The proposed regulations state that if claimants fail to make their claim by the deadline plus an extra month’s grace period, they will lose entitlement to transitional protections, which will put vulnerable people at huge risk. May we have an urgent debate, so that we can further review that aspect of managed migration and ensure that the least well-off and the most vulnerable in society are protected from these changes?
Andrea Leadsom
The hon. Gentleman will be aware that the application process for universal credit is much simpler and it is designed to help people get into work and then keep more of their benefits as they increase their hours. Having listened carefully to views expressed in the House, we have increased advances to up to 100% of the first full monthly payment, scrapped the seven days’ waiting, so that everybody can get their money on the same day, should that be necessary, and introduced a two-week overlap with housing benefit payments. Unfortunately, his party voted against those changes.
In the most recent Budget, we increased the amount that someone can earn before their universal credit is reduced, introduced a two-week overlap with various legacy benefits for a smoother transition and gave all self-employed people 12 months to get their business off the ground. That demonstrates a Government who are listening but, at the same time, are committed to rolling out a much better benefit than the ones it replaces.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
The Leader of the House knows that I voted against the Prime Minister last night, but I accept the result of the vote. The Prime Minister won fair and square, and she is therefore entitled to have my support to continue as leader. She will get my support to continue as leader, as I hope she will from all my right hon. and hon. Friends.
The Prime Minister has said that she is going to the EU to secure significant and supposedly game-changing amendments to the withdrawal agreement. Will the Leader of the House assure us that we will get a full debate when that agreement comes back and will not just continue with the debate as we left it? Given how over-subscribed that debate was, can she assure us that the debate will last longer than five days?
Andrea Leadsom
I thank my hon. Friend; his approach is exactly right. Even if he did not support the Prime Minister, she won by a clear majority, and it is right that he now supports her.
My hon. Friend asks what the guaranteed lengh of time for debate will be. He will appreciate that that decision depends on what the Prime Minister comes back with. She is seeking significant reassurances, so that she can bring back a withdrawal agreement that the House will support. It is not possible to set out the exact terms of resumption of the debate or, indeed, the terms of an entirely new debate until we see what the Prime Minister is able to bring back. We are certain that the debate and the vote will come back to the House by 21 January, and that time will be given for all Members to make a contribution to it.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
My constituents and the country are crying out for certainty. Will the Leader of the House commit to amend our recess time and have the House sit before Christmas and/or from 2 January, if necessary, so that we can rule out a reckless no-deal Brexit? We urgently need to stop the contingency plans for our NHS, other public services and businesses right across the country being triggered, because it will cost our country millions of pounds.
Andrea Leadsom
I fully understand the hon. Lady’s concerns. She will understand that the legal position at present is that, in the event that there was no agreement on our withdrawal and potentially the political declaration between now and the end of March 2019, the UK would leave the EU without a deal. It is right—[Interruption.] The hon. Lady is shouting back at me, but I hope she will hear me out. It is vital that any Government make preparations for all outcomes. That is the right thing to do, in the country’s interests. It would be wrong of us to assume that a deal will be forthcoming and therefore to put down our preparations. We will continue to prepare for all outcomes, including no deal.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
MidKent College in my constituency has recently had a good Ofsted report. It has played its part—it is at the heart of the local community—in creating over 20,000 apprenticeships since 2010. Will the Leader of the House join me in congratulating the college? May we have a debate on further education colleges and apprenticeships?
Andrea Leadsom
I am delighted to join my hon. Friend in congratulating his further education college. It is absolutely vital that more young people are able to develop the skills they need to get the well-paid jobs of the future. We are transforming technical education through T-levels, and we will be investing an extra £500 million a year once they are up and running. That will build on our apprenticeship programme, which is creating 3 million quality apprenticeships that will change the lives of young people, giving them the skills they need for the future.
Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)
A constituent of mine was convinced to invest her life savings of £150,000—all of it has gone. When she threatened action against the PlusOption Trading company, it simply offered her a bonus payment to invest even more. It has ignored three letters from me. Further to the Leader of the House’s answer to the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess), may we have a Government statement on, and an investigation by the Financial Conduct Authority into, disgraceful companies such as that?
Andrea Leadsom
The hon. Lady raises what sounds like a very concerning case. I encourage her to write on behalf of her constituent directly to the FCA, which, as she will know, is independent of Government.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
A constituent has pointed out to me that the local government ombudsman will look only at cases that have a direct impact on a particular individual rather than taxpayers in general. He raised an issue about Staffordshire County Council, which I believe is very well run, but we need to have confidence in the decisions made in investigations by councils into their own activities. May we have a debate on setting up an independent arbiter or body that can look at the decisions made by county councils or other councils that are not subject to the local government ombudsman in order to give credibility to the decisions of local government?
Andrea Leadsom
My hon. Friend raises an issue that I am sure many hon. Members will have found concerning broader criticisms of the way in which councils go about their business. I am very sympathetic to him, and he may well want to seek an Adjournment debate so that he can discuss with a Minister the specifics of Staffordshire’s councils.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
This morning, I received a letter from the Minister for Immigration, thanking me for my email correspondence of 5 February about a previous letter of 22 December 2017. May we have a debate about incompetence in the Home Office? I was raising a very serious matter about the delay in granting indefinite leave to remain to Sri Lankans who have sought political asylum and the impact on their ability to contribute to the UK. It is absolutely and woefully inadequate that I have had to wait almost a year to get any kind of response from the Minister of State. Actually, the Minister of State has changed in that time, and the response is still inadequate.
Andrea Leadsom
I am genuinely sorry to hear of the hon. Lady’s experience. She will recognise that correspondence units in each Department have turnaround times. That sounds like a very bad experience, so if she would like to send me the details, I will take it up with the Department on her behalf.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
I am sure the Leader of the House will be as pleased as I am that Rugby is delivering new homes at three times the national rate—it currently has 17 sites for homebuyers to choose from—yet the Heart of England Co-op has chosen to push ahead with an application to develop a well-established recreation area at Oakfield, in a part of the town with limited facilities, against the wishes of the local community. May we therefore have a debate about the value of retaining open spaces so that young people can enjoy the great outdoors?
Andrea Leadsom
I am sympathetic to my hon. Friend; as constituency MPs we all have to find a balance between meeting housing needs and protecting the green and outdoor spaces around us. The national planning policy framework was updated in July, and it safeguards existing recreation areas unless there is clear evidence that the loss can be justified. As my hon. Friend knows, the planning system is locally led, so I hope that his planning authority has taken into consideration strongly held views about the recreation area in Oakfield.
Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
The Government have faced repeated calls from Labour Members to bring privatised probation services back under public control. Following the shocking news that the largest private provider of probation services, Interserve, needs a bail-out, it continues to be awarded Government contracts, so may we please have an urgent debate about the future of privatised probation services?
Andrea Leadsom
The hon. Lady takes a significant interest in this issue, so she will know that Justice questions are next Tuesday, at which she might want to raise the matter. It is vital that offenders are properly supervised, and our reforms mean that up to 40,000 more offenders are being monitored than was previously the case. She raises an important issue, and I encourage her to take it up with Ministers.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
Two days ago at the TechFest STEM in the Pipeline schools BP challenge in Aberdeen, students from schools across north-east Scotland battled it out to develop an ideal oilfield development plan for a fictional North sea oilfield. I am delighted to report, to what I am sure is an eager House, that a team from Westhill Academy in my constituency won the Maximising Economic Recovery accolade. Will my right hon. Friend join me not only in congratulating the staff and pupils involved, but in considering what more the Government can do to encourage more young people to get involved in STEM subjects in an engaging and exciting way?
Andrea Leadsom
I am delighted to join my hon. Friend in congratulating students at Westhill Academy. As energy Minister I had the chance to take part in a survival challenge in Scotland, before going out to an offshore oil rig; perhaps my hon. Friend could think about offering such a prize to some of those students. They would get in a pretend helicopter and be dropped from the roof upside down into a swimming pool —it is definitely exciting. He is right to point out the Government’s commitment to improving STEM subjects. The Government fund a number of programmes that aim to inspire more young people to study science subjects, such as the STEM Ambassadors programme and the CREST Awards, which encourage students to do STEM-related projects. I congratulate them all on their prizes.
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
Yesterday, the Conservative party lost any ounce of credibility in leading investigations into sexual harassment and bullying in this place when it restored the Whip to the hon. Members for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) and for Burton (Andrew Griffiths). I am afraid it is thoroughly implausible that those investigations just so happened to conclude yesterday. How can we be assured that party politics are taken out of investigations into such allegations, and out of crucial appointments to committees that govern standards and privileges in this House?
Andrea Leadsom
The hon. Lady will be aware that parties across the House combined to develop the independent complaints procedure. It was right that we did that, and one key reason for doing so was to ensure that any future complaints would not have to go down party political routes. That was at the heart of the process, as was confidentiality for the complainant, and the complaints procedure has now been up and running for more than four months. A steady stream of complaints are being brought forward to it, and there are a small number of ongoing investigations. That is the right way for complaints to be brought forward in this House, to give people the assurance that party politics will not get in the way.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
My constituent, Marion Finch of Muirkirk, had a lifetime disability living allowance higher rate award, yet when she was reassessed for the personal independence payment she was given only the standard mobility rate. While fighting the system her health deteriorated and, tragically, she died. Her husband is convinced that stress was a contributor to that, and on a point of principle he appealed the decision, which was then overturned. Will the Leader of the House, on behalf of the Government, offer an apology to Mr Finch, and speak to her Cabinet colleagues about the real effects of the Government’s welfare policy?
Andrea Leadsom
May I say how sorry we all are to hear of the loss of the hon. Gentleman’s constituent? It is always incredibly tragic for somebody whose health is deteriorating to then pass on. Our sympathies go to her widower. The Government seek at all times to improve the lives of people with disabilities. Since 2010, more money has been going into supporting those with disabilities to get into work and improve their lives than ever before. It is vital that we continue to do everything we can to improve people’s lives.
Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)
The Leader of the House has robbed me of the seventh chance to ask her where the immigration Bill is. I thank her for that. Instead, I would like to know when, oh when, are we going to get our meaningful vote?
Andrea Leadsom
I am so sorry to steal the hon. Lady’s thunder. I thought she might be pleased with that news, but she has another challenge for me. As I have said, and as the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr Lidington), said: at the very latest by 21 January.
David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)
May we have a debate on Government Department response times? The Child Maintenance Service has been making me wait for an inordinate length of time in relation to the case of my Carmyle constituent, Jamie Cameron. The CMS overestimated his salary by £100,000 and I cannot deal with his case until it responds. When can we have a statement from the Government about the woeful state of the CMS?
Andrea Leadsom
I am obviously not familiar with the specifics of the case the hon. Gentleman mentions. I suggest he seeks an Adjournment debate or asks a parliamentary question of Ministers to try to get information on his particular case.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
As the Leader of the House knows, the Committee on Standards published a report this week recommending some quick wins that we could implement on the way to full implementation of the Laura Cox report recommendations, without prejudice to longer-term improvements. Will the Leader make time for a debate on that report and its recommendations, and a vote on the recommendations that we make and that the House will need to endorse?
Andrea Leadsom
I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for the speed with which she and her Committee have come forward with some quick recommendations on how to ensure more independence in the parliamentary scrutiny process. I pay tribute to her Committee for that. I have already seen the report and I will certainly look at finding time for a debate.
Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)
A century ago, Springburn in my constituency was a world centre for locomotive manufacturing. Last night, the heartbreaking news broke that the last locomotive works in Springburn, the St Rollox Locomotive Works which dates from 1856, is to close with the loss of 180 jobs. I am very confident that this could be avoided with a proper effort from Government at all levels. Will the Leader of the House seek to engage with the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, so that we can have a statement or correspondence on what we can do to safeguard this crucial highly sophisticated and highly skilled centre for locomotive repair and overhaul in Scotland?
Andrea Leadsom
I am genuinely sorry to hear about the threatened closure of that plant. I encourage the hon. Gentleman to seek an urgent Adjournment debate, so that he can raise the issue directly with Ministers.
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)
A UN report and space satellite images show that 1 million Uighur Muslims are in a mass internment camp where they are forced to undergo psychological indoctrination programmes. More recent reports show the widespread use of torture for those who resist. May I ask the Leader of the House to ask the Foreign Secretary to make a statement on what action our Government are taking with regard to this matter, or is it going to be business as usual where we do not want to upset powerful countries?
Andrea Leadsom
I share the hon. Lady’s enormous concern for the plight of the Rohingya people. It is absolutely appalling what is—[Interruption.]
Andrea Leadsom
I am sorry. I apologise to the hon. Lady. I heard Rohingya. I do apologise. Mr Speaker, may I ask the hon. Lady to repeat her question?
Yasmin Qureshi
A UN report and space satellite images show that 1 million Uighur Muslims are in a mass internment camp where they are forced to undergo psychological indoctrination programmes. More recent reports show that those who resist are subjected to widespread torture. Will the Leader of the House ask the Foreign Secretary to come to this House to make a statement on what action our Government are taking in relation to this situation, or is it going to be business as usual where we never want to criticise a powerful country?
Andrea Leadsom
My sincere apologies to the hon. Lady for mishearing her the first time round. She is raising an incredibly important point. We have all been horrified to hear the stories of what is going on. We have International Development questions on Wednesday 9 January—[Interruption.] I certainly absolutely agree with the hon. Lady that it is vital that we do all we can in this country, and if she would like to email me, I can take this up directly with the Foreign Office.
Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)
Scotland’s parliamentarians and Scotland’s Government are on a bit of a roll at the moment, with legal victories in Supreme Courts across Europe against the British Government in the midst of the Brexit chaos. This morning, the United Kingdom Supreme Court ruled that the Scottish Parliament had the competence to pass its Brexit continuity Bill at the time that it did, and that Scotland’s chief Law Officer, the Lord Advocate, gave the correct advice and that the Presiding Officer of the Holyrood Parliament was wrong in this respect. However, what has happened is that retrospectively, through House of Lords amendments to the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 here, the will of the Scottish Parliament has been thwarted. Can we have a debate about how it is ridiculous to say that Scotland has the most powerful devolved Parliament in the world and about how the only way to protect people in Scotland and the Scottish legal system from the folly of this Tory Government is independence?
Andrea Leadsom
I think the hon. and learned Lady may have just asked that question of the Attorney General, which would have been the more appropriate place—[Interruption.] Okay, well, perhaps she should have asked the Attorney General if she wanted the Law Officers’ advice on that. The answer that I would give is simply to remind her that Scotland is a part of the United Kingdom. It voted very recently to remain a part of the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom entered the European Community together and we will be leaving the European Union together.
Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
The Leader of the House obviously does not expect the Prime Minister to get a meaningful concession in Brussels, because otherwise we would have a meaningful vote next week. While the chaos has been happening on the Government’s side of the House, will she join me in paying tribute to the outgoing First Minister in Wales, Carwyn Jones, and the new Welsh Labour First Minister, Mark Drakeford? Does she perhaps concede that we need to take some lessons in strong and stable Government from the Welsh Labour Government, who have delivered real changes for my constituents, including new schools, new hospitals, new further education colleges and real differences in public services? That is what happens when we have a Government focused on what matters to people, rather than one who are focused on the chaos on the other side.
Andrea Leadsom
I certainly join the hon. Gentleman in thanking the outgoing First Minister for his service to the people of Wales and congratulate and wish all the best to Mark Drakeford, who is taking over. As to the other points that he raises, I am a huge, huge fan of Wales and all the amazing achievements of Welsh food producers, Welsh creators and Welsh farming communities, as well as the amazing culture and the wonderful walks, but less so of the Welsh Government—he will forgive me for making that point.
Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)
Yesterday, I learned that another brilliant live music venue, Gwdihŵ, in my constituency and other long-standing local businesses are being forced to close to make way for unnecessary commercial development. Can we have a debate on what additional measures are needed across the UK to protect cultural assets against the threat of greedy developers?
Andrea Leadsom
I hope that the hon. Lady took the opportunity to raise that at Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport questions, which we just had. She will be aware that the Government do everything that we can to support thriving arts and culture right across the UK and that many of our towns are undergoing quite some change, because of the reduced footprint and the way that people are shopping differently, online and so on. The Government are doing what we can by reducing business rates and by encouraging thriving arts and culture. With regards to the specific issue that she raises, she might want to seek an Adjournment debate.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Cuba is undergoing a process to adopt a new constitution in February 2019. Unfortunately, freedom of religion and belief protections in the draft constitution have been deliberately weakened, and according to Christian Solidarity Worldwide, some church leaders who have been standing up for stronger freedom of religious belief provisions have been threatened by the Cuban Government. Will the Leader of the House agree to a statement or a debate on this very pressing issue?
Andrea Leadsom
The hon. Gentleman often raises the suppression of religious freedom and is absolutely right to do so. He will be aware that the Government entirely support the rights of all individuals to express their religious preferences. I encourage him to seek an Adjournment debate so that he can raise the matter with Ministers.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I am absolutely delighted about “Erskine May” being online, not least because when I called for that on 2 November 2017, both you, Mr Speaker, and the Leader of the House were ever so slightly sniffy about the very idea. I am absolutely delighted that we are united in wanting it online.
It is preposterous for us to delay endlessly the vote on Brexit. If we bump up against 21 January, businesses in this country will be wasting time, energy and money worrying about whether there will be a no-deal situation. We need to get on with it. I say this to the Leader of the House: please ditch all next week’s business. Let us get on with the debate and get on with making a decision. That is what Parliament is for—decisions.
Andrea Leadsom
I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman is delighted. I do not think Mr Speaker or I were sniffy.
On the hon. Gentleman’s main point on the meaningful vote, when hon. Members look at themselves in the mirror, they know full well that the country needs a decision to support a withdrawal agreement. We were looking at a decision not to support a meaningful vote. That is precisely why the Prime Minister decided that we would not go ahead with the vote—she was concerned that hon. Members would not support the withdrawal agreement. If the hon. Gentleman wants to come forward with a worked-out and negotiable alternative, that would be great, but the reality is that the Opposition have no alternatives to suggest. All they want to do is have a vote so that they can vote no. The Prime Minister, in the interests of the country, is trying to find a withdrawal agreement that the House will support.
Mr Speaker
Naturally I reject the accusation that there was any sniffiness in my attitude. The Leader of the House can answer for herself and has already done so. My recollection is that the House was advised that “Erskine May” was already available to Members online. In so far as the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), leading the charge for progressive change, was making the argument that it should be more widely available online, I am happy to accept that. If that burnishes the hon. Gentleman’s credentials as a champion of progressive change and brings some happiness into his heart, that is a double benefit.
Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)
In my meeting with the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work, she stated that Department for Work and Pensions auditors of health assessment reports offer recommendations only, but the independent assessment service told me that the auditor has the authority to overrule report justifications. In my constituent’s case, the auditors instructed that changes be made. May we have a debate in Government time to enable Ministers to explain these differences to the House?
Andrea Leadsom
The hon. Lady will be aware that we have DWP questions on the first day back on 7 January, when I am sure Ministers will be able to explain that to her.
Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)
As one of the 164 MPs who were called last week—I was called a little after midnight last Tuesday—I am very concerned by the suspension of the vote, not least because the Brexit Secretary might change again by the time we get to it. I tell the Leader of the House that kicking the can down the road is not a strategy for government, and that waiting for the sword of Damocles to fall on people’s homes, businesses and livelihoods, and our NHS, is completely unacceptable. She is deliberately pursuing a policy of running down the clock and spending taxpayers’ money in order to blackmail Parliament into supporting her deal. I tell her now that it will not work.
Andrea Leadsom
I ask you, Mr Speaker, whether accusing me of blackmailing the House is parliamentary language.
Mr Speaker
Yes, nothing disorderly has occurred because, if there were a suspicion of disorderly behaviour, I feel sure that I would have been advised thus. I think that the essential point was of a political character. I do not think anybody is making any allegation that would, if you like, detract from the right hon. Lady’s honour or be an imputation of dishonesty, because I feel sure that senior Clerks would have advised me. I think the essential charge was a political one, to which I am sure the Leader of the House is capable of responding.
Andrea Leadsom
Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.
The hon. Lady will realise that—as I have just said to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant)—had we gone ahead with the vote, the House would have been very unlikely to support the withdrawal agreement as it stood. She says that in not holding the vote we are running down the clock. The point is that the Prime Minister listened to the views of the House, and has now gone away urgently to seek changes which will mean that the House can support the agreement—in other words, so that she can put to the House something that it will support in the interests of the country. It is not in the interests of the United Kingdom for the House to have a vote on something that the House does not accept. That is what would create the uncertainty about which the hon. Lady is concerned.
Mr Speaker
Order. It is an important point, colleagues, that was raised by the Leader of the House quizzically with me, and I have been confirmed in my sense that it was a metaphorical use of the term, and when I say I have been confirmed in that sense, I mean that I have been confirmed in that sense by professional advice of the highest order. So no impropriety has occurred. I have no objection to being asked whether there was an impropriety, but there was no impropriety at all.
Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
Following the news this week about Interserve, the previous collapse of Carillion and the repeated failures of Capita, will the Leader of the House arrange for a Minister from the Cabinet Office to come and make a statement about the functions of the Crown Representative system, which is meant to be the link between Government and strategic suppliers? When we see these large companies failing to fulfil their contracts, something is clearly not working in the scrutiny process.
Andrea Leadsom
The hon. Gentleman has raised a really important point. After the collapse of Carillion, it was clear that the Government wanted to carry out further reviews to ensure that public service provision and taxpayers’ money were protected at all times, and they have taken a number of steps to achieve that. As the hon. Gentleman will know, Cabinet Office questions will take place next Wednesday, and I encourage him to raise the matter with Ministers then.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
It is welcome that the immigration Bill is finally to be published, but when will we have a chance to debate it? My constituent Robert Makutsa is stuck in interminable legal processes as the Government try to deport him through their hostile environment policy, although his wife is a UK citizen and he makes a valuable contribution to music and sound engineering in Glasgow. Will the Leader of the House ask the Immigration Minister to grant him leave, and when exactly will the Bill be debated so that we can seek to amend and reform this hostile immigration policy?
Andrea Leadsom
The hon. Gentleman has raised an important constituency issue to which I am extremely sympathetic, and I applaud him for doing so, but I do not accept that the Home Office is employing a hostile environment policy. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is trying hard to change any sense that there is an unwelcoming approach to new migrants or, indeed, to existing migrants who are seeking the right to remain here. If the hon. Gentleman wishes to raise the specific point with me in an email, I can take it up with the Home Office on his behalf.
Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)
We are in an absurd position. The Leader of the House is berating Members for not supporting her Bill, but how can we engage with the Bill in any way, shape or form unless she brings it to the House? The Prime Minister has travelled around Europe this week, she has spoken to numerous leaders of countries, and she is going to the European Council at the weekend. There is nothing that she will know after Christmas that she will not know this weekend. She should bring back the Bill next week. Will the Leader of the House press her to do so? If not, she is the Leader of the House: just bring it back.
Andrea Leadsom
I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for attributing such magical powers to me, but, as he will appreciate, I am not able to do such a thing on my own. He talked about a Bill; he means, of course, the withdrawal agreement, and the meaningful vote.
I am not berating Members in any way. Having listened to the views of the House at great length over many weeks, I fully understand and, indeed, share the House’s concerns about, in particular, the prospect of the UK’s being stuck permanently in a backstop that we cannot get out of. However, I think that the House should give the Prime Minister an opportunity to seek amendments so that it can then support the agreement.
Dr Paul Williams (Stockton South) (Lab)
The North East England chamber of commerce is telling me that the uncertainty built into the future partnership framework will cost investment and jobs in the north-east of England, and it has asked me to achieve an outcome that leaves the UK in the single market and customs union, so when will I have a chance to end this business uncertainty by voting against the Prime Minister’s deal and for a public vote that includes an option to stay in the EU?
Andrea Leadsom
It is not Government policy to allow us to do anything other than leave the EU on 29 March 2019, and it is the Government’s policy to do so with a good deal that works for the UK and the EU.
Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)
The images of Christmas that are portrayed in advertising and on television are of families coming together, but the reality for many people is that this is a time of great loneliness. Although I appreciate that there is not time for a statement or a debate on the issue of loneliness, may I invite the Leader of the House and you, Mr Speaker, and all hon. Members to join me at the Samaritans reception on Monday at 4 o’clock in the Thames pavilion where we will be launching a report on loneliness, particularly among young people? Last year 1,660 young people took their own lives, and it is time that we recognised the epidemic that is loneliness in this country.
Andrea Leadsom
I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady. She is right to raise this issue. Loneliness is an appalling scourge; whether for a young person at home with a new baby or somebody older who has perhaps been bereaved, it is absolutely appalling. We now have the first ever Minister for loneliness, as she will appreciate, and the Government are committed to a proper strategy for tackling this problem. I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising the Samaritans reception next week.
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
Following on from questions from my hon. Friends, the Prime Minister has been touring Europe this week and will be at the European Council this weekend. The Leader of the House has already announced the business for next week, including that the Prime Minister will make her usual statement after the European Council meeting. So why oh why can we not bring the meaningful vote back next week, since we know that the Prime Minister cannot open up the legal agreement and is merely seeking assurances? Is this not just a scorched earth policy from the Government to bribe Members of this Parliament to vote for a deal that we all know is flawed?
Andrea Leadsom
The hon. Gentleman rightly says that the Prime Minister will make a statement to the House on Monday after the EU Council. He asserts that she will not succeed in her negotiations. The Opposition have asserted all the way through that the Government’s negotiations will not succeed, but an agreement has been negotiated and the Prime Minister is seeking to further improve on it to address the concerns expressed by right hon. and hon. Members. The hon. Gentleman will have the opportunity to ask the Prime Minister how that has gone on Monday.
Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the Leader of the House organise a debate in Government time on the planning system? My district council of Stroud has a proud record of delivering the numbers required and has met its five-year plan supply, but under the Government’s new formula there is a massive hike in the number of houses it is expected to provide. Much as we need houses, there must be some fairness in how that system operates, so will the Leader of the House organise a debate?
Andrea Leadsom
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, we do need many more houses. We have a very good track record: we have delivered over 217,000 new homes in the latest year, which is the highest level in all but one of the last 30 years. That is good news, but there is more to do, and he is right that there needs to be a balance between the needs of those who already live in a community and the needs of those who want a home. He will be aware that local planning is a matter for local authorities, but I encourage him to seek an Adjournment debate so that he can raise his local concerns directly with Ministers.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
So in other news this week, the media have been reporting that Crossrail is about to get a £2 billion bail-out to add to what it has already received—a total of, I think, £17 billion —and that is before we even start with Crossrail 2, which has an earmarked price tag of about £30 billion. The north, meanwhile, is getting nothing like those figures, so may we have a statement from the Transport Secretary on what is going on with the mismanagement and overspending of the Crossrail budget?
Andrea Leadsom
I sympathise with the hon. Lady. She will be aware that we have Transport questions in our first week back, on 10 January, and I encourage her to raise that matter directly with the Secretary of State then.
Martin Whitfield (East Lothian) (Lab)
As we approach the holiday season, I should like to take this opportunity to wish teachers, staff and pupils a peaceful Christmas. I should also like to give credit to people who will not be with their families over the holiday period because they are helping to keep us safe and secure. May we have a debate in Government time on the role of those volunteers and professionals—people who are just doing their jobs and giving up time for their communities?
Andrea Leadsom
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to raise this. There are so many people working as volunteers, or doing their duty as police officers, local council workers and so on, who will enable the rest of us to have a lovely relaxing Christmas, and we owe them a huge debt of gratitude. He will be aware that there is a pre-recess Adjournment debate next Thursday, and he might well want to raise the matter again then.
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
About a month ago, Royal Mail contacted me to inform me that the Hope Farm Road post office in my constituency would be closing on a temporary basis. It explained the reasons for that and the interim arrangements that would be put in place. Unfortunately, no interim arrangements have materialised and the Post Office appears to have no plan to get it reopened. It is not even replying to my emails now. May we please have a debate on how we can hold this shambolic organisation to account?
Andrea Leadsom
I am sorry to hear that the hon. Gentleman has had such a bad experience with the Post Office, and he is right to raise the matter here. I think he will probably now get an answer to his question in very short order.
Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)
Last week I asked the Leader of the House for a debate on child poverty in the UK. She dismissed my request and said that I was making assertions. She stated:
“Just because the hon. Lady makes those assertions, it does not make them true.”—[Official Report, 6 December 2018; Vol. 650, c. 1069.]
I am going to try again. May we have a debate on child poverty in the UK? If any MP has any evidence that refutes the evidence given by the Institute for Public Policy Research, the Child Poverty Action Group and the United Nations rapporteur, let them bring that evidence to the debate. Let us have a proper debate on this, and let us find out the truth about child poverty in the UK on her Government’s watch.
Andrea Leadsom
I never dismiss the requests of right hon. and hon. Members. The hon. Lady did indeed ask for a debate on child poverty, and I merely sought to put right some of her assertions. I would say to her that we now have more children growing up in a home where they see their parents going to work and providing for their family, with 630,000 fewer children living in workless households. The numbers of people and children in absolute poverty are at record lows, with 1 million fewer people and 300,000 fewer children in absolute poverty. Income inequality is also down—it is lower than in any year under the last Labour Government—as the Conservatives have built a fairer and more equal society.
John Grogan (Keighley) (Lab)
Regarding Europe, is it not now time for those on the two Front Benches to get together, perhaps even with you, Mr Speaker, to offer the House a timetable for the votes that we must have—namely, on the Prime Minister’s deal and, if that falls, on a further referendum, on no deal or on a Norway-style option—so that we can see how the land lies while we still have time to do something about it?
Andrea Leadsom
As I have said to a number of right hon. and hon. Members, the meaningful vote will be brought back by 21 January at the latest. Members will know that the Government are under a statutory obligation under section 13(1)(b) of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 to have the deal approved by a motion in the House, and we will do so just as soon as possible.
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
A large number of Scottish sports governing bodies have brought to my attention their growing concern regarding sports governance arrangements across the UK. Scottish sports and athletics are being undermined by the decisions and actions of UK bodies—the recent autocratic actions of UK Athletics are a case in point. The all-party parliamentary group on Scottish sport will be having a look at this soon. May we have a debate on the Floor of the House to enable Ministers to hear what Members have to say on this?
Andrea Leadsom
I hope that the hon. Gentleman took advantage of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport questions earlier today. I know that sports governing bodies are a matter of huge interest right across this House, and he might well want to seek a Westminster Hall debate so that all hon. Members can take part.
Local Government Funding Settlement
(6 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (James Brokenshire)
With permission, I will make a statement on funding for local authorities in England next year. Every day, councils and the many hard-working, dedicated people who work for them do their communities proud, delivering the essential services on which we all depend and making a difference to every life they touch. It is a privilege to be working with and representing those communities. In doing so, I am determined to ensure that they get the resources and support they need to rise to new opportunities and challenges, to grow their economies and to ensure that there is opportunity for all and that no one is left behind. The draft local government finance settlement being published today is an important step towards that. The provisional local authority funding allocations will be subject to further review before final settlements are made in line with my Department’s usual processes. This provisional settlement confirms that core spending power is forecast to increase from £45.1 billion in 2018-19 to £46.4 billion in 2019-20—a cash increase of 2.8% and a real-terms increase in the resources available to local authorities.
It has been challenging for councils to drive efficiencies as they have contributed to rebuilding our economy and tackling the deficit that we inherited from Labour. That is why I am delighted that the Budget committed around £1 billion of extra funding for local services, with a strong focus on supporting some of our most vulnerable groups. That includes £650 million for adult and children’s social care in 2019-20. Of that, £240 million will go towards easing winter pressures, with the flexibility to use the remaining £410 million for either adult or children’s services and, where necessary, to relieve demands on the NHS. That is on top of the £240 million announced in October to address winter pressures this year.
In addition, the Budget pledged an extra £84 million over the next five years to expand our children’s social care programmes to support more councils with high or rising numbers of children in care. That builds on the good work my Department is already doing through the troubled families programme to improve all services for families with complex programmes. The Budget also provided a boost for our high streets via a £1.5 billion package of support, including a business rates discount worth almost £900 million and a £675 million future high streets fund to help them adapt and thrive in changing times. In addition, a further £420 million will go towards repairing and improving our roads this year.
I recognise some of the pressures within social care. I have been working with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to address those pressures, and the Government will soon publish a Green Paper on the future of social care. It is a complex issue, and we are working with local authorities to ensure that we get things right. We have taken that approach across the board, listening carefully to councils of all shapes and sizes across the country and responding. My thanks go to my Ministers, especially the Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak), for all their work. As a result, I can confirm that I will increase the rural services delivery grant by £16 million in 2019-20 to maintain it at last year’s level, recognising the extra costs of providing services in rural communities.
In addition, I am committing up to £20 million to maintain the new homes bonus baseline at 0.4% in 2019-20, to ensure that we continue to reward councils for delivering the homes we need. There will also be no change to the council tax referendum limits set for local authorities in 2018-19, aside from further flexibility offered on the police precept level. Authorities will have the flexibility to increase their core council tax requirement by up to 3% and can draw as needed on the adult social care precept to meet demand for services, but local residents will continue to be protected and be able to approve or veto any excessive rise in a referendum. Measures that I have agreed with the Home Secretary to allow police and crime commissioners to increase the police precept to £24 will help PCCs tackle the changing demands they face.
I am also conscious that so-called negative revenue support grant remains an issue in certain areas. Having consulted on options for addressing it, I am pleased to announce that we intend to directly eliminate the £152.9 million negative RSG in 2019-20 using forgone business rates. That will prevent any local authority from being subject to a downward adjustment to its business rates tariffs and top-ups, which could act as a disincentive to growth.
We have been listening, and we have been acting on what we hear. Nowhere is that more true than when it comes to answering calls from councils, over many years, for more control over the money they raise. Our plan to increase business rates retention to 75% from 2020 provides that and more, giving local authorities powerful incentives to grow their local economy. Under the current scheme, councils estimate that they will receive around £2.4 billion in business rates growth in 2018-19, a significant revenue stream on top of the core settlement funding I am unveiling today. It is therefore no wonder that councils are queuing up to get involved in the pilots we have been running to test the new approach.
I am delighted to announce that, in 2019-20, 15 new pilots will get under way in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, East Sussex, Hertfordshire, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, North and West Yorkshire, North of Tyne, Solent combined authority, Somerset, Staffordshire and Stoke, West Sussex and Worcestershire. We will also be piloting 75% rates retention in London and continuing the existing pilots in devolution deal areas.
I am also pleased to announce that every authority in England stands to reap the rewards of increased growth in business rates income, which has generated a surplus in the business rates levy account in 2018-19. We propose to distribute £180 million of levy surplus to all councils, based on need.
I am aware that a few authorities continue to undertake significant borrowing for commercial purposes. I share the concerns of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy and others about the risks to which those local authorities are exposing themselves and local taxpayers. We are considering with Her Majesty’s Treasury what further interventions may be required.
We are also launching two further consultations today, on reforms to the business rates retention system and on the new approach to distributing funding through the review of relative needs and resources. There is little doubt that the current funding formula needs fixing and replacing with a robust, straightforward approach in which the link between local circumstances and the allocation of resources is clear. With those consultations, we are making important progress towards that and towards a stronger, more sustainable system of local government.
So 2019 is shaping up to be a big moment for local government, drawing together our plans for a new approach to distributing funding and increasing business rates retention, as well as the upcoming spending review. No one knows their local area like councils, which are at the heart of their communities, and we are supporting them to harness their vast local knowledge and networks—yes, to make the best of available resources and to increase efficiency, but also to innovate and improve the way we deliver services. We are working with local authorities to promote efficiency, and we will use that work to develop a package of support to help councils become more efficient and get better service outcomes. We will launch a continuous improvement tool in spring 2019, and we are championing authorities that are putting communities at the heart of service delivery.
The smarter use of technology is clearly pivotal to this work, and it has the potential to be genuinely transformative, which is why the digital declaration launched by the Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond (Yorks), to share and spread best practice is so important. The declaration is backed by a £7.5 million local digital innovation fund, and I am delighted to say that the first successful bids were announced last week to kick-start projects led by councils to promote service transformation.
There is so much excellent, inspiring work under way in our local communities, and it is right that we get behind it and have faith in the authorities that, day in and day out, always deliver. This settlement and the extra funding announced in the Budget reaffirm that faith, delivering a cash-terms increase of 2.8% and a real-terms increase in spending for local authorities in 2019-20; delivering extra support for the vulnerable, for quality public services, for our high streets and for local economic growth; and paving the way for a fairer, more self-sufficient and more resilient future for local government and a brighter future for the people and places it serves. I commend this settlement to the House.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
First, let me thank the Secretary of State for giving me advance sight of his statement. But the real thanks have to go to our councillors, of all political persuasions and none, and to the frontline heroes who, despite almost a decade of austerity, have worked hard to keep our local public services going at the same time as demand has increased and funding has fallen through the floor. The under-resourcing of local government—the sector has lost 60p in every £1 of central Government funding, according to the Tory-led Local Government Association —and the reverse redistribution policies of his Ministry have exacerbated these problems, and he cannot hide from that fact.
Let us bust the myth—this might come as a revelation to the Secretary of State and his Ministers—by pointing out that not all areas are the same. Some areas have greater deprivation and greater poverty, and greater demand for people-based services as a consequence, yet these same areas have fronted the heaviest cuts, and that is continuing—it is not ending. But the Government’s approach, as we have heard here again today, is to shift the burden on to council tax. He knows, and it is an inconvenient truth, that areas such as the one I represent and the one my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon) represents cannot bring in anything like the resource from council tax that his own council can bring in, and that widens the inequality across England.
So can the Secretary of State confirm how much of the 2.8% that he has announced, with fanfare, is actually being raised through council tax rather than from central Government funding? Can he confirm that he is recommending an inflation-busting council tax rise this year to local government to plug his Department’s gaps? How will he therefore address the inequality issue whereby revenue support grant is distributed on a needs-based formula, but council tax revenue is collected and spent locally, meaning that the richest parts of this country will be able to raise significants more than the parts of the country with real deprivation and real demand on public services? Can he confirm that his plans mean a £1.3 billion cut to RSG next year, offsetting the £1.3 billion of spending in his announcement? That really is the reverse redistribution that I talked about.
Does the Secretary of State agree with his official who told the Public Accounts Committee that the sector is sustainable only if it delivers only statutory services? The Secretary of State will know that councils deliver much more than the bare legal minimum—700 or more non-statutory services to be precise. We are talking about Sure Start centres, libraries, parks, museums and investment in youth—all are not included in his assessment of sustainability. So which of those should councils stop providing altogether, if they are to take the advice of his officials? The truth about this statement is that it was actually the worst secret Santa ever, because much of what he has announced today was already announced by the Chancellor in his Budget—there is nothing new here.
On adult social care, we were told by the Tory-led Local Government Association that it needs £1.3 billion next year and £2 billion for children’s services, yet the Secretary of State has re-announced £650 million for both—not only that, but it could be shared with the NHS. How is that going to be split between services for adults, children’s services and the NHS? Can he clarify that? The Secretary of State says he is working with the Health and Social Care Secretary to soon publish the Green Paper on social care. Given the pressures that councils are facing, and the real heartbreak and misery experienced by service users, can he tell us how soon is “soon”? Or is this like the Brexit meaningful vote, whereby no date is ever given? The fact is that social care is in crisis. The promised Green Paper has now been delayed four times and it is more than a year late.
On public health, we have seen this week that health inequalities are widening, with life expectancy going backwards in the poorest parts of the country. After £700 million of cuts to public health budgets, and more cuts to come next year, all falling disproportionately on the poorest areas, why is the Secretary of State not doing more to protect those budgets from being used for what are clearly non-public health projects?
Two years ago on the steps of Downing Street, and again last night, the Prime Minister promised to build a country that works for everyone. At her conference, she promised to end austerity. But is it not the case that Brokenshire today delivered another broken promise? Food bank use has increased to the highest rate on record. Child homelessness has increased to the highest level in recent years. Yesterday, we were told that for the first time since records began, life expectancy has come to a standstill, and in some areas it is falling.
The UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights warned that local authorities have been gutted by a series of Government policies. Although the Secretary of State may wrap up his statement in Christmas paper, when we unwrap the parcel we will still see poorer areas in this country getting poorer. Frankly, that should shame us all.
James Brokenshire
I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s comments, but I am disappointed that he has not recognised the increases in spending that were set out in the Budget and that I have underlined, and the fact that I highlighted further spending in today’s statement. To take up his theme, one of my colleagues questioned whether the hon. Gentleman might be the Gwynch that stole Christmas. He should recognise that even in his local area there is Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council, with an extra £5.6 million in core spending; Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council, with an extra £4.5 million in core spending; and Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council, with an extra £3.6 million increase in core spending.
The hon. Gentleman should recognise the context of the work that the Government have done to clear up the mess that we inherited. [Interruption.] No, no— the UK economy has grown for five years, there are 3 million more people in employment since 2010, and manufacturing has grown for its longest period in the past 20 years. I recognise that local government has contributed to the hard work involved in clearing up that mess. We know that the demand on local services has increased. We have recognised that in the statement and will ensure not only that councils have the tools and flexibilities to deliver efficiently and effectively, but that they will have the additional funding that I set out today. We are equipping councils well.
The hon. Gentleman highlighted several points about deprivation. The most deprived authority’s core spending power is 23% higher than that of the least deprived. We take council tax into account in funding and when we look into issues of equalisation. He also highlighted the issue of negative RSG. I addressed clearly and firmly in my statement how that will be dealt with.
On social care and the £650 million, the hon. Gentleman questioned the need for strong integration—strong working between our councils and our NHS—to deliver quality services. That is profoundly what needs to happen so that we are looking after the most vulnerable in our communities. I am sorry if those on the Opposition Front Bench do not acknowledge or accept that. It is a fact that 93% of local authorities recognise that the better care fund has promoted integration and improved joint working in their areas.
This is a statement and settlement that, yes, acknowledges and recognises the pressures on social care, and that there is more work to do in respect of the forthcoming Green Paper and on how we will apply the learning from local government to drive better services. I will continue to be a champion for local government and what it delivers and does in our communities. I am proud to support local government and that positive work within our areas.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
Devon has successfully piloted the 100% retention of business rates, and it has injected an additional £20 million into Devon to support local economic growth and public services, but the pilot is due to end in March. Surely the whole point is to continue pilots that are a success. Can the Secretary of State provide any reassurance for Devon as to whether it will be able to continue, because it was not in the list of counties that he mentioned?
James Brokenshire
I recognise the challenges and issues over the business rates retention pilots. Not everyone has been successful in relation to the pilots for 2019-20. We are piloting on the basis of 75%. That is on the basis of the new system that is being introduced in 2020 so that we can properly understand how it will operate in practice. I will certainly highlight to my hon. Friend some of the other issues in relation to, for example, the rural services grant, and how that will be beneficial to her local community, but, obviously, we will look at the representations that are received through this provisional settlement.
Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)
I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement.
The Government’s austerity policies, as we have heard from the Labour Front-Bench spokesman this morning, have been deeply affecting councils in England for many years. I have been in this Chamber listening to debates about the struggles that they have had. Those austerity policies have also hit Scottish finances, but, in contrast, the Scottish National party Government continue to treat local authorities very fairly, despite the fact that the Government have cut the Scottish budget by £2 billion between 2010-11 and 2019-20. There are some warnings from Scotland on match funding and pilots, because this Government also continue to short change local authorities in Scotland directly in other ways by their failure to match the city deal funding from the Scottish Government by £387 million. It is especially critical at this time for Dundee, which faces the prospect of losing 850 Michelin jobs, as the Tay cities deal falls short because the Government have failed to match the Scottish Government’s spending by £50 million
Mitigating Tory costs for local authorities will cost the Scottish Government £435 million next year. On pilots, the extra administration costs of dealing with the hard-hearted and shambolic roll-out of universal credit has meant that Highland Council, a pilot area, has run up costs of more than £2.5 million, which is directly attributable to the costs of universal credit. The council leader and I have written numerous letters to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, and the matter has been raised with the Minister for Employment on numerous occasions. The questions are: when will the Secretary of State’s Government reimburse councils such as Highland Council and their tax payers and when will they live up to their responsibility for city deals and make good on their shortfalls?
James Brokenshire
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his comments. I am pleased that he recognises the contribution that city deals have made in Scotland, the contribution that the UK Government are making in Scotland to ensure that that sense of growth and opportunity is felt very firmly, and how we contribute in that way to see that that is felt throughout our United Kingdom. I am sorry that, in some way, he does not fully appreciate and recognise the contribution that we are making. On the point that he makes more broadly in relation to universal credit, obviously, care and attention has been given to this matter by my colleagues, who I am sure will listen to the points that he makes. However, I say to him that the Scottish Government themselves have flexibility over welfare policy and over what they can do to deal with some of the issues and concerns that he has highlighted, and therefore that they have responsibility in that regard.
Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
I welcome the change and elimination of negative revenue support grant; that is most important. Will the Secretary of State confirm also that outer London boroughs such as Bromley will in fact profit as a result of the increases that he has announced, but, when the former is revised, will he also bear in mind the need to take into account those authorities that have a track record of historical efficiency and low cost?
James Brokenshire
As my hon. Friend has highlighted, we do intend to directly eliminate the £152.9 million negative revenue support grant using forgone business rates. That will prevent any local authority from being subject to a downward adjustment to its business rates tariffs and top-ups that could act as a disincentive for growth. I am sure that he will look at the detail of this. Obviously, we have the business rates retention pilots of 75% for London and that long-term sustainable funding arrangement for local government.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
At the time of the Budget, the Local Government Association, of which I am pleased to be a vice-president, welcomed the £650 million extra for social care, but contrasted it very clearly with the funding gap in adult and children’s services of £2.6 billion. That, it said, would lead to more than 1 million people not getting the care they need and, in the LGA’s own words,
“threaten other services our communities rely on”—
such as libraries, street cleaning and parks. Will the Secretary of State confirm that, for the majority of councils, there is no additional funding in this statement over and above the amounts announced in the Budget, which the LGA described as “inadequate”, and that, for the next financial year, this will mean further cuts and more austerity still being the order of the day for most local councils?
James Brokenshire
I recognise the work that the Communities and Local Government Committee does in scrutinising and challenging things in the way that it rightly does on behalf of hon. Members. Obviously, the hon. Gentleman will have noted what I said in relation to negative revenue support grant and other matters within the statement on additional funding that is being made available to local government. Yes, the £650 million is important to support adults and children’s social care and to deal with some of the pressures. That is why I also highlighted the specific fund to drive innovation to help councils that are struggling with some of those pressures to innovate and to make sure that we are raising standards and responding to the needs, acknowledging also that there is other income from council tax and business rates retention growth, too.
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
I welcome the help that the Government are providing for local high streets, and may I urge the Secretary of State to make sure that the new Help for High Streets fund is up and running very soon and is providing help to local town centres in my constituency?
James Brokenshire
We will certainly be doing our utmost to ensure that councils are able to bid into the £675 million, knowing that, yes, there are challenges on our high streets; no one can deny that. There is a need for innovation and a need to see investment going in there, as well as a taskforce that will support that activity, learning and recognising very firmly the recommendations from the Timpson review, which has been of great assistance.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
I was really disappointed with the announcement, as it really does nothing to address the growing inequalities across our country. One of the biggest problems, of course, is that much of local government funding is now based on council tax, and council tax is so very unfair. When will the Government revalue properties so that dwellings worth £300,000 in one area are no longer in the same council tax band as dwellings worth £100,000 in another area?
James Brokenshire
I am always sorry to disappoint the hon. Lady, but I will have to do so on that point. However, I can highlight the £3.5 million additional funding from 2018-19 to 2019-20 for Bath and North East Somerset unitary authority. Therefore, we do take account of the differentials in council tax and how grant is applied, and that is very firmly recognised and understood within the system.
Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (Con)
Will the Secretary of State confirm that my constituents in Northumberland will benefit from the increases in the rural services delivery grant, which is a most welcome recognition of the rurality challenges with which our public services have to deal across my vast and very sparsely populated constituency?
James Brokenshire
As I have indicated, we acknowledge some of the real pressures within rural areas—some of the additional costs that come through from that—through the rural services delivery grant. We also acknowledge those pressures through the business rates retention pilot, which I am sure will be of assistance in my hon. Friend’s area.
Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)
I welcome the announcement of an increase in core spending power, but I estimate that it will be worth about £2.5 million in Knowsley. Set against that, however, the Secretary of State will be aware that Knowsley, with some of the highest need in the country, has also shamefully had the biggest cut in support from central Government, at £100 million. Is the Secretary of State not ashamed that need is now almost irrelevant to the allocation of local government funding?
James Brokenshire
I simply do not accept the core issue behind the right hon. Gentleman’s comments. Indeed, we are undertaking the fair funding review, which will allow further reflection on and recognition of some of the pressures that are felt between councils. Knowsley will see an increase of £2.8 million between 2018-19 and 2019-20, which will mean core spending power per dwelling of £2,282.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
To balance, in 2021 Hampshire will have cut a total of £560 million from its budget. Will the Secretary of State acknowledge the difficulties faced by even the best-run councils?
James Brokenshire
I acknowledge the pressures that councils have been experiencing and the hard choices that so many have had to make to deal with the issues with the public finances to which we have had to respond. I hope that my right hon. Friend will recognise the additional funding announced today. Equally, as we head towards the spending review next year, we will look carefully at further efficiencies and opportunities to ensure that councils are sustainable for the long term.
Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)
Liverpool City Council and Knowsley Borough Council cover my constituency of Garston and Halewood. Both have been severely hard hit, with more than 60% of their Government grant removed. Will the Secretary of State explain how his announcement will help Liverpool City Council to meet the enormous gaps that have been created as a result of his Government’s policies?
James Brokenshire
The funding and allocations announced today certainly recognise some of the pressures that councils in Liverpool and elsewhere have been facing—for example, with regard to social care issues. It is important that we recognise those pressures and the growth that has been experienced. The additional funding will assist, but long-term reform is needed through the Green Paper and, in relation to the long-term funding situation, through the spending review. That needs to be addressed next year.
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
Essex County Council and Chelmsford City Council do an excellent job, and the real-terms increase is welcome. However, there are real pressures because the area is growing, with 16,000 new homes due next year. Will the Secretary of State look favourably on our housing infrastructure bid, and will there be another chance for business rates retention projects for those who were not called for this year’s pilot?
James Brokenshire
We are moving to a system in which 75% business rates retention will be the norm around the country. In relation to the housing infrastructure fund, we received a large number of bids worth almost £14 billion to deliver 1.5 million homes back in 2017, and further funding has been committed to that. We are looking carefully at this matter because we want to build the homes that our country needs and get the infrastructure in place to deliver them.
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State confirm that local authorities are now housing 82,000 homeless families in temporary accommodation? Can he confirm that that has risen by 5% in the last year and by 71% since 2010, and can he tell us how much it actually costs local authorities?
James Brokenshire
I recognise the pressures of homelessness and temporary accommodation, and we have committed £1.2 billion across the board to respond to and deal with the issue. I am committed to dealing with some of the most acute pressures and issues, including rough sleeping. I want us to move towards a situation in which that is eradicated, and we get people into homes and give them the support they need. That is a clear priority for me.
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
I thank the Secretary of State and his excellent Minister for Local Government, who have given East Sussex County Council a great deal of time and support. I welcome East Sussex being added to the pilot for 75% business rates retention. Using this year’s figures, that will be worth an extra £3.6 million. Does the Secretary of State agree that projects such as the delivery of a new road and business park in East Sussex will mean more money retained by East Sussex, and more jobs and growth in the local economy for my constituents?
James Brokenshire
I welcome the innovation in East Sussex highlighted by my hon. Friend. That is what I see in local government—the real drive and desire to do the right thing for communities, and to see jobs, growth and prosperity. This Government will continue to support that.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
Birmingham is reeling from the biggest cuts in local government history—£690 million, with another £86 million to come. Children’s centres are closing, and there have been cuts to school transport for disabled kids and to advice for poor people. The consequences are ever more serious, yet the Secretary of State seems to favour low-need, leafy shires at the expense of the great city of Birmingham. Does he not recognise that this is not a fair deal but a bad deal for the city, and that Birmingham has simply had enough?
James Brokenshire
No, I certainly do not acknowledge the hon. Gentleman’s point. Core spending power per dwelling in Birmingham is around 10% higher than the average. I draw his attention to the extra £18.2 million that he will see through today’s announcements. We want to see the great city of Birmingham continue to thrive and flourish, which is precisely why we are supporting it.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
This year is the last year of the multi-year settlement, so what happens to the 3% of councils that did not sign up to the efficiency savings? How are they treated? More importantly, what are the Secretary of State’s plans for the future of multi-year settlements, so that councils can plan for the future?
James Brokenshire
I firmly recognise the benefit of multi-year settlements. We have seen this through councils’ ability to plan and to drive efficiencies and effectiveness. As my Department prepares submissions for next year’s spending review, I will reflect carefully on the matter in order to recognise the ability for councils to plan, while also ensuring that we promote innovation.
Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State understand that there is a limit to back-office efficiency savings and the new income that councils can get? Since 2010, Lambeth has seen some of the biggest cuts of any council in the country. There is a rising demand in inner-city areas that we can do nothing about. Just how does the Secretary of State think that councils can continue to deal with this rising demand with the level of funding that they are receiving?
James Brokenshire
A lot of that demand is in social care pressures, which is why we have made these announcements. Equally, I recognise that there is a need for long-term reform and sustainability to ensure that we can meet the needs of the future. I am firmly discussing that issue with the Health Secretary as we look at the social care Green Paper. Core spending power in Lambeth is also above average for that class of council, but we will continue to reflect on the issue.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
I thank the Secretary of State for our recent meeting to discuss a further devolution deal for Greater Lincolnshire. In his statement, he referred to promoting efficiency. Does he agree that more resources for frontline services could be released if we created more unitary authorities, and would he welcome such proposals?
James Brokenshire
I want to drive efficiency and effectiveness, and I recognise some of the incredible work that has already been undertaken. My hon. Friend highlights the issues of unitarisation, which we very much want to be locally driven. I will certainly be setting out my further thoughts on the conditions to be satisfied, knowing that there needs to be a unanimity of view or that we seek proposals from particular areas to make it effective.
Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)
In my previous role, I warned Suffolk County Council that reducing services in children’s centres would lead to increased numbers of children being taken into care. Does the Secretary of State accept that increase in demand for children’s social care is at least partially caused by cuts in preventive services such as children’s centres, and will his Department assess the correlation between children’s centre cuts and an increase in the number of children taken into care?
James Brokenshire
We are investing in prevention and ways to promote good standards across local authorities. That is why, at the autumn Budget, the Chancellor announced an additional £84 million over five years to work with a number of local authorities that are seeing high or rising demand for children’s social care to ensure that they improve their practice and decision making in delivering for those families.
James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s announcement, particularly on the rural services delivery grant. There is no doubt that rural counties such as Suffolk do face specific costs. Will he outline specifically what this will mean financially for Suffolk?
James Brokenshire
The Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond (Yorks), has been highlighting the additional £400,000 for Suffolk in the rural services delivery grant. We are providing £81 million to the most sparsely populated areas in 2019-20, recognising the pressures that my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) has highlighted and just how important that is.
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
It is the season of goodwill, and I indicated to the diligent Parliamentary Private Secretary that I would like a copy of the hand-out questions, but I have had to make up my own.
Last week, I met the nursery heads and children’s centre leaders in south Bristol. We know that these centres are the greatest, most efficient driver of social mobility in the country. May I therefore invite the Secretary of State to south Bristol to meet those nursery school heads and children’s centre leaders to explain how, if they are not part of his assessment on sustainability for local authorities, they fit into the Government’s policies on social mobility and increasing skills for our country?
James Brokenshire
I was in Bristol just a few short weeks ago looking at the issue of homelessness, but I recognise the hon. Lady’s bid for me to look at some of the other important services and the work going on that is affecting her community. Yes, there are pressures on children’s social care—I recognise that, and it has been recognised in today’s announcement. I will continue to work with my colleagues at the Department for Education as we look at the spending review and ensure that we have a sustainable system knowing the pressures that are there.
Mr Speaker
In a similarly festive spirit, I can tell the hon. Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) that she has brought back fond memories for me, because in 1992 I fought the Bristol South constituency. Unfortunately for me, and probably for the benefit of the nation, the Bristol South constituency fought back.
Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)
You might have been my neighbour, Mr Speaker.
I very much welcome the increase in core spending for Somerset of 3.7% and, in particular, our inclusion in the 75% business rate retention pilot areas, which I and three colleagues from Somerset have worked hard on. I have just had a text from the leader of Somerset County Council saying, “This is excellent news and thank you.” Does this not demonstrate that our Ministers are listening, especially the Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak), and that they have at last realised that rural areas really do need some special attention?
James Brokenshire
I am grateful to my hon. Friend and, indeed, to all the Somerset MPs who have highlighted to me some of the specific issues that have been engaged in. I welcome the feedback that she has relayed to the House on how we acknowledge some of the particular pressures in rural areas. It is interesting to note, Mr Speaker, that, by the sound of it, you came very close to going into the Bristol area. However, we will continue to focus on all areas around the country as we look at the spending for councils moving forward.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
Unfortunately, Liverpool City Council is not very happy with today’s news. I listened very closely to the Secretary of State, but he did not mention anything about replacing European funds that will be lost if the Prime Minister’s withdrawal agreement passes—whenever that may be. Liverpool City Council has secured £110 million from Europe for various projects over the next few years that is going to be vital in the face of £440 million of cuts since 2010—a 64% cut in real terms that has seen devastating consequences. Will he today commit to replacing those moneys if it turns out that they will be lost?
James Brokenshire
On EU funds, we will be consulting in due course in relation to the UK shared prosperity fund—the UK-wide arrangements that will replace the structural funds. I am sure that the hon. Lady will have the opportunity to make representations on that. I acknowledge, yes, that some funding is received through the existing funds, but there is now the opportunity for the UK to shape this and also to deal with some of the bureaucracy to ensure that more money goes to the frontline.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
My right hon. Friend will know that with the home-grown proposals for the unitary councils of Dorset, we have been at the cutting edge of modernisation and delivering value for money and quality services. Will he say a little more in relation to Dorset, specifically, regarding the outcome of his announcement on negative revenue support grant and the very welcome news about the rural services delivery grant?
James Brokenshire
Negative RSG will be eliminated, as I have indicated. My hon. Friend will see in the different schedules that will be published the implications of the rural services delivery grant. He will also notice, in relation to Dorset, the statutory instrument that has been laid in relation to council tax harmonisation, which I am sure will give him all the clarity he will need for his council for the future.
Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
The battering of Birmingham has been remorseless. In the food banks where I work, demand is up by a third on the past year. In the soup kitchen where I worked on Sunday night, demand was up by 50% on the past year. The rough sleepers I helped to count sleeping on our pavements a couple of weeks ago were up by 50% on the past year. Yet our council has been forced to table proposals to cut council tax support for the poorest in our community because the Secretary of State has ruled out access to our reserves. Birmingham MPs wrote to him on 25 November to ask to discuss this. We have not yet had the courtesy of a reply. When will he meet us to discuss when the battering of Birmingham will stop?
James Brokenshire
I hear what the right hon. Gentleman says. I will certainly look into his letter of 25 November and get back to him in relation to the points that he makes. But I would also highlight how we have been supporting the west midlands area in relation to issues such as rough sleeping, which he highlights, with our Housing First programme to ensure that we are getting the help that is needed to the most vulnerable people, getting them off the streets and getting them the support that they require.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
I declare my interest as a member of Kettering Borough Council. I thank the Secretary of State for listening to the campaign by local authorities in Northamptonshire and local hon. Members that Northamptonshire be granted a business rates retention pilot. Can he explain in simple terms, for the benefit of my constituents, how this will help local government finance as local councils reorganise in Northamptonshire?
James Brokenshire
I understand that Northamptonshire has estimated that the potential benefit is in the order of £18 million in relation to the business rates retention arrangements, with the growth in business rates. That is the change that we want to see across the system. I recognise the continuing issues and challenges within Northamptonshire. I can certainly commit to my hon. Friend to continue to work with colleagues on this.
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council has had to make £170 million of cuts and savings since 2010, yet this year alone we have had a 40% increase in the number of looked-after children, which was unplanned because they have come from the National Crime Agency’s historical child sexual exploitation investigation. The £84 million that the Secretary of State cites is actually Department for Education money for innovation, not frontline social work. So exactly how is Rotherham Council meant to look after children on a day-to-day basis?
James Brokenshire
The hon. Lady is right about the £84 million, which is about driving innovation, and driving good standards and different forms of practice, so that councils can learn from each other in that way. In terms of the core elements of this, I point to the £650 million and the £410 million within it that enables councils to use it for issues such as children’s social care, given the issues and pressures that are there. That is why we have responded in this way. Clearly, I acknowledge and recognise the points that she makes. That is why we have made those decisions but, equally, why we will continue to work with councils on this hugely important issue.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
By way of a declaration, I am a member of Medway Council. Conservative-run Medway Council has the lowest council tax in Kent and excellent frontline services, and it has made a real success of the 100% business rates retention scheme. It has now applied for £170 million to build 13,000 houses through the housing infrastructure fund. In the light of its success, will the Secretary of State look at its bid favourably?
James Brokenshire
We are looking at all bids for the housing infrastructure fund. I appreciate the ambition of Medway and other councils to deliver the homes that our country needs. We are scrutinising those bids so that councils can deliver that. I recognise and appreciate the work that Medway is doing and how it is keeping council tax down.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
The National Audit Office says that local government funding will be cut by 56% between 2010 and 2020. My local authority’s funding has been cut by 63%. Last night, there were 948 households in temporary accommodation in Greenwich, and 21,000 children went to sleep in households in poverty. Is that not the reality of Tory austerity, and are those people not paying the price of the consistent cuts that this Government have made to local government funding?
James Brokenshire
The hon. Gentleman highlights one element of the local government settlement. However, that does not take account of council tax, business rates retention or the better care fund. In relation to core spending power, I hope he recognises the additional £44.3 million that Greenwich Council will receive in 2019-20. It is important to look at all the forms of funding that make up the overall finances available to local government to deliver for their areas.
Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)
I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I thank the Secretary of State and the Minister for Local Government for the work they have been doing, and in particular for Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire’s inclusion in the 15 business rates retention pilots. Does the Secretary of State agree that that will help the Conservatives on the local authority in Stoke-on-Trent to continue their fantastic work to build a stronger economy and more job opportunities?
James Brokenshire
I congratulate Stoke-on-Trent and commend my hon. Friend on all he does to champion his community. The business rates retention pilots will certainly assist the 15 councils selected, but we want to see that benefit being rolled out to all councils. That is why this will be tested further, as we look to 2020 and beyond, so that other communities can see that positive impact.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
By 2022, Newcastle City Council will have had to save £327 million due to slashed Government funding and rising demand. We see that in the increased litter on our streets, the reduced library opening hours, reduced support for the most vulnerable among us and the terrible choices that Newcastle councillors and council officials have to make. The council is currently consulting on yet further cuts. Will the Secretary of State respond to that consultation and explain why slashed services should be further slashed, now that austerity is supposedly over?
James Brokenshire
First, I hope that the hon. Lady’s voice gets better quickly in time for Christmas. There will be a 75% business rates retention pilot in Newcastle in 2019-20, which will release additional funds to meet some of the pressures that she highlighted, and core spending power will increase further. We must also look at the devolution deals and all the support and investment being provided. I hope she sees the positive things in this statement that will address a number of the points that she highlighted.
Neil O’Brien (Harborough) (Con)
It is very welcome that Leicestershire will see a 4.4% increase in its core spending power next year, and it is extremely welcome that we will get a business rates retention pilot worth £13 million; I thank Ministers for meeting me to discuss that. However, the local government funding formula is opaque and unfair, and Leicestershire is unfairly under- funded. Can the Secretary of State assure me that he will continue to look at a fair funding formula and look closely at the Leicestershire model, for comprehensive reform?
James Brokenshire
I thank my hon. Friend for his active participation in our work on long-term funding and the fair funding review, and I thank Leicestershire for its participation in and support for that. He highlighted some of the announcements today, including the benefit of around £14 million for Leicestershire. He has been a good and active champion. We want people to be engaged in the fair funding review, to ensure that we learn from the evidence, so that we get this right.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
After the Budget statement, 76 council leaders, including the Mayor of Bristol, wrote to the Secretary of State warning that more money was needed to avoid a “catastrophic collapse” in key council services. Does he really think that those 76 council leaders will be reassured by what they have heard today?
James Brokenshire
Those council leaders should recognise the additional funding being allocated to councils up and down the country, but I know that further innovation, support and discussions are required. In terms of the spending review next year and the long-term arrangements, I want to see a sustainable future for our local councils and the delivery of services in the hon. Lady’s constituency and elsewhere. I am determined to deliver that.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement, and in particular the funding and clarity provided on two issues for district councils that have an agenda for growth, such as Rugby Borough Council. First, he has retained the threshold on the new homes bonus, which will continue to provide an incentive for councils to grant planning consent for homes. Secondly, he has eliminated the negative revenue support grant, which was a particular concern to many district councils, meaning that councils will continue to have an incentive to provide business growth.
James Brokenshire
I know that my hon. Friend is a champion of district councils, and I commend him for all his work. As I said in my statement, I hope there will be recognition that we have listened on a number of issues, including negative RSG and the new homes bonus. This is a settlement that councils can get behind, so that they can get on and deliver for their local communities.
Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the Secretary of State for allowing Stoke and Staffordshire to be in the business rates pilot. It is late—it should have been last year—but it is welcome. However, I remain confused. When I wrote to the Conservative leadership at Stoke-on-Trent City Council last February about their increase in revenue support grant, they told me that it was an ineffective measure of their spending ability and that they will still have to make severe cuts in their budget. Who is right—the Conservatives at the council who tell me their budget is still being squeezed, or the Conservatives in Parliament who tell me that spending has never been greater?
James Brokenshire
I would highlight the additional core spending power of £3.9 million that will be delivered for Stoke-on-Trent. I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s recognition of the inclusion of those areas in the business rates retention pilots. The point is that councils can look to a number of different funding streams for the delivery of their services, including direct grants, business rates retention and council tax. We look at the funding that councils are delivering for their communities in that overall context.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
Further to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), the £84 million for children’s services is over five years, which means it is only £16 million a year. The £410 million is to be shared between adults, the NHS and children’s services, yet in County Durham the number of children looked after has risen by 300 to more than 800, which means an extra £7 million a year. Will the Secretary of State acknowledge that his increases are inadequate, and that he needs to go back to the Treasury to ask for more?
James Brokenshire
I certainly recognise the pressures that councils have experienced in relation to children’s social care as well as adult social care. That is why there is flexibility for councils to determine how the £410 million is allocated between each of the pressures they are experiencing. Durham unitary authority will see an extra £13.1 million in 2019-20. The £84 million is spread over five years. It is about a sense of innovation and driving up standards. I certainly commit to continuing to work with colleagues in the Department for Education on these issues, and I recognise the pressures and the need for continued innovation in preparation for the spending review.
Dr Paul Williams (Stockton South) (Lab)
The cuts to the public health ring fence—£1 million has been lost in Stockton-on-Tees in the past two years—mean health visitors with unsustainable case loads and sexual health services under increased pressure. What guarantees does this settlement give that there will be increased public health investment in our most disadvantaged communities?
James Brokenshire
Within the social care element, there is obviously a focus on taking pressure off the NHS—how social care in the NHS goes hand in hand. I am a profound advocate for the prevention agenda that my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary has advanced. I certainly commit to continuing to work with him to ensure that we focus on the delivery of the prevention agenda in local communities. That obviously involves public health, and we are therefore seeing fewer people going into hospital. We are delivering the sort of system that actually makes sense and ensures we take pressure off our NHS.
Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)
Rochdale Council has had to make £178 million of cuts since 2010 due to cuts in central Government funding. The latest cuts are to the grants for our community centres. Does the Secretary of State think it is an efficient use of council funds to cut these much-needed community centres?
James Brokenshire
Clearly, it is for individual councils to make their decisions. I gently remind the hon. Lady again that these changes have had to be made to deal with pressures in the public finances, and that councils have had to make hard decisions because of the bigger macro issues we have had to deal with. However, I hope that she will recognise the increase in core spending power that Rochdale will see from the announcement I have made today. I encourage councils to do all that they can through local decision making, knowing that, yes, changes have had to be made, and that is a consequence of some of the implications we have had to pick up as a Government.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
Over the past eight years, Coventry City Council has lost well over £100 million in resources from the Government. It faces pressures on children’s services, youth services and social care—and it is about time we had the Green Paper on social care. It would have been more welcome if we had been able to look at the overall picture and could ask questions now about the police precept, so that we could make a judgment about the 2.8% increase in cash terms. We would then have got a better judgment because, under the guise of local democracy, the Government are shoving their responsibilities for funding local services on to local authorities. Local authorities will then get discredited, and in three or four years’ time the Secretary of State will come along and talk about capping profligate local authorities. He needs to get real for a change.
James Brokenshire
I say gently to the hon. Gentleman that he will have an opportunity during the statement to follow to raise any questions about policing—or about what I have said today about flexibility on the police precept—with the Minister for Policing and the Fire Service, who has just joined me on the Front Bench. I am sure my hon. Friend listened very carefully to what the hon. Gentleman said. This is about providing our police with additional funding to meet their needs and those of local communities, and such flexibility is one of the means of doing so.
Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)
Further to the point raised by the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers)—my hon. Friend in this respect—will the Secretary of State, given the reputed back-office and other savings produced by the move to unitary authorities, look at setting up a fund to encourage the remaining parts of the country at least to consider doing so as the way forward in really making local government work in those areas?
James Brokenshire
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the approach he has outlined. Certainly, as we look to the spending review and to different ways in which we can drive further innovation, we will consider how unitarisation has brought benefits to some parts of the country in producing savings on back-office and other arrangements. We do want that to be locally driven and for there to be such support for it, but he makes an interesting suggestion and I will certainly reflect on it further.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
In the Secretary of State’s statement, he said that he has been
“listening carefully to councils of all shapes and sizes across the country and responding.”
May I therefore ask him how exactly the £650 million for adult and children’s services, and apparently for the NHS as well, will deal with the national funding crisis now—I repeat, now—in adult social care and children’s services, which is currently estimated to be about £3 billion?
James Brokenshire
With the additional funding announced in the Budget, the Government will have given councils access to £10 billion of dedicated funding that can be used for adult social care in the three-year period to 2019-20. I know that longer-term reforms are obviously required to put the system on a sustainable basis. That is why we have now gained the £650 million to support councils in dealing with a number of these pressures. Again, I highlight how we deliver care and support better by having stronger linkages between our NHS and our council services, which this will help drive.
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)
For two weeks running, I have asked the Prime Minister about the devastating funding challenges that the Tyne and Wear fire and rescue service is facing. I know she has been a bit busy, so she may not have had time to have a word with the Secretary of State. In the light of the fact that funding local services such as social care, fire services and the police through the council tax precept just does not work in areas such as mine, as he well knows, and that the reserves have already been allocated, how does he propose to fill these drastic funding gaps?
James Brokenshire
I would be pleased to discuss this further with the hon. Lady. I would highlight that, overall, fire and rescue services will receive about £2.3 billion in 2019-20. She talked about the reserves. Certainly, the financial reserves held by single-purpose fire and rescue authorities increased by over 80%—to £545 million— between 31 March 2011 and 31 March 2018, which is equivalent to 42% of their core spending power. However, I will certainly reflect further on the points the hon. Lady has made, and I look forward to discussing them with her.
Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)
For the past eight years, the Government have in effect outsourced the hardest decisions on the most severe cuts to the most deprived local authorities. It is just not fair on a city such as Manchester, where, in the eight years to 2020, we will see a £600 per household cut in funding. Is it not true that austerity will never be over until we have not only the sticking plaster that the Government are implementing in relation to these cuts, but some proper funding restored to the most deprived authorities in this country?
James Brokenshire
I say gently to the hon. Gentleman that this has been about the empowerment of Manchester. It is about Manchester getting more of the benefits and more of the decision making, with devolution arrangements worth about £7 billion, which my hon. Friends on the Front Bench have highlighted. As I hope the hon. Gentleman will see from the details of the information published on the settlement, there is an extra £11.8 million for Manchester in 2019-20—an extra amount of that sum—to support services in that great city.
Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)
The modus operandi of this Government—whether we are talking about the police, fire services or, as today, local government—is to smash financial support for public authorities and, when they are unable to deliver services, to attack them for such an inability; or, if they are forced to increase the council tax to make up the shortfall, to attack them politically for increasing the council tax. Since most of the additional spending power the Secretary of State is announcing today will come from the local authorities themselves, does he plan to use the same tactic in this funding round?
James Brokenshire
I gently say to the hon. Gentleman that I am a proud champion of local government. I celebrate the incredible work that our councils do up and down the country, and the local government officers and staff who work tirelessly for the benefit of our communities. As we look to the future, I will continue to underline that message about the positive things councils do in transforming communities and the life chances that they deliver. Rather than knocking that, I will be supporting and celebrating it.
Police Funding Settlement
(6 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for Policing and the Fire Service (Mr Nick Hurd)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to propose to the House a provisional police funding settlement for 2019-20. I do so at a time of real pressure on our police system, with demand rising and becoming increasingly complex and resource intensive. Across the country, police officers and staff are working exceptionally hard in demanding and often risky conditions. They have the respect and thanks of this House, but they need more than that—they need additional support to help them do their job.
Last year, Parliament approved a funding settlement that resulted in £460 million of additional public investment in policing, including £50 million more for counter-terrorism and £280 million more for local forces from the precept. That meant that every force’s funding was protected in real terms this year, and overall public investment in policing this year is more than £1 billion higher than three years ago. As a result of last year’s settlement, most police and crime commissioners set out plans to either protect or enhance frontline policing. I also indicated last year that our intention was to provide a similar settlement in 2019-20, subject to improved efficiency, productivity and financial transparency. I am pleased to confirm that the police have met those conditions, and there is an agreed plan to deliver £120 million in commercial and back-office savings by 2020-21. Forces are developing digital plans, including deploying mobile technology more ambitiously to use police time more productively, and every police and crime commissioner has published a financial reserves strategy.
However, the Government recognise that two things have changed since I stood at the Dispatch Box one year ago. First, cost pressures have risen, public sector inflation has increased and the police are facing challenges in meeting new costs such as in forensics and increased employer contributions to safeguard public pensions. More significantly, demand pressures have risen. There has been a major increase in the reporting of high-harm, previously hidden crimes such as child sexual exploitation. The challenge from serious and organised crime networks is growing. Through the serious violence strategy we are bearing down on the worst spike in serious violence and knife crime that we have seen in this country in a decade. Digitally enabled and online crime remains a major challenge for our police, and meanwhile, as we are all aware, the threat from terrorism has escalated and evolved.
The first role of Government is to protect the public, and as crime changes, so must the police. We are determined to ensure that the police have the powers and resources they need to respond to changing demand. Therefore, the Home Secretary and I would like to go further than I indicated last year. As the Home Secretary has signalled over the course of the year, police funding is his No. 1 priority, and he and I have been working closely with our colleagues across Government to agree a comprehensive settlement. Today we are proposing a settlement that could see public investment in policing rise by up to £970 million in 2019-20, depending on the actions of police and crime commissioners.
Let me break that very large number down for the House. First, instead of the flat cash grant that I indicated last year, we want to increase Government grants to police and crime commissioners by £161 million. Every police and crime commissioner will have their Government grant funding protected in real terms, and the package includes £14 million to recognise the specific extra costs and financial challenges of policing London. On top of that, we will allocate additional grant funding of more than £150 million specifically to help the police manage what, since the 2016 Budget, have been unexpected increases in their contribution to public sector pensions.
We have also listened to requests from police and crime commissioners for more flexibility around levels of police precept. This settlement empowers police and crime commissioners to raise council tax contributions for local policing by £2 a month for a typical household, which is £24 a year. If that flexibility is fully utilised, the result will be just over £500 million of additional local investment in local policing. We do not take that decision lightly, because we know money is tight for many people. The decision to raise local tax will be up to locally elected police and crime commissioners, and they will have to make a case to their electorate and be accountable for delivery of a return on that public investment.
On top of the proposed increase in core grant and a doubling of local precept flexibility, we propose investing more in the fight to protect our constituents against terrorism and serious organised crime. As my right hon. Friend the Chancellor announced at the Budget, funding for counter-terrorism policing will increase by £59 million next year to £816 million, which is £160 million more than we planned at the last spending review. We also intend to match the new serious and organised crime strategy with £90 million of much-needed resources to tackle threats including economic crime, child sexual exploitation, fraud and cyber-crime.
This settlement combines increased central funding with increased local contributions to local policing. It enables the biggest investment in frontline policing since 2010, and the start of the journey to get this country back to living within our means. It will allow PCCs to manage their costs while maintaining their plans to recruit and fill capability gaps, not least when it comes to detectives. It will strengthen our capabilities in the fight against serious and organised crime and terrorism.
Alongside that increased investment in the frontline against crime, we will also maintain our existing level of public investment in building national police capabilities and upgrading police technology for the benefit of local forces. We will invest £175 million in the police transformation fund next year. A major priority for us is supporting the police to make the most of the digital opportunity to improve contact with the public and manage police time more effectively. We are also developing the first national programme to support the wellbeing of stretched frontline officers. We support Police Now, which is attracting fresh talent into neighbourhood policing and supporting the role of detectives.
Alongside the police transformation fund we will invest £495 million in technology programmes that will upgrade critical infrastructure such as police databases and the emergency service communications network. Taking everything together, the settlement means that as a country we will be investing up to £14 billion in our police system next year, if all police and crime commissioners use full precept flexibility. That would represent increased public investment of £2 billion compared with 2015-16.
With increased public investment comes an increased responsibility to improve efficiency and effectiveness, and to show the public what difference their investment is making in terms of greater deterrence for criminals, better outcomes for victims and safer communities. To make the most of the new investment we are announcing today, we will work with the police on ensuring the delivery of the efficiency savings we have identified. We want greater ambition in the use of digital mobile working to improve productivity. We also want to ensure that the major capability gaps that the independent inspectorate identified, on detectives and investigations, are filled, and that there is greater co-ordination of important work to tackle serious and organised crime.
Of course, support for our police is not all about spending taxpayers’ money, and we are also supporting them through new powers. We are working on a cross-party basis to strengthen legislation on offensive weapons, just as we worked on a cross-party basis to strengthen protections for emergency services workers. Let me be clear: our commitment to supporting the police to deliver for the public is for the long term. Come the forthcoming comprehensive spending review, the Government will be prepared to invest appropriately in police capacity, capability and professional confidence, but that must come with greater local accountability of directly elected police and crime commissioners, and a commitment to accelerate the pace of change to ensure that British policing remains the best in the world.
As we have indicated, this settlement is the last before the next spending review, which will set long-term police budgets and address how resources are allocated fairly across police forces—I know that is of great interest to many Members across the House. This Government’s priority is the safety of the public. We understand that our police face increased demands, and we are determined to respond to the threats from terrorism, organised crime and serious violence. We are today announcing a major investment in the capabilities that the police need to respond, and we are rightly challenging them to spend that money well and continue on the path of reform and modernisation. I conclude by expressing my gratitude and that of the Government to police forces around the country for their exceptional attitude, hard work and bravery, and I commend this statement to the House.
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for advance notice of his statement and for his recognition of the demand facing our police forces. Once again, however, we are faced with the Government’s complete refusal to acknowledge their own part in creating that demand.
It is important that we set today’s statement in the context it deserves. The Conservative party has created a crisis in public safety. There is simply no precedent in post-war history for a Government to have undermined the police in the way that this Government have. No Government in post-war history have ever slashed the resources available to the police by as much as 30% and cut officers in every year they have been in office. Never, since records began, has violent crime been as high as it is today. Never has knife crime been as high as it is today. Arrests have halved in a decade. Unsolved crimes stand at over 2 million cases, and 93% of domestic violence offences go unprosecuted. Today’s settlement has to stand in that context.
If we are honest—if we are not to mislead the public, as the Office for National Statistics has asked the Government not to do on police funding—today’s settlement represents a ninth consecutive year of real-terms central Government cuts to the police. In September, the Government announced that changes to the police pension valuation would mean an additional £165 million cost to forces in 2019-20, increasing to £417 million in 2021. Why, then, does today’s settlement cover only £150 million of that cost, and why does it provide no certainty for the following year? That cost was dropped on forces at the last minute. Some police and crime commissioners had already started drafting emergency budgets. It was a completely inappropriate way to handle an event that must take place every four years. The Government need to get real. They cannot keep expecting forces to wait until the last minute, with disaster at the door, for the Government to get their act together. Will the Minister commit today to funding the complete pension bill for 2019-20 and 2020-21?
Funding for counter-terrorism and serious organised crime, although welcome, is not seen by local forces, and the funding to tackle fraud and cyber-crime is significantly below the amount requested by police last year.
The Government are once again confirming today their intention to pass the vast majority of the increase in the police funding settlement on to local ratepayers. That is perverse. It will not meet need and is fundamentally unfair. Despite the fact that every band D household or above will be asked to pay the exact same amount in additional tax, different force areas will be able to raise hugely different amounts. The forces that have already been cut the most will be able to raise the least. Can the Minister confirm that today’s settlement will mean that Surrey can raise 44% of the cash it has lost since 2010, whereas the west midlands will be able to raise just 11% of what it has lost; and that Suffolk can raise 30% while Northumbria can raise only 12%? How can the Minister possibly justify a postcode lottery that means the communities that are already seeing higher crime, to which reserves have been allocated, will receive so much less funding?
Can the Minister further confirm that the National Police Chiefs’ Council has calculated the cost of inflation at £435 million this year, wiping out the grant from central Government and almost wiping out the amount the precept will raise, forcing council tax payers to pay the price for their local service to stand still? The simple truth is that because the Home Secretary cannot make the case within the Government for extra resources for the police, he is passing his own political failure on to local ratepayers. He knows that this perverse way of raising income for the police will not and cannot meet the needs of local communities. Instead of a calculation based on demand, rising crime, population and vulnerability, the only determination this is based on is local house prices. Once again, the Minister is at the Dispatch Box announcing cuts from central Government funding and trying to dress them up as good news. I am afraid no one is falling for it.
Mr Hurd
I have been a shadow Minister and I know that that sometimes requires one to push the boundaries of reasonableness, but I am afraid the hon. Lady has lost all sense of proportion. She talks about the Government creating demand on the police system. I do not know what she means by that. Perhaps she means the pressure we put on the police to improve their recording of crime. Perhaps she means the pressure the current Prime Minister put on the police to improve their support for the most vulnerable people in our communities, which means that more victims of domestic violence and rape are coming forward to the police. If that is what she means, I can see her point.
The hon. Lady tries to claim that the Government are cutting funding to the police in real terms, but I stated very clearly that in this settlement we have moved from flat-cash Home Office grant to police forces to the first real increase in the grant since 2010. That is the reality.
The hon. Lady talks about pension costs, which have been a very real issue. The Treasury has done exactly what it said it would do. I am very clear that through a combination of the special pension grant, the increase in the Home Office grant, the room for efficiencies and the levels of reserves, every single police and crime commissioner should be able to go to their public and talk about local taxes for their local police service.
Finally, for the Labour party to present itself as the champion of the council tax payer, when it doubled council tax when it was in power, is hypocrisy of the worst order. The hon. Lady talks about the council tax payer being weighed down by this, but in reality the average amount of funding that comes from the precept has moved from 32% to 34% across the police system. The reality is that most of the funding for our police system comes from the taxpayer through central funding.
My challenge to the shadow Minister is this. She and her boss led their colleagues through the No Lobby this time last year, so the Labour party effectively voted against a police settlement that put an additional £460 million into our police. This settlement has the potential to put an additional £970 million into our police system so that we as taxpayers are investing over £2 billion more than we were in 2015-16. This might, therefore, be the moment to put tribal politics and games aside and recognise the fundamental truth that Members on both sides of the House recognise the pressure on the police and want to see increased resources for policing. That is exactly what this settlement delivers.
Justine Greening (Putney) (Con)
I very much welcome the Minister’s statement, particularly his recognition of the pressures that the police are under both in demand and in the resources they have to do their job. I pay tribute to the Wandsworth police, who work tirelessly to keep our local community safe.
In my area we have significant extra housing and population arriving, both in the form of the Battersea power station development and because of demand related to the new US and Dutch embassies. Will the Minister set out briefly how we can ensure that additional demands do not squeeze funding for the broader community in Wandsworth?
Mr Hurd
I thank my right hon. Friend and former boss for that question. As a fellow London MP, I am delighted that the Met could receive an additional £172 million next year if the Mayor raises precept flexibility by the full £24. He has indicated that he will. That comes on to top of an additional £100 million of public investment in the Met this year. The challenge for the commissioner and the Mayor, who is accountable to the people of Wandsworth for how resources are allocated, is to make sure that police resources are not just allocated to existing demand but used to better anticipate future demand, reflecting factors such as those she talks about. It is a challenge, but it is one that police leadership should be up to. We are determined to make sure they have the resources they need to do their job. I am sure she would agree that this settlement enables just that.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
The Minister has rightly talked about the increasing pressures on policing, as the Home Affairs Committee set out in our report, and we look forward to scrutinising the detail of the figures that he set out. Will he confirm what I think he just said—that once we take account of inflation, the increased pension costs and funding, there is not a real increase in Government funding for police forces? Will he also say what he thinks the impact of the funding will be, given that arrests have halved in the last 10 years, and even in the last three years we have seen an increase of about one third in the level of recorded crime, but a drop of one quarter in the number of charges and summons? Does he think that arrests, charges and summons will go up as a result of these figures?
Mr Hurd
I thank the right hon. Lady for that question and for her challenging, but extremely good, report on future policing. This settlement enables additional investment of up to £970 million in our police system, of which £509 million could come from PCCs, if all of them use their flexibility. Within that, as I said in my statement, we have moved from a situation where the Home Office grant is flat cash to one in which every single PCC will see flat real in relation to the first increase in the grant from the Home Office since 2010. She is right to point to a worrying trend in some of the outcomes of policing. The right hon. Lady and the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh), identified that and were right to do so. For me, the critical thing now is to increase the capacity of the police and to fill some key capability gaps. She knows that one of the most important of those is the lack of detectives. Therefore, one thing that I and the Home Secretary will be following very closely next year, as I am sure her Committee will, is an improvement in exactly the outcomes that she identified.
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
I very much welcome the additional resources for policing—something that I and Government Members have raised with the Prime Minister, as the Minister will be aware. Does he agree, though, that we need to urge the Mayor of London to start using some of his £500 million of reserves to strengthen policing and to keep Barnet police station open?
Mr Hurd
I speak not just as the Minister for Policing, but as the Minister for London and a London MP. Certainly, a large part of my ongoing conversations with the Mayor will be on the question, “What are you doing with the money?” The taxpayer has put in an additional £100 million this year. As I have said, there is the potential from this settlement for an additional £172 million of public investment in the Met. It is already a force that has over one and a half times the national average in terms of police officers per head, so the voice from Londoners will get increasingly loud in asking, “What are we getting for the money?”
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
Yet another tragic case of knife crime in my constituency led to a death within the last 48 hours. Ten years ago, there were 31,000 police officers in London, and the Mayor of London is now warning that that is going to drop to below 27,000. Back then, I had six police officers per ward in my constituency, and I am now struggling to get two. The Government were warned about the dangers of cutting the police so severely and now we are suffering the consequences. What will this announcement do to address the severe cuts that we have seen over the last eight years?
Mr Hurd
As a fellow Londoner, I say to the hon. Gentleman that there is absolutely cross-party consensus on the absolute determination that we need to bear down on this horrific spike in serious violence and knife crime. I am sure that the whole House will want to pass on through him their condolences to the family and friends of the victim of that tragedy. Through the serious violence strategy and the serious violence taskforce, on which the Mayor sits, as do other London Labour MPs, there is an absolute determination to combine robust policing with a big investment in prevention and early intervention to do just that. The Met needs more resources, as I said. An additional £100 million of taxpayers’ money is going into that system this year. This settlement enables additional investment of £172 million, if Sadiq Khan increases precept flexibility. The hon. Gentleman talks about police officer numbers. I am sure that he is aware—and will welcome the fact—that the commissioner is actively recruiting an additional 1,000 officers. We all wait to see what the result of this settlement will be in terms of updating those plans.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
I very much welcome the statement, and I thank the Minister for providing extra resources to deal with the Salisbury and Amesbury incidents. The fact remains, however, that Wiltshire gets £151 per person from the Government to deal with policing. Nationally, the figure is £171 per person. I am sure that he wants to close that gap. Does he propose that that is done through the £161 million that he has announced today, or does he think that Angus Macpherson, our police and crime commissioner, should be raising money locally through the precept using the powers announced today?
Mr Hurd
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Through him, again, I congratulate and place on record our appreciation of the work of Wiltshire police in response to the Salisbury incident. I hope he will welcome the fact that this year, public funding in Wiltshire policing increased by £4 million and that this settlement enables further investment of up to £9 million, of which £2 million will come from additional grant funding. It is for the local police and crime commissioner to consult colleagues and weigh up his options on using the full precept flexibly. I cannot take that decision for him—he must consult local MPs and people who understand the public pulse in Wiltshire—but if he does so, he has the ability to raise an additional £7 million for local policing in Wiltshire.
Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
Last year, West Midlands police took 40,000 extra 999 calls and recorded 27,000 more crimes and 3,000 more violent crimes, yet it has 2,000 fewer officers. Law and order in our city is now resting on the heroism of officers such as Matt Crowley, who led a major operation against the dealers of violence this week. The Minister knows that we needed £25.5 million extra for 500 extra officers to keep our city safe. At best, can he confirm that we have only half that money and that once more, West Midlands police will be sent forward with one arm tied behind its back?
Mr Hurd
I do not accept that last statement, because that is a grotesque exaggeration of the situation. The West Midlands police force is an extremely important police force in the system, with a proud history of innovation. Funding—public investment—in that system increased by £10 million this year. This settlement enables the police and crime commissioner to increase public investment by up to £34 million, of which £16 million will come from central Government grants. The west midlands has, I think, an above average number of police officers per head of population, compared with the national average, and broadly the national average in terms of crime recorded by police officers, but it is a stretched police force. I absolutely understand that and I see this settlement as another important milestone on the journey towards the next comprehensive spending review, which is the most important event in shaping police funding for the next few years.
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
As someone who has campaigned vociferously on behalf of Bedfordshire police, I say thank you for enabling Bedfordshire to raise an extra £8 million next year, which is very welcome indeed. Does the Policing Minister share my outrage at the escalation in the theft of tools from vans? We have just had Small Business Saturday. Someone who steals tools from a work person’s van takes their livelihood. I am concerned that the police might not take that crime as seriously as I think they should. Does he share my concern about that particular issue?
Mr Hurd
I do share that concern, because I absolutely understand the economic impact on that small business trade, and I would expect the police to take that crime seriously. This is an opportunity for me to place on record again my admiration for and thanks to my hon. Friend for his tenacity in advocating for increased funding for Bedfordshire police. I hope that he is pleased about the exceptional grant that I announced a few months ago and that he will welcome a settlement that has the potential to increase funding into Bedfordshire police by up to £8 million next year.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
On Merseyside, we have seen a cut of more than 1,000 police officers since 2010, which is a 24% decrease. Despite the very best efforts of our police, they simply cannot provide the same level of service. Levels of certain crimes are going up and our police are under incredible pressure, as we have seen in the increase in the number of 999 calls.
I listened closely to the Minister. Will he categorically confirm that, of the £161 million increase in grants to the police, almost all—£152 million—will be eaten up by higher pensions? That will mean that inflation and pay increase costs will have to be met by council tax payers—it is about £24 a year, which we are not guaranteed to raise. That means that Merseyside police will just stand still. How on earth is that an acceptable state of affairs?
Mr Hurd
The settlement allows police and crime commissioners to absorb the increase in costs that they face while hopefully enabling them to continue their plans for recruitment and for filling in capability gaps. Like many other police forces, Merseyside police is stretched and does incredibly important and difficult work. Although the hon. Lady voted against it, I hope she welcomes the additional public investment of £5 million in Merseyside police, and that she will support a funding settlement that could increase funding into Merseyside police by up to £18 million this year, of which £8.6 million will come from central Government grant.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
Policemen and women in Northamptonshire do a wonderful job in very challenging circumstances and deserve the thanks of hon. Members and of the public. Will the Policing Minister confirm that the funding settlement could mean up to an extra £9 million into Northamptonshire police, and does he share my hope that the police and crime commissioner will use the money to continue to increase police numbers?
Mr Hurd
I place on record my admiration for the work of Northamptonshire police and the police and crime commissioner. They are a good force in relation to efficiency, and benefited from increased funding of £4 million this year, which my hon. Friend voted for. I hope he will support this settlement, which I can confirm has the capacity to increase funding by a further £9 million this year. Of course, it is up to Stephen and the local chief to decide how those resources are best allocated. I am sure my hon. Friend will express a strong view on behalf of the good people of Kettering.
Sir Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)
Where in this statement is there money for a public health model to cut youth violence? Where in this statement is there money for a police partnership with the NHS, so that they can work together to support each other and reduce the police work related to people with mental health problems?
Mr Hurd
The right hon. Gentleman raises two extremely important points. Our whole approach to bearing down on the worst spike in serious violence and knife crime in a decade is entirely based on a public health model, as the Home Secretary has made extremely clear. That is the basis of the serious violence taskforce, which brings together all the agencies, including health and education, to discuss what needs to be done to combine robust policing with effective prevention and intervention work, and support for young people. That strategy is properly funded, not least through the £200 million youth endowment fund. That is long-term money to support that work and to support young people up and down the country.
The right hon. Gentleman’s second point on the demands placed on the police system by the need to support people in crisis or who are suffering from mental health issues is an extremely important one. The recommendations of the review of the Mental Health Act 1983 were extremely valuable not only on what needs to change to reduce the demand on the police system, but on ensuring that people in crisis who are suffering from mental health issues are supported by the right people—the people qualified to help them, which in many cases is not the police. One dividend I want from the additional investment in local mental health services announced in the Budget is a reduction in the demand on policing. I hope he will support me in that.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
The murder rate in London is at its highest since 2008. My right hon. Friend the Minister will know that, in Harrow, we face a spike in aggravated burglaries—burglars burst into people’s homes knowing that they are there to intimidate them and beat them up. That clearly needs extra policing resources, but not ordinary policing resources—it needs detectives with experience and capability. What in the settlement will encourage people to remain in the police force and encourage new recruits?
Mr Hurd
I thank my hon. Friend and parliamentary neighbour. He is entirely right, and I will be sitting down with Pinner residents tomorrow to discuss exactly their concerns about the spike in aggravated burglary. The police response, to their credit, has been good, including enhanced neighbourhood team working and enhanced advice on crime prevention. One of the gangs in the case has been disrupted. There has been a good policing response, but the situation requires additional resources going into the Metropolitan police, in part to support increased investment in frontline officers but, critically, to support increased investment in detectives, who follow up crime and give a better service to victims. I hope he supports the settlement for that reason.
Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)
Does the Minister accept that the proposed increase in the precept in the Merseyside police force area will mean that people in all council tax bands will experience a 13% increase? Jane Kennedy, the police and crime commissioner, says that that will allow only for a stand-still budget on Merseyside. At the same time, we have seen a worrying increase in knife and gun crime, and the needless and tragic loss of so many young lives, yet the Minister has been unprepared to meet the police and crime commissioner and local MPs to discuss it. Will he undertake to meet the commissioner, the chief constable and local MPs to discuss how we can tackle that appalling problem?
Mr Hurd
With genuine respect to the right hon. Gentleman, I have met Jane on a number of occasions, and once specifically with the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), who has responsibility for crime and safeguarding, to discuss serious violence.
Mr Hurd
I am not aware of that. I see Jane quite regularly, as I do the chief. Given the seriousness of the matter, I am more than happy to sit down with Merseyside MPs—I give that undertaking, and was unaware of those unanswered requests. We have an open and regular dialogue with the police leadership.
The settlement helps police and crime commissioners to manage cost pressures—the pension issue was a serious concern—in a way that will allow Jane to go to the people of Merseyside and say clearly that any increase in the local precept will go into local policing. That is one objective of the settlement.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
Despite the exceptional efforts of the Humberside force, there is growing concern among my constituents that too many serious crimes such as burglary and attacks on retail staff go without investigation. Will the Minister assure my constituents that the additional resources going to the force will allow for more investigations into those crimes?
Mr Hurd
Through my hon. Friend, I pass on my congratulations to the Humberside force for some very impressive performance improvements within existing resources, which has been noticed by the independent inspectorate.
I hope my hon. Friend welcomes the settlement, which builds on last year’s, which resulted in an additional £4 million-worth of investment in Humberside policing this year. This year’s settlement enables an increase of up to £11 million of further investment. It is obviously up to the local police and crime commissioner, operating and working with local MPs and colleagues, to decide how those resources are allocated, but I am sure my hon. Friend will be a powerful advocate for exactly what he describes.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
Under this Government, since 2010, we have seen the lowest number of police officers in Humberside since the 1970s. It is welcome that under the current chief constable and the police and crime commissioner, Keith Hunter, recruitment is starting to take off again, but what I think worries all Humberside Members is what we were told by the chief constable. He said that if the funds were not found for the additional payments into the police pension scheme, up to 120 officers could lose their jobs and all police community support officers could go. I know that the Minister has just talked about the money that is available for this financial year, but—my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) made this point—what about 2019-20 and 2020-21?
Mr Hurd
I thank the hon. Lady for welcoming the increased recruitment of police officers in Humberside, which, I should add, was made possible by a police settlement that she voted against. This settlement enables the police and crime commissioner and the new chief constable to continue that process, not least as the increased costs and the pension costs are absorbed.
The hon. Lady made an important point about what will happen beyond 2019-20. We have made it very clear that the conversation about ongoing management of the need for increased employer contributions to public pensions is wrapped up in the conversations about the comprehensive spending review that is expected next year, which are now live.
James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)
Tomorrow afternoon I will host a meeting in the village of Lavenham, together with the police and crime commissioner, Tim Passmore, and the chief constable. It is likely to be attended by about 100 farmers, and will deal specifically with the issue of rural crime following a wave of significant incidents on the Suffolk-Essex borders in recent months. While I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement, what message will he give me to take to that meeting about the resources to which we may look forward in Suffolk as a result of his statement?
Mr Hurd
Like many colleagues, my hon. Friend has been a tireless advocate of increased resources for policing, and specifically for Suffolk policing. This settlement builds on the settlement for 2018-19, which provided an additional £3 million for Suffolk: it will allow a further investment of up to £9 million. What my hon. Friend can communicate to that meeting is the Government’s determination to ensure that Suffolk and other police forces have the resources that they need to meet the increasing demands caused by the change in and variety of crime in his area. I do, of course, understand the significance of rural crime, and the determination of farmers to ensure that the police and crime commissioner is attributing the right level of importance to it.
Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)
Over the last few years, the West Midlands police force has lost £175 million and 2,000 officers as a result of Government cuts. Violent crime and murders are up, and in the past 10 years the number of arrests has fallen by 50%. I am being lobbied by the public because of their frustration about the lack of action when they report crimes, and I am being lobbied by the police because, as good public servants, they are deeply demoralised by their inability to meet the legitimate demands placed on them by the public.
The Minister said that Opposition Members who raised this issue were doing so for tribal reasons. Will he withdraw that comment, and recognise that Opposition Members are exercising their democratic duty in reporting the legitimate fears of the people whom they represent? Will he also tell me whether, in one year’s time, any of the negative statistics that we have seen in the West Midlands will be reversed as a result of this settlement?
Mr Hurd
I fully recognise the pressures on West Midlands police. Both the hon. Gentleman’s concern and the concern expressed to him by his constituents are clearly genuine. My straight answer to him, however, is that, given that concern, he should support a police funding settlement that has the capacity to increase funding for West Midlands police by up to £34 million. In doing so, he also might correct a wrong, namely, his action in voting against a settlement that increased funding for that force by £10 million in the current year.
Paul Scully (Sutton and Cheam) (Con)
I do not think that members of the public would appreciate any reduction in resources for the police force because of an actuarial calculation. I thank my right hon. Friend, and the Prime Minister, for responding so well to representations from me, from London Tory MPs, and from Shaun Bailey. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is now important for the Mayor of London to put the whole £172 million of extra funding into the hands of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner as soon as possible, so that she can plan effectively for recruitment, tackling knife crime, and delivering to keep Londoners safe?
Mr Hurd
I thank my hon. Friend, and other London colleagues, for their persistence in lobbying to ensure that the Metropolitan police have the resources that they need, and that the additional cost pressures, which have been a genuine problem, are cushioned by this settlement. I thank him for his support for it.
If the Mayor uses his maximum flexibility, which he has indicated that he will, there will be an additional £172 million of public investment in the Met, on top of the extra £100 million this year. That is a serious amount of money. My hon. Friend and I, together with other colleagues, will be holding the Mayor and the Commissioner to account for the way in which that money is spent, and, in particular, for ensuring that we see continued progress in driving down the serious violence that is so deeply unsettling for Londoners.
Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)
Last week I saw at first hand just how stretched our local police are when I joined officers patrolling Bradford. Areas such as mine, which have seen a surge in violent and sexual crimes, have also seen some of the biggest cuts. When will central Government stop passing the buck to local ratepayers, and take responsibility for funding our police properly?
Mr Hurd
I congratulate the hon. Lady on her support for her local police force in West Yorkshire. I am sure that, given her desire to see them supported properly, she will welcome a settlement that has the capacity to increase their funding by £28.5 million this year. I look forward to her support in the Lobby.
Neil O'Brien (Harborough) (Con)
The Minister knows from our meetings that I wanted to see a strong settlement for the police. I am delighted that there will be an extra £13 million for Leicestershire police, and I am very pleased about the money to protect police pensions.
Does the Minister agree with me on two points? First, does he agree that this must be a first step towards a strong settlement in next year’s spending review, with a fair funding formula attached to it? Secondly, will he confirm that the new programme to look after officers’ welfare will especially help officers who have been victims of violence in the course of their duty? All of us in the House want to see stiffer sentences for those who attack police officers, and we are all very proud of the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) to do just that, but must we not also look after the welfare of those poor officers who have been attacked while protecting all the rest of us?
Mr Hurd
I could not agree more, and I think my hon. Friend senses the House’s full approval of what he has said. I congratulate him personally on his tenacity in advocating more resources and support for Leicestershire police.
My hon. Friend has also raised a very important point. One of the unacceptable features of the modern landscape and the circumstances that the police have to manage is the increased number of assaults and abuse of members of the police and emergency services. It was entirely right that, on a cross-party basis, led by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), the House came together to take that Bill through Parliament to send the strongest possible signal that we find such actions absolutely unacceptable.
Yes, I can confirm that as part of the settlement and part of the investment through the police transformation fund, we are working with the police to build the first national welfare programme to support the wellbeing of officers who are having to work in very challenging circumstances, often feeling very stretched. Their welfare and wellbeing is of huge importance to us, and we are investing public money to support it.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
The West Midlands police service has suffered a £175 million cut and the loss of 2,000 police officers. With violent crime up, gun crime up, knife crime up and burglaries up, fear stalks the streets in too many communities in the west midlands. Today’s settlement is a cut in real terms. It passes the buck to hard-pressed council tax payers, and it simply does not go far enough to put back on the beat the 500 officers whom we badly need in Birmingham and the west midlands. I pay tribute to the members of our police service, who have been nothing short of heroic, but as the thin blue line is drawn ever thinner, is it not the case that the Government are failing in the first duty of any Government, which is to ensure the safety and security of their citizens?
Mr Hurd
No, I deny that completely. Like last year’s settlement, this settlement is entirely designed to make sure we increase the resources available to policing. The hon. Gentleman is tenacious in this regard, but he and other Labour Members consistently fail to make any connection between the need to reduce police budgets and the imperative to get serious about reducing the largest peacetime budget deficit in this country’s history. The cuts were the consequence of Labour action, which he supported, and it was our job to try to clear up that mess. As we make progress on that journey, we are now able as a country to do more in terms of public investment in our public services. The police are a priority for the Home Secretary, as we have made clear, and this settlement could not be clearer about the ambition we have, within the resources we have got, to prioritise public safety and make sure that the police have the support they need—for West Midlands police the potential for an increase of up to £34 million of additional investment, and I hope the hon. Gentleman will support that.
Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)
This is a positive announcement for Greater Manchester police, who serve my constituency so well. Can my right hon. Friend confirm that it will allow them to increase frontline officer numbers and that more can be done in the forthcoming spending review so that they can properly respond to the victims of crime?
Mr Hurd
Yes, I can certainly confirm that this settlement has the potential to increase funding to GMP by up to £35 million, of which almost £15 million comes from central Government grants. Again that is an enormously important police force that is stretched and is facing challenging circumstances, which is why we are determined to come to this House with an ambitious settlement to increase resources for policing and capacity for policing, and I look forward to my hon. Friend’s support.
Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)
My constituents in Battersea are seeing an alarming rise in crime, with violent crime having increased by more than 15% in just six months this year. Following over £2 billion of cuts by this Tory Government to our local forces, can the Minister now confirm that the funding settlement today is only a tiny fraction of what has already been cut from our forces since 2010, and this will leave our police forces unable to meet the surge in violent crime?
Mr Hurd
I do not think my constituents would consider £172 million of increased investment in London policing, if that is what the Mayor enables, to be a small, tiny step; I think most people would recognise that to be a large amount of money. They want the police to have more support and welcome the fact that the Met are recruiting additional officers, yet the hon. Lady joins other Labour MPs in punching the same old tune on the jukebox, which completely ignores the economic reality that the last Labour Government ran out of money and ran up the biggest budget deficit in the history of this country, and it was our responsibility to sort that out.
Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)
I thank the Minister and the Home Secretary for listening to the points raised on the Conservative Benches about the need to increase funding for our police and help to tackle crime. I also hope he agrees with me about supporting forces like Staffordshire police. We are led by a fantastic Conservative PCC, who is doing fantastic work to lead that police force. Will my right hon. Friend also confirm that Staffordshire police will receive an additional £13 million due to this funding settlement to help tackle crime in Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire?
Mr Hurd
I thank my hon. Friend for his representations on behalf of Staffordshire police. He knows how important it is for his constituents that the police are well supported. This is indeed a settlement that has the capacity to increase investment into Staffordshire policing by up to £13 million. The excellent PCC Matthew Ellis has got some choices to make, but he will be supported by an increased grant from central Government. I thank my hon. Friend for his support for this settlement.
Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
The police Minister knows that I have seen for myself the pressures facing South Wales police, particularly in Cardiff, not just from the increasing demand from everything from county lines to spice to missing persons, but from the specific demands on it as a capital city hosting major events and as a seat of Government. The Minister met me, the chief constable and the PCC, and we made a very reasonable request to him; I wonder if he has had a chance to consider it further and has anything hopeful to say to us. On the police pensions gap, I appreciate what he said about next year, but beyond that the gap is projected to be £417 million a year, £10 million of which would fall as a burden on South Wales police. Where is that money going to come from in the future?
Mr Hurd
The hon. Gentleman made a powerful representation on behalf of Cardiff, which I am genuinely and seriously looking at. The more specific answer to that and his broader question around pension costs is rooted in the strategy for the CSR, which is active work under way in anticipation of a spending review next year. He talks about a pensions gap; there is not a pensions gap in 2019-20 as a result of this settlement, and I am determined that through the CSR, with the full support of the Home Secretary, we will get a robust settlement for the police that allows them to increase their capacity and improve their response to changing demand.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
During the last hour or so Members have quite rightly been standing up for their own areas, but nobody can say what I am going to say. As the Minister knows from his frequent meetings with Lincolnshire MPs, Lincolnshire is the lowest funded police authority per head in the country—just £88 compared with £99 for Norfolk, a comparable authority. The Minister knows that from our meetings, and he knows that Marc Jones, our excellent commissioner, is now warning that we might lose all our PCSOs and see the complete end of community policing in Lincolnshire. He knows that Bill Skelly, our excellent chief constable, has warned that he might lose up to 60 police officers. He knows, too, that after years of belt-tightening going back over the 35 years that I have been in this House we cannot save £16 million over the next three years. So I beg the police Minister to raise his eyes from his excellent brief and convince us in Lincolnshire that we are going to get a fair funding formula. This is about justice. This is a county that has loyally supported the Conservatives in all my lifetime; where is the justice?
Mr Hurd
My hon. Friend is, along with other Lincolnshire MPs—I am sitting on the Front Bench next to one now, my ministerial colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins)—assiduous, as are Marc and Bill, in making this point on behalf of Lincolnshire. I hope that my hon. Friend will welcome and support a funding settlement that has the potential to see an additional £9 million of funding going into Lincolnshire Police in 2019-20 on top of the £3 million that the settlement for 2018-19 enabled, and on top of consideration of exceptional grant funding as well. But I absolutely accept my hon. Friend’s main point that there is a serious set of decisions to be taken about how funding is allocated across police forces; there is a very serious issue around the fairness of that allocation, and I have indicated very clearly that this settlement is the final stepping stone on the journey towards that work in the CSR, which is the appropriate strategic framework in which to settle police funding for the next five years. He and others have a powerful case to make on behalf of Lincolnshire, a force that does excellent work under extremely difficult circumstances and is extremely well led, not least by Marc Jones.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
The Minister and his London cronies really have got some brass neck, in one breath asking what the Mayor of London has done to tackle crime, and in the next breath trying to take credit for the 1,000 police officers being put on London’s streets thanks to action by London’s Mayor. Is it not the case that, even after this funding settlement announced today and the huge increases in charges for council tax payers that will follow, the funding announcement made by the Minister will barely dent the loss of 3,000 police officers, more than 3,000 PCSOs and 5,000 police staff across London, and that is the tragedy that is fuelling rising crime on the streets of my constituency?
Mr Hurd
And the actions by the Mayor of London. We now have an opportunity to increase funding to the Metropolitan police by up to £172 million, which will seem—and is—a large amount of money to the hon. Gentleman’s constituents, as it does to mine. I sincerely hope that, rather than grandstanding, he will support the Government on this.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
The Minister repeatedly claims to recognise that the first duty of his Government is to protect UK citizens, including my constituents, but he is moving funding for the police on to town council tax payers when wages are still flatlining and in-work poverty is at an all-time high. Northumbria has lost a third of its officers while demand is rising as a result of crimes ranging from burglary to historical sexual abuse to terrorism, as we have seen this week. Will he tell me whether this settlement will get us back our lost bobbies and give Northumbria police the funding they need so that hard-pressed police officers can do the jobs they love to do?
Mr Hurd
The hon. Lady tries to make a point about loading police funding on to council tax payers, when precept funding for Northumbria police represents 19% of total funding. The issue for Northumbria police is a low tax base and an historical decision not to raise council tax. This means that the precept level is low. Vera Baird now has an option to increase council tax by up to £2 a month, and the hon. Lady will have her own view on whether that is acceptable to her constituents. To her point, this is a settlement that builds on a settlement that put £5 million more into Northumbria policing this year, and has the potential to put in a further £18 million next year, to deliver exactly the things she is talking about, so I would be very surprised if she did not support the Government in the voting Lobby.
Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
I have heard what the Minister has had to say about London, but the reality is that since 2010 the Met has faced cuts of £1 billion from central Government. The Government are to blame for the funding crisis in policing. Raising the council tax precept will mean that hard-working families will have to foot the bill and that police budgets will still be significantly underfunded compared with 2010. When will the Government stop abdicating responsibility and undo the damage caused by years of austerity?
Mr Hurd
My question is: when will Labour MPs grasp economic reality and understand the reason why budgets had to be cut in the first place? It is also recognised by almost everyone that there was enormous scope to improve the efficiency of the Metropolitan police, and I congratulate the police leadership on the work they have done to do exactly that. The reality is that this settlement has the ability to put another £172 million into Metropolitan police funding, on top of £100 million in 2018-19. For all those reasons, I would expect the hon. Lady to support this.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
The Minister has repeatedly referred to a “spike” in serious violence. May I urge him to stop using that word? It is not a spike unless and until we actually get these numbers down. The truth is that it is a rising surge. In particular, the horrific assaults on emergency workers that are preventing them from saving people’s lives really have to be tackled. If the police on my patch in South Wales are to be able to do that, they will need additional resources. We need to see the law implemented fully. My biggest fear is that, if South Wales police has a £10 million shortfall in its pension fund, it will be areas such as the Rhondda and the small towns and villages on my patch that will lose out on any kind of policing whatsoever. We really need additional resources in South Wales police.
Mr Hurd
I actually understand the hon. Gentleman’s point. I use the word “spike” because I am determined, as are my colleagues, that it is a spike and not a shift. We have been here before, in London 10 years ago, when there was a spike and we succeeded in bearing down on it—
Mr Hurd
The Labour party is claiming some credit for that, but I do not think that the Mayor at the time was Labour. I seem to remember that he was called Boris. Leaving that aside, the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) makes a serious point about the need for additional resourcing for policing. We on the Government Benches absolutely accept that argument, because we absolutely accept the pressures on the police. I happen to think that we are as one with Labour Front Benchers on this, because we all recognise the pressure on the police. We all recognise that the police need additional resources. We are pragmatic, and we know that the public finances remain constrained, but this is an ambitious settlement that—if the police and crime commissioner uses the full power—will see up to £19 million more going into South Wales police on top of the £8 million increase that went in this year. I sincerely hope that I can count on the hon. Gentleman’s support when this measure comes to a vote.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
The Minister repeatedly mentioned the need to tackle debt. He will know that the debt-to-GDP ratio, which is the only measure that counts, remains stagnant under this Government and that the cuts to public services simply funded cuts to things like corporation tax, which made little or no difference to a slow-growing economy that has been hampered by this Government’s failed Brexit agenda. Can the Minister look me in the eye and tell me that the massive increase in knife crime and the 130 murders in London this year have nothing to do with the £850 million cuts that the Met police has already had to implement since 2010? Can he also explain how the £33 million of Government core funding that he has announced today for the Met will in any way fill that gap?
Mr Hurd
The hon. Lady and I share an absolute determination to bear down on this terrible violence in London, and I salute the work that she has been doing for some time on that issue. Where she is wrong is on the economics. She talks about tax cuts, but she is talking to a party that has cut income tax for 32 million people and that has reduced the amount of tax paid by a basic-rate payer by £1,205 since it has been in power. She is talking to a party that, despite what it had to do to get public finances under control, has managed to keep council tax as low as possible. That is in stark contrast to her party, which doubled council tax when it was in power.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I welcome the Minister’s commitment to the extra moneys to address terrorism and organised crime. Hailing from Northern Ireland, and from my constituency, I believe that security measures are as essential as the NHS. Funding has to be set aside for policing and communities, but funding for additional staffing must also be met. Will the Minister meet the cost of those duties and demands, and not rely on further tax hikes at council level, which would fall on the shoulders and the backs of the middle class, who are already squeezed?
Mr Hurd
The hon. Gentleman will know that this is a settlement for England and Wales. To his point, it is designed to help police and crime commissioners to manage the very real cost pressures that they face while giving them the space to continue their plans to recruit additional officers and fill key capability gaps. Our priority is to help the police to increase their capacity and to do an even better job in responding to increases in demand. That is the full intention of this settlement.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
And the prize for patience and perseverance goes to Kerry McCarthy.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. There is one advantage to being called last, in that I have now heard the Minister respond over and over again to my many colleagues who have raised the increase in violent crime, the impact of the cuts and the loss of frontline police officers in their constituencies. He has not answered anyone who has questioned him on whether the extra money he has announced today will do any more than just fill the pensions funding gap. We have lost 700 frontline police officers in the Avon and Somerset force. Will today’s announcement mean that we can replace them?
Mr Hurd
I am sorry that the hon. Lady felt that she did not hear an answer to that question. The reality is that the additional pension costs for 2019-20 are £330 million, and this settlement is designed so that, if all police and crime commissioners use their precept flexibility, there will be an additional investment of £970 million in our police system. Within that, there is plenty of scope to go beyond standing still. Our intention is to support excellent forces such as Avon and Somerset to increase their capacity to deliver a better service to the hon. Lady’s constituents. This year, she voted against a settlement that put an additional £8 million into Avon and Somerset police, but I hope she will not vote against a settlement that has the potential to increase funding by up to £21 million for that police force in 2019-20.
Points of Order
(6 years ago)
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Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I apologise for not being able to raise this matter with you in advance—the Policing Minister may be interested to hear this—but I am aware of concerns about harassment targeted at some of the peaceful demonstrators who have been outside Parliament for many weeks, months or years protesting about issues around Brexit. I am always unclear about the boundaries of the parliamentary estate, but I am sure that you would agree, along with many Members, that people should be able to express themselves and protest freely and peacefully outside Parliament’s buildings.
I am told that some of those protestors, particularly those from SODEM—the Stand of Defiance European Movement—including Steven Bray, are being harassed by people holding potentially defamatory placards targeting individuals and by the activities of the far right. This is a relatively recent development and, as I think you will be aware, these good-natured protests have been going on quite peacefully for a long time. Could you use your offices to speak to the parliamentary security authorities to ensure that protestors are kept safe, that their right to protest is respected and that contact is made with the Metropolitan Police to ensure that those protests are able to continue in a safe and secure way?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that point of order. It is matter of concern for Parliament and for Members that peaceful protests should be allowed in the vicinity of Parliament. Exactly what constitutes peaceful protest and what crosses the line into a breach of the peace is another matter, and one on which I obviously cannot comment without knowing further details. The hon. Gentleman has targeted his point of order well in raising it while the Policing Minister is still in the Chamber.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I take it from that nod that the Minister has listened carefully to the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty). I will also ensure that the Serjeant at Arms knows about what the hon. Gentleman has said, as I am sure Mr Speaker would wish me to ensure.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. On 6 November, I tabled a written parliamentary question to the Ministry of Justice regarding the number of appeals involving special educational needs cases and tribunals, asking for that material to be provided on a local authority basis. On 12 November, I received a response from the Department saying that such information would be placed in the Library. It is now 13 December and that information has not been provided despite regular calls from my office to the Library and the Ministry of Justice to try to secure it. Given that so few sitting days remain, I wonder whether you can advise me on how best to secure that information so that I may update my constituents, who are worried about special educational needs tribunals.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I thank the hon. Lady for her point of order. As she will know, the Chair has no power whatsoever over the way in which Ministers operate their Departments, but I will echo what Mr Speaker has said many times. There is a duty upon Ministers and their Departments to answer hon. Members’ questions in a timely fashion, and it would appear that the hon. Lady has waited quite some time for her answer. By raising the matter right now, she has brought it to the attention of those on the Treasury Bench, and I am sure that her points will have been noted. If she still does not receive an answer, I am sure that she will come back to Mr Speaker for further advice and that he would be happy to help.
Public Health Model to Reduce Youth Violence
(6 years ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered a public health model to reduce youth violence.
There is something particularly poignant about discussing serious violence, its terrible ramifications and a public health approach towards it in the days leading up to Christmas. It is poignant because some families will be facing their first Christmas without a son or a daughter, a brother or a sister, a father or a mother. For them, this season of good will and celebration will be filled with grief, longing and loss, so this debate is well timed. Looking around, I can see many Members in the Chamber this afternoon who have particular constituency issues, and I hope that they will help the House to understand them. I also hope that at the conclusion of the debate we will have discovered not just the Government’s approach to tackling serious violence, but the will of the House to work together to stop these terrible crimes. We are all committed to breaking the deadly cycle of violence, and the Government published our serious violence strategy earlier this year, which outlines an ambitious programme of work to tackle the issue.
Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)
It is important to state for the people watching this debate just how worried this House is. Over 40 young people between the ages of 13 and 24 have died from violence this year in London alone—over 40—but there are fewer than 30 Members in the Chamber debating this important issue right now. What does she say to people watching these proceedings who think, “Do you know what? That lot just do not care”? Look at these empty green Benches. How will the Minister explain them to people watching right now?
Victoria Atkins
I thank the hon. Gentleman, who contributes a great deal through the serious violence taskforce, which is chaired by the Home Secretary and brings together colleagues from across the House and people from local government, Whitehall Departments, the police, health and so on to try to tease out ways of tackling serious violence. I understand his point. It is of course for each Member of Parliament to decide which debates to attend. However, looking at the colleagues who are here, I know that they have all paid particular attention to this issue in their constituencies and in conversations with me and other Ministers. I hope that there will be more people in the Chamber for future such debates, but anyone watching should rest assured that, although the Benches may not be as full today as the hon. Gentleman and I would like, a great deal of work is going on outside this Chamber.
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
How many times has the serious violence taskforce met? Where can we find the details of what it has discussed?
Victoria Atkins
The taskforce has met five times—it meets pretty much every month, although there may have been a period of five weeks between one or two meetings. There was a meeting only last week that I was unfortunately unable to attend because I was required for a debate in the House, but the next meeting is on 9 January. We do not publish the minutes of the meeting because we want people to be able to exchange full and frank views. I am grateful to hon. Members throughout the House who take part in the taskforce, which has pushed on a programme of work across Government, including on exclusions and social media activity. I plan to move on to that later in my speech.
Sir Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)
The Minister acknowledges that this is a huge problem and that the murder rate is at its highest since 2008, with the 130th homicide of the year in London happening earlier this week. Will she therefore explain why we are taking so long to get on to the public health model? It was deployed in Glasgow in 2005 and efforts and initiatives by groups such as Redthread have been going since 2005, so why is it taking so long to get this model going?
Victoria Atkins
The right hon. Gentleman will know that the serious violence strategy, which I am about to come on to, sets out the cross-governmental, multi-agency approach to the public health model. He mentions Redthread, so I hope he knows that the Home Office has been funding charities such as Redthread, St Giles Trust and other important and valuable contributors from the charitable sphere for some time now, because we recognise that law enforcement and policing is not the only answer. Of course it is important, but we want to get to the early causes of crime to prevent young people in particular from being dragged into criminality and snared by gangs, particularly in the case of county lines.
Norman Lamb
I share the concern of others about the horrifying death toll. I pay tribute to the work of the Youth Violence Commission in highlighting these issues. Given that we are considering a public health approach in this debate, is the Minister conscious of the clear correlation between people experiencing adversity, trauma, abuse and neglect in their early years and the emergence of mental ill health, exclusion from school, violence and so on? Does she agree that it is vital that we apply the evidence of what works in those early years to prevent such trauma from becoming entrenched and, potentially, to prevent violence?
Victoria Atkins
I pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman for his work on this subject over the years, and I join him in paying tribute to the work of the Youth Violence Commission. I absolutely agree about adverse childhood experiences. He will know there is a new inter-ministerial group, chaired by the Leader of the House, focusing on the first two years of life. I invited myself on to that group because it is of such interest to my portfolio.
When I speak to young people who are involved in gangs, and to their youth workers, the prevalence of domestic abuse is sadly a theme that runs through these young people’s lives. That is why I hope the forthcoming domestic abuse Bill will have an immediate impact not just on violence committed in people’s homes but on the longer-term consequences of ensuring that children do not witness such violence and abuse in what should be their ultimate place of safety—their home. That can have long-term adverse impacts in their adult and teenage years.
The serious violence strategy sets out our understanding of recent increases in serious violence, our analysis of the trends and drivers, as well as the risks, and the protective factors that can help to tackle them. As a result, it places a new emphasis on early intervention and prevention, and it aims to tackle the root causes of the problem, alongside ensuring a robust law enforcement response.
The strategy sets out our response under four key themes: tackling county lines and the misuse of drugs; early intervention and prevention; supporting communities and local partnerships; and the law enforcement and criminal justice response. The strategy is very clear that tackling serious violence is not a law enforcement issue alone and that it requires a multi-agency approach involving a range of organisations, partners and agencies, including education, health, social services, housing and youth services. It supports a public health approach to tackling serious violence, which I suspect has the support of the House.
Vicky Foxcroft
Does the Minister share my disappointment that we do not have Ministers here listening to the debate from all those other Departments, which are so integral to delivering a public health approach?
Victoria Atkins
I always enjoy the company of my colleagues on the Treasury Bench. In fairness, those Ministers may not be here today, but they are there at meetings of the serious violence taskforce, the inter-ministerial group on serious violence and the inter-ministerial group on the first two years of life. There is a great deal of Whitehall involvement, and there has to be, because we have to ensure that all relevant Government Departments, at both national and local level, are involved if we are to provide a wrap-around approach to tackling violence.
The trends and analysis show that this violence is based around male-on-male offending, alongside a shift to younger offenders. Young black men are disproportionately represented as both victims and perpetrators, and although the rise in violence is national, particular communities are being disproportionately hurt by this terrible violence. The strategy is clear that a range of factors are likely to be driving the rise in serious violence, but the most notable driver is the drugs market.
Crack cocaine markets have strong links to serious violence, supported by the growth in county lines, which is also strongly linked to violence. The latest evidence suggests that crack use is rising in England and Wales and that county lines drug dealing, which is associated with hard class A drugs, has spread.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for the work she is doing and for always being available when we want to speak to her, which is appreciated.
It is true that the increase in drug use is driving some of these issues, but at least three quarters of knife crime is not gang-related in that way. People are carrying knives and getting involved in knife crime for completely different reasons, and it is important that we bear that in mind as we look at the evidence.
Victoria Atkins
The hon. Lady, who has done so much work in her constituency and in the House on knife crime, not least through chairing the all-party parliamentary group on knife crime, is absolutely right. Sadly, we know that more young people are carrying knives because they think, wrongly, that it will offer them protection. That is where education is critical.
I am extremely grateful for the work the APPG and the associated charities are doing to try to educate young people. One has only to visit the Ben Kinsella Trust, for example, to see the powerful message it delivers, as one makes one’s way around the exhibition, that carrying a knife simply does not offer such protection. Indeed, many young people are killed by their own knives. That is very much part of the early intervention work, which I will outline in detail.
Social media is a driving force in serious violence and in escalating gang violence, due to the reaction of young people to supposed signs of disrespect or, indeed, encouragements to commit violence. A range of risk factors can affect a person’s vulnerability and susceptibility to becoming a victim or perpetrator of serious violence through a range of adverse childhood experiences, such as domestic abuse, truancy and exclusion. The strategy also sets out the evidence and support for targeted interventions that can help to mitigate, and protect children and young people from, these factors.
I will talk first about tackling county lines and the misuse of drugs, because county lines is the first of the four key areas of action set out in our strategy. County lines is a horrific form of child criminal exploitation, and it involves high levels of violence. I am grateful to colleagues on both sides of the House for raising awareness of county lines. Sadly, in the last year or so, we have all become familiar with county lines, and it is precisely because of the questions posed in debates in this place, as well as a very informed campaign by the police and others, that the public are now much more aware of this type of crime.
We have a cross-Government programme of action to tackle county lines, which includes investing £3.6 million to establish a new national county lines co-ordination centre to enhance our intelligence capability and to support cross-border working to disrupt county lines criminality, while also ensuring that vulnerable children and young people are identified and safeguarded.
The new centre became fully operational in September, and it carried out its first week of intensification, to use the police terminology, in October, which resulted in 505 arrests and 320 individuals being safeguarded. That is an extraordinary amount of work in one week, and it shows the scale of the challenge to policing and social services colleagues. The serious violence strategy sets out further measures we will take to enhance our response to drugs, building on the drugs strategy of 2017 and providing further support in targeted areas, such as through heroin and cocaine action areas.
As has already been mentioned, the evidence to support early intervention is set out in our strategy, and a focus on early intervention and prevention is at the heart of a public health approach. That is why we have already delivered on our early intervention youth fund, allocating £17.7 million to 29 projects that will focus on diverting vulnerable young people and those who have already offended away from crime. The projects, supported by police and crime commissioners across England and Wales, will work with young people who are already involved in criminality or who have already offended, and with organisations safeguarding those at risk of gang exploitation and county lines, to deliver interventions to help them into positive life choices. Earlier this year, we also launched a major social media advertising campaign aimed at teenagers, #knifefree, to raise awareness of the consequences of knife crime and discourage young people from carrying knives. That has been supported with the creation of a #knifefree lesson plan and resources for teachers to use in schools.
As I have said previously, a multi-agency approach and local partnerships are vital. That is why we placed PCCs at the heart of our early intervention youth fund and why we are running a series of engagement events for interested and relevant agencies and partners across England and Wales. The aim of the events is to increase awareness of the strategy’s key messages and actions, and understand what action is being taken locally. The events allow partners to share good practice and feedback on further support and what further action needs to be taken. Three events have already taken place in London, Luton and Bristol, and at least 10 further events will take place next year. I have attended one of them and they are very powerful programmes, allowing people to give good advice and to ask questions to improve their local response. We have also made available funding of £1.5 million for 68 projects from the anti-knife crime community fund. The funding supports communities to tackle knife crime, including through early intervention and education, as well as mentoring and outreach work. I hope hon. Members have received letters from me informing them of local projects that have received those donations.
Finally, the strategy sets out further action we will take to enhance the law enforcement and criminal justice response, including tackling social media and continued targeted action on knife crime. On 17 June, the Home Secretary announced funding of £1.4 million to support a new national police capability to tackle gang-related activity on social media. This new police “hub” will be fully operational early next year and will focus on disrupting gang criminality online, as well as identifying and referring more content to social media companies to be removed. In addition, we are taking action to ensure the police have all the powers they need to tackle violent crime. We have introduced a new Offensive Weapons Bill to strengthen our legislation on knives, corrosive substances and firearms. The Bill has completed its passage through this House and had its First Reading in the House of Lords on 29 November. We have continued to encourage police forces to undertake a series of co-ordinated national weeks of action against knife crime under Operation Sceptre. The last operation was in September, when all 43 forces in England and Wales took part, as well as British Transport police. Our newly published serious and organised crime strategy also sets out a framework for how we will use our national, regional and local capabilities to disrupt and target serious violence activity through county lines, for example.
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
Will the Minister, in her conversations, encourage the police to use the powers they have? Let me give one example on this. A gang who were glorifying violence were convicted and banned from making any music videos—putting them online—unless the police gave their approval. The police then approved one video that had shocking lyrics glorifying gun violence. No wonder campaigners have their head in their hands when the police make decisions such as that.
Victoria Atkins
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, and I was grateful for the particular interest he took in the Offensive Weapons Bill. I am not familiar with the case he has raised, but if he provides me with the details, I will certainly look into it. When the police ask us for powers we do our level best to provide them, but I, too, would like to see those powers used sensibly when they are provided.
Sarah Jones
I want to caution against being too flippant when it comes to social media. There are big issues to address, but a lot of music that is online, drill music and stuff on YouTube, in particular, is an expression of an environment in which people find themselves, not an expression of intent. That is where the difference lies and that is what the police have to tackle. Someone expressing what is around in their community, what they see and their lived experience is very different from someone expressing intent to do something—that is the difference.
Victoria Atkins
I listen to and consider that with great care, but I must make the point that I would like to support our young people and give them the reassurance that if they do not want to be listening to or watching videos that are incredibly violent—as I say, I am not familiar with the example my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) provided—we can take a stand and say, “Actually, we don’t want to see those levels of violence online, because it helps feed a narrative and a very negative atmosphere for our young people.” This is one of the debates we will continue to have, not least through the introduction of the online harms White Paper, and in the context of not just serious violence, but depictions of women in music videos. This is one of the big debates of our time, but I would not want our young people to think that we feel it is okay for music videos to be targeting them with images of extreme violence, with foul language and with foul depictions. We should be doing a bit better than that for our young people.
Huw Merriman
I will indeed write to my hon. Friend, but I should make it absolutely clear that I was not talking about an “environmental issue” and I am not a prude; this video referred to taking a gun, going into a block and using it, pop by pop—and the rest. So this is shocking stuff. The other point I wish to make is that TimWestwoodTV is still on YouTube. There are 32 examples where breaches of the law have been found, with glorifications of violence and misogyny and shocking lyrics about gun and drug use. Some 100,000 people watch each of these videos. He is an absolute disgrace, but so is YouTube for even hosting him.
Victoria Atkins
We are tackling this through our social media hub and through the serious violence taskforce. These issues are very difficult and they need to be debated, not only by us in this place, but by the wider communities. As a mum, I know that one wants to protect one’s child and one would hope they are not accessing and seeing material such as that. We have to tread carefully around this, because one does not want, for a moment, to step over into the boundaries of musical freedom. However, we have to be a little less forgiving of those who present these very violent images on TV and then shrug their shoulders when we think it is having an impact on how our children view each other and their friends, and how they view situations in their day-to-day lives.
Victoria Atkins
I will give way, but this will be the last time, as I must move on.
Stella Creasy
I thank the Minister for giving way. I recognise the debate that people want to have. With the greatest respect to all my colleagues across the House, I do not think this is really about whether we are prudes. Whatever material our young people are seeing, and whether they are seeing violence online or on our streets, the biggest difference is made by their having people in their lives who can be a consistent voice for making positive choices. I understand that there is an obsession with what is on YouTube, but will the Minister say a bit about how she wants to support those youth mentors and social workers that we know we need to be able to crack this problem? That is what this debate is really about today.
Victoria Atkins
It is as though the hon. Lady had my speech in front of her, because I am just about to move on to the further work that we have announced in recent months. Of course, having positive role models is key, particularly for young people with the biggest set of vulnerabilities, who perhaps do not have someone at home on whom they can rely. That may be because their home lives are difficult and chaotic, for reasons that we have heard about earlier in the debate. There is already a programme of work: the Home Office supports charities such as Safer London and the St Giles Trust to do innovative work to try to reach and then keep hold of the young people who most need their help.
Victoria Atkins
I am not going to, I am afraid, because I must make progress.
It has been a great pleasure for me, as part of my role, to meet youth workers and discover what they think will most help their young people. We in the Government are then in a position to help them in their work.
On 2 October, the Home Secretary announced additional major new measures to tackle violent crime. First, he announced a consultation on a new legal duty to underpin a public health approach to tackling serious violence. This would mean that police officers, education partners, local authority and healthcare professionals would have a new legal duty to take action and prevent violent crime, and fundamentally support our public health approach. The consultation will be a fundamental change in our approach—indeed, it will go further than the often-given example of Glasgow—and I will be very interested to see the results.
Secondly, the Home Secretary announced a new £200 million youth endowment fund, which will be delivered over 10 years and will support interventions with children and young people who are at risk of involvement in crime and violence. It will focus on those who are most at risk, such as those who display signs of truancy, aggression and involvement in antisocial behaviour. It will fund interventions to steer children and young people away from becoming serious offenders. Because we are delivering this £200 million over 10 years, it will provide longer-term certainty to those organisations that are helped through the fund, so that they can develop their programmes.
Thirdly, the Home Secretary announced the independent review of drug misuse, which will ensure that law-enforcement agencies are targeting and preventing the drug-related causes of violent crime effectively. Drugs have been identified as a major driver of serious violence. The review will consider recreational drug use, as well as use by the smaller number of users who cause the most harm to themselves and their communities.
Let me be clear: tackling serious violence is a top priority for the Government. The approach set out in the serious violence strategy, with a greater emphasis on early intervention, will address violent crime and help young people to develop the skills and resilience to live happy and productive lives away from violence. But we cannot deliver that alone, which is why we are supporting a multi-agency public health approach to tackling the issue and investing heavily in tackling the root causes of the problem and consulting on further measures to underpin the public health approach, to ensure that everyone is working collectively to stop this violence.
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)
I am very glad indeed to have the opportunity to speak in this important debate. I do not doubt the Minister’s sincerity, but there are some in the wider community who believe that in many important ways the Government are only paying lip service to a public health approach to violent crime.
Like other Members, I have had the sad duty of visiting the families of young men who have died as a result of violent crime. I say young men because they are nearly always men—and in London at least they are all too often black and minority ethnic men. Visiting the families of these deceased young men brings it home to you that the deceased were people—someone’s child. Not just a statistic or a newspaper clipping but young people who were loved and often carried the hopes and dreams of their parents, wider family and even church community. Violent crime creates fear generally, but we should always remember that it is also a personal tragedy for families and communities. Tonight, too many mothers will be going to bed worrying about that call from the public services that will tell them that their son will not be coming home alive.
The topic of the debate is youth involvement in violent crime, but we should remember that older people commit violent crime, too. Violent crime committed against and perpetrated by young people is hugely emotive, and the argument about catching them young and diverting them from crime is well understood, but as I have said, young people are not the sole perpetrators of violent crime; far from it. Youth violence is often associated with drug gangs, which are often run by very adult Mr Bigs—organised criminals who try to keep their hands clean. The Minister talked about county lines; as we know, violence—sometimes extreme violence—is used to claim and enforce operations and territory, drug debts and so on. The organisers and ultimate beneficiaries of the county line phenomenon are rarely young people.
It is important to set out the real nature of the problem, because the Government—although not necessarily this Minister—sometimes seem in denial on matters relating to policing and crime. These are the facts: in the latest report from the Office for National Statistics on crime in the year ending in June, there were more than 39,300 incidents of police recorded crime using knives or other sharp instruments, compared with more than 30,600 as of March 2011. In reality, violent crime and knife crime are rising under this Government. As was said earlier, we can call it a spike if we like, but it can only really be described as a spike if we see the level of violent crime start to come down.
The same ONS document says:
“As offences involving the use of weapons are relatively low in volume, the Crime Survey for England and Wales…is not able to provide reliable trends for such incidents. In this case, police recorded crime is a useful source for measuring these offences, although not all offences will come to the attention of the police.”
The ONS goes on to say that we now have the:
“Highest number of offences involving knives or sharp instruments since 2011”.
So, the reality is that knife crime has risen while this Government have been in office, but what has their policy response been?
We have to accept that one of the most vital elements in the fight against crime must be the role and strength of our police force. We know that 50,000 workers have been lost from the police service, 21,000 of whom were police officers. Up until recent times, the Government have been demanding that they do “more with less” and they are now at crisis point. Those are not my words; they are not some tribal assertion. They are the words of Chief Superintendent Gavin Thomas from the College of Policing writing in The Daily Telegraph at the end of October. He is simply highlighting what all of the police leadership has said and the clear verdict of the National Audit Office, the Home Affairs Committee, the inspectorate and many others besides.
Let us consider for a moment the real effect of slashing the numbers of what are known sometimes a little disparagingly as back-office staff. They do vital work, and when their numbers have been slashed, all of their work falls on the police officers themselves. I invite the Minister to imagine how she would feel if her support staff was halved or reduced to a 10th. Well, police, just like the Minister, are dealing with very serious matters—matters of life and death—and we expect them to manage with cuts in the number of staff who support them.
According to the Home Office’s own data, the number of full-time frontline police officers has fallen from 123,000 in 2010 to 106,000 in 2017. All of this has undermined police officers’ effectiveness—that is being said not just by Labour Members but by police officers themselves—in preventing and detecting crime and in apprehending criminals when crime does occur. It is also increasingly the case that police officers do not have the time to spend on protective engagement with the public, but that protective engagement with communities is particularly important in relation to youth crime.
Fewer police officers do not inevitably lead to more crime. Some criminals, opportunistically or otherwise, may be encouraged by the lack of police visibility, and there has certainly been a sharp decline in arrest rates. But although fewer police do not lead directly to rising crime, including violent crime, the police tend to become overstretched, which means that they cannot cope with current levels of crime, let alone rising crime. I am arguing not that fewer police officers in themselves lead to more crime, but that we have to look elsewhere for the causes of crime.
I have heard the Minister talk about the Government’s commissions, strategies, and legislation, and I am grateful that she is not talking about just arresting our way out of rising violent crime. Police officers tell me exactly the opposite; that we cannot arrest our way out of this crisis. I am told by officers of one instance in which an entire drug gang, which had been dominating the area, were sent away for lengthy sentences. They had used frequent and extreme violence to enforce their rule and protect their territory. There was some jubilation in the local police station when the gang members were sent away, but the consequence was a huge upsurge in violence as other gangs moved in. We must tackle the causes of violent crime. Although I have heard what the Minister has had to say, as I said right at the beginning, the Government as a whole run the risk of being seen to pay lip service to a public health approach.
Let us reflect on a genuine public health approach to violent crime. This is the work done in Scotland around knife crime—I am sure that our Scottish colleagues will have more to say on this. Between April 2006 and April 2011, 40 children and teenagers were killed in homicides involving a knife in Scotland, but between 2011 and 2016, that figure fell to just eight. The decline was steepest in Glasgow, which once had one of the highest murder rates in western Europe. Between 2006 and 2011, 15 children and teenagers were killed with knives in Glasgow, but between April 2011 and April 2016, not a single child was killed with a knife in Glasgow.
What was the content of the public health approach to knife crime in Glasgow? The police did play a central role. Legislation was improved and toughened, but the authorities also worked in a multi-agency fashion, working very closely with the NHS, schools and social workers. They also had some very innovative projects. In one, the violence reduction unit identified those people most likely to offend and asked them to voluntarily attend the sheriff’s court. They did not have to come, but they were encouraged to do so by community police, teachers and social workers. The police had mapped all the gangs in the area, so that when the young men got there, they saw their own pictures up in court. The session started off with a warning: “We know who you are, and if you carry on with this lifestyle we’re going to come down on you really hard. We’re going to arrest you and we’ll arrest the rest of the gang. You will be going to prison if this carries on.” But as the intervention in the court went on, the police took a more holistic approach.
The police spoke to the young men about the injuries they see as a result of violence, and had a mother talk about losing her son. That really hit home. There was help with housing, relocation, employment and training, and the young men were given a number to call if they wanted to take the offer up. Many of them did so and were put into the programme, and are no longer in the gang lifestyle. That is just one project, which was carried out in Glasgow.
I have heard what the Minister has said about this pot of money and that pot of money, but in order to replicate that sort of approach and those sorts of innovative projects, much more resource needs to be put into the public sector across the board, notably into the NHS, local authorities, schools and social workers.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
I thank the right hon. Lady for her comments about Glasgow. As a local councillor in Glasgow at the time, I saw the difference made by the community initiative to reduce violence. I sat in on one of the court call-ins, which was as moving as she said it was. However, does she agree that the success of the Glasgow programme has been its consistency—that it has been funded for the long-term? That is the kind of investment needed to make it a success.
Ms Abbott
I thank the hon. Lady for her important intervention; I expected Scottish colleagues to amplify my remarks. She is exactly right. It is not about a commission or a pot of money. It is about a sustained investment, year on year, not just into policing, but into the public sector services that the police need to work alongside to make the public health approach work.
We have heard about the Government’s commission, working parties and policy documents, but the reality is that police numbers have gone down. The idea that we heard earlier this afternoon, that the Government are going to make good some of the drops in police funding by increasing taxes—the precept is a regressive tax paid by householders—is yet another austerity measure, with ordinary people in some of our poorest communities paying for the Government’s failure on policing.
There are other serious and concerning changes to policing; I have called it the Americanisation of our policing. This should be resisted by all sensible people. Of all the advanced, industrialised countries, the American system of policing is the last one we should emulate. The Government have encouraged the increased use of non-evidence-based stop and search, as well as knocking suspected muggers—I stress that these are suspects—off their mopeds with police cars. There is also talk about the use of routine armed patrols in certain parts of London, which alarms a number of us.
None of this is treating violent crime as a public health matter. It is actually an attempt to cover for the shortfall in our policing with the increased Americanisation of our police. This runs contrary to our tradition of policing by consent and to the fact that, in the end, the police can only bear down on violent crime with the co-operation of communities. I ask Ministers to think again about the idea that knocking people off mopeds in police cars and having routine armed patrols in certain areas of London—we know which areas they will be—will increase community co-operation.
A holistic public health approach would mean police forces such as the Metropolitan police working closely with schools, social workers, the NHS, youth services and housing services consistently over a period of time. The Minister talks about individual projects, but all this provision is being cut because of austerity. Far from having the capacity to innovate, the public sector is under pressure just to maintain the services it already provides.
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
Is the shadow Home Secretary aware of the work being done in Scotland by the violence reduction unit, with mentors going into schools for violence prevention sessions? That is raising the skills and confidence of school pupils in challenging threatening and abusive behaviour.
Ms Abbott
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Similar projects are happening in some parts of London, but we are not doing it in the consistent way that the violence reduction unit in Scotland is doing it.
Let me say a little more about the underlying causes of crime. The recent report by the Social Mobility Commission, an advisory non-departmental public body to the Department for Education, highlights how poor the outlook is generally for young people. It is something of an indictment of this Government, conscious of what was said when the current Prime Minister took up office, that they have not tackled burning injustices for young people—they have created more injustices and exacerbated them. Under this Government, every aspect of young people’s lives, and every underlying cause of crime, has got worse. Sure Start has been savaged, the schools budget has been cut in real terms and per pupil, and school exclusions have risen. There is a very real connection between high levels of school exclusion and children ending up in pupil referral units, too many of which, sadly, despite the best efforts of people who work in them, are academies for crime. Housing has deteriorated, access to universities has worsened, the education maintenance allowance has been cut, fees have risen, and zero-hours contracts have increased—and those are often aimed at young people. As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition asked after the Budget of 2011, “What have the Tories got against young people?”
All of this has consequences. The correlation between sharply lower living standards, worsening prospects, increased hopelessness and rising crime is well established. It is so well established as to have a causal element. The House should not just take my word for it. Metropolitan Police assistant chief commissioner Patricia Gallan, who spearheads Scotland Yard’s specialist crime operations in the fight against gun crime, homicides and high-harm and high-profile crimes, said:
“If we don’t invest at the beginning”
of children’s lives
“we’ll have to invest…in terms of criminal justice and in the prison system.”
Chuka Umunna
My right hon. Friend’s point about investment is absolutely key. If we invest in the early stages—I accept that this is not just a case of money, but ultimately money is an issue—we will save money for the public sector in the future. She talked about pupil referral units. It costs over £30,000 to put a young person through a PRU; if they are in mainstream education, it costs £5,000 to £6,000. If we invest to prevent them from getting wrapped up in the violence that leads to their being in the PRU, we will save money at the end of the day—although we should not be putting a price on the heads of our young people.
Ms Abbott
I thank my hon. Friend for his important intervention.
Nick Alston, the former Conservative police and crime commissioner for Essex, has said that austerity has had a negative impact on crime. The reality is that too many of this Government’s policies, particularly austerity, have exacerbated some of the underlying causes of the drift to criminality in our young people.
The issue of drill music has been raised. The Minister will be aware that, for as long as anyone can remember, people have sought to blame the music that young people listen to for their bad behaviour. Much of the drill music and videos are horrifying and appalling, but at the end of the day, the music is a reflection of those young people’s lives and realities. It is not a cause of violent crime.
Victoria Atkins
To clarify, I was not claiming that the music causes serious violence. From a safeguarding perspective, and as mums, surely we want to keep our children safe and protect them. We need to have a debate about what sort of music and videos we, as mothers, want our children to be listening to and watching. At the moment, I do not know where that line is. There are clear cases where violence has been incited. I appreciate that there is a grey area, and there may be terminology that we do not like, but do we, as mums, still want our children to be watching those videos? That is the point I was making.
Ms Abbott
As a mother, let me gently tell the Minister that what we want our children to view online and what they actually view online are two different things. If she is concerned about safeguarding children, maybe she should spend some time lobbying Education Ministers to make more money available for education, particularly in the areas with the biggest incidence of violent youth crime.
We respect the Minister’s genuineness, but we feel that the Government have not done enough to promote a genuine public health approach to violent crime, let alone fund it. They mouth the phrase, and they set up committees and commissions, but in reality, their policies tend more towards an Americanisation of our police and the notion that we can arrest our way out of this crisis than the public health approach, which we have seen successfully implemented in other nations of Britain.
To our police officers—the women and men we rely on to uphold the law—I want to say this: we respect the work you do, and we are grateful for the way you put your lives at risk fighting crime, including violent crime, but we urge you not to be taken in by this Government. They are not defending you; they are cutting your numbers. They are not defending you when they ask you to go on routine armed patrols.
Let us have a serious discussion about tackling violent crime, addressing the causes of crime and what our actual police needs are and how to meet them. Above all, I look forward to an ongoing debate about what a real public health approach to policing would be. I would welcome never again having to meet a mother whose son has died because of violent crime. After all, if we in this House cannot take practical measures to protect young people and communities from violent crime, what are we doing?
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. It will be obvious to the House that a great many Members wish to speak, and we have only until 5 o’clock. I hope we can manage without a formal time limit. We will be able to do so if everybody keeps to under nine minutes. That means doing arithmetic in looking at the clock. If I said 10 minutes, it would be easier. You would be amazed at the number of people who cannot add nine to the time on the clock when they start or who are incapable of working out how long they have. I put it to Members that this is a competition to see who is best at counting. If anyone takes more than nine minutes, it will be assumed not that they had an awful lot to say that was terribly important, but that they simply cannot do arithmetic. It is a challenge, and we will start with Mr Jack Brereton.
Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)
I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in the debate. I am sorry to have to say that, unfortunately, youth violence has been on the rise in parts of my constituency over the past year—not on the scale of what has happened in London, of course, but the Meir area of my constituency now has the highest level of antisocial behaviour in the whole of Staffordshire, much of which is caused by gangs of youngsters. Over the past 12 months, there has been a massive rise in these incidents compared with previous years; in some months there has been nearly a quadrupling. These gangs are terrorising our community with totally unacceptable behaviour, and we have even seen a number of shocking knife and firearms incidents in recent months.
These issues are not reserved to the Meir area. In Fenton, we have also of late seen some unacceptable antisocial behaviour and drug-related crimes by a few individuals, whose destructive behaviour I am determined to see stamped out. It cannot be right that a few individuals are allowed to intimidate the majority of law-abiding citizens. The vast majority of our constituents, including young people, are well-minded and full of opportunity, and they make a huge contribution to our society. They do not deserve to grow up in an environment of crime that destroys families and life chances. I am pleased that the Minister mentioned domestic violence, since too many young people in Stoke-on-Trent South are being exposed to that at home. A whole catalogue of totally unacceptable behaviours are being committed by a small number of people.
In Meir, the gang is directing violence especially against local shops and businesses in the centre of the community. People are fearful to go and use those facilities, and staff face daily intimidation just in doing their job. I recently went out on patrol with Staffordshire police and spoke to residents and businesses about the issues they are experiencing. The local KFC, for example, had a whole book of incidents over the past month, recording the all too frequent experiences of lawlessness. I think of the young member of staff—only 18 or 19 herself—who has to put up with horrific intimidation in her place of work. No one should have to put up with that when just trying to do their job.
These hardened gang members are actually children—13, 14, 15 or 16, and sometimes even younger. They are not yet of the age of criminal maturity, which means that there has often been little or no response and the totally unacceptable behaviour of these individuals continues. However, it is now well recognised that these issues can be addressed only by taking a multi-agency, multi-pronged approach. This is now very well recognised in Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire.
In the past few weeks, Staffordshire police has made addressing these challenges in Meir one of its highest priorities. This means taking action, and a number of orders have recently been served or are about to be served on some of the young people involved. However, we cannot let the police tackle these issues alone; nor is that desirable. We must ensure that parents take responsibility for their children. Stoke-on-Trent City Council also has a significant role to play in taking action, and I am pleased that it is taking up the baton. In particular, it has powers that can be used against those who repeatedly breach tenancy agreements and those with repeated cases of truancy.
However, the reality is that we need a much broader approach even than that. I am incredibly pleased that the Government have recognised that in calling the debate, and it is important that we take a robust approach. I was pleased that the Minister set out a number of measures that the Government are now taking on the ground. We need to take much more proactive action involving a whole range of public, private and voluntary organisations to ensure an absolute focus on a preventive approach to tackling the root causes.
As has been mentioned, there is also a huge financial incentive to do so for organisations such as the police, local councils and health services. Vast amounts of taxpayers’ money currently goes to addressing the consequences of antisocial behaviour and criminality caused by gangs. A small number of individuals and families are often passed from service to service without issues ever being fully addressed. As these young people get older and turn to more hardened criminality, the costs will only rise further, and more taxpayers’ money will be wasted without any of the beneficial results of actually addressing the problems.
If only a proportion of that investment was redirected into more preventive work to stop young people being drawn into gangs, just think what could be saved in the long run and how the lives of these young people could be transformed. Many say that there is a real lack of facilities and distractions for young people, especially in the Meir community. I tend to agree, and that is why I have recently been working with Ormiston Meridian Academy to secure a new 3G football pitch. It is essential that we secure the funding we need to deliver that, and I was pleased to meet the Football Foundation last week to discuss the significant benefits of such a facility, which will help to ensure that there are activities in our community. I also launched a petition with the principal, Gareth Jones, to demonstrate to the Football Foundation the community support for the project.
Having a 3G pitch in Meir would help not only to reduce the draw of gangs but to address the significant lack of such facilities in Stoke-on-Trent South. I was pleased recently to work closely with St Thomas More Catholic Academy to secure a similar facility in the Longton area, which again helps to meet the massive demand for sporting facilities, especially 3G pitches. I hope that in future we will also have such a facility at Trentham High at the other end of my constituency.
Improving sports facilities demonstrates the massive impact that improving fitness and encouraging healthier lifestyles can have on reducing antisocial behaviour and crime more broadly. The role that sport—not just football—can have is dramatic, as it gives young people a focus, provides discipline and provokes aspirations. It also helps bring together differing cross-sections of the community, and in the most disadvantaged parts of my constituency such as Meir, it helps young people to transform their lives and achieve their full potential.
Our country cannot afford to lose young people on a path towards a life of criminality. We need our future generation, which includes every young person, to be equipped with the ability and skills needed to contribute to our industries, economy and society in Stoke-on-Trent. As we near full levels of employment, ensuring that our future generations fill important roles and jobs will be essential if we are to continue to build on the economic successes we have seen thanks to the work of local businesses and Conservative policies in government.
If we are to overcome the productivity challenges we face, further accelerate growth and build prosperity for every young person in the country, communities such as Meir will play a vital part. If we allow young people to succumb to gangs, criminality and aggression in the way we are seeing, we will have failed those young people. It can never be right for a young person in our country to feel that their community is not for them, or to be so blinded by their upbringing that they are unable to see a pathway that works.
This issue goes to the heart of why I am a Conservative: in a modern, global Britain, every child and young person must have equality of opportunity to achieve their full potential. We must continue to focus on that, working with our communities to overcome challenges. Of course we must use the full range of enforcement measures to show that there are consequences for those who behave in the way we are discussing, but we must also do much more to solve and address the root causes behind why young people are attracted to gangs in the first place.
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) and to take part in this debate. A number of hon. Members have been pressing for a debate on this subject for some time, particularly the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft). I pay tribute to her and her fellow commissioners on the Youth Violence Commission, including my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens), as well as other hon. Members present today who have a long track record of campaigning on this issue—I am not surprised to see a couple of former colleagues from the Home Affairs Committee.
The Committee, on which I still sit, recently commenced an inquiry into serious violence, and we started by taking evidence from parents who had lost their children to youth violence. One said to us:
“As a mum, when you have a child the child then becomes your world. When they are taken away from you in this senseless manner, your whole world just rips apart”.
As the shadow Home Secretary powerfully pointed out, such testimonies bring home the disastrous and tragic impact of this type of crime better than any statistics.
The Scottish National party supports the call for a public health approach to be front and centre of efforts to tackle youth violence. Such an approach seeks to improve the health and safety of all individuals by addressing underlying risk factors that increase the likelihood of people becoming a victim or perpetrator of violence. Only by tackling the causes of violence and not just its symptoms, and by using a whole systems approach, can we break the cycle of violence and reduce its impact on individuals, their families and communities.
A public health approach involves collecting evidence on the causes of violence, using that evidence to design interventions, and then testing, improving and upskilling them. By doing that we will achieve so much more than if we simply respond after the event through the justice system. We know it can work, because, as we have heard, it has delivered significant progress in Scotland. It was introduced there because the evidence showed it working elsewhere—in the USA, and in Chicago in particular.
None of that is to say that we still do not have a long, long way to go, but it is hard to overstate just how difficult a starting point Scotland had when it set off on this approach. As recently as 2005, one UN report declared Scotland the most violent country in the developed world, while Worth Health Organisation statistics suggested that Glasgow was the murder capital of Europe—thankfully no more. The shadow Home Secretary mentioned some of the significant progress that has been made: violent crime in Scotland fell by almost half between 2006-07 and 2016-17; the homicide rate halved between 2008 and 2018; offending by young people has halved since 2008; there was a fall of almost 78% in the number of under-18-year-olds being prosecuted in court since 2006-7; the number of children referred to the children’s hearings system on offence grounds fell by 83%; and hospital admissions in Glasgow due to assault with sharp objects are down 62%. By any measure, that is pretty remarkable progress.
A good number of Members, in previous debates as well as in this one, have highlighted the work of the violence reduction unit in Glasgow. I too want to pay tribute to if for the transformational work it has undertaken. I would also like to pay tribute to other organisations, such as Medics against Violence, and those implementing programmes such as “No Knives, Better Lives” and the mentors in violence prevention scheme. Building on the progress that had been made, the Scottish Government’s 2008 “Preventing Offending by Young People: Framework for Action” document reflected a significant policy shift towards prevention and early intervention, and support to manage risk and build community confidence. That has been developed further in the most recent youth justice strategy for 2015 to 2020, “Preventing Offending: Getting it right for children and young people”. That strategy seeks to ensure that all agencies that come into contact with children and young people who offend work together, putting a whole systems approach into practice. It seeks to establish a secure care national adviser post to carry out an independent review of secure care. It will also fund the Centre for Youth and Criminal Justice at the University of Strathclyde to develop, support and understand youth justice practice, policy and research in Scotland.
In practical terms, those combined strategies deliver on the ground, with early and effective intervention; opportunities to divert from prosecution; court support; community alternatives to secure care and custody; and improvements to reintegration back into the community. They are about improving life chances with a focus on school inclusion, strengthening relationships and engagement, mentoring, building life skills, and improving health and wellbeing. There is a huge amount of work still to be done, as I have said, including on employability, especially for those who have ended up in the criminal justice system, but progress is being made.
David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)
It is a testament to the impact of this approach on Glasgow that there are four Glasgow MPs here in the Chamber to support my hon. Friend’s speech. He is right to mention some of the strategies in place at a national and Government level, but will he join me in paying tribute to Urban Fox in Lilybank, one of the organisations in my constituency? Michael McCourt, Debbie and the team do an excellent job, delivering diversionary activities to ensure that young people make positive choices to get into a slightly better pattern of life.
Stuart C. McDonald
I very much welcome that intervention. This is probably a good moment to pay tribute not just to the organisation my hon. Friend mentions, but to organisations across Scotland and the United Kingdom that do such good work on the ground to try to divert people away from violence.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
I agree entirely with what my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) said. We can all think of similar initiatives in our own constituencies. The Children’s Wood in Glasgow North primarily supports teenagers who start to engage in antisocial behaviour. Instead of just calling the police to get them taken away, local volunteers went out and worked with them. Now those same teenagers, instead of being involved in antisocial behaviour, are active parts of that community. That preventive strategy is seen at all levels.
Stuart C. McDonald
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, which highlights another very useful and innovative community response.
Both the Minister and the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) mentioned the impact of adverse childhood experiences—ACEs. More recently, and significantly, this has been an increasing focus of Scottish Government policy. There is increasingly convincing evidence about how certain adverse childhood experiences can result in long-term effects on learning, health and behaviour. Remarkable research in Wales found that people who reported experiencing four or more ACEs are 15 times more likely to have committed violence, 14 times more likely to have been victim of violence in the past 12 months, and 20 times more likely to have been in prison at some point in their life. Many other studies show similar links, so working to prevent ACEs at all and to build resilience for those who have already experienced them now underpins policies in all areas. An ACEs hub, co-ordinated by NHS Health Scotland, is progressing national action, and the implications for justice policy are now reflected in the Government’s “Justice in Scotland: Vision and Priorities” for 2017 to 2020.
While detailed policies cannot simply be transplanted from one community to the next, and each has to be tailored to local need, there is no doubt that the principles behind a public health approach to violent crime, and particularly violent youth crime, are absolutely solid and evidence-based. I welcome, for example, what Mayor Sadiq Khan has done in establishing a violence reduction unit in London.
Similarly, the UK Government’s serious violence strategy includes some welcome steps, including the establishment of the new national county lines co-ordination centre, which the Minister mentioned, and a move towards a public health approach, but there are those who have expressed concern about it. Critics have expressed the belief that it is still overly dominated—certainly, as regards youth justice—by a criminal law enforcement response, with insufficient emphasis on some drivers of serious violence, such as poverty, and insufficient recognition of the impact of trauma on children caught up in serious violence. That is what some critics are concerned about. The Minister is a former colleague from the Home Affairs Committee, and I know that she is absolutely committed to this issue, so I hope that she can bring the Government with her in being able to respond to these questions and criticisms in the best way possible by investing in putting public health front and centre of their ambitions to tackle youth crime.
The Minister also mentioned the Offensive Weapons Bill, which was a welcome, if small step, as I said when we debated it. She mentioned a consultation on a statutory duty, which seems fine to me. We will monitor that with interest. However, I think we all absolutely agree that we cannot legislate our way out of these issues any more than we can arrest our way out of them. These challenges require evidence-based strategy and policies, and, as hon. Members have said repeatedly already, they require urgent and significant investment in them. Ultimately, everyone benefits if Government genuinely and urgently commit to that approach. We will support any and all initiatives that reflect that approach.
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald), although I was rather hoping to follow the hon. Member for Streatham (Chuka Umunna)—not just because he has an easier constituency to pronounce, but because I will be referring to parts of my life when I worked in his constituency. The Minister mentioned that many Members want to speak about their constituency, but I want to speak primarily about a time in my life when this issue was a real cause and passion, and not to use my voice in this place to carry that on would seem a complete waste.
My time was spent working in a youth organisation in Brixton. It was formed after the Brixton riots of the ’80s, and we had two sites—one was on the Moorlands estate and the other was further down Coldharbour Lane towards Camberwell Green. I spent my time there because originally I had worked as a barrister and found myself dealing with a lot of young offenders on the criminal side of things, when it was frankly just too late. By that time, it was hard to change their path, even if they got an order that would allow them to do so, rather than going into custody. I left the Bar and then went into finance, where I was surrounded by people whose life was great. I thought to myself, “I need to put something back and reach out to see where I can help” so that I could stop young people getting into the situation in which I had met them in my previous career.
That is what took me to that organisation as a trustee, fundraiser, staff manager and volunteer, and my goodness, we did some amazing things together. We funded teachers to provide after-school education, particularly for young children who were excluded or were just skipping school. We made it more fun, so that they would actually turn up. We also had a whole range of sports activities, which included horse-riding in inner-city London. We had a huge amount of environmental projects. Our football teams were absolutely fantastic. We basically got kids out of a life where it was all about gang culture and we made it interesting, exciting and gave them something different. To actually see their choices and the paths that they went on, and the success that many of them achieved, despite the odds, was absolutely incredible. I then moved on and spent five years as a governor in a failing school, when I moved to another part of London. Again, it was interesting to see the educational impact and, again, how a situation could be transformed through great leadership, great funding and everyone working together. That is what brought me here.
This morning, I tried to track down that organisation, and while doing so, I ended up speaking to a remarkable person, who I think is just outside the hon. Gentleman’s constituency in Denmark Hill. It was interesting chatting to that community and family worker about how things are now compared with how they were when I was there in the five years from 1997 to 2002. It confirmed to me that things have got worse, which is so depressing. She feels that young children are more at risk than they were when I was there, and talked about the impact of smartphones and the fact that people can get their gang together quickly—it is so fast and people do not get the chance to think, “What am I doing?” and turn around. She specifically mentioned the music lyrics, which she believes incite young people to commit violence. I heard what the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) said, but when I speak to people such as that lady, who is on the frontline—she has kids and sees it—they tell me that they absolutely believe that it causes others to follow and glamorises that culture. That is why I say what I say. I am not a big fan of censorship, but when things get this serious, we have to look at it, and do something about it and the people who do it.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
I completely and utterly agree with the hon. Gentleman. There have been incidents in my constituency. Drill music went up online from one gang calling out another gang bragging about a murder in the constituency. The music should have been taken down fast but my police services did not have the resources they needed to do it, and we did not have the access we needed.
Huw Merriman
We talked a bit about this earlier. I gave an example of when the problem was not police resources—in my example, the police had the power but allowed videos to be published. We heard about police funding earlier. Hopefully, if that was the problem, things might get a little better.
Companies such as YouTube should be forced to take those videos down. I mentioned Tim Westwood. A number of gangs have appeared on his YouTube channel and people have lost their lives. The evidence seems clear to me and I find him to be incredibly irresponsible in how he promotes this music.
The lady I spoke to was interesting. Her youngest is 22 and has gone on to do great things. She said that things have got so bad now that, if he was of primary school age, she would have moved out of London, which makes it incredibly stark. She also made the point that teachers no longer have the respect of pupils. We have spoken before in the House about teachers spending far too much time on too many other matters, which has an impact on their ability to be seen as leaders in the classroom. Youngsters know that they can get away with it. She also gave me a shocking example of young boys who have located here from Nigeria being sent back to keep them safe. It is incredibly frustrating that I spent five years in that area and now find that things are not getting better, but are in fact getting worse, which is why more must be done.
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft). I cannot remember a week in Parliament when I have not heard her say that we need to be talking about this, and we finally are. I had expected to see her name on the Order Paper, but this is a Government debate. I congratulate her.
The question is what to do. I welcome the Government’s £200 million youth endowment fund and note that bidders are being sought. The fund is to be independent, but does that mean independent of profit or independent of the Government? Perhaps it is both.
Huw Merriman
Right. Therefore it could be profit-based.
Ultimately, as the title of the debate suggests, as experience tells me, and as the shadow Home Secretary said, we cannot arrest our way through this process. It is all about tackling the early signs and making interventions to ensure that we never reach the point at which that young person is arrested, or where there is a victim. I am thinking not only of the victim of a crime, but of the perpetrator, their families, and the hospitals and trauma services—there are so many victims of that one fleeting moment when someone uses a knife. I support the money, but it is critical that it is well spent. We have seen the examples from Glasgow, which is a model we need to follow or at least look at closely because the results have been extraordinary.
Alongside that, I want to press the Minister again because knife crime has got so out of control. The Offensive Weapons Bill is currently going through this House, and I welcome that, but on Report, as the Minister will remember, I supported a couple of amendments tabled by Opposition Members. One was about the ability to get hold of knives. If people shoplift and knives are not in locked cupboards, they have their weapon. The Minister told me that there was a code of practice to which many retailers were signing up, but what worries me is the number of irresponsible retailers who will not do so, and who might even see knives being taken and do nothing about it. I was talking to someone from the Ministry of Justice who had walked past a place—again, I think it was in Streatham—and saw a meat cleaver hanging from a rope.
Let me say to the Minister that if we are not seeing a reduction in this type of crime in six months’ time, I think it would be responsible of our party to look at that amendment again. As I said then, if I decide to kill myself by walking into a shop to buy a packet of cigarettes, I will find that the packets are in a locked cabinet. If I decide to walk into a shop and shoplift a knife to kill someone else, the knife will not be in a locked cabinet, which makes no sense to me at all. Public space protection orders, which the Minister has considered before, might work to that end as well.
The other amendment that I thought had a lot of worth was tabled by the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq). It would make moped use in knife or acid crime an aggravating factor. If there is no reduction in that type of crime, I think that the Government should discuss such a measure.
Let me make one more point. Have I hit nine minutes yet, Madam Deputy Speaker? You will tell me, anyway—or you will just look daggers at me.
I have talked about the constituency of the hon. Member for Streatham, and I will listen with interest to what he has to say about where we are at the moment. The sad reality is, however, that I have covered 200 square miles, largely rural, where I would not necessarily have expected to be dealing with this issue. After I spoke in the Offensive Weapons Bill debate, a constituent reached out to me because her son—she told me, in desperation—had been taking knives, and stealing them as well. She had been told by another parent that their child had been threatened with a knife by her son. He then went missing with the knife. She contacted the police, who said that she would have to wait until the next day to report him as a missing person, and did not take the knife aspect at all seriously or do anything about it.
I take the point about police resourcing, and it is great news that we have additional police resources, but I also think it is incredibly important for all of us, as Members of Parliament, to press our police to ensure that they are doing their job and taking this issue very seriously indeed. While we cannot arrest ourselves out of the situation, when a young person is out there with a knife, the police need to take that seriously and deal with it. It is not a missing person; it is another crime statistic about to happen, and another person about to become a victim.
I will end my speech with that point. I look forward to hearing other contributions.
Colleen Fletcher (Coventry North East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman). It is always interesting to hear about Members’ former lives, and about what drove them to come to this place.
Sadly, youth violence, and knife crime in particular, has affected almost every community in the country in recent years, and it is a problem that has reached epidemic levels. Just last month in Coventry, a 16-year-old boy was tragically stabbed to death in the Wood End area of my constituency. That senseless act cost an innocent young man his life, ruined the lives of his family and friends, and left an entire city in a state of shock. It was yet another tragic example of how knife crime destroys lives and devastates communities.
That shocking event is just the latest in a rising toll of knife crime in the city. Over the last five years the number of knife crime incidents has almost doubled, from 164 in 2012-13 to 307 in 2017-18. There were more than 162 knife crimes in the first six months of 2018-19, with three fatalities in this year alone. The levels of knife crime in my area, and in other areas across the country, are rising, at a time when police budgets have been cut to the bone and the number of frontline police officers has fallen to the lowest level in 30 years. The West Midlands police force alone has lost more than 2,000 officers in the last eight years, and £175 million from its budget over the same period. There can be little doubt about the correlation between falling police numbers and rising crime levels. It is time that the Government finally acknowledged this link and acted to increase the number of officers on our streets to help protect our communities.
All forces need additional officers, and the West Midlands is no different; our PCC has asked the Government for an extra £42.2 million to cover inflation and the funding for 500 additional officers to help tackle violent crime more proactively. It is shameful that the Government failed to meet that request in full.
However, I accept that this problem has not been created by cuts to police budgets alone, nor is it a problem that can be resolved by simply putting extra officers on the streets. If we really want to address this problem permanently, we need to understand the social conditions that lie at the root of youth violence and recognise the underlying causes that have fuelled the recent surge in knife crime. In doing so it is impossible to ignore the cumulative impact of eight years of savage Government cuts to local services, which have exacerbated poverty and inequality, hampered our ability to tackle youth violence at source and pushed communities to a tipping point.
It is certainly no coincidence that areas of high deprivation have similarly high rates of knife crime. In Coventry we have seen cuts to education provision, children and youth services, Sure Start, the police and mental health facilities, all of which have had a direct impact on the most vulnerable in society. Cuts to such vital services not only make it difficult to identify young people who are most at risk of early offending due to their environments, but make it more difficult to address those environments through early intervention. That is why we need a long-term, properly funded, integrated public health approach to youth violence, an approach that focuses on the drivers of youth violence rather than the aftermath and that prioritises the safeguarding and protection of vulnerable young people over criminalisation.
We must ensure that carrying knives never becomes normal behaviour and seek to change the culture among many young people. To do this, we need to place a greater emphasis on community policing that builds trust, education programmes that equip young people to be resilient, and early intervention that targets those most at risk of becoming involved in violence, as well as targeting significant resources on prevention activities on a multi-agency basis. As a result, youth violence would no longer simply be within the purview of the criminal justice system; instead, this would involve the police, schools, parents, health professionals, youth workers and council services working alongside community groups, young people, faith groups and the voluntary sector.
There are already practical examples of this holistic approach taking place in Coventry with the roll-out of youth workers in our local A&E department. Those youth workers intervene at “teachable moments” and speak with young people who attend hospital with a knife wound, as victims often become perpetrators of violent crime—although I think we can all agree that it would be preferable to prevent the violent incident in the first place, rather than act in the aftermath.
There is also investment in mentoring projects and youth work, including through the Positive Youth Foundation in Coventry, to divert young people away from violence. Similarly, there is investment in education programmes that warn young people of the dangers of carrying a knife. We have also seen the introduction of violence prevention mentors—young people who mentor other young people in their schools away from violence.
Such local initiatives really do make a difference to both individuals and communities touched by violence, but they do not in any way negate the need for the Government to adopt a public health approach on a national scale. We need the Government to implement and properly fund a national programme, with measurable outcomes, that targets resources at communities to tackle the problem of youth violence at source while protecting future generations from it. I hope this is something the Government will look at very seriously.
Sir Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)
I want briefly to talk about the consensus that I hear in the debate, as well as about some of the areas in which there is a divergence of views. I also want to make one or two constructive remarks. Everyone agrees that this is a serious and pressing issue. We cannot just look at the figures, although they are pretty appalling, with homicides and knife deaths at levels not seen for more than a decade. The right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) talked about how meeting the mothers involved really brings it home to you. I have had two fatal stabbings in my constituency in the past two years, and meeting the mothers of the two young men involved was most distressing. I could not leave those meetings without committing myself to take action, and I am sure that everyone in the House has had a similar experience.
There is consensus on the urgency involved, and there is consensus that the old approach of arresting everyone and putting them in prison is not going to work. We have to have a holistic public health approach, and I think that everyone has signed up to that. I refer people to the work of the World Health Organisation on the need for violence prevention and the need to treat this upsurge in violent crime as an epidemic linked to aspects of disease. A public health approach is absolutely right. I also think we can agree on the good work that is being done in communities.
Lyn Brown
I absolutely admire the work that has been done in Glasgow, but this is not the only cause of crime in London. If we continue to focus only on the public health approach, we are likely to miss the way in which children are being groomed by gang members and organised criminals and placed in harm’s way by being used as mules and dealers. We need to understand that, in London, the problem is massive.
Sir Edward Davey
I agree with the hon. Lady, who has taken a great leadership role in this debate. However, the title of the debate is “Public health model to reduce youth violence”, which is why I am focusing on that.
A great deal of cross-party work has been done on this, including the work of the Youth Violence Commission, which the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) chairs. Her ears must be ringing in this debate. Colleagues from all parties are involved in the commission, including the hon. Members for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) and for Braintree (James Cleverly) and my right hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb). My constituent and friend, Siobhan Benita, a former senior civil servant, has also been contributing her skills and knowledge to this cross-party work. There is consensus that this is the way forward.
So where is the disagreement? First, there is disagreement on the speed of the response. I just do not think that we are doing this quickly enough. This is a crisis. Yes, we know that some of the responses involving the public health model are going to be long-term approaches, but there are short-term measures that could happen sooner. Why are we not doing those things ever more quickly? There is a failure to see this crisis for what it is, and to understand how it is experienced by the families in our constituencies.
The other disagreement involves resources. We can always go on about resources and how well they are used—the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) made that point—but let us remember the cost of these appalling tragedies. It is estimated that every homicide costs more than £1 million for the investigation, the autopsy, the coroner’s court and so on. That is before we even talk about how much it costs to lock up the perpetrator, if he or she is caught, and before we have calculated the lost economic opportunity—never mind the emotional value to the family. We are talking about a huge waste of money and resources, as well as about the tragedy and the tears. When we look at resources, let us do our sums right. Let us recognise how much money we are wasting by not tackling this properly. I know that this is a debate that the Treasury sometimes has difficulty in hearing, but we have to get it to do its sums properly. It looks at this problem in too narrow a way, and for that reason we are getting the wrong solution. We are not making this the priority that it must be.
This has been a constructive debate, and I want to turn to some of the solutions. I am going to make one or two slightly weird suggestions, but people will see their relevance. Some solutions must be targeted and must focus on the individuals and communities at greatest risk, which can be a sensible approach for getting early responses. However, we should also consider the prevention side of things and deal with the long-term causes, as other hon. Members have said.
One such long-term problem is bereavement, which relates to the adverse childhood experiences issues to which other Members have referred. It will of course be only one of the issues, but we do not properly treat traumatised bereaved children at all in this country. I am not necessarily talking about children who may be traumatised because one of their loved-ones has been murdered; I am talking about children whose parent may have died naturally. We are hopeless as a society at dealing with that. I have been working with the “Life Matters” taskforce, which is not considering the issue from the angle that we are looking at it today, but I want to bring it in because it offers an example of how rubbish we have been at dealing with some of the adverse childhood experience issues.
We do not measure the number of children who have lost their mother or father, because we do not record that information. I have met the Office for National Statistics to talk about that, and the reason is that when a death is registered it is recorded if there is a partner, but not if there are any surviving children. There is no requirement in law, but this is a Home Office responsibility, so I will write to the Minister about that and I am having a second meeting with the ONS. If we measure something, surprisingly enough the officials say, “Oh. That’s a problem.” We can then share the problem out and say, “We’re not giving enough help in schools. We’re not giving enough counselling.” The system can suddenly kick into gear, but it does not do that at the moment because we do not realise that there is this massive problem. Let us start thinking at that level about how we can get attention on to such issues.
Another example—perhaps not so weird and wacky—is the local initiatives that are set up when someone loses a dear one. We have seen lots of charitable initiatives to tackle knife crime. We all know about Redthread, but a Christian youth charity in my constituency called Oxygen has set up an amazing programme—before the Minister reminds me, the Home Office helped to fund it—called “What’s the Point?” whereby the group goes into schools, bringing along people whose loved ones have been the victim of knife murders. There is also a new initiative in my constituency called “Drop a Knife, Save a Life” that was set up by an amazing woman called Sophie Kafeero, whose son, Derick Mulondo was murdered in my constituency 18 months ago. Sophie came to this country from Uganda about three decades ago, and she was a leading community activist on HIV/AIDS in the African population. She is an amazing lady, but she lost her only child in the later years of her life. She is full of grief when you talk to her, but she tells her story and goes into schools to talk to young people.
Interestingly, Sophie has noted in her work in the community that it is the really simple stuff that matters—just like the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle was talking about when describing his time as a youth worker all those years ago—such as organising some football. Sophie tells a story about how a young boy knocked on her door after her son Derick had died and said, “Who’s going to help us play football now?” Derick had arranged football games among the young people in the local community, but he was killed with a knife. If we can find those sorts of initiatives, we can get on top of this problem, but we have to give it the seriousness that it deserves. Such solutions are not rocket science, but they are vital.
I hope that the Minister will not take my final point as my bringing in a little controversy, but police resources are vital, and we are particularly missing the police community support officers. When we had a sergeant, two PCs and three PCSOs in every ward in my constituency, the police knew what they were doing. We had days when wards had no crime reported at all, which has hardly happened since. People felt more confident and safer, and the community felt happier. Trying to measure that may be difficult, but that sort of thing is what I would call a public health model. This is about taking things in a different way and getting to the root of the problem. This is about giving our young people the support and the role models that they need.
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
I will start with what motivated me to speak in this debate. I was first elected in 2015, and in September of that year I had to deal with losing two young men in my constituency. I saw the impact it had on the whole community. Since then we have lost 10 young people in Lewisham, Deptford. With 130 lost in London and 263 lost across the country this year alone, this clearly is not something we can simply tackle in Lewisham, Deptford alone.
If that many people had died in a football stadium, a music arena or a workplace, we would be having a national inquiry. From my conversations with experts and young people, I quickly realised that anything we do needs to be cross-party—we cannot play politics with young people’s lives—and evidence-led. That is why we established the cross-party commission on the root causes of youth violence. Warwick University joined as our academic partner, and academics from elsewhere, including the Open University, have supported our work. A public health approach was the key recommendation of our interim report.
In talking about a public health approach, people far too often, and particularly politicians and commentators, say the words but do not understand what they mean or where they come from. In 1996, at its 49th annual conference, the World Health Organisation declared violence
“a major and growing public health concern around the world”
and in 2002 it advocated tackling violence as a public health problem. The World Health Organisation identified that violence acts and spreads like a disease.
The focus is on dealing with violence just like any other disease. The World Health Organisation’s evidence shows that violence spreads like a disease and, as such, we need to treat the disease and prevent it from spreading. Across the world, from Chicago to Scotland, there are numerous examples of successful public health programmes aimed at tackling violence. I could name loads of them, but I have had to cut down my speech dramatically to stay within the time limit.
Cure Violence, founded in Chicago in 2000 under the name CeaseFire, runs projects all over the world, including in England at Cookham Wood young offender institution. The project at Cookham Wood resulted in a 50% reduction in violent incidents, a 95% reduction in group attacks and a 96% reduction in youths involved in group violence.
Cure Violence maintains that violence is a learned behaviour that can be prevented using disease control methods. The Cure Violence model has five required components, three core components and two implementing components. Put briefly, the model involves, first, detecting potentially violent events and interrupting them to prevent violence through trained, credible messengers; secondly, providing ongoing behaviour change and support to the highest-risk individuals through trained, credible messengers; thirdly, changing community norms that allow, encourage and exacerbate violence in chronically violent neighbourhoods to healthy norms that reject the use of violence; fourthly, continually analysing data to ensure proper implementation and to identify changes in violence patterns and levels; and fifthly, providing training and technical assistance to workers, programme members and implementing agencies.
In Scotland, the violence reduction unit established in 2005 has reduced the number of homicides by 39% and the number of violent crimes by 69%, which is huge. I could talk for hours about the unit’s work, but I will not. I will simply say that I have nothing other than total respect for the unit’s work and for the magnificent people I have met.
Karyn McCluskey and John Carnochan, who set up the unit, are two of the finest, most dedicated people I have ever met. It has never been just a job to them. They drafted the violence reduction unit’s first plan and they would say that they had lots of dedicated people who worked with them, and I know that to be true. What would be the main things they would say to me if they were here? They would say, “It is about relationships.” I interpret that to mean breaking down barriers, pulling people together on a common aim and enthusing people to do something that is going to work. It is also about the importance of individual relationships. They would also say, “Follow the evidence. Don’t do things that don’t work. Do things that work.” That might sometimes mean trying something, realising it is not working and binning it, and then trying something else that will work. They would also say, “ Listen. Listen to what you’re being told and what the evidence shows you. Listen to our young people and recognise they are so, so often so very vulnerable, even if they put a super-hard act on.” One of the most important things they would say is that our approach must be long term. They had a 10-year strategy, but when we speak to them, they say it could and probably should have been 15 or 20 years long.
I am glad to see that Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, has announced the establishment of a violence reduction unit in London, which will establish a public health approach to reducing violence, learning the lessons from Scotland, but appreciating we may need some different approaches in London. Local authorities need to have the legal duty—this is not just about having a consultation on a legal duty—to underpin a public health approach in tackling violent crime. I hope the Home Office can update us on that soon.
Turning back to what the Government can do, we need to learn lessons from what works. We need to be brave and follow the evidence, which can be difficult when the Government do not store data on crucial sources of information. Can the Minister tell me why the Government do not centrally hold data on the time of knife attacks, especially as recent research has shown that young people are especially vulnerable between 4 pm and 6 pm on school days? Data on the number of knife aggravated murders in each city or local authority is also not held centrally, which makes it far harder to compare the efficacy of different local authority approaches over time. The number of prisoners that were excluded at school is also not regularly recorded. Many victims of knife crime do not report their injuries to the police, so should we not be looking for this information in other areas, such as the NHS? The Government do not cross-reference ambulance service dispatch data for knife injuries and police records for knife attacks. Many people believe there is a link between deprivation and levels of violence, so why do the Government not hold this information? Finally, but extremely importantly, why do we not record the number of young people who applied but failed to meet the threshold for child and adolescent mental health services treatment?
Those are all extremely important areas—and I am sure there are many more—where we should hold data, as a minimum to ensure that the Government can successfully deliver on their public health approach. I have asked numerous questions of the Government and others in order to try to find this information, but, sadly, I know the Government do not hold this data. Why is that? Will the Government commit today to seeking to hold this data?
Why do we invest in programmes that we know do not work? For example, there is no evidence to suggest that programmes in schools that say, “Do not use drugs” or, “Do not carry a knife” have any impact. We should analyse the efficacy of these programmes and if they do not work, we must stop them. We know that programmes investing in social development, home visitation, training in parenting, mentoring programmes and family therapy work. We also know that the earlier the intervention, the more effective it is.
I will skip through what I have on adverse childhood experiences, because I know that other Members have gone through it, but ACEs is an extremely important area of work and we need to do a lot more on it. I encourage all Members of Parliament to do the survey on ACEs and get their scores, as I intend to do in the future. I understand that the Government are due to publish a report on ACEs; when will it be published?
I will skip through my comments on schools, but in previous speeches on education I have said a lot about what happens in schools. It is really important that we look into whether school finishing times are right and whether we should stagger them. Should we think about closing down all pupil referral units? Should we look into expulsion? We could absolutely invest that money in our children’s lives far earlier.
Let me conclude my remarks with an important quote from a Member of the Youth Parliament, Ciya Vyas, who spoke about the importance of tackling knife crime in the recent UK Youth Parliament debate on the subject. She said:
“More young people voted for this issue than any other…If there is a will for change on this issue among young people, there is a political will for change here at Westminster. Whether we see the need for a violence reduction unit and a public health approach, as pioneered so successfully in Scotland and endorsed here by London’s Mayor, or the Home Secretary’s recent proposals to increase levels of stop-and-search, this debate is happening now, and we cannot neglect our duty to bring young people’s voices into it.”
After that debate, and following a ballot of more than 1 million young people throughout the nation, the Youth Parliament and the British Youth Council chose knife crime as the subject of their national campaign. Let us make sure that as politicians we do not let them down.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I know this will be unpopular, but in order that everybody can speak, I am going to have to drop the informal time limit down to six minutes—and no more, please. I am sorry, but I have to leave time for the Front-Bench contributions.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
Let me put on record my awe at the work that my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) has been doing on this issue, along with my hon. Friends the Members for Streatham (Chuka Umunna) and for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones). It has been incredibly powerful to watch. In my short contribution I want to read into the record what it is like to be from a community in the grip of this disease, because we know at first hand in Walthamstow. I have felt like I have been living a parallel life over the past couple of years: the debates are about either Brexit or knife crime, but both have powerfully divided my local community.
We are a community who know what it means to lose our loved ones. On 7 May 2017, Elijah Dornelly was stabbed. He was 17 years old. He died. On 20 November, Kacem Mokrane died in hospital after being stabbed four days previously. He was 18. On 14 March, Joseph William-Torres was shot in his car. He was 20 years old. He died. On 2 April this year, Amaan Shakoor, 16 years old, was shot in a school car park in Walthamstow. He died. On 22 September, Guled Farah, 19 years old, was shot dead on Vallentin Road in Walthamstow.
There are not just the ones we have lost, but the ones who have—thankfully—lived through this trauma. On 14 November last year, an 18-year-old was stabbed in a Subway restaurant in Walthamstow. On 19 November, a 17-year-old was stabbed. On 5 February this year, a 17-year-old turned up at our local hospital with gunshot wounds. As my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford, pointed out, it is often the hospitals, rather than the police, that know about these problems. On 3 May, two young men were found stabbed in my local high street in Walthamstow. On 27 August this year, a 16-year-old was found stabbed in the neck on Markhouse Road. Mercifully, he survived. On 9 November, a 20-year-old was found with stab wounds in our local leisure centre. On 12 November, a 17-year-old was found stabbed on Hoe Street in Walthamstow. Just this week, on 11 December, a 15-year-old boy was stabbed in a school playground in Walthamstow.
It is fair to say that in the eight years that I have been an MP in Walthamstow we have always had a challenge with gangs in our local community. Professor John Pitts has catalogued that for us in work on what he called reluctant gangsters. Eight years ago, it was about postcodes and the pride that people felt about their local communities—the Beaumont estate, the Boundary Road, the Priory Court, the Drive. Kids wore their membership as a badge of pride to put fear into their rivals. People here have talked about adverse childhood experiences and definitely then that was a factor too, but now we see how it has changed from reluctant gangsters to making profits, as John Pitts points out. It is organised crime that is driving much of this violence. People have mentioned county lines already.
We might have 250 recognised gangs across London. In my local community, we have identified around 230 gang nominals. Indeed, the Mali Boys have come to devastate our local area and to frighten many. These gangs do not advertise their membership now; it is bad for business, because it is driven by drugs. They use their territories not to deter other people, but as marketing grounds—as places where they find their customers. The most valuable resource for them is the phone, so that they can be on-call to deliver the drugs, and, yes, children are sent all around the country to deal, to as far away as Scotland, but also to Essex, to Norfolk and the Thames Valley.
The public health model reflects that, over the past eight years, the same factors are at stake: the childhood chaos, the poverty and the resources that we need to address these problems. For my local community, living in the grip of this disease of youth violence, the same fears remain. There are the parents who tell me that they do not want their kids to get on the buses to go to school because they do not know what will happen to them. There is the shock when they see the police tape and, yes, the social media posts when somebody has spotted something. There is the fear of the gang knives and the guns that we now have on our streets. There are little boys who are dying—they are boys, they are teenagers—and the girls who are caught up in sexual exploitation. There is the domestic violence that is behind much of this, and the frustrations of my local social workers who do an amazing job for Waltham Forest Council, trying to work with these families. There are the people who work through Christmas trying to keep our kids alive.
We cannot pretend that resources do not matter in these circumstances. We cannot pretend that, when finally we get those resources, it does not make a difference. This October, 30 members of the Mali gang were arrested. We have seen in just one area of Walthamstow, in St James’s Street, 15 arrests in one month alone, because we are seeing guns, knives and drugs being taken off our streets. We have had a 24% increase in offensive weapon offences in Walthamstow in the past year alone, so, of course, enforcement and policing make a difference. Anybody who says otherwise simply does not understand what it is like to live within this community. But we know that that is not enough.
Finally, let me pay tribute to all the other organisations that are working with our council: Spark2life, Access Aspiration, Soul Project, Gangs United, Boxing for Life, Camara at Words 4 Weapons, Slenky, and Waltham Forest community hub and Monwara Ali. Our community will not stand by while this happens. Minister, please, give us the resources for the youth services that we need to help our young people. Give us the police that we need to work with them, because this disease is gripping us and it is frightening.
Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)
I wholeheartedly agree with the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy). I just want to recount to the House, by way of example, just what has been happening in our borough of Lambeth recently.
On 25 July, two boys on a moped pull up next to a parked car in Denmark Road, in another part of the borough from my constituency, but near to one of our local hospitals, King’s College. The moped passenger slides sideways off the seat and falls on to the road. The driver shouts to those nearby, “Help him! Help him! He’s been stabbed.” Two men in a parked car jump out to help and the moped driver just speeds off. The boy lies in the road, bleeding. He dies a few hours later. His name was Laatwan Griffiths and he was 18 years old. He also went by the name of Splash Addict and SA Harlem, and was part of the Harlem Spartans drill group based in and around the Kennington Park Estate.
A week later, on 1 August, Sidique Kamara, 23, and a member of Moscow17, is stabbed to death yards from his home on an estate in Camberwell. That estate is Moscow17’s base. Laatwan and Sidique were reportedly good friends; Moscow17 and Harlem Spartans are allies. A year earlier Sidique and another member of Moscow17 had been cleared of the murder of Abdirahman Mohamed, who belonged to a rival drill group—I will come to drill in moment—called Zone 2. Zone 2 are at war with Harlem Spartans and Moscow17, and at the end of August there was another incident in the same area, involving up to 20 young boys fighting with knives. Several were stabbed, one horrifically so—a constituent of mine. And so it goes on. We lost young John Ogunjobi in the Tulse Hill part of my constituency last month. That incident was unrelated to the feud I have just mentioned, but did involve other groups. That is what is happening.
Let us be absolutely clear that this is not just an issue of black boys killing other black boys in socially deprived neighbourhoods. It affects all families. Any parent of a teenager in London now worries when they leave their home. Let us also be clear that the demand for illegal drugs from well-off, middle-class people is a major driver of this violence. This is all interconnected. Young people from my area are trafficking drugs around other parts of the country. I say to people who indulge in their cocaine usage and what have you over the weekends: when you snort that line of coke, a whole heap of violence, abuse, exploitation and general criminality has led to that powder going up your nose. You are part of this too. That is why this entire thing needs to be a national mission—an issue that we seek to tackle as a country.
Now, why is it happening? I believe in reciprocity; it is at the heart of my politics. We provide our young people with an environment in which they can thrive, and pursue their hopes, dreams and opportunities. In return, we ask that they abide by the norms, values and rules of the society of which they are a part. The bottom line is that we have broken that social contract with our young people, and unless we address it we are not going to deal with this problem.
We will not be able to reduce the bloodshed unless we go to the root causes, and we have to look at three or four different things. First, as I have said, we dispossess our young people by bringing them up in this environment. In so many parts of my constituency, richness and extreme deprivation sit side by side. In the deprived areas of my community there is a concentration of social problems all sitting in one place. Parents are absolutely struggling and are under intense pressure, often holding down two or three jobs just to make ends meet. I will just quote a young mother from the Tulse Hill estate, who said that
“if you want to support our kids, we need support too because it’s a daily struggle.”
So we need to sort out the environment.
Secondly, we have to talk about respect and the way it plays into this culture of violence. The friendship groups that young people are part of are surrogate families, but they are families without parental authority and without an arbiter of justice. Each boy—it is mostly boys—has to prove his worth. That is not a problem if we are talking about how good they are at sport or what they are wearing, but it is much more serious if we are dealing with disenfranchised young boys without money, hope or self-esteem, who feel disrespected. In areas where legal authority is weak, a reputation for violence is seen as the only effective deterrent against attack. That has to be dealt with. Locally powerful criminals end up providing alternative routes to respect, and boys who are desperate and looking for that respect will gravitate towards them. Of course, more and more girls are also being dragged into this and abused.
Finally—a big thing—we have to give these young people access to opportunities and hope, because as a youth worker said to me:
“If you’ve got no hope then you’ve got nothing. They need something real to aspire to.”
No one has had enough time to give the speeches they want to give, so I will just finish by saying this: this is not rocket science. We have already been through so much of this in the report on the August 2011 riots, so it is nothing new. Everything that everybody is saying can be found in the report of that panel. But the big question for this House and this Government is, when are we going to act? Year in, year out we are here debating the same issues, and we keep seeing blood on our streets. It is a disgrace. It shames this House, it shames our politics and finally we need to do something about it.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)
The informal limit is now down to five minutes.
Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
At the beginning of November, a 15-year-old child, Jay Hughes, was murdered in Bellingham in my constituency. Less than 72 hours on from that tragic event, a 22-year-old, Ayodeji Habeeb Azeez, was murdered in Anerley, just a year on from the murder of teenager Michael Jonas, which shocked the community back in 2017. These murders have utterly shaken our community, and constituents have expressed to me their fear for their family’s safety. No parent should have to harbour such concerns. No family should have to lose their child to violent crime. Similarly, no young person should be so bereft of opportunity and aspiration that they feel that violent crime is a path to follow. But this is the situation that we find ourselves in.
We are in the midst of a youth violence crisis. I will turn to the causes, but before that, I want to say how heartened I have been by the community’s response in Lewisham West and Penge. In the face of such tragic circumstances, they have shown strength and determination to bring our communities closer. I mention not least the work of the Bellingham community project, Youth First, the local police, Elfrida and Athelney primary schools in Bellingham, and Stewart Fleming Primary School and the Samos Road community in Anerley.
But as much as the community has worked to rebuild what has been lost, they cannot do this on their own. Tackling youth violence requires work from an array of public services in co-operation with our communities. Sadly, ever since 2010 we have seen some of the most devastating cuts made to our public services, especially the Metropolitan police, which has faced £1 billion of cuts since 2010, with further savings to be found over the next few years. As a result, we have seen the loss of 30% of police staff and 65% of police community support officers. Our police do a fantastic job, but in the wards that I represent, we have, at most, two ward officers and one PCSO per ward. They are fantastic, but they are overstretched. It is inevitable that with reduced police visibility and presence in our neighbourhoods, relationships with communities deteriorate, trust is eroded, and opportunities for crime arise. The Met urgently needs more funding so that it can work to prevent crime rather than just reacting to it. However, youth violence is not just a question of police funding and enforcement. The causes are extremely complex and involve societal problems such as poverty, adverse childhood experiences and lack of opportunity.
Tackling youth violence therefore requires a public health approach, which means addressing the environments that make people vulnerable to the risk of crime. We have talked about the example of Glasgow, where the violence reduction unit teamed up with agencies in the fields of health, education and social work, and the police force became the first in the world to adopt a public health approach. As a result, recorded crime in Scotland is now at a 40-year low. There are lessons to be learned from that, but it will work only if we join up health, education, youth services, housing, the Home Office and the justice system. Yet all those departments have been cut as part of the Government’s austerity agenda.
For example, the Government spend less than 1% of the NHS budget on children’s mental health, with many children waiting many months for treatment and often being turned away for not meeting the threshold. In the case of education, schools in my constituency tell me that they can identify children who are vulnerable from as young as three years old, because they may have older siblings or other family members in gangs. That is the point at which intervention is really needed, but schools can barely afford to go on as they are, so intervening to carry out that sort of work becomes increasingly difficult. Similarly, we have seen Sure Start centres have their budgets cut, and the loss of things like youth clubs and youth projects across the country.
The Minister mentioned St Giles Trust in her opening remarks, and I pay tribute to it for the work that it does. It was running a fantastic county lines pilot project down in Kent for six months, but then the funding from the Home Office dried up. That is the reality of the situation that we are working in. These projects need funding in order to carry on doing their work. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) for the work that she has done on the Youth Violence Commission—she has campaigned on this issue tirelessly—and also to the Mayor of London, who, despite restricted budgets, has launched the youth violence reduction unit. Such agencies desperately need money so that they can carry out this vital work.
We cannot bring back those we have already lost, but we can take action to prevent more from losing their lives. We can help prevent our vulnerable young people from turning to crime, and we can offer them aspiration and a stake in our society. What is needed is the funding and the political will.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
I start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) on the work she has done on the Youth Violence Commission and on securing this debate against all the odds. I do not know whether she asked for the debate nine, 10 or 11 times—
Sarah Jones
Indeed.
Violence is not inevitable—we have to hold on to that. Just as it goes up, so it can come down, if we do the right things, and that is fundamentally what we are here to debate. I had the honour of going to Clarence House yesterday, where Prince Charles was holding an event with Prince Harry. Prince Charles, who takes a great interest in this issue, stood up and said, “Enough is enough. We have to do more to tackle this.” If the royal family are telling us we need to do more, we should pay attention.
We know that we have reached the highest level of knife crime on record and have seen more violent deaths in London than in any year since 2008. This is not a Croydon issue or a London issue; this is a national crisis. As my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford said, last month a poll of 1 million young people found that knife crime was their No. 1 issue. This must start from the very top, and I would like to see the Prime Minister make a speech on violence. That would set an agenda that the rest of us could follow and would be a powerful way to show that she cares.
Last Friday, some of us from the all-party parliamentary group on knife crime went up to Scotland, where we visited a young offenders prison and the violence reduction unit. After leaving the prison, we met a young man called Callum, and for me he epitomises what the public health approach can do. He was born into a family where domestic violence was rife and there was alcoholism. He had a traumatised childhood. He said that he used to spend his time in school looking out of the window, worrying whether his mother was safe at home. He looked at the gangs on the streets and thought that they were a place of safety for him.
Callum ended up getting involved with boys who were much older and in all kinds of criminal activity, which escalated, so he was in and out of prison. He took to drinking and became an alcoholic because he felt such self-loathing and fear. He got himself into a position where one day he was stabbed seven times outside his own house by some men. He looked up and saw his seven-year-old son at the window, seeing his father being stabbed. He was rushed to hospital, where he met a youth worker who said, “Callum, are you done?” and he said, “Yes, I’m done, but I need help.” That was the point at which interventions began. He had therapy, training and a whole raft of interventions that helped him get a job.
His former partner sadly killed herself earlier this year, and Callum now has sole custody of their boy. If he had not turned himself around, that cycle—the epidemic and disease that we all talk about—would have carried on. As his parents, so him, and so his child. Now his child has a chance of a life. That is what we are talking about today.
I will not go through all the different interventions, because we do not have time, but I want to echo the points made about early intervention and prevention. In the young offenders prison that our APPG went to, a third of the prisoners had been in care as a child, 38% had experience of domestic violence and 75% had suffered a traumatic bereavement—for example, a suicide, drug death or murder. That figure is huge, and we do not talk enough about that misunderstood area. Two thirds of the boys in that prison had suffered four or more bereavements, three quarters had witnessed serious violence in their area and 76% had been threatened with a weapon. These young people are traumatised by adverse childhood experiences that have developed through their lives. It is clear that intervention at an early stage, as well as when they get to such as stage, is crucial. Our ambition must be to make this country the safest country in the world for our young people. Nothing less will do.
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
I am very grateful, because of my sore throat. that the time limit has been reduced. When I heard it was originally nine minutes, I was going to encourage interventions.
I am a member of the Youth Violence Commission, alongside the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft). I want to spend my allotted time making it clear that the recommendations in its report are very much evidence-based, and in particular are based on the evidence of the work we saw in Glasgow and in Scotland. When we launched the Youth Violence Commission, I said that one of the first things we need to tackle as a society is the cycle of low expectation in young people—I think we need to raise young people’s hopes—and also that youth violence is a preventable public health problem, but it does require resources and constant commitment.
That was seen when Swayed, a youth organisation that does street outreach work in my constituency, visited the London Assembly. Young people and youth workers met in London to discuss the work that is done both in London and in Glasgow, and I know that both organisations found that very beneficial.
Vicky Foxcroft
I just want to point out for the record that my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Chuka Umunna) is also on the Youth Violence Commission. I had forgotten the name of his seat when I was making my speech.
Chris Stephens
So noted—and it has been good to work with the hon. Gentleman.
On the Youth Violence Commission’s visit in October last year, we went to a school. In my intervention on the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), I mentioned the visits to schools that are made to give young people the skills to deal with challenging, threatening and abusive behaviour.
We visited an after-school club, which at that time was run by Sergeant Danny Stuart. We made an evening visit to Govan to see Johnny Hendry of YouthLink Scotland, a street outreach worker. He provided the commission with insights and a tour of some of the areas he goes to in Govan to engage with and support young people. Points were made earlier about gangs taking over, as well as about drug dealers and all the rest of it. Johnny tells me that what is happening in Scotland is that the violence reduction unit is dealing with the schools, but the drug dealers are after the ones playing truant.
We also visited another organisation in my constituency that has been praised in Parliament, the South West Arts and Music Project, to see its magnificent work. I am a great believer in providing young people with a creative outlet, such as video making or music. Young people can do so much to help the creative industries in our country, and it helps them with their health as well. I think that is one of the keys going forward.
The public health model adopted in Scotland has demonstrated that violence has significant social, structural and environmental root causes that need to be tackled. If a young person is subjected to harsh physical punishment or has seen physical punishment in the household, they are more likely, as others have said, to engage in violence. If we are to support the public health model across these islands, we need to have consistent funding; to provide opportunities, whether educational, recreational or economic; to promote social inclusion; and to enhance social cohesion between parents, young parents and communities. I will be doing all I can while I am a Member of Parliament to make sure that we tackle youth violence across these islands.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
Over the past 18 months I have sat in the living rooms of grieving parents who have lost a precious child to knife crime, and in community centres with angry and bewildered local residents who are terrified by the violence they have witnessed. I have faced questions on too many occasions, in school assemblies and youth clubs, from frightened children who ask what is being done to stop knife and gun crime in our area.
Today I am speaking for the bereaved families of Jude Gayle, Kyall Parnell, and John Ogunjobi. Jude Gayle was killed last year as he popped out to the local shop to buy ingredients for a family meal. Kyall Parnell was stabbed at a bus stop in West Norwood on new year’s eve, and John Ogunjobi was stabbed just a few weeks ago on the Tulse Hill estate, in front of his mother who had come to pick him up to try to keep him safe.
Lambeth and Southwark, the boroughs that each serve part of my constituency, have among the highest rates of knife crime in London, and among the highest volume of serious violence against young people. That level of challenge has resulted in some truly exceptional work on this issue, and I pay tribute to the organisations that work hard every day to keep young people safe, to save the lives of those who are injured, and to intervene to turn lives around.
The work of the trauma team in King’s College hospital under Duncan Bew, Malcolm Tunnicliff and Emer Sutherland is second to none. They have developed life saving techniques for gun and knife-related injuries, and they also work with the charity Redthread, under the leadership of John Poyton, on an intervention approach for young people who come to the emergency department.
There are many inspirational community organisations, such as the Dwaynamics boxing gym, which was established by Lorraine Jones who lost her son, Dwayne Simpson, to knife crime in 2014. There is the work of Lee Dema and the St Matthew’s project, which provides football coaching for young people in Brockwell Park, and the Marcus Lipton youth centre led by Ira Campbell. Brixton Wings is based on the Angell Town Estate, and the Advocacy Academy empowers young people to speak truth to power on the issues that matter to them, and to work for change in their area.
The DIVERT team led by Inspector Jack Rowlands at Brixton police station—now also in Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Croydon and Lewisham—provides intensive support and intervention for young adults in police custody. It is hugely innovative and successful, and I am glad the Government recently recognised that by agreeing to extend funding for the existing programme for a further two years. Nevertheless, more commitment is needed. DIVERT should be the norm in every police station and every community where youth violence is a serious issue, and it should be funded as a part of mainstream policing. Both Lambeth and Southwark have sought to protect funding for youth services at a time when they have lost more than half their funding from central Government. Why, when there is so much good work to celebrate, is violence that affects young people continuing to increase?
The number of school exclusions has been rising in recent years, with particularly alarming increases among children eligible for free school meals and those with special educational needs, who account for almost half of exclusions. Currently, when a school excludes a child, the school’s responsibility for that child comes to an end. Since the number of academies is increasing under this Government, and academies have their own admissions authorities, in many areas it is becoming increasingly difficult for local authorities to find places for excluded children. A child who has been excluded needs more intervention, not less, and children who end up out of school for extended periods following exclusion are surely at greater risk of becoming involved in violence, both as victims and perpetrators. More must be done to fund our schools to provide intervention and support for students whose behaviour is challenging, and to hold them to account for the outcomes for every child who has been on their roll.
There is a huge and growing gap in the funding of children’s social services, estimated by the Local Government Association—I declare my interest as a vice-president of the LGA—at around £3 billion. As a consequence, children’s social services departments are stretched to breaking point. They struggle to provide their statutory safeguarding services, and find it increasingly hard to recruit and retain social workers in an environment that is often high risk. Any department under such pressure will find it hard to do the proactive, preventive, early-intervention work that can prevent adverse childhood experiences and reduce the risk of violence later in childhood.
Our youth justice system is woefully under resourced. Government rhetoric on tough sentencing may play well in communities where young people do not regularly lose their lives to guns and knives, but the reality is a court system on its knees, which allows—this happened in my constituency recently—a young person bailed in north London to travel to south London to rob school children at knife point the next day. Our penal system delivers the scandalously high youth reoffending rate of 41.7%. Such a system must reform as well as punish, which is even more urgently the case for young offenders than for the rest of the prison population. Youth justice must be funded and resourced to do the intensive, transformative work that is needed to stop young offenders returning to a life of violence. That is the right thing for victims as well as perpetrators and our communities more widely, and the current situation is shameful.
Access to mental health support, particularly for children and young people, remains far too difficult within early intervention and crisis services. The extent to which young people who are both the victims and perpetrators of violent crime are clinically traumatised is documented and evidenced, but still not reflected in mainstream practice in mental health services.
My final observation on this issue is the extent of the issues at local level which never register with any public services. I reflect on the conversations I have had recently with parents in my constituency. One mother told me about the number of young people with minor knife injuries who she has patched up in her kitchen because they are too scared to go to hospital, and how some of them have then become too scared to leave their own homes. She came to see me because she was struggling to support another mother whose child had been traumatised by the violence he had experienced and spent his days smashing up his mother’s home. Another mother told me how she will not let her 16-year-old pop out to the shop on her estate because:
“I don’t know which gang is going to be there and whether he will come back.”
The public health approach to youth violence has to mean more than words. The measure of the Government’s commitment to the public health approach in my constituency will be whether it relieves the anxiety of those mothers who are fearful every time their teenagers leave the house and whether it stops the killing. Next week, when I see the family of John Ogunjobi who was recently stabbed to death, I want to be able to look them in the eye and say that that this is going to stop and that other families will not have to suffer their agony. Under this Government, I do not believe I can do so.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for bringing this debate to the Floor of the House. The magnificent contributions from right hon. and hon. Members have been truly something to acknowledge.
The issue of youth violence has moved on massively from my day. There may not be many people of my day in the Chamber—perhaps with the exception of yourself, Mr Deputy Speaker, or thereabouts—but in those far off days a “fair dig” was the worst it ever got after school and then it was all over. Things have changed, however. I was horrified to read back in March that more than 1,000 children in Northern Ireland have received criminal convictions in the past five years. The youngest criminals convicted in that period were just 12 years of age. It costs £324,000 per year to keep a young person in custody and the Northern Ireland young offender population is proportionately larger than that of England and Wales. In total, 1,085 children under the age of 18 carried out one or more crimes in the past five years. Among that number are five 12-year-olds, the youngest of whom was convicted of criminal damage. There were 279 convictions in 2015 and 207 in 2017.
In the very short time I have, I would like to give two examples of solutions—this is about solutions as well as statistics. In my constituency, I am very fortunate to have an organisation called Street Pastors, which is a coming together of churches. Other Members may have something similar in their constituencies. It is clear that it is not simply youth violence that is the culprit in these convictions. It is also clear that this is something that must be addressed. Having seen a massive reduction in antisocial behaviour in my area with the work of Street Pastors, who have managed to make friendships, build trust and prevent cross words turning to street brawls, it is clear that the voluntary sector is an essential tool in tackling youth violence. Street Pastors has a good interaction with young people. Antisocial issues that led to violence have dissipated. I have seen its good work, which has been made possible by churches coming together.
The work carried out by community groups, churches and voluntary groups is incredible and brings dividends, but there is greater work to be carried out in other realms. I agree with the comments made by Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge with regard to social media outlets living up to their responsibility and not simply doing the bare minimum expected of them. There must be an end to cyber-bullying, which then translates to physical violence. There must be a clear campaign that weapons and criminal activity is something to be ashamed of, not something to be proud of.
Across Northern Ireland, there has been a very successful advertising campaign that raises such awareness. It states the fact that paramilitaries do not protect, they harm. The adverts are, to say the least, chilling. The screams of a young lad, lying on the floor crying for his mother after being shot in the knees, are difficult to listen to. Paramilitaries and gangs act as judge, jury and executioner, discharging their own cruel, horrific and violent surgical justice. The adverts were commissioned by the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland and they are being used on Snapchat and on other social media. I know how effective they are because of the conversations they have started with my staff and across my community. I know how harsh the adverts are, but the fact is that youth violence is harsh. It leaves long-lasting legacies. It is not a matter of being loyal and standing up for your friends, crew or gang; it is illegal behaviour that has the potential to ruin your life, harm others and bring immeasurable grief to families. The decision to run this type of hard-hitting campaign, which bids to end so-called paramilitary-style attacks, was not taken lightly, but I believe that it gets the right message across.
In conclusion—I am conscious of the time, Mr Deputy Speaker—it is my belief that we can do better on addressing youth violence and it is my fervent hope that we can do better, not simply for the victims, which is telling enough, but for all those who are caught up in it, taking things too far and being led further than they want to go. We cannot afford to lose a generation to gang mentality and rage. We must fund community groups and work alongside churches and other voluntary sectors to work with our young people and change mentalities. We must work with parents and give them the help and support needed to deal with troublesome teens and enable teachers to have choices in their school budget to address the differing needs of pupils. There is work to be done, and we must be determined to do it.
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
Let me say how much we welcome today’s debate. I know that it has felt like a Backbench Business Committee debate, but it was brought forward by the Government after my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) harassed them into doing so. However, I agree with the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey), who said that it could perhaps have been brought forward with a bit more urgency.
There is not time to list everyone’s contributions, but we have heard some incredibly passionate speeches. We have heard about the devastating consequences of cuts and the breach of the social contract with our young people, which my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Chuka Umunna) spoke about so powerfully. We have heard from my hon. Friends the Members for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), for Streatham, for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) and for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves), as well as my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East (Colleen Fletcher)—we were grateful to her for bringing a non-London-centric point of view to the debate, because this is a national crisis.
We heard about the importance of preventive measures from the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon), for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton), and for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman). We also heard about the powerful lessons from Glasgow from the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) and the spokesperson for the SNP, the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald).
I want to dwell on just two Members’ contributions. The right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton spoke about bereavement. I was on the trip to the violence reduction unit last week and to Polmont young offenders institution. The two greatest commonalities, as my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones) mentioned, were school exclusions and traumatic bereavements. Clearly, we need a fast-tracked pathway to trauma counselling for any young person who has experienced trauma, as that is a serious factor in becoming a victim of or committing youth violence.
It is impossible for me to do justice to the incredible work that my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford has done as chair of the Youth Violence Commission. She gave us a full history of the public health debate and the need to treat violence as a disease—but a disease that can be cured—and she outlined the fundamental principles that need to be at the heart of the public health approach. She laid a challenge to the Government to ensure that our interventions are effective and evidence-based, and not simply knee-jerk reactions to congratulate ourselves on having taken action.
We have heard from Members about the devastating consequences of youth violence in their constituencies, but this is a national crisis, too. No society can keep its cohesion or its humanity—indeed, no society can claim to be one at all if it becomes complacent about young people dying on our streets. This is not a spike or a blip as we saw in 2008; it is a trend enveloping a generation of young people, and it requires immediate national action directed by Government. It must be directed from the very top as part of a national mission.
The Home Secretary highlighted the importance of early intervention in tackling violence when he told “The Andrew Marr Show” that we must deal with the “root causes” of violence. The £20 million a year to be spent on early intervention and prevention has to be seen in the context of the £387 million cut from youth services, the £1 billion taken from children’s services and the £2.7 billion taken from school budgets since 2015. As the Children’s Commissioner said in her excellent report on vulnerabilities:
“We are all familiar with frailty in old age but much less so for children and teenagers… do we know the same about children who start school unable to speak?...Do we understand how this affects their further progression? Do we realise that an inability to express yourself leads to anger, and difficult behaviour, which is then reflected in rising school exclusions … Do we know that if this continues…not only does the child’s education suffer but so does their mental health? Do we know that 60% of children who end up in the youth justice estate have a communication problem, most of which could have been effectively treated?”
We talk about hard-to-reach young people all the time in this place, but I would suggest that it is our services that are hard to reach and that we set young people up to fail.
The truth is that the public health model can work only with intensive support and investment in our most vulnerable young people, driven by a co-ordinated effect across government. This is not just about statutory agencies—the vision and duty must sit across a huge range of community services, and voluntary sector and faith organisations. I am concerned that the Government’s approach might be too restrictive and overly focused on statutory agencies. It is not clear how the new duty that the Minister has announced will go beyond the duty already placed on those agencies by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998.
The public health approach requires a strong criminal justice response. For that, we need police on our streets and in our communities. It requires a fundamental shift towards prevention and early intervention. Nothing that Glasgow and other public health models have achieved is rocket science. Very little of it requires legislation. However, it does require a clear mission statement, political will and leadership. It requires us to recognise that relationships must be at the heart of protecting and keeping our young people safe; and that human interventions from stable, trusted adults are the saviour of every young man or woman who has turned their life around. It requires young people’s voices to be at the heart of the design of those interventions, and it requires all our services to be trauma informed.
The challenge facing the country from violent crime is truly frightening and at times can feel overwhelming, but with the right resources, the right approach and the political leadership from the House and in every community in our country, it is possible to stem the tide.
Victoria Atkins
With the leave of the House, I will wind up the debate.
I thank colleagues on both sides of the House for their contributions to this important debate. We have heard, as I suspected we would, many sad instances. I thank colleagues who have shared the terribly sad stories from their constituencies in the Chamber.
I thank the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft), who called for the debate. I gave her a hint that it might be worth her while to ask for it in business questions last week. I am pleased that she did so because my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House was able to announce it. I also thank her for her work, along with the hon. Members for Streatham (Chuka Umunna) and for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens), and other colleagues, for their work on the Youth Violence Commission, which has certainly helped to inform our debate as well as our wider work on this important topic. The hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford asked a number of detailed and important questions. I hope she will understand that I will write to her to answer them. In fact, I will go further than that and invite her to the Home Office to discuss the issues she has raised, because they are important and worth considering very carefully.
As we have heard, this violence is having an appalling impact on families and communities. It is clear that tackling violent crime matters to and affects hon. Members on both sides of the House, which is why we must continue to work together to tackle it. I am grateful to the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), for saying that we cannot arrest our way out of this. I completely agree with her and, in fairness, have been saying that for many months. I very much hope that the approach we are taking—the serious violence strategy and the public health duty—shows that we get that and are not just focusing on law enforcement, important though that can be in some respects.
I must always mention the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) when we have a debate on this. She made the point about grooming—the shadow Home Secretary talked about focusing on young people, which we tend to do because it is so terrible to think of young lives cut short. The older people who run the gangs and groom the young people are absolutely in our sights. That is where law enforcement is important. Through the work of the National Crime Agency and the serious and organised crime strategy, for which extra funding of £90 million has been announced today, we are absolutely determined to reach the leaders of those gangs.
Hon. Members including my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton), the hon. Member for Coventry North East (Colleen Fletcher) and the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey), mentioned the importance of investment, including longer-term investment, in charities and services that can help to intervene and stop young people being involved in serious violence. That is why I have great expectations of the new £200 million youth endowment fund, which will be delivered over 10 years. We are in the process of setting it up, with a view to more investment. It is protected for 10 years. I can tell the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford that it will, I hope, fund innovative projects. We must accept that that will involve risk, because while I hope that those projects will succeed, they may fail. Sometimes, when ground-breaking work is being done, understanding what does not work helps us to find out what does. I very much hope that the fund will deliver transformative change in the way in which we tackle youth violence.
I have referred to the consultation on a new legal duty to underpin a public health approach. I am pleased that that has met with agreement across the House, because I think that it could help to focus minds, not just nationally but at local level, on the importance of tackling and intervening in serious violence at an earlier stage. We have also announced an independent review of drug misuse, and we are working on the final terms of reference. I hope to be able to make a further announcement shortly.
I thank the hon. Member for Streatham for his very powerful speech, and for his particularly powerful message to middle-class drug users. As he put it so eloquently, when they are snorting cocaine up their noses at the weekend, they need to understand how that coke got into their hands in the first place. I hope that the more we spread the message about the irresponsibility of such drug habits, the greater impact that will have on the young people whom we have talked about today.
There has been, interestingly, a focus on international elements. I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton and, again, to the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford for mentioning the work of the World Health Organisation. We are not alone in seeing increases in serious violence in England and Wales. We know that, for example, the United States, Canada and Sweden have experienced rises in one or more types of serious violence over the last three years.
Last month we held an international symposium, drawing together more than 100 leading international and UK academics, senior police leaders, experts and practitioners to exchange ideas about the causes of those rises, and about best practice in tackling them. I managed to attend only a small part of the symposium, but it was a real pleasure to hear from senior law enforcement officers from Chicago, New York and elsewhere about what they call “precision policing”, and to learn about the international efforts to establish a health agenda as well. It was a very interesting and, for me, worthwhile exercise. We want to continue that international work, because we believe that—particularly in the context of the drug markets—we should not ignore what is happening elsewhere in the world, but should learn lessons from what has worked elsewhere.
Many colleagues raised the issue of exclusions. There is a great piece of work going on at the moment with Edward Timpson looking into alternative education provision. Having spoken to him again, I think that there will be some productive suggestions of ways of ensuring that children in alternative provision do not fall into the traps laid by criminal gangs. As we know, that happens, particularly in the case of county lines. The Department for Education is providing £4 million through its alternative provision innovation fund to improve outcomes for children in non-mainstream education. We continue to work together as Departments on the important task of tackling serious violence.
I was interested to hear what was said by the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton and the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones) about the impact of grief on children. I look forward to the right hon. Gentleman’s correspondence, because I think that that is an issue on which we should work together. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman), who, as I said earlier, made valuable contributions during the debate on the Offensive Weapons Bill. I took on board his points about cupboards, and we are having ongoing discussions with retailers about the voluntary matters.
Many other issues were raised which I regret I do not have time to deal with. Let me again stress our determination to stop serious violence, and also thank the police, emergency workers, hospital staff and everyone else who will be looking after us and our young people over Christmas. Let us end the debate as we began it, with the families who are grieving and the young people themselves very much in our minds and our hearts this Christmas.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered a public health model to reduce youth violence.
Rural Post Offices
(6 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)
Heamoor, Guval, Carbis Bay, Leedstown, Praa Sands, Newlyn, Crowntown, Lizard, Porthleven, St Keverne: these are communities that have either lost their post office branch in recent history or where the branch is at risk of closure. I stand here today to call on the Government to make it clear that there is no post office closure programme. However, we must do more to secure the future of these rural post offices, and to do that we need to enjoy the confidence of sub-postmasters and the businesses that could consider hosting a post office counter in their outlet. I believe that large numbers of sub-postmasters have lost confidence in Post Office Ltd, and for businesses considering taking on a post office service within their current establishment, the word is out that it is not a viable business and they would do well to leave well alone. This is not something that I have stumbled upon recently. I have been working with post office branches, Post Office Ltd and local communities for over three years now, and despite an extraordinary effort by all concerned, including local Post Office Ltd personnel, we have not yet been able to resolve the difficulties faced by sub-postmasters.
It is vital that we secure the future of the rural post office network which, as we know, is integral to rural communities, often forming the hub of commerce within their villages and providing banking and post office services to constituents who would otherwise be unable to access them. The problem of post office closures is not a west Cornwall issue alone, although I would argue that if we can resolve some of our particular challenges, such solutions could be applied elsewhere, strengthening the network for all who need it.
The National Federation of SubPostmasters, with which I have been working closely, informs me that in 2018 some 8% of post offices have seen temporary closure, with 66% of those closing due to the resignation of the postmaster. For many postmasters, the business is neither viable nor fair financially. That is particularly the case in rural constituencies like mine, and it has a profoundly adverse effect on customers who rely on the vital services that the post office network provides.
Earlier this year I sought the support of constituents in west Cornwall in calling on the Government and Post Office Ltd to make sure that sub-postmasters have a viable business, to force banks to pay sub-postmasters a fair price for their services, and to increase the services available to rural post office branches. I want to touch on those three areas and explain why they are so important.
During the campaign I contacted 10,000 people and received over 1,700 responses. That is a greater response than to any previous local campaign and shows how important the issue is to my rural constituency. Those who responded agreed with me that it is in everybody’s interest to have a viable post office network, which creates thousands of jobs and sustains communities. I am grateful to the communities right across west Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly who are so passionate about maintaining the post office network, and to the sub-postmasters, who work hard every day to provide a service and to provide access to good provision.
It is vital that the Government intervene to ensure that sub-postmasters have a viable business. Post Office Ltd takes responsibility for the post office network on behalf of the Government and it is falling short. This is despite the Government’s £2.4 billion investment in the network since 2012. People expect to get value for money. Overall remuneration to postmasters fell again last year, by £17 million, and is predicted to fall by a further £10 million. The rural post office network is not in a good place yet Post Office Ltd reported profits of £36 million in the year 2017-18.
I have been working with one particular community on the Lizard. The current arrangement, which ensures that the local community has access to post office services in the summer and also in the quieter winter period, cannot be maintained—and nor should it be—but the Post Office has spectacularly failed to find an alternative arrangement that maintains a service for the community and treats the current sub-postmaster, who has given several decades of his life to his community, with respect. In a meeting with the chief executive of Post Office Ltd on 24 April this year, I was assured of her commitment to find a solution, but there has been no further communication from her or her office. It has been left to the local community and local Post Office representative—whose responsibilities span the entire Duchy of Cornwall—to find a solution. So, three years on, there is no change.
I have now taken the fight to the Government. In a recent meeting with the Minister for Rural Affairs, I proposed a winter payment plan that recognises that the footfall over the winter is considerably reduced. That plan would help the businesses to be sustained through quieter off-peak periods. This would maintain the service for those who live in the area all year round, and ensure that the service is open when the visitors descend. I also stressed the need for a dedicated mobile service so that post office services can be provided quickly following a post office branch closure. Six of the seven post office closures in west Cornwall have left local residents with no easy access to post office services since their branch has closed. In fact, the one post office that enjoys a mobile service has had no service this week because of ill health. Even that post office, which provides temporary services for two hours, two days a week, has not provided those services this week. This is in Newlyn. It has a large community and is the fourth biggest fishing port in the country, yet is has no post office service.
I am grateful that Lord Gardiner and his officials agreed to meet the chief executive of Post Office Ltd to explore these demands. A post office branch must be a viable business for the owner, and I have long argued that Post Office Ltd has no vision or plan for rural post office services. It is now for the Minister to intervene and find a bespoke solution that supports post offices during the winter to maintain an essential service all year round. This is true not only for rural west Cornwall but for about 6,000 sub-post offices around the country.
Also, post office banking must pay. We are all acutely aware of the decline in high street banks. Now that most banking transactions can be made in a post office branch, this offers a real opportunity and a great plus for the post office network. In 2016, when it first became possible for banking services to be provided in post offices, it was a great leap forward and offered real hope and opportunity for many post offices. Post office banking has experienced strong growth of £20 million, as reported in the Post Office’s own financial report this year, but the reality is that only £3 million of that £20 million has filtered through to the postmasters. The industry average charge to a business depositing £1,000 in local and community branches of the Post Office is £10, of which the postmaster will receive only 24p for the transaction. In a larger branch, the figure rises to 37p per £1,000 transaction. For at least one of my former post offices, it was the banking that broke the camel’s back. The postmaster was taking the risk and the responsibility of handling tens of thousands of pounds every week but being paid only a few hundred a year for the privilege. That community no longer has a post office branch.
Another part of the campaign, which has received such support in my constituency, is that the Government and Post Office Ltd must maintain and grow post office services. The Government share some responsibility for the services that are available over a post office counter. As we speak today, the Department for Work and Pensions is writing to people who use their post office account to receive their money to encourage them to switch to a bank account. Those people can still do the transaction at the post office for as long as the post office survives, but the DWP is sending a worrying message regarding the Government’s commitment to the post offices by encouraging people to move away from the post office account.
I have met, and received some reassurance from the DWP Minister on this issue. The Government need to be taking steps that help our post offices and our vulnerable constituents, not creating confusion and divorcing our constituents from their source of support. For many, the post office is their only way of accessing the benefits system, and the Post Office relies upon offering this service to customers. Furthermore, sub-postmasters look out for vulnerable customers and often reach out to the lonely and isolated. Opportunities for someone to do that are becoming rarer in rural communities such as mine, so securing the sub-postmaster will secure not only the service, but provide the chance for someone to look out for the vulnerable and isolated in the countryside.
An added dimension and potential threat to the Post Office network that must be considered is that Royal Mail and the Post Office are different businesses facing different challenges. To maintain the Post Office in public ownership and enable private sector investment in Royal Mail’s letters and parcels business, Post Office Ltd was separated from Royal Mail Group Ltd in April 2012. To ensure the continuation of their existing business relationship, the management of Royal Mail and the Post Office put in place a commercial contract between the two parties at the time of separation with the longest possible contract length permitted by law. That commercial agreement is coming to an end, and negotiations on their future relationship have started. They complement each other well and are natural business partners. In fact, the chief executive of Royal Mail said it would be “unthinkable” that there would not always be a strong relationship between Royal Mail and the Post Office.
However, I understand that Royal Mail has already introduced a service whereby people post items directly through the counter at the sorting office, bypassing the post office, and is trialling a local collect service using a national convenience store rather than the post office network. It would not be right for the Minister to intervene in a commercial contract, but I plead with her to press the Post Office to ensure that it is doing everything to be competitive and to tender for vital services.
There is no time to waste. Thousands of post offices are at risk. This is an opportunity for the Government to reaffirm their commitment to local businesses and their recognition of the essential and valuable work of the rural post office network. For the sake of rural post offices and the many sub-postmasters both in my constituency and around the country and for all those who value and depend on post office services, my plea to the Minister is to ensure that sub-postmasters have a viable business, to work with the banks to ensure that they pay sub-postmasters a fair price for their services, and to ensure that every Department demonstrates a commitment, where they can, to increase the services available in rural post offices.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Kelly Tolhurst)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) on securing this important debate. He has been a passionate advocate for post office services in his constituency. We have spoken at great length about the post office network and have another meeting booked in for the new year. As he outlined, he has also met Lord Gardiner to discuss this topic. One of the best things about my role is being responsible for postal services—I know how important the post office is to all our communities, not just rural areas, so this is an important part of my responsibilities. For centuries, post offices have been the centre of social life in our communities, towns and villages. That is especially true in rural areas, which is why our 2017 manifesto committed to safeguarding the post office network and supporting rural services.
Between 2010 and 2018, this Government provided nearly £2 billion to maintain and invest in a national network of at least 11,500 post offices. The Post Office currently meets and exceeds all the Government accessibility targets at national level. Government investment has enabled the modernisation of more than 7,500 branches, added more than 200,000 opening hours a week and established the Post Office as the largest network trading on Sunday.
The Post Office’s agreement with the high street banks has enabled personal and business banking in all branches, supporting consumers, businesses and local economies facing bank branch closures, particularly in rural areas. The Post Office’s financial performance has improved significantly and, consequently, the Government funding required to sustain the network has drastically decreased and is set to decrease even further in coming years.
I encourage the House to look objectively at those facts, which clearly show that the network is as stable today as it has been in decades. We must remember that the post office network declined by 38% under the last Labour Government, with more than 7,000 branch closures.
Serving rural communities is at the heart of the Post Office’s social purpose. There are more than 6,100 post offices in rural areas, with nearly all the population in such areas living within three miles of a branch. Last year, Citizens Advice found that seven out of 10 rural consumers buy essential items at post offices and that almost 3 million rural shoppers visit a post office on a weekly basis. That is 31%, compared with 21% of people living in cities. Illustrating how important the post office is to such areas is the fact that almost half of rural post offices have community status. The post office is the last shop in some villages.
Rural branches, whether main branches, local branches or traditional branches, can offer the same products and services as urban branches of the same category. The Post Office recognises the unique challenge of running a community branch and supports such postmasters differently from the rest of the network. They receive fixed remuneration, as well as variable remuneration to reflect their special situation.
In addition, the Post Office delivered almost £10 million of investment via the community fund between 2014 and 2018, which enabled community branches to invest in their associated retail business. The Post Office has now launched a smaller community branch development scheme, which will benefit an anticipated 700 branches. Let me be clear that this Government and Post Office Ltd will continue to support rural post offices.
My hon. Friend will be interested to hear that network modernisation has led to the creation of 450 additional opening hours in his constituency, delivering greater convenience to consumers. However, I am aware that there have been a number of service issues in St Ives, and it is fair to say those issues have not been sorted as quickly as the Post Office would have liked. I fully appreciate how frustrating it is for a local community when post office services are interrupted.
In rural areas such as the St Ives constituency, when the shop in which the post office is based closes, there may be few other commercial premises from which services can be offered to consumers. In such instances, the Post Office explores how an outreach service run by a nearby postmaster can ensure the continuity of services for the community, such as via a mobile van.
For example, in my hon. Friend’s constituency the St Keverne postmaster will be extending the mobile visit timetable to provide services at—excuse my pronunciations if they are not correct—Heamoor, Gulval, Carbis Bay, Leedstown, Praa Sands and Crowntown over the coming months. Outreach and mobile services are highly valued by the communities they serve, as they offer all the same services as a bricks-and-mortar branch.
Derek Thomas
I thank the Minister for listing those places—she was not far off. Does she accept that it was the work that we have been doing as a local community to put pressure on the Post Office, and to bring this issue to the Minister and other Ministers, that finally got the Post Office even to consider that mobile service, which at the moment is not in place? Some of those villages have not had post office services for more than a year.
Kelly Tolhurst
I thank my hon. Friend for his point. He is right in what he says and I recognise that. I was going to come on to this later, but I will respond directly to his point now. The Government are the sole shareholder in the Post Office. It is right that we work with the Post Office, challenging it where necessary, and with constituency MPs and the community to make sure that we can deliver the right services for the community. As I always do when speaking about post offices at the Dispatch Box, let me say that we are committed to working with MPs and their communities, and we will continue to do so in order to maintain the branch network we have and to try to serve communities as best we can.
Outreach and mobile services are highly valued by the communities they serve, as they offer all the same services as bricks-and-mortar branches. They have been successful in taking key services such as everyday banking to customers, giving them vital access to cash in areas where there are no bank branches nearby. The Post Office directly contributes towards the costs of those outreach services, in conjunction with the postmaster running them, whose parent branch benefits from the transactional income accrued from the visits to outlying communities.
My hon. Friend raised important points about the specific challenge of running a post office in communities where seasonal trade and variation plays a significant role. I know that the Post Office listens to the community and the postmasters in St Ives by taking a more flexible approach to opening hours requirements across the year. That will allow branches to be more sustainable through the leaner, off-peak seasons, when their post office and associated shop has fewer customers. As he said, the issue was taken up by Lord Gardiner in his meeting with Paula Vennells, the Post Office’s chief executive officer, on 4 December. I understand that there will be a follow-up meeting with her in the constituency in the New Year to discuss this and other matters further. I am confident that this ongoing, frank and sustained engagement is the right way to proceed, so that the issues can be understood and a solution be provided for the benefit of postmasters, businesses and residents of St Ives.
Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to clarify some misconceptions about the Post Office’s franchising programme, particularly the assumption that franchising means closures and the downgrading of services. Those criticisms are misplaced. Post Office branches are not closing, but are being franchised, either on-site or by relocating to other high street locations. Franchising is nothing new; almost 98% of post offices across the UK are successfully operated by independent businesses and retail partners. Moving the directly managed Crown offices to retail partners has been instrumental in reducing losses in that part of the network.
My hon. Friend raised an important point on postmasters’ remuneration, especially for everyday banking services. As these services have developed and increased, I know the Post Office is looking at ways to better recognise the effort required of its postmasters for banking transactions. In fact, the Post Office has recently notified postmasters that their rates for banking deposits have been increased this year. I understand that the Post Office has now entered negotiations with banks on the next banking service agreement. The Post Office has reassured me that it will do all it can to ensure that postmasters are better remunerated for the vital services that they offer. I should add that the Post Office is picking up vital services in areas that banks have left. It is right that the Post Office does its best to make sure the banks accept the responsibilities involved and the work that post offices are doing on behalf of those communities and, we hope, properly remunerate them.
My hon. Friend also raised an important point about postmasters who cannot exit the business because of the absence of alternative operators to take over their branch. Although that is an operational matter, I assure him that the Post Office is taking it very seriously. As of November 2017, there were more than 450 branches of that type across the network. To help the remaining postmasters, the Post Office has extended the network transformation resignation timeframe to March 2020. That means that all parties can continue to work together to ensure that no communities are left without the invaluable post office services that they rely on. The postmasters affected will continue to receive both fixed and variable remuneration throughout that period. Where solutions are found, the postmasters concerned can leave while still qualifying for their leaver’s compensation.
My hon. Friend raised some particular issues relating to his constituents. I am not aware of some of the detail of those cases, but we are meeting in the new year, so I look forward to discussing those points and seeing how we can move forward.
I reassure my hon. Friend that all post offices across the network, including rural branches, are of the utmost importance to the Government. We recognise their value and importance, and we will continue to honour our manifesto commitments so that post offices can thrive and remain at the heart of our rural and urban communities. I thank my hon. Friend again for making his points, and for his hard work in support of access to post office services for his constituents. I assure him that I will continue to work with him and the Post Office to make sure that the constituents of St Ives receive the post office service that they deserve.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)
I am sure the House would like to wish all postal workers the best for Christmas and the new year, and to thank them for getting the parliamentary mail through.
Question put and agreed to.
Draft Postal and Parcel Services (Amendment Etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018
(6 years ago)
General CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Kelly Tolhurst)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Postal and Parcel Services (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. The draft regulations were laid before the House on 29 October. The Government are confident that an agreement on the EU exit will be achieved, but we must be prepared for all outcomes. If the UK left the EU without an agreement in place, the instrument would provide legal clarity and consistency for the regulator and postal operators.
The draft regulations are being introduced, under powers in section 8 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, to correct deficiencies in the statute book associated with exiting the EU. They will make minor amendments by removing obligations that would no longer apply if no agreement were reached with the EU.
The regulations make no changes to the operation of postal and parcel services beyond those necessary to ensure the regime is fully functional on exit day. They will not change the six-days-a-week or “one price goes anywhere” universal postal service that continues to be relied upon by consumers and businesses throughout the UK. I will explain what the specific legal amendments are and why they are necessary if no agreement is reached with the EU.
The regulations make four sets of changes. First, they will amend the Postal Services Act 2000 and the Postal Services Act 2011 to remove or replace references to EU obligations that will no longer apply once the UK has left the EU. They will also remove provisions that impose duties to notify the European Commission. Secondly, they will remove from statute the Postal Services Regulations 1999, which implemented article 22 of the postal services directive. That directive requires member states to designate a national regulatory authority, or NRA, for the postal sector. Thirdly, they will revoke the European Commission decision of 10 August 2010, which established the European Regulators Group for Postal Services, or ERGP. Finally, they will revoke EU regulation 2018/644 on cross-border parcel delivery services.
The 2000 and 2011 Acts set out the minimum requirements of the UK’s universal postal service. The amendments made by the regulations to primary legislation governing postal services will not affect the UK’s universal postal service. The regulations will ensure that any remaining obligations under retained EU law are maintained in the 2011 Act and will remove redundant provisions. They will also remove obligations of the EU postal services directive, such as sharing information with the European Commission, because the UK will no longer be subject to the directive’s provisions or to the authority of the European Commission after we leave the EU.
The 1999 regulations designate Ofcom and the Secretary of State as the UK’s national regulatory authorities for postal services, which is a requirement of the postal services directive. The duties and functions of Ofcom and the Secretary of State relating to postal services are set out in the 2000 and 2011 Acts, so there is no longer a requirement to designate them the national regulatory authority under separate regulations for the purposes of the postal services directive. The 1999 regulations will become redundant when the UK leaves the EU and will be revoked in full by the draft regulations.
The European Commission decision of 2010 established the ERGP. Ofcom—the UK’s NRA—is a member. The group consists of member states’ NRAs, provides advice to the European Commission and aims to facilitate consultation, co-ordination and co-operation between NRAs of member states on postal services. As well as members, the group also consists of permanent and ad hoc observers.
The UK will not be entitled to participate formally as a member of the group after we leave the European Union, because membership is restricted to the NRAs of member states. The draft regulations will therefore revoke the EU’s decision, which contains a list of members, one of them being the UK.
The withdrawal from the ERGP was an issue of interest to the House of Commons sifting Committee when the draft instrument was first presented. The House requested further information on the effect of the UK’s non-participation in the group, and possible alternatives for future arrangements.
The ERGP does not make binding rules or take decisions, but occupies an advisory role and facilitates the sharing of best practice. Ofcom intends to seek permanent observer status after the UK has exited the EU, in the way that other NRAs of European economic area states, such as Switzerland, and EU candidate countries currently participate. Although observer status would remove Ofcom’s right to vote, the likely impact of that would be minimal, as this is more of a co-operative forum in nature. If granted observer status, Ofcom could still engage in strategic discussions, negotiations and the sharing of best practice after we exited the EU.
The aim of the EU regulation, which came into force in May, is to increase regulatory oversight and price transparency of cross-border parcel delivery services within the EU. The draft regulations will fully revoke the EU regulation, which requires regular submission to the European Commission of information on cross-border parcel delivery providers, with the aim of publishing tariff information on all member states’ cross-border parcel operators. That duty will no longer apply after the UK leaves the EU.
The principal information-gathering powers are provided for in the UK’s domestic legislation under the 2011 Act. Ofcom already draws on that as part of its regulatory monitoring of the postal sector. Ofcom is also able to carry out comparative overviews of the quality and price of postal services, with a view to publication in the interests of users of those services, following the receipt of information from the operators.
Similarly, the EU’s regulatory obligation on traders to provide consumers with certain information relating to their services is contained in the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013. For those reasons, the EU parcel delivery regulation will become redundant and will be revoked by the draft regulations.
The draft regulations will ensure that postal and parcel services can continue to operate effectively after the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union, and I therefore commend them to the Committee.
Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Mr Rosindell. On the whole, I am assured that the statutory instrument mostly ensures technical changes to remove the relevant EU references from postal services regulations.
As the Minister outlined, the basis of the statutory instrument is to attempt to address retained EU law to ensure it operates effectively and alters deficiencies arising from the UK’s exit next year. Part two makes amendments to the 2000 and 2011 Acts, to remove or replace references to obligations that will no longer apply following our departure. Part three revokes the 1999 regulations, which implemented article 22 of the postal services directive and required member states to designate a national regulatory authority for the postal sector. The draft regulations will revoke the European Commission’s decision of 10 August 2010, which established the ERGP.
As the Minister will know, however, the Commons sifting Committee overturned the decision of the House of Lords to pass the SI without debate. The Committee argued that the Government should provide more information—for example, on the effect of the UK’s non-participation in the ERGP—and possible alternatives for the future. Therefore, I am pleased to have the opportunity to sit on the Committee today.
I will be brief and get to the crux of the matter, because the Minister very competently gave us an overview of a complicated set of regulations. I have a number of questions. First, was there a discussion during the Brexit negotiations about co-operation between the UK and EU on postal services following our departure? It has become a trend that the Government have failed to conduct impact assessments on the recent wave of SIs, so what assessment has been made of the implication that this measure will have for how postal services flow and how our parcels will be delivered in future? Finally, what assessment has she made of the impact that revoking the 2018 EU regulation on cross-border parcel delivery services will have on UK consumers’ access to competitive postal service prices?
Kelly Tolhurst
I thank the hon. Lady for her kind comments. I will try to answer her questions and give her some more information about what has been done.
Regarding co-operation, as the SI highlights we will not be able to continue as a member of the ERGP after we leave, but Ofcom has made it clear that we will be trying to obtain permanent observer status. I touched on this briefly in my opening speech, but I can reassure her that that group votes only twice a year, so the voting element is minimal. It is an advisory board, working together and consulting, and there are a number of countries with observer status in the group. Obviously, obtaining that status is a decision that will have to be taken at a later stage, but I do not see any reason for it not happening.
As the hon. Lady will know, we are already a member of the Universal Postal Union, which is a UN body that operates worldwide and is able to co-operate internationally. The potential impact of the measure will cross over to the impact with respect to cross-border issues. As she will know, we are in consultation with Royal Mail and other delivery operators regarding customs arrangements and requirements that will be necessary. That work is being undertaken by Her Majesty’s Treasury and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, and that information is already being tested in the White Paper.
Regarding impact assessments, we believe that this SI has a very minimal impact. It is under the £5 million mark, so a full impact assessment has been judged not to be required. We are continuing to work with delivery operators and the Royal Mail as we move through the process, towards exit day, either with or without a deal, to make sure that we continue to address what needs to be addressed. We have assessed that neither the regulator nor the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy would require further funding to be able to operate under a no-deal scenario in relation to this SI.
To put it on record and to put the hon. Lady’s mind at rest regarding cross-border parcel delivery, we have a duty to co-operate with other countries with respect to the postal service and parcels. We will become a third country, but we expect that to operate in the same way with the European Union. We will retain European standards, which are widely shared. We have a great postal service here in the UK, and it has become more efficient in the past eight years.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
Does the Minister know whether Royal Mail anticipates that any customs changes that come about due to a Brexit in which we crash out will have any practical impact?
Kelly Tolhurst
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. We are continuing to work with Royal Mail and HMRC on the customs arrangements that will be put in place. That is a live issue, which continues to be consulted on. I cannot give him full details, because that is a piece of ongoing work.
Nick Smith
I thank the Minister for that response. Will she update us on the analysis she does with Royal Mail on the possible financial impact of the draft regulations in the event that we crash out?
Kelly Tolhurst
If there was to be a direct financial impact that was less than minimal, of course we would provide an update. As things stand, we have assessed that there will be a very minimal cost, but we continue to work on those customs arrangements. Let us be frank: in a no-deal situation, we will be dealing with customs for our postal and parcel services in some way, shape or form, so that will have to be monitored right up to our leaving date while we wait for our direction to be confirmed. That is as far as I can go on that point, I am afraid.
The draft regulations will be made under the powers conferred by section 8 of the withdrawal Act. Those powers will provide legal clarity in respect of postal and parcel services legislation after the UK’s exit from the EU by removing inconsistencies and inappropriate references from the statute book. I have addressed the concerns of the Commons sifting Committee about the effects of the UK’s non-participation in the ERGP as a result of our leaving the EU. The draft regulations do not represent a policy change in the operation of postal services; they preserve as far as possible the rights, responsibilities and protections offered by the existing system. I therefore hope the Committee will approve them.
Question put and agreed to.
Home Education: draft guidance and the consultation
Asylum of Nelly Gelves
Fisheries Bill (Seventh sitting)
Thursday 13th December 2018
(6 years ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Fisheries Bill 2017-19 View all Fisheries Bill 2017-19 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 13 December 2018 - (13 Dec 2018)
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 6 / Noes: 12 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Chair
I welcome everybody back to this line-by-line consideration of the Fisheries Bill. We start with clause 12, which I think we discussed reasonably well on Tuesday, and I will therefore put the question without further debate.
Clause 12 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 13 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 2
Sea fishing licences: further provision
Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)
I beg to move amendment 64, in schedule 2, page 31, line 16, at end insert—
“(2A) A sea fishing licensing authority must attach to any sea fishing licence appropriate conditions with respect to the safety of the boat and its crew.”
This amendment would require the licensing authority to set appropriate conditions regarding safety when granting a sea fishing licence.
It is good to see everyone back for more fish fun and games. The amendment relates to the conditions attached to a sea fishing licence. As Jerry Percy, who represents the New Under Ten Fishermen’s Association, said in last week’s evidence session:
“Fishing, unfortunately, still carries the record as the most dangerous occupation in the world.”––[Official Report, Fisheries Public Bill Committee, 4 December 2018; c. 39, Q67.]
Just last week, a report came out on the tragic sinking of the Solstice, a trawler from the constituency I represent. It is a tragedy that too many fishermen die each year catching our fish suppers. We touched on safety during our discussions of amendments 41 and 42 to clause 1, “Fisheries objectives”, and schedule 2 provides another opportunity to address the urgent need for improvements to safety in the industry by setting suitable conditions in relation to sea fishing licences.
Yesterday, in the annual fisheries debate—because we have not had enough debates about fishing, so one more was welcome—I paid tribute to all the fishers who lost their lives at sea. Normally the debate starts each year with such tributes, but yesterday it kicked off with an argument over Brexit and fishing. I welcomed the Minister sticking to that convention in his remarks and paying tribute to the six people who died at sea in the past year. It showed his class in not forgetting, or allowing Brexit to overshadow, that important tradition, and I thank him for that.
Returning to amendment 64, fishermen surveyed as part of Seafarers UK’s recent “Fishing for a Future” research publication reported that
“accidents at sea were commonplace”
with many
“having experienced capsized and sinking vessels as well as falling overboard, while over a third reported…injuries received as a result of accidents.”
Others reported an impact on their health as a result of their working conditions. Those research findings are supported by the latest statistics from the Marine Accident Investigation Branch, which revealed that five fishermen died in separate incidents between the months of September and November 2017, while the Sea Fish Industry Authority has identified 535 serious injuries to fishermen in the past 10 years. Sadly, there were six deaths in the past year, as the Minister noted in yesterday’s debate. Back pain and arthritis are common health conditions experienced by fishermen as a consequence of their work environment. Typically, injuries experienced by fishermen surveyed in the “Fishing for a Future” report included
“fractures, partial loss of fingers and fingertips and a lost thumb. While many hand injuries were caused by filleting knife accidents, others were winch or hauler accidents. Jellyfish stings and various crush injuries from equipment such as a clam dredge, pots, net bins,”
and other gear were also reported.
The Opposition would like to use this Bill to make the case for fishing to be a better and safer place to work for all our fishers.
Marine safety is an issue for many small boats because of the pressures on those boats, and because—as we discussed the other day—the 10-metre limit has led to different configurations of fish for strength and capacity, rather than for stability. There seems to be good universal agreement that personal locator beacons attached to lifejackets are good things, but buying new lifejackets with PLBs and registering them involves a cost to fishermen.
Seafarers UK, responding to the fisheries White Paper, made other recommendations, which we also want to flag in relation to the requirements for sea fishing licences. The first of those recommendations is the maintenance of a UK-wide standard for
“fishermen’s health, safety and welfare”
to ensure a commonality of approach among all the UK’s Administrations. The second is the establishment of a successor to the European maritime and fisheries fund to support small-scale, low-impact, inshore fishermen and small fishing ports in making enhancements to vessels, infrastructure and ports, particularly in respect of enhancing safety. I am grateful that the Minister spoke about the money allocated to that in the Budget.
Seafarers UK also recommended that a co-ordinated approach should be developed to training new entrants to the fishing industry to help future generations of fishers to begin their careers in a safe and sustainable manner; that the views of small-scale, low-impact fishermen should be heard during consultations on legislative changes and fisheries management; and that the proposed changes should be financially supported and/or proportionally costed according to their impact on a fisher’s livelihood and their ability to pay. Finally, it recommended that we share the ambition of the Fishing Industry Safety Group and many others to reduce fishing fatalities at sea and in port to zero.
The amendment is about how we can ensure that sea fishing licences take proper regard of the safety considerations that affect the day-to-day lived experience of our fishers. I will be grateful to hear the Minister’s response.
The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (George Eustice)
We discussed safety under a previous group of amendments. Safety is incredibly important, as fishing is the most dangerous occupation. As the hon. Gentleman said, tragically in the past year six people have lost their lives while fishing to put food on our table, so we absolutely recognise the importance of the issue. As he is aware, this is a priority for my hon. Friend the Shipping Minister, who held a summit with representatives of fishing organisations this summer. The hon. Gentleman will also be aware that in the most recent Budget, the Treasury announced a fund to support investment to help safety at sea. Also, we recently announced additional matched funding for the EMFF fund to support coastal communities and measures including safety improvement.
As I explained in a previous sitting, we do not believe it is necessary to add a safety requirement to a fishing licence for the simple reason that provisions on the safety of any vessel, whether a fishing vessel or another type of vessel, are already covered by the Merchant Shipping and Fishing Vessels (Health and Safety at Work) Regulations 1997, which applies to all domestic vessels. It is not possible for a person to get a fishing licence at all unless they have already crossed that threshold and their vessel has passed a seaworthiness test. In the absence of that, it is not possible to get a fishing licence. That provision has already been made.
As I also mentioned previously, there are some issues with some of the under-10-metre vessels. I described the rather bizarre practice that some people engage in of chopping the end off their boat, selling their quota and then claiming that they are under 10 metres to access the pool. There are some concerns about the resulting stability, so we are looking at a different way of measuring inshore, low-impact fishing vessels—perhaps by looking at vessel size or another measure. Our White Paper highlights that and makes provision for us to consider a better way.
From next year, we will require that an inshore vessel monitoring system be used. The new IVMS system will be a requirement for all smaller vessels. It sends a signal every two minutes, so if there is a problem, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency will easily be able to detect where those vessels are.
Mike Hill (Hartlepool) (Lab)
On a point of clarification, will the IVMS be extended to what would be considered leisure fishing under-10 craft?
George Eustice
No. It will be a requirement for anybody who is engaged in commercial fishing, but there are other systems, including the automatic identification system, which some leisure craft use as a safety device. The IVMS system is for those who are fishing commercially.
Bill Grant (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (Con)
There is merit in this amendment on the safety of those who go to sea, but one wonders whether the Bill is the wrong place for it. I sense that there is need for greater training to embed a health and safety culture in those who go to sea. We have some way to go in that regard.
George Eustice
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. As I said, other pieces of primary and secondary legislation make provision for the seaworthiness and safety of vessels, so it does not need to be a condition of a fishing licence. It is absolutely the case that we need to take safety more seriously. As the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland said in a previous debate, sometimes attitudes to safety are not what they ought to be.
A lot is done by way of training. Seafish runs a number of projects in this area, and there are marine schools around the country. Indeed, when I visited Shetland several years ago with the right hon. Gentleman, we went to a marine school that trains fishermen in safety and vessel handling. We have a number of institutions, establishments and projects that support training, and over the past few years about 500 fishermen have been through those training courses and gone on to enter the industry.
I hope that I have been able to reassure the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport. As I said in our previous debate, we absolutely take safety seriously. He makes an important point, but it is covered already under the merchant shipping and fishing vessels regulations and therefore does not need to be added to the schedule.
Luke Pollard
I am grateful to the Minister for setting out that position. It would be useful if he and his colleagues in the Department for Transport reflected further on certain areas. He spoke about dumpy boats—boats with the ends cut off to get under the 10-metre limit—but another concern on those smaller boats is swapping the type of gear, which can affect stability: gear types might be swapped over without the stability assessment taking place to ensure that the vessel goes to sea safe.
The Minister should also reflect on where EMFF funding goes, to ensure that safety is one of the criteria applied to new sea fishing licensing so that we have the highest standards possible. I know that he is working with DFT colleagues to do that, but the opportunity for us to reset our fishing framework and to have high levels of marine safety is one that we need to seize with both hands, whether it is a Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs responsibility or a DFT one.
I would also be grateful if the Minister continued conversations with his colleague the Shipping Minister, especially to pick up some of the recommendations that have come out of marine accident investigation branch reports that have not yet been implemented by the Government—a number are still outstanding. Further consideration of those recommendations would greatly enhance the marine environment. However, on the basis of the Minister’s response, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Luke Pollard
I beg to move amendment 65 to schedule 2, page 31, line 24, at end insert—
“(6) The conditions attached to any licence must include a national landing requirement prescribed in regulations under section (National landing requirement).”
This amendment would require a ‘national landing requirement’, defined in NC13 to be attached to licence conditions for any boat specifying the percentage of the boat’s catch which must be landed at a UK port.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 13—National landing requirement—
“(1) The national landing requirement is the percentage of the boat’s catch that was caught within British fishery limits in any given quarter which must be landed at a port in—
(a) the UK
(b) the Isle of Man
(c) Guernsey, or
(d) Jersey.
(2) The Secretary of State must by regulations define the national landing requirement for each species in each UK fishing zone, and any such requirement must be not less than 50%, except where the Secretary of State determines it would be inappropriate to have a national landing requirement of 50% or more.
(3) Where the Secretary of State determines that the national landing requirement for any species is to be less than 50%, the Secretary of State must publish the reasons for such a determination.
(4) Regulations under this section are subject to the affirmative procedure.”
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to set a ‘national landing requirement’ to be attached to licence conditions for any boat specifying the percentage of the boat’s catch which must be landed at a UK port.
Luke Pollard
We have heard from Ministers that we will get more fish as we move from relative stability within the common fisheries policy to zonal attachment outside the CFP. That is welcome and something that the Minister knows the Opposition support as much as Government Members.
Given that we are to get a whole lot more fish, we believe that the Bill misses a trick when a requirement to land fish in UK ports is omitted. For every one job at sea, there are 10 jobs at home in fish processing. Indeed, fish processing is a part of the fishing industry that does not get the attention it deserves—it was briefly mentioned in the annual fisheries debate yesterday, including by my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn)—but we need to talk more about how a new and refreshed fishing framework could provide more jobs on land as well as at sea.
We call on the Government to make it a requirement for anyone fishing under a UK quota to land at least 50% of that catch in a British port, which would support port and fish processing jobs. We also want them to consult on increasing that in line with increased investment in our ports and coastal communities, as and when more capacity can come online. Along with reallocation of quota, which I will speak about later, that would bring about a renaissance in the UK fishing industry. Such a measure would show firm determination to make real the promises of taking back control, and the benefits of a revised fishing framework to help all our coastal communities.
A national landing obligation requiring 50% of fish caught under a UK quota to be landed in a British port could make a real difference to coastal communities. Such communities have been held back by an unfair system, as well as the impact of austerity which, as we know, has been hardest felt in coastal communities such as the one that I represent in Plymouth. They are some of the most beautiful and historical places in the UK, but there is a genuine feeling in those communities that they have been held back and that the system is not working for them. Whether or not Members agree entirely with all the principles expressed in our amendment and new clause, that is a sentiment that anyone representing a coastal town or city will be familiar with.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
The hon. Gentleman is making a valuable point. We have heard evidence about rejuvenating coastal communities, and he has given examples from his constituency. Would the amendment and new clause deliver what he hopes they will deliver? They might lead to additional landings going to existing big ports. Is there not also a risk that they would impinge on devolved settlements by not allowing devolved Governments to set their own landing criteria?
Luke Pollard
In fact, much of the inspiration behind the amendment and new clause came from some of the work by the Scottish Government, who looked at having a Scottish landing obligation to land fish caught under Scottish quotas in Scottish ports. There needs to be agreement with the devolved Administrations that more fish caught under UK quota being landed in UK ports is a good thing and that the benefits can be shared across our United Kingdom.
Fishing is an important source of income for some of the most deprived communities in Europe. West Wales, including Milford Haven, is ranked as the poorest area in Europe. West Cornwall is second; Lincolnshire, including the Grimsby area, comes in fifth; Devon is 13th and Tyne and Wear is 20th, according to Eurostat statistics. Many others are rural areas that have fewer alternative employment opportunities, such as Shetland, Stornoway and Brixham, as we heard in the fisheries debate yesterday.
The amendment could and, I think, would create more jobs in those coastal communities and was backed by Members from all parts of the House speaking on Second Reading. My hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) said that
“the fishing industry is not just about the catching side; there is still a very important processing and aquaculture industry alongside it…It is an important provider of jobs in…Grimsby…with some 4,200 jobs dependent on the sector. These processing plants also export much of their product into the EU, in a market worth £1.3 billion, where we still enjoy a trade surplus. It is therefore vital in the drive to create world-leading fisheries that processing is not forgotten”.—[Official Report, 21 November 2018; Vol. 649, c. 926.]
My right hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Mr Campbell) said that he believes
“that there is still a strong case for ensuring a link between landings and home port, because it is important to recognise that fishing is more than just about catching fish; there are also issues about the sustainability of ports and port jobs.”—[Official Report, 21 November 2018; Vol. 649, c. 936.]
Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman is making a good point. As we will see during the course of the day, he and I have a lot in common in what we are trying to achieve through the Bill. My concern about the amendment—it was raised just now by the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun—is whether it would just result in more of the opportunities and landings going to those ports with existing infrastructure. I think of the Lowestoft producers organisation, which lands all its fish in the Netherlands or in Peterhead, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan.
Peter Aldous
Is there not a concern in that situation that those fish might just all be landed by the Lowestoft PO in Peterhead?
Luke Pollard
I thank the hon. Gentleman. Actually, the next line of my speech says, “On the other side of the House my partner in crime, the hon. Member for Waveney said”. I think we are spending far too much time together.
In respect of what the hon. Gentleman has said now and on Second Reading, the economic link policy is important. Fishers want it to be included in the Bill. It needs to be conducted and implemented in conjunction with other policies around building port capacity and supporting smaller ports in particular. We know that the EMFF has been instrumental in driving and refreshing port capacity, such as fuel and ice plants. They are not particularly sexy topics, but they are vital to ensuring that our fishing works. We also know that many of the fish landed at smaller ports might be physically taken off the boat in a smaller port, but they are officially landed when they get to a larger port, where they can go into auctions. That is the case in much of the far south-west, for instance, where fish landed right across the peninsula are taken by truck to Plymouth. The majority of the fish landed in Plymouth are landed by truck rather than by boat. I think the policy that we are discussing needs to be viewed in conjunction with that. None the less, the economic link is a strong one. Indeed, the next line in my notes, under the hon. Gentleman’s speech, is “I could not agree with him more” on some of those things.
Importantly, our amendment has the support of the industry as well. Fishers want the creation of a strong economic link, because of the injustice of seeing fish caught under UK quota by foreign boats—caught, in some cases, within sight of our shores and then exported to foreign countries, where the jobs and the benefits of that economic activity are held by other people, rather than the people in the UK. That is a source of injustice and annoyance for many people across our fishing communities, and that is something that they are hoping the measure will reflect. Indeed, in one of the evidence sessions, we heard from Aaron Brown of Fishing for Leave that he backed this amendment.
I think that this is an aspect of the Bill that the Department overlooked in preparing the text, so I would like to make a sincere offer to the Minister. If he commits to working with the Opposition and the industry to craft a national landing requirement as an amendment to the Bill that he can table on Report, I will not feel it necessary to press this amendment to a vote and have the Minister vote against this most sensible principle. I think we have a real opportunity to create a provision that includes an economic link in the text of the Bill and that hon. Members on both sides of the House will be able to support when it comes to the Bill’s transition.
Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I rise to speak briefly in support of the amendment and new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport. In doing so, I am also reflecting the views of the Welsh Government, who are very supportive of this idea. Complementing the remarks made by hon. Members from the Scottish National party, I think it could be reflected in the way in which subsequent legislation and regulations about both quotas and landing requirements might be applied in Wales and in Scotland.
Milford Haven, which my hon. Friend mentioned, is a classic example of an area of Britain where there was once a thriving fishing industry but there is now significant poverty and absolutely no fishing industry. I do not believe that any boats go out of Milford Haven now, and the only boats operating there with any significance are foreign-owned. There was once a processing industry in the area, not just in Milford Haven but in Pembroke Dock, Aberaeron, Aberporth and, indeed, lots of the villages along Cardigan bay—traditionally one of the richest fisheries off the UK. Small-scale and artisanal in many respects, it has completely disappeared.
If there is any opportunity to effect a renaissance of processing through the landing requirement, the changes to quota and that overall sense of an economic connection in the Bill and at the heart of future legislation, it would be remiss of us not to try to bring that about. I think that this is a very sensible suggestion from the Labour Front Bench and I hope that the Minister will reflect on how important it, or perhaps a similar measure, could be to bringing about a renaissance in the processing industry and in the towns that might thereby survive.
The Chair
My brain has gone completely blank. The hon. Gentleman on the Opposition Front Bench—[Interruption.] It is Mr Sweeney.
The Chair
I apologise, Mr Sweeney. It was one of those moments when I had not realised that you were going to stand.
Mr Sweeney
Thank you for calling me, Mr Gray. I rise in support of my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport and this very well thought through amendment, because it ties in exactly with the coherent position that Labour has had on industrial strategy, which is about maximising the prosperity agenda for the United Kingdom.
We look at vertical integration of the industry. We have to look at the source of fishing, at sea, but also at how the supply chain operates and maximising the industrial benefit for the United Kingdom. That is not simply about the fish processing side; it aims at rejuvenating the whole UK port infrastructure, including boat and ship repair, and shipbuilding, and the associated industries that would benefit from having a tie to particular ports. Smaller ports such as those on the west coast of Scotland have suffered decline, and we can see an opportunity, through the tying of catches to UK ports, to create demand in those ports, generating new activity and industrial growth. That would be a huge benefit for the highlands and islands particularly. They have had significant economic challenges because of their isolation. That needs a focused effort.
Alan Brown
Can the hon. Gentleman explain how the amendment and new clause would rejuvenate ports in the highlands and islands? I do not see the direct link. The point was made earlier that additional landings coming to the UK might still just go through existing big ports.
Mr Sweeney
They would create a framework within which those opportunities could be generated by devolved Administrations. The Scottish Government could augment that. The amendment and new clause would create a fundamental framework that would drive demand into UK ports. That is the opportunity, which would be an important baseline measure in the Bill, and could be developed. We had an interesting debate yesterday on the centenary of the Iolaire disaster, and one of the conclusions was that highland and island communities suffer significant isolation, and that it is important that their distinctive economic and social needs should be met by Parliament. The amendment and new clause would benefit them a great deal.
Mr Carmichael
I have sympathy with the amendment, but I want to add a few words of caution. In my time in Parliament, I have often supported campaigns to land more fish in our own ports. Obviously it is important for the economic viability of coastal ports. My worry about the amendment is that the law of unintended consequences could come into play. Such a requirement would be quite challenging for some of the larger pelagic boats in my constituency. I anticipate that a significant proportion of their catch would probably currently be landed in Norway or Denmark. Essentially, my instinct is that fishing boats should be able to land wherever they get the best price for their fish. If the Government were to put into a Bill something that would limit that ability, it would be a bit of a blunt tool.
David Duguid (Banff and Buchan) (Con)
As the right hon. Gentleman and the Minister know, many of the concerns that the right hon. Gentleman raises would be shared by pelagic fishermen in my constituency as well. Clearly, they can, and choose to, land in Norway, Denmark and other places for economic and logistical reasons. Does he agree that if the Government or the Scottish Government or other devolved Administrations want to encourage the development of local industries, so that such economic and logistical benefits can be realised locally, that would be better than setting an arbitrary percentage limit?
Mr Carmichael
Yes. In essence I agree with the hon. Gentleman about that. When I practised law in his constituency, Macduff was omitted from the list of designated ports. That was virtually the end of—or it was at the time a real threat to—the processing that was done there. When we want to consider building infrastructure—not just landing infrastructure, but ice houses, processing plants and the rest—there are probably other ways we should go first, before doing something as blunt as what is proposed. In relation to this Bill, the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations is strongly advocating that we set up advisory councils for fisheries administration, for example. It seems to me that this is exactly the sort of decision that those advisory councils should be tackling, because the fishing industry itself knows best how to deal with that infrastructure.
George Eustice
I will explain some of the background to the existing economic link, because my contention is that the amendment is both unnecessary and potentially unhelpful in that it could frustrate or limit our ambitions to improve that link. A landing requirement is already included on all UK fishing vessel licences as part of our existing economic link condition. Paragraph 1 of schedule 2 to the Bill already includes powers to attach licence conditions requiring the landing of a catch into the UK.
Hon. Members should understand the background. The genesis of the current economic link was an important test case, called the Factortame case, which gained notoriety because, rather shamefully, the European Court effectively held that European law was indeed supreme over laws made by this Parliament. It was a controversial judgment, because it was the first time that people started to realise that membership of the European Union was highly detrimental to our sovereignty. It was only through another notorious case a decade later, the “Metric Martyrs” case, that the judgment of our Supreme Court—I think it was the House of Lords in those days—held that if Parliament explicitly revoked the European Communities Act 1972 or explicitly set aside elements of EU law, Parliament’s supremacy could be restored. Thankfully, we have all voted to trigger the article 50 process, and the EU (Withdrawal) Act 2018 has now passed Parliament and revokes the European Communities Act. That is the background.
After we lost the Factortame case, the Commission held that the UK should benefit from UK quota, so in 1999 we introduced the economic link condition. The current condition, which is attached as a condition on all vessels, says that they must land at least 50% of their catch of quota stocks into UK ports, have at least 50% of their crew normally resident in the UK, spend at least 50% of operating expenditure in UK coastal areas or, finally, demonstrate other real economic links such as contributing some of their quota to the inshore pool. Thus, we already have a comprehensive set of economic links.
We intend to review the economic link to see whether it can be strengthened. Perhaps on certain species it would be appropriate to attach a condition that says the proportion should be higher than 50%—perhaps considerably higher. Earlier this summer I visited the Faroes, and the Faroese Fisheries Minister told me that he had a proposal that said all Faroese vessels must land 80% of their catch into the Faroes. The Faroese Parliament, in its wisdom, decided to move that to 100% of the catch. The difficulty, he explained to me, is that the Faroes now has a problem: its fishermen are sometimes effectively held to ransom by a small number of processors on the Faroes, because they are required by law to land all their fish in the Faroes, which means Faroese fishermen do not always get the price they should get.
That links to a very important point that we heard in evidence from Bertie Armstrong from the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation, also made eloquently by the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland: we want to be able to retain the ability for fishermen to land their fish in the place where they will get the highest price. If there are too many onerous restrictions on landing, on some species fishermen may be put in a position where they can be held to ransom and end up being price takers rather getting a fair price for their catch. I am sure that is not what the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport intends.
I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that the economic link already exists and provides for all the things he seeks to achieve in the amendment, and more besides. We should review and strengthen the economic link as we leave the European Union. We want to do that in collaboration with other parts of the UK; we want to talk to the Scottish in particular, who have strong views, so we can have an agreement for a UK economic link. We need some dialogue with the devolved Administrations, but we must recognise that we should be cautious on some species, since we do not want to put our fisherman at a disadvantage and force them to take lower prices than they could otherwise receive.
I hope, on that basis, the hon. Gentleman will withdraw the amendment. We would be more than happy to share with him some of our thinking about how we could improve and refine the economic link in time for Report.
Luke Pollard
I am grateful for hon. Members’ contributions. It might be helpful to direct the Committee’s attention to new clause 13, especially subsections (2) and (3). It talks about the ability of the Secretary of State to say that some species might not necessarily need to hit 50%, and if so to publish the reasons why. That would address the concerns the Minister raised. The example of the Faroes provides the reason the requirement is not 100%, but at least 50%, with the ability to vary it, should be required.
That is an important consideration because, at the moment, the fishing community does not believe the economic link works in the way the Minister tried to reassure us of. There is a strong sense that, actually, fish caught under UK quotas are not being landed in UK ports and we are not receiving the benefits. That is certainly a sentiment on every quayside, be it in Devon and Cornwall in the west country, through the east coast and up to Scotland.
George Eustice
Does the hon. Gentleman not accept, though, that in 1999 the Labour Government introduced the current economic link, which required 50% of quota stocks to be landed in a perfectly sensible way for 20 years? Given that attaching a condition to a vessel licence has worked for 20 years, why do we need to change that?
Luke Pollard
I simply do not think it is working—it is not carrying the confidence of the industry. Part of the amendment is about being clear to the industry what kind of objectives we want in a revised fishing portfolio. The contributions on Second Reading and the feedback on the White Paper from fishers show that a strengthened economic link is an important part of that.
It is important that we talk about why a strengthened economic link is so important. As the hon. Member for Glasgow North East mentioned, it provides the additional trades and jobs that come from that. The industry’s confidence in that economic link is not there. I invite the Minister to spend more time on the fish quays speaking to fishers about the economic link, because that is not the view that has been expressed to me and my colleagues.
I am slightly disappointed that the Minister did not take up the genuine offer I made to work to find a better form of words. There is a real sense that this provision should be better than it is at the moment. I would be very happy to see if, on Report, we can strengthen that economic link in the schedule. At the moment, 50% is required. The Minister seeks not to allow any changes in our quota allocation after we depart the EU unless they are better than we currently have—we will come to that. The same principle of getting a better deal than we have at the moment should apply to the economic link. If the Minister wants to work with us to improve schedule 2 to include “at least 50%”, I will be happy to work with him. As he is looking at me blankly, I suspect he has not been given permission to do so. I will therefore press the amendment to a vote.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Luke Pollard
I beg to move amendment 66, in schedule 2, page 31, line 24, at end insert—
‘(6) Conditions attached to any sea fishing licence must include a prohibition on the use of any form of electric pulse beam trawl fishing.”
This amendment would require sea fishing licences to prohibit electric pulse beam trawl fishing.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 92, in clause 14, page 8, line 21, after “11(5)” insert
“or section (Ban on electric pulse fishing)”
New clause 9—Ban on electric pulse fishing—
“A person commits an offence if they use, in order to catch fish, any form of electric pulse fishing technology on towed or otherwise mobile equipment within British fishery limits.”
Luke Pollard
The amendment relates to creating a licence restriction that prohibits any form of electric pulse beam trawling in UK waters. We have heard in previous debates about that form of fishing and we have an opportunity in this Bill to set a clear direction that we do not accept it. It needs to appear in the Bill rather than as a commitment so that we send a clear message to our EU friends and anyone thinking about that type of fishing that it is not something the UK Parliament will accept.
The amendment aims to prohibit a form of fishing currently taking place in UK waters that is known to cause excess harm to our marine life and could have widespread negative effects that have yet to be adequately researched. Members will likely be aware that electric pulse beam fishing uses electrodes attached to nets to send electrical signals to the surface of the seabed, driving some fish into the nets. Although fishing with electricity has been banned in the EU since 1998, in 2007 an exception was made for electric pulse beam fishing, ostensibly to allow some boats to test the impact on fish stocks and the ocean ecosystem. It is currently centred on the Dutch fleet. According to some of the latest figures, 84 Dutch vessels use that method, but as we heard on Second Reading from my partner in crime, the hon. Member for Waveney, that is now up to nearly 100 vessels. We need to act now on this form of fishing, before it becomes more widespread and is seen as irreversible and as a standard for fishing to adopt. The Government have a choice with this amendment. I hope they will side with the environment and small-scale fishermen against that type of fishing and not with those who promote that untested and expensive new technology.
The Marine Conservation Society’s head of fisheries and aquaculture has made it clear that such a form of fishing cannot currently be permitted on a large scale if we are serious about protecting marine life. He said:
“There remain large gaps in understanding on impacts to other species and processes, especially after long-term exposure. The method is also known to break the vertebrae of large cod and it’s unclear if similar damage could be inflicted on other large animals.”
I invite the Committee to think for a moment about what it means to break the vertebrae of large cod in a marine environment and the physical force needed to break the vertebrae of large cod if it were due to electrical impacts. It is clearly a form of fishing that causes distress and harm. There are particular concerns about the magnitude of the fishing currently using this method. The MCS added:
“We’re not talking about a minor modification to net configuration—we’re talking about the industrial scale use of electricity on the seabed.”
It is not a test-bed fishery. It is now a de facto commercial fishery and we need to be aware of it.
Bill Grant
I have two concerns about a blanket ban. I sense that there is a degree of evidence, but we need to be absolutely certain about that evidence and the damage that the method is alleged to be doing before we comprehensively ban it. My other concern is whether there is a risk it might dilute the authority rightly placed with the devolved Governments. The Scottish Government are trialling electric pulse fishing in the Firth of Clyde. There have been some land-based objections, strangely enough, but do we risk taking away the powers that are rightly devolved to the various Administrations if we put a blanket ban on it?
Luke Pollard
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I think there is a clear understanding in fishing communities that we should not be encouraging electric pulse beam trawling. There is a big distinction between a sensible trial that seeks to get scientific data and what we have now in UK waters, especially off the east coast of England, where we have a de facto commercial fishery, fishing at scale using this method and potentially causing huge environmental damage. I take his point about science and evidence, but that commercial fishery has existed for more than a decade.
Luke Pollard
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. I would personally go further, but he makes a very good case for a precautionary ban, as has been imposed by a number of other countries. It is worth bearing in mind that the EU has already banned electric pulse beam trawling, but has allowed the trial. In setting a new framework for fishing after we leave the European Union, certain types of fishing gear and methodologies should be outlawed. We should make the case that we will not accept certain things in our waters, electric pulse beam fishing being one of them.
The stated objective of my party in relation to the Bill is to ensure that UK fishing has the most sustainable fisheries in the world. That means not only having the rules in place, and the enforcement, incentives and backing of the industry, but making clear statements that set the tone and approach for sustainable fishing. I want the message from the Committee to be that we stand united in banning electric pulse beam trawling because of its environmental impacts, and we support the fishing communities that want it to be banned. I ask the Minister to agree with that, to ensure that there is no division here between the Government and Opposition parties.
Electric pulse fishing is extremely lucrative. One study financed by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs found that Dutch fishermen using standard beam trawlers broke even in 2014, while their electrically powered competitors earned a whopping €17 million. That is a huge difference, and it is a very powerful interest to go up against, but conservation means nothing if we are unwilling to go against well-financed groups intent on exploiting our natural environment and causing severe damage to our marine environment. I hope that all Members will take that concern on board, and support the amendment.
Peter Aldous
It is a pleasure to serve again under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I will speak to amendment 92 and new clause 9 in my name, which relate to electric pulse fishing.
As we heard from the Opposition spokesman, pulse fishing is the process by which commercial trawlers, towing electrodes, emit bursts of electricity into the seabed to force out fish such as flatfish, shrimp, sole and plaice buried in the mud. The electric shock makes the fish convulse and flip upwards into the trawler’s net. The method is not used by British-owned vessels; it is practised largely by the Dutch in the North sea, often in British waters. They argue that pulse fishing is better for the environment than traditional trawling and, as we have heard, they have issued permits for up to 100 pulse trawlers to operate. They point out that pulse trawlers use up to 46% less fuel and catch 50% less unwanted marine life than other trawlers.
However, the practice is strongly opposed by English and French fishermen, who have seen its devastating impact at first hand. Moreover, there is a lack of scientific evidence to justify it generally, although the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science is carrying out extensive ongoing research. The feedback I receive from East Anglian fishermen is that pulse trawling has a devastating effect on the marine environment. They find dead fish left behind with broken backs. The practice rips up life on the seabed surface and uses large scouring devices to extract buried fish, damaging underlying sediment. The practice is indiscriminate and is destroying a variety of marine life and ecosystems, particularly in the North sea.
As we have heard, pulse fishing is technically illegal in the EU, the US and China. However, an exemption allows EU countries to catch up to 5% of their annual fishing quota in the North sea using what are termed “innovative” methods in the name of research. For some reason, pulse fishing is one of those methods. In January, the European Parliament voted to ban commercial fishing using an electric current in EU waters. The amendment calling for a total ban on pulse fishing was passed by 402 votes to 232, with 40 abstentions, although the ban has not yet come into place.
I summarise my thoughts as follows. First, in pursuing the precautionary approach, given the clear evidence of its devastating impact, pulsing should not take place at all. The Dutch argue that they are conducting a trial. In practice, it is no such thing. They have set up a whole industry based on a completely inappropriate fishing practice. They have exploited a loophole in the common fisheries policy and EU regulations for their own commercial advantage. There must be no such loopholes in our UK fishing policy, for which the Bill will provide the framework.
Secondly, pulse fishing has a devastating impact both at sea and on land. It destroys the marine environment and takes fish that should be caught and landed by UK fishermen and processed in Britain back to the Netherlands, and then, absurdly, often back to the UK for sale.
Thirdly, although the practice still takes place, it has been condemned and voted down by the European Parliament. The UK Parliament should do likewise. In some respects, I accept that primary legislation such as this Bill may well not be the right place for such a ban on a specific practice. However, we need to send a clear message right from the outset that there is no place for electro-pulse fishing in the future management of UK waters when we leave the EU and when the Bill, which I assume will receive Royal Assent, comes into effect. The Minister and I have spoken at length on this matter over the last few months. I am grateful to him for doing that. In answering, can he provide me with an assurance that electro-pulse fishing stops immediately that we leave the EU and the Bill comes into force? If he cannot, I believe the ban needs to be on the face of the Bill.
Mr Carmichael
I think it is fairly well known in the House that I am essentially a simple soul. I lead my life according to some basic rules, from which I do not depart. One of them is to never mix water and electricity. No good ever comes of it. This amendment touches on one other example of that basic truth, from which we should not depart. It is quite remarkable that occasionally the industry manages to throw up new, innovative ways of doing things that are self-evidently wrong.
When I was first elected to this House, one of the biggest complaints from the industry at that time was the operation of the Danish industrial fishery in the North sea hoovering up just about anything that was in the water, with mesh sizes in the region of 2 mm or 3 mm. It was as unsustainable a fishing method as one could imagine, and it was rightly stopped—eventually. This is another such example. It is self-evident that this sort of thing should not be allowed. The precautionary principle, about which the hon. Member for Waveney spoke, is absolutely the right approach to take. Whether that needs to done through primary legislation is another matter, but we have primary legislation. This is the first time in my 17 and a half years as a Member of Parliament that we have had a specific fishing Bill. Since we have it, why do we not use it?
George Eustice
This is an important issue, which I have discussed many times with my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney. I want to explain the arguments that advocates of pulse trawling put forward, the arguments against it, and my position and the one we have therefore adopted within the EU at the moment, as well as how I tend to address this issue. I think I have a solution that may be even faster than the passage of the Bill.
The advocates of pulse trawling make a reasonable argument that conventional beam trawling literally drags a chain across the seabed, destroying and crushing everything in its path, to get flat fish to jump up into the nets, whereas a pulse beam trawler does not drag a chain across the floor of the seabed, but hovers above the seabed and sends the electric pulse down. There is evidence that this type of fishing uses less fuel, so the carbon footprint of fishing vessels using this method is lower.
However, the opponents—I am one—point to a number of other problems. First—this is why fishermen in my hon. Friend’s constituency are so concerned—although pulse trawling does not disturb the seabed to the same extent as conventional beam trawling, it makes it possible to fish areas that could not otherwise be fished. Paradoxically, the ability to fish parts of the ocean where conventional gear types could not have gone means that areas of the seabed that might have been seen as a sanctuary for some flat fish, because it was technically not possible to fish them, can now be fished. That increases fishing pressure, because there are more vessels able to catch more fish in more areas, more quickly.
Secondly, as my hon. Friend pointed out, there are lots of anecdotal reports of gadoids, in particular cod, having their backs broken by this technique. There is evidence from some of the tank studies that it can affect the navigation of some fish. The electric pulse can disturb their navigation and affect their ability to feed and migrate. The third problem is that we do not really know what impact the electric pulse might be having on smaller organisms—young fry, small lobsters, eggs and other types of early-developing sea life. We do not know the full impact of that, and there are concerns that it could be having a detrimental effect, breaking the food chain and therefore causing other problems.
Peter Aldous
I am grateful to the Minister for looking into that, and for the work he has done and the solution he outlines. I must say that, at face value, it appears to address my concerns and I believe the shadow Minister’s concerns also, although he will give his views in a moment. On that basis, I am prepared not to press my amendment or new clause to a vote, but I put the Minister on notice that, if his solution has not happened by the time we get to Report, I will take the matter up again. I am grateful to him for taking this seriously, because off the East Anglian coast people are absolutely livid about it. It is creating havoc and it must be addressed. I have met the Dutch Government, who were very pleasant, but it is clear that they will carry on until they are told to stop, and we must tell them to stop as soon as possible.
Luke Pollard
I am grateful to the Minister, who, as has just been mentioned, has clearly put a lot of thought and effort into looking at how this practice can be banned. If the statutory instrument is indeed laid in January before Report, that gives us an opportunity to consider all the detail. However, if that is insufficient, the amendment will be coming back on Report. The Minister specifically spoke about foreign boats in relation to this matter, but according to Marine Management Organisation figures there are 11 boats in the UK that were initially equipped with electric pulse beam trawling equipment, and three of them are still equipped with it. Can he confirm whether the SI that he mentioned would include UK boats as well?
George Eustice
There are currently six UK-registered vessels that are licensed to use the derogation. Only three currently do. I think they are Scottish vessels, and the Scottish Government have their own particular view on this, but only three UK vessels use it. If we were serious about doing a genuine scientific experiment to explore this further, doing so with three vessels would make sense. If we then wanted a total prohibition with no scientific exemption at all, we have plenty of powers in the Bill, once it is passed, to do precisely that. I believe the overwhelming pressure here is coming from those 84 Dutch vessels, and if we can deal with that, we will have solved the problem.
Luke Pollard
I am grateful for that answer. On the basis of the Minister’s commitment to lay the SI in January and to ensure that it is sufficiently robust to address the concerns that both the hon. Member for Waveney and the Opposition have suggested, I am happy to withdraw the amendment. However, I give notice that it will be coming back if the SI is not sufficiently robust to address those concerns. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Peter Aldous
I beg to move amendment 22, in schedule 2, page 31, line 24, at end insert—
“1A The Marine Management Organisation must, within one week of a sea fishing licence being issued in respect of a foreign fishing boat, publish—
(a) any conditions attached to that licence, and
(b) the estimated monetary value of that licence.”
There is concern that there are no provisions in the Bill that foreign vessels must comply with the same standards as UK vessels. Access by foreign vessels to UK waters should be contingent on compliance with the same environmental standards that are applicable to UK vessels, to ensure a level playing field and a high level of environmental protection. I raised this concern on Tuesday when speaking to amendments 21 and 83 and new clause 8. That said, I would welcome the Minister’s reassurance that this is not what I would describe as the Bill’s Achilles’ heel.
Luke Pollard
Again, the hon. Member for Waveney has raised a good point about an issue on which we need greater transparency, to continue the theme we touched on with amendment 33. On that basis, the Opposition concurs with him.
George Eustice
I will take this opportunity to explain how the current licensing system works. I think I can reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney that what he seeks to achieve is already in the public domain and published on the MMO website.
The UK has three different types of licence: categories A, B and C. In most cases, a category A licence is used, which is issued to both under-10 metre and over-10 metre vessels and allows them to fish for specific quota and non-quota species. Licences for certain other species, such as shellfish or deep-sea stocks, are granted in addition to, rather than instead of, that category A licence. Conditions attached to the licence set out the specific requirements to which the vessels must adhere, such as the economic link requirement and reporting obligations. Conditions related to different fisheries indicate the species that can be fished and the area where they can be fished.
The licences and conditions are already published, on the MMO website. When foreign vessel licences and associated conditions have been agreed, they will be published on the Government’s website and so will be accessible to the public, as they are now through the MMO website. The MMO already publishes on its website the conditions it places on English licence holders.
Our intention is for foreign licences to be time-limited and definitely not tradeable—another issue that my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney was concerned about—so there is no prospect of a foreign vessel licence accruing a monetary value. The other matters on which he sought assurance are already published by the MMO.
Peter Aldous
I am grateful to the Minister for his response and for clarifying the matter. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Luke Pollard
I beg to move amendment 75, in schedule 2, page 34, line 19, leave out “negative” and insert “affirmative”.
The observant in Committee will have noticed that this amendment is similar to amendments 23, 70, 71, 76 and 77, but we have not yet reached those. Members will not have to endure this speech six times; they need not worry—I have six separate speeches.
The amendment might seem rather esoteric and, I dare say, boring, techy or legalistic, but it is an important part of how much transparency the new fisheries regime after we leave the EU will have, and how much scrutiny will be given. We have previously tested this important issue with the Minister, on the Agriculture Bill. The negative procedure is provided for in several places throughout this Bill. The Labour party was concerned about that during the passage of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, and we have not stopped worrying about where it sits in this Bill. Curiously, there are far fewer instances of the negative procedure in this Bill than in the Agriculture Bill. That is welcome.
The Bill also has a higher proportion of duties than powers. The opposite was the case in the Agriculture Bill, so some of our scrutiny of and pressure on the Minister has had some effect. The House of Lords Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee reports on both Bills helpfully drew attention to how they had been drafted differently, even though they were produced by the same Department and are the responsibility of the same Minister—he is a lucky gentleman to be covering so many important issues. That is curious, to say the least, and perhaps points to the enormous pressure that the Government’s approach to Brexit places on officials and Ministers.
I acknowledge that the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee report on the Bill was very kind to Ministers. It stated that of the 15 delegated powers in the Bill, “only four” were governed by the negative procedure and, according to the Committee, “justifiably so”. We seem to have identified two more instances than that Committee did, and we do not necessarily agree that all six are justifiable—hence our six amendments for a move to the affirmative procedure instead.
We believe that enhanced scrutiny is an important part of the process, so it should not simply go through on the nod. The amendment is concerned with regulations that might impose charges, so it is particularly important to consider the level of scrutiny. I would be grateful if the Minister would address those points.
George Eustice
As the hon. Gentleman has highlighted, the Government believe that in this Bill we have struck the right balance between the need for parliamentary scrutiny and the need to be able to react quickly. As he pointed out, although the Lords Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee was rather critical of the number of negative resolution powers the Government sought in the Agriculture Bill, it gave us a glowing report with respect to the Fisheries Bill. It said:
“Of the Bill’s 15 delegated powers that have a parliamentary procedure, only four are solely governed by the negative procedure, and justifiably so”,
so our approach to those powers has that Committee’s support.
Luke Pollard
I am grateful to the Minister for those clarifications. In the time he took to respond, I managed to chop up my speech into seven small component parts, so we can revisit those points later. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
The Chair
My instinct is that we have had sufficient debate on schedule 2.
Schedule 2 agreed to.
Clause 14
Penalties for offences
Peter Aldous
I beg to move amendment 93, in clause 14, page 8, line 21, after “11(5)” insert
“or section (Ban on sandeel fishing)”.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss
New clause 10—Ban on sandeel fishing—
“A person commits an offence if they fish with the intent of catching any species in the genus Ammodytes.”
Peter Aldous
The amendment and new clause relate to sand eel fishing. The amendment raises similar issues to those we have debated on electric pulse fishing. I will not press the amendment or the new clause to a Division, but I raise the matter in order to highlight the importance of pursuing an ecosystem-based approach to future management of fishery stocks. I am particularly grateful to the RSPB, the Angling Trust and Fishing for Leave for their guidance and advice.
The sand eel, which is a small, energy-rich shoaling fish, is a key prey species for many seabirds, underpinning the breeding success of terns, kittiwakes and puffins. Sand eels are also eaten in large numbers by harbour porpoises, other sea mammals and commercially important table fish, such as cod, whiting and mackerel. As such, the sand eel plays a pivotal role in the food web between the primary productivity of plankton and the top predators.
Diminishing abundance of sand eels, however, in combination with other pressures in the marine environment, has driven a major decline in the UK’s seabird population. In Scotland, 12 indicator seabird species were 50% less numerous in 2015 than they were in 1986. To address that impact, in 2000 the EU created a closed area of 20,000 sq km extending offshore from the coast of north-east Scotland to Northumberland. It is a box that keeps the Danish sand eel fishing fleet, which has almost all the EU sand eel quota, away from sensitive seabed colonies. This industrial seabed fishery continues elsewhere in the North sea, mainly on the Dogger Bank, of which the UK part is a key focal area for the fleet. RSPB research indicates that the Dogger Bank fishery could have a detrimental impact on kittiwake productivity on the adjacent Yorkshire coast.
Related to that, the sand eel stock assessment model used by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea to set EU catch limits does not address the needs of seabirds, cetaceans or other marine wildlife when setting levels of commercial exploitation of sand eels, such that insufficient sand eel is set aside for the wider ecosystem. In failing to cater adequately for the needs of seabirds and other marine wildlife, the management of the fishery at present falls short of meeting an ecosystem-based approach.
To improve the situation, the RSPB suggests three alternatives, the first of which is stopping sand eel fishing in UK waters. The UK could champion that approach as an exemplar in pursuing an eco-based system. That is already done off the US coast. There would be very limited financial cost to UK commercial fishing, though there is the risk of reciprocal denial by Denmark of UK fishing opportunities in Danish waters for white fish. I am also mindful of advice provided by the Angling Trust that there are five species of sand eel in UK waters, all with the genus Ammodytes. The only one that has generated widespread concern is the industrial fishery for Ammodytes marinus in the North sea.
The other four species are subject to very small levels of fishing mortality. Ammodytes tobianus is the species targeted for bait—both commercial and recreational—and it is estimated that the combined landings of both anglers and fishermen who catch their own and commercial catches are no more than 50 tonnes a year across the whole UK. The Angling Trust is concerned that the provisions would prevent anglers from fishing for tobianus to use as bait, as well as having a hugely negative impact on businesses in the angling bait market, such as the market leader, Ammodytes, a Cornwall-based company that catches and processes Ammodytes tobianus for the bait and aquarium markets.
The second option is to make the total allowable catch of sand eel more precautionary by reducing fishing mortality, leaving at least one third of the stock for the provisioning needs of seabirds, cetaceans and other marine wildlife. The third and final alternative is to extend the existing sand eel closed area south to Yorkshire and the Humber, to cover the Dogger Bank area.
I am conscious that I have probably delayed Committee members’ lunch, but I believe that how we manage sand eel fishing provides an extremely relevant case study as to how future UK fisheries can be managed in a sustainable and environmentally sensitive way, adopting an eco-based approach. I would welcome the Minister’s view of how he sees the system operating in practice according to the Bill’s provisions.
Luke Pollard
Following the hon. Gentleman’s speech, we are all now aware of the humble sand eel, which is an important component of food webs in the north Atlantic. It is at the bottom of the marine food chain and is part of the diet of cod, mackerel, porpoises and seabirds such as Arctic terns and kittiwakes, especially in breeding season.
We also need to be aware of research led by the British Trust for Ornithology and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee that indicates that populations of kittiwakes, terns, fulmars and shags are impacted by sand eel farming in the North sea. Those conservationists are concerned that the boats that catch thousands of tonnes of sand eels each year to be turned into animal feed and fertiliser deprive seabirds of a vital source of food.
We have heard calls for a ban on sand eel fishing in the central North sea, most recently from the Fishing for Leave representative in our evidence session, but we would like more evidence about the practice. I would be grateful if the Minister dealt with how we can pick up the points raised by the hon. Member for Waveney but also ensure there is sufficient scientific evidence and understanding of the stock baseline for sand eels, which seem at the moment to be missing from the debate.
Mr Carmichael
Anyone seeking evidence of the issue the hon. Member for Waveney raised is more than welcome to come and visit us in Orkney or Shetland and look at the cliffs. Cliffs that were once white with seabirds and other things—evidence of seabirds—are often empty at times of the year when they should be full. That causes enormous concern in our community. It is a good example of the way an ecosystem-based approach can bring benefits to the community beyond the fishing industry. Nature tourism is one of the liveliest and most rapidly growing sectors in our local economy, and it is a welcome boost. The sand eel fishery self-evidently has been a foolish enterprise for many years, and I very much endorse the hon. Gentleman’s comments and his efforts to end it.
George Eustice
My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney, having got important concessions on the Dutch fleet, turns his attention to taking on the Danes. As he knows, sand eels are a shared stock, but about 90% of the sand eels caught in the UK’s exclusive economic zone are caught by the Danish fleet around Dogger Bank, although Sweden also has some interest in this area.
We are giving consideration to the issue, but, as my hon. Friend acknowledges, access to the sand eel stock is the most important access that Denmark receives from the UK, so we will have to consider it in the context of our annual fisheries exchanges. There is a full data assessment for the stock, and ICES provides annual recommendations for a TAC on sand eels in the Dogger Bank area. In recent years, with the exception only of 2016, the TAC has been set in line with ICES recommendations.
The issue with a unilateral ban on the fishing of all sand eels in all UK waters is that we would be likely simply to displace that fishing activity, so there would be unsustainable catches of sand eels in waters outside the UK EEZ. However, my hon. Friend highlighted a number of measures we could consider to address that. First, as he pointed out, the so-called Wee Bankie sand eel fishery has been closed since 2000. As we leave the EU, I certainly would like to explore whether we could consider a similar closure in a particular area to try to protect the sand eel population closer to shore, where birds are more likely to be, so they have a food source.
The second approach to which my hon. Friend alluded is to do something more akin to what we do in some shellfish sectors. We have a principle in cockle fisheries of reserving a proportion of cockles for wading birds so we do not deprive them of a food source. Local inshore fisheries and conservation authorities take into account the needs of wild birds when setting catch limits for cockles. Given the way ICES advice is generated, based as it is on maximum sustainable yield, it tends not to place great weight on such considerations, but there is no reason why, in the context of future UK-EU bilateral negotiations, we should not seek to argue that there should be more restraint on species such as sand eels where they have an important role as a food source for birds.
This is a complex area, and some scientists would say that it is not just sand eels that are used but other species, too. However, I am certainly happy to say that we will look at it, and I hope my hon. Friend does not feel the need to press the amendment to a vote.
Peter Aldous
I am grateful to the Minister for that explanation and for the reassurance he provided. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 14 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Iain Stewart.)
Fisheries Bill (Eighth sitting)
(6 years ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 6 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 2 / Noes: 14 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 8 / Noes: 8 - The Chair: In accordance with precedent, given that there is equality of votes, I have to cast my vote with the Noes to leave the Bill unamended. I will have to explain that one to my constituents.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 7 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 8 / Noes: 7 - Question accordingly agreed to.
The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (George Eustice)
I can be relatively brief. The clause sets out the circumstances in which the officer of a body corporate, as well as the body corporate, may be found guilty of committing a relevant offence. These offences mirror those in section 12 of the Sea Fish (Conservation) Act 1967 and apply to all parts of the UK.
Clause 15(1) provides that an officer of a body corporate, as well as a body corporate, may be guilty of an offence where it is proved that the officer connived or consented to the offence or that the offence was attributable to the neglect of the officer. Subsection (3) provides for members of a body corporate to be treated as if they were directors, who fall under the definition of �officer�. That means that subsection (1) applies in relation to their acts and omissions in connection with their management of the body corporate. Subsection (4) is similar to subsection (1), but applies to a partner or person purporting to be a partner in a Scottish partnership.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 15 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 16
Jurisdiction of court to try offences
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
George Eustice
I can be even briefer on this clause, which simply provides that offences may be treated as having been committed in any place in the United Kingdom. That ensures that a prosecution could be brought in the appropriate UK court.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 16 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 17
Consequential amendments
George Eustice
I beg to move amendment 4, in clause�17,�page�9,�line�36,�leave out from �contains� to end of line 36 and insert�
�() in Part 1, consequential amendments relating to the provision made by sections 7 and 8;
() in Part 2�
(i) minor amendments relating to the licensing of fishing boats, and
(ii) consequential amendments relating to the provision made by sections 9 to16;
() in Part 3, transitional provision relating to the provision made by sections 9 to16.�
This amendment would ensure that Clause 17 accurately describes the contents of Schedule 3, if the proposed Government amendments to that Schedule are made.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Clause stand part.
Government amendments 7 to 9.
That schedule 3 be the Third schedule to the Bill.
George Eustice
Government amendment 4 is simply a technical amendment to ensure that clause 17 accurately describes the contents of schedule 3, which makes consequential amendments to existing legislation. The relevant legislation is the Sea Fish Industry Act 1962, the Sea Fisheries Act 1968, the Fishery Limits Act 1976, designation orders made under that Act, and the Sea Fish (Conservation) Act 1967 and orders made under that Act.
Amendment 4 agreed to.
Clause 17, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 3
Access and licensing: consequential amendments
Amendments made: 7, in schedule 3, page 39, line 15, leave out from �(interpretation),� to end of line and insert�
�( ) in subsection (1), at the appropriate place, insert�
�British fishing boat� means a fishing boat�
(a) which is registered in the United Kingdom under Part 2 of the Merchant Shipping Act 1995,
(b) which is British-owned, or
(c) which is registered under the law of Jersey, Guernsey or the Isle of Man;�;
( ) in that subsection, in the definition of �sea fish�, omit �4,�;
( ) after subsection (1) insert�
�(1A) In any order or regulations made under this Act �foreign fishing boat� means (unless the contrary intention appears) a fishing boat which is not a British fishing boat.��
This amendment would ensure that the expressions �British fishing boat� and �foreign fishing boat� bear the same meaning in the Sea Fish (Conservation) Act 1967, and subordinate legislation made under it, as they do the Bill.
Amendment 8, in schedule 3, page 39, line 19, at end insert�
�Fishery Limits Act 1976
5A In the Fishery Limits Act 1976, omit section 3 (which substitutes section 4 of the Sea Fish (Conservation) Act 1967).
Fisheries Act 1981
5B In the Fisheries Act 1981, omit section 20 (which amends section 4 of the Sea Fish (Conservation) Act 1967).
Sea Fish (Conservation) Act 1992
5C In the Sea Fish (Conservation) Act 1992, omit section 1 (which amends section 4 of the Sea Fish (Conservation) Act 1967).
Government of Wales Act 2006
5D (1) The Government of Wales Act 2006 is amended as follows.
(2) In Schedule 3A (functions of Ministers of Crown etc exercisable concurrently or jointly with Welsh Ministers)�
(a) in paragraph 1(2), in the table, in the entry for the Sea Fish (Conservation) Act 1967, in column 2�
(i) omit �(a) section 4 (licensing of fishing boats), and�;
(ii) for �sections 4 and� substitute �section�;
(b) in paragraph 2(2)(b), omit sub-paragraph (i);
(c) in paragraph 2(3), omit �4 or�.
Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009
5E (1) The Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 is amended as follows.
(2) In section 4 (licensing of fishing boats)�
(a) omit subsections (1) to (6);
(b) in subsection (7), for �that section� substitute �section 4 of the Sea Fish (Conservation) Act 1967 (licensing of fishing boats)�.
(3) In section 7 (regulations supplementary to sections 4 and 4A of the Sea Fish (Conservation) Act 1967), omit �4 or�.
(4) In section 196 (charging for commercial fishing licences), omit subsection (1).
(5) Omit section 197 (grant of licences subject to conditions imposed for environmental purposes).
(6) In section 284 (power to require production of certain equipment), in subsection (2)(a), for �section 4(6) or� substitute �paragraph 1 of Schedule 2 to the Fisheries Act 2019 or section.�
This amendment would insert additional amendments in connection with the repeal of section 4 of the Sea Fish (Conservation) Act 1967 and its re-enactment in the Bill.
Amendment 9, in schedule 3, page 39, line 32, at end insert�
�Sea Fishing (Licences and Notices) Regulations 1994
6A (1) The Sea Fishing (Licences and Notices) Regulations 1994 (S.I. 1994/2813) are amended as follows.
(2) In regulation 1 (citation, commencement and interpretation)�
(a) in the heading, after �commencement� insert �, application�;
(b) after paragraph (1) insert�
�(1A) These regulations apply in relation to�
(a) licences granted under section 10 of the Fisheries Act 2019 (licensing of British fishing boats) in respect of Welsh fishing boats;
(b) licences granted under section 12 of that Act (licensing of foreign fishing boats) by the Welsh Ministers; and
(c) licences granted under section 4A of the Sea Fish (Conservation) Act 1967 (licensing of vessels receiving trans-shipped fish)�
(i) in respect of Welsh fishing boats, or
(ii) by the Welsh Ministers in respect of foreign fishing boats.�;
(c) in paragraph (2), for the definition of �licence� substitute�
��licence� means a licence to which these regulations apply (see regulation 1(1A));�;
(d) in paragraph (2), in the definition of �nominee�, in paragraph (b), for �in a member State and having a place of business� substitute �, and having a place of business,�;
(e) in paragraph (2), for the definition of �sea fishing licence� substitute�
��sea fishing licence� means a licence to which these regulations apply by virtue of regulation 1(1A)(a) or (b);�;
(f) in paragraph (2), at the end insert�
��Welsh fishing boat� means a fishing boat�
(a) which is registered in the United Kingdom under Part 2 of the Merchant Shipping Act 1995, and
(b) whose entry in the register specifies a port in Wales as the port to which the boat is to be treated as belonging.�
(3) In regulation 2 (communication of licences and notices)�
(a) in paragraph (1), in the opening words, for �a nominee� substitute �an appropriate recipient�;
(b) in paragraph (1), for sub-paragraph (d) substitute�
(d) subject to paragraph (6), transmitting it to the appropriate recipient by means of an electronic communication to an address which the appropriate recipient has specified in accordance with sub-paragraph (b) of that paragraph.�;
(c) for paragraph (2) substitute�
�(2) A notice shall be effected by communicating it to an appropriate recipient�
(a) in any of the ways specified in paragraph (1);
(b) by publishing it on a website, the address of which is indicated on the licence to which the notice relates; or
(c) in accordance with paragraph (3).�;
(d) after that paragraph insert�
�(2A) In this regulation, �an appropriate recipient� means�
(a) in relation to a licence or notice relating to a Welsh fishing boat�
(i) the owner or charterer of the fishing boat, or
(ii) a nominee of that owner or charterer; and
(b) in relation to a licence or notice relating to any other fishing boat, the owner or charterer of the fishing boat.�;
(e) in paragraph (3), in the closing words, omit �granted by the appropriate Minister,�;
(f) after paragraph (4) insert�
�(5) A notice, other than a notice published in accordance with paragraph (3), must�
(a) specify the name, port letters and number of the fishing boat named in the licence to which the notice relates, or
(b) in the case of a notice in respect of two or more licences, specify the name, port letters and number of the fishing boats named in the licences.
(6) A licence or notice may be communicated to a person by means of an electronic communication only if the following conditions are met�
(a) the use of the electronic communication results in the information contained in the licence or notice being available to the person in all material respects as it would appear in a licence or notice given in printed form, and
(b) the person has specified an address for the purpose of receiving such communications.�
(4) In regulation 3 (delivery of licences and giving of notices)�
(a) in paragraph (3), for �a nominee�s� substitute �an�;
(b) after paragraph (3) insert�
�(3A) A notice communicated in accordance with regulation 2(2)(b) (publication on website) shall be treated as given immediately it is published.�
(5) In regulation 4 (time at which licences and notices to have effect)�
(a) in paragraph (a) omit �, and a notice which is communicated in accordance with regulation 2(2)(b),�;
(b) in paragraph (b), omit the �and� at the end;
(c) after paragraph (b) insert�
�(ba) a notice which is communicated in accordance with regulation 2(2)(b) (publication on website) shall have effect 24 hours after it is treated as given in accordance with regulation 3; and�.
Scotland Act 1998 (Agency Arrangements) (Specification) Order 1999
6B (1) The Scotland Act (Agency Arrangements) (Specification) Order 1999 (S.I. 1999/1512) is amended as follows.
(2) In Schedule 1 (functions conferred on Minister of the Crown), omit paragraph 1.
(3) In Schedule 2 (functions exercisable by Scottish Ministers), omit paragraph 1.
Scotland Act 1998 (Concurrent Functions) Order 1999
6C (1) The Scotland Act 1998 (Concurrent Functions) Order 1999 (S.I. 1999/1592) is amended as follows.
(2) In Schedule 1�
(a) in column 1, omit the entry for section 4 of the Sea Fish (Conservation) Act 1967, and
(b) omit the corresponding entry in column 2.
Sea Fishing (Licences and Notices) (Scotland) Regulations 2011
6D (1) The Sea Fishing (Licences and Notices) (Scotland) Regulations 2011 (S.I. 2011/70) are amended as follows.
(2) In regulation 1 (citation, commencement, extent and application)�
(a) in paragraph (2), omit the words from �and the Scottish zone� to the end;
(b) for paragraph (3) substitute�
�(3) These regulations apply in relation to�
(a) licences granted under section 10 of the Fisheries Act 2019 (licensing of British fishing boats) in respect of Scottish fishing boats;
(b) licences granted under section 12 of that Act (licensing of foreign fishing boats) by the Scottish Ministers; and
(c) licences granted under section 4A of the Sea Fish (Conservation) Act 1967 (licensing of vessels receiving trans-shipped fish)�
(i) in respect of Scottish fishing boats, or
(ii) by the Scottish Ministers in respect of foreign fishing boats.�
(3) In regulation 2 (interpretation)�
(a) for the definition of �licence� substitute�
��licence� means a licence to which these regulations apply (see regulation 1(3));�;
(b) in the definition of �nominee��
(i) in paragraph (b) for �a member State� substitute �the United Kingdom�;
(ii) in the closing words, omit �Scottish�;
(c) in the definition of �Scottish fishing boat�, omit �; and in respect of which the Scottish Ministers may grant or have granted a licence�;
(d) for the definition of �sea fishing licence� substitute�
��sea fishing licence� means a licence to which these regulations apply by virtue of regulation 1(3)(a) or (b).�
(4) In regulation 3 (communication of licences and notices)�
(a) in paragraph (1), in the opening words, for �Scottish fishing boat� substitute �fishing boat�;
(b) in paragraph (1), in sub-paragraphs (a) and (b), after �charterer or� insert �, in the case of a Scottish fishing boat,�;
(c) in paragraph (2)�
(i) in sub-paragraph (a), at the beginning, insert �in the case of a Scottish fishing boat�;
(ii) in sub-paragraph (b), omit �Scottish�;
(d) in paragraphs (3) and (4), for �Scottish fishing boat� substitute �fishing boat�
(5) In regulation 4 (delivery of licences and giving of notices), in paragraph (3), for �a nominee�s� substitute �an�.
Sea Fishing (Licences and Notices) (England) Regulations 2012
6E (1) The Sea Fishing (Licences and Notices) (England) Regulations 2012 (S.I. 2012/827) are amended as follows.
(2) In regulation 1 (citation, commencement and application), for paragraph (2) substitute�
�(2) These regulations apply in relation to�
(a) licences granted under section 10 of the Fisheries Act 2019 (licensing of British fishing boats) in respect of relevant fishing boats;
(b) licences granted under section 12 of that Act (licensing of foreign fishing boats) by the Marine Management Organisation; and
(c) licences granted under section 4A of the Sea Fish (Conservation) Act 1967 (licensing of vessels receiving trans-shipped fish)�
(i) in respect of relevant fishing boats, or
(ii) by the Marine Management Organisation in respect of foreign fishing boats.�
(3) In regulation 2 (interpretation)�
(a) for the definition of �licence� substitute�
��licence� means a licence to which these regulations apply (see regulation 1(2));�;
(b) in the definition of �nominee��
(i) in paragraph (b), for �in a member State and having a place of business� substitute �, and having a place of business,�;
(ii) in the closing words, omit �relevant�;
(c) for the definition of �relevant fishing boat� substitute�
��relevant fishing boat� means a British fishing boat other than a fishing boat�
(a) which is registered in the United Kingdom under Part 2 of the Merchant Shipping Act 1995, and
(b) whose entry in the register specifies a port in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland as the port to which the boat is to be treated as belonging;�;
(d) at the end insert�
��sea fishing licence� means a licence to which these regulations apply by virtue of regulation 1(2)(a) or (b).�
(4) In regulation 3 (communication of licences and notices)�
(a) in paragraph (1), for the words from �the owner� to the end substitute �an appropriate recipient (�P�);
(b) after that paragraph insert�
�(1A) In this regulation, �an appropriate recipient� means�
(a) in relation to a licence or notice relating to a relevant fishing boat�
(i) the owner or charterer of the fishing boat, or
(ii) a nominee of that owner or charterer; and
(b) in relation to a licence or notice relating to any other fishing boat, the owner or charterer of the fishing boat.�;
(c) omit paragraph (8).
Sea Fishing (Licences and Notices) (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2014
6F (1) The Sea Fishing (Licences and Notices) (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2014 (S.R.�(N.I.)�2014 No.�209) are amended as follows.
(2) In regulation 1 (citation, commencement and application), for paragraph (2) substitute�
�(2) These Regulations apply in relation to�
(a) licences granted under section 10 of the Fisheries Act 2019 (licensing of British fishing boats) in respect of Northern Ireland fishing boats;
(b) licences granted under section 12 of that Act (licensing of foreign fishing boats) by the Department; and
(c) licences granted under section 4A of the Sea Fish (Conservation) Act 1967 (licensing of vessels receiving trans-shipped fish)�
(i) in respect of Northern Ireland fishing boats, or
(ii) by the Department in respect of foreign fishing boats.�
(3) In regulation 2 (interpretation)�
(a) in the definition of �the Department�, for �of Agriculture and Rural Development� substitute �of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs�;
(b) for the definition of �licence� substitute�
��licence� means a licence to which these regulations apply (see regulation 1(2));�;
(c) in the definition of �nominee�-
(i) in paragraph (b) for �in a member State of the European Union and having a place of business� substitute �, and having a place of business,�;
(ii) in the closing words, omit �Northern Ireland�;
(d) for the definition of �Northern Ireland fishing boat� substitute�
��Northern Ireland fishing boat� means a fishing boat�
(a) which is registered in the United Kingdom under Part 2 of the Merchant Shipping Act 1995, and
(b) whose entry in the register specifies a port in Northern Ireland as the port to which the boat is to be treated as belonging;�;
(e) for the definition of �sea fishing licence� substitute�
��sea fishing licence� means a licence to which these regulations apply by virtue of regulation 1(2)(a) or (b).�
(4) In regulation 3 (manner in which a licence is granted etc)�
(a) in paragraph (1)�
(i) omit �Northern Ireland�;
(ii) for the words from �the owner or charterer of the boat� to the end substitute �an appropriate recipient (�the recipient�);
(b) after that paragraph insert�
�(1A) In this regulation, �an appropriate recipient� means�
(a) in relation to a licence or notice relating to a Northern Ireland fishing boat�
(i) the owner or charterer of the fishing boat, or
(ii) a nominee of that owner or charterer; and
(b) in relation to a licence or notice relating to any other fishing boat, the owner or charterer of the fishing boat.�;
(c) in paragraph (3), for the words from �the owner or charterer � to the end substitute �an appropriate recipient (�the recipient�).��(George Eustice.)
This amendment would add to Schedule 3 minor and consequential amendments of certain statutory instruments relating to the licensing of fishing boats, including (at the request of the devolved administrations) statutory instruments amendable by the devolved administrations.
Schedule 3, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 18
Power of Secretary of State to determine fishing opportunities
Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)
I beg to move amendment 58, in clause 18, page 9, line 40, leave out �may� and insert �must�.
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to determine fishing opportunities.
It is good to see you back in the Chair, Mr Hanson. The amazing thing about fish is that they are a replenishable resource if used correctly. We can all agree that if there were no fish in the sea, there would be no fishing industry. It is one of those inalienable truths that the Minister spoke of on the first day in Committee that Parliament is sovereign, which is a good debate to have, and that fish are a public good, as I hope to see in the Bill in due course.
This amendment would turn clause 18 into a duty and force the Secretary of State to commit to determining fishing opportunities annually, to determine the maximum quantity of fish that could be caught by British boats. If we are serious about preventing overfishing, the amendment is vital.
This is another example of the Government�s failure to take the issue of sustainability seriously, as it has not been included in the Bill. If it had been up to Labour, we would have called the Bill the �Sustainable Fisheries Bill�. The short title would have been the �Sustainable Fisheries Act 2019�. I understand we are not allowed to change the short title, so we could not table an amendment to do that.
In yesterday�s sitting of the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Martin Salter, formerly a Member of the House who now represents the Angling Trust, raised concerns about the lack of care given to sustainability, when he said that the Fisheries Bill falls short of the White Paper and is much weaker than the common fisheries policy in binding Ministers to fishing sustainably. In July 2017, the Environment Secretary, the self-described �shy green�, said on �The Andrew Marr Show� that the common fisheries policy was an �environmental disaster� and that leaving it would ensure that Britain could
�have sustainable fish stocks for the future.�
Given that, it is important that there should be a commitment to stop overfishing.
On global fish stocks, 29% are overfished, 61% are fully fished and 10% are underfished. The UK has a leading role to play in stopping that overfishing. A 2006 article by Charles Clover, the then environment editor of The Daily Telegraph, who now heads the Blue Marine Foundation, said that if the rate of overfishing continued the world�s currently fished seafoods would reach what is defined as collapse by 2048. The World Wide Fund for Nature said this year that, worldwide, overfishing is one of the biggest threats to the health of seas and their inhabitants.
Today, each person eats on average 19.2 kg of fish a year, which is quite an image to put before ourselves�that is twice the amount people ate about 50 years ago. In 2013, about 93 million tonnes of fish were caught worldwide. Illegal and unregulated fishing constitutes an estimated 11 million to 26 million tonnes�about 12% to 28% of fishing worldwide. Almost 30% of fish stocks that are commercially fished are overfished. More than 50% of our imports are fully fished from developing countries. Over just 40 years, there has been a decrease in recorded marine species of about 39%. That is very worrying.
Overall, according to the Government�s own data, there has been a decline in commercial landings in the UK from around 300,000 tonnes of demersal species to less than 20,000 tonnes during the past 40 years. When thinking about landings, we should bear it in mind that in 2015-16 technology in relation to fish location and fishing gear was of an altogether different magnitude compared with the �70s, making many of the figures all the more alarming.
There is a global crisis and the need for the UK to lead the way is quite apparent. We cannot hide away from our responsibilities and the amendment would close the loophole that allows for overfishing beyond scientific levels. I urge Members to vote with us to protect our oceans from the curse of the �tragedy of the commons�.
George Eustice
There are a number of other amendments to clause 18 and I would like to cover some of the broader issues that the hon. Gentleman raised in relation to those later amendments.
George Eustice
Yes, exactly, but I shall address the point of amendment 58, which is simply to provide that under clause 18(1) the Secretary of State �must� rather than �may� make the determination in question for a calendar year.
The amendment is unnecessary and potentially counterproductive. Subsection (2) already makes it clear that the power will be used only in the context of international negotiations on quota species. The difficulty with introducing the word �must� is that that would have the perverse effect of requiring the Secretary of State to set the maximum quantity of sea fish for all sea fish, whether or not they were subject to quota. Species such as pilchards, which we get a lot of in the west country, and lemon sole and squid, which will be important to many fishermen in the hon. Gentleman�s constituency, are not currently subject to catch quotas. We do not want to introduce a requirement that they should be. We intend to use the power only for quota stocks.
I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not see a need to press the amendment, which would require us to set limits on all sorts of species where limits are not currently deemed necessary.
Luke Pollard
The amendment is intended to get a commitment from the Minister to seek not to set levels above those that are scientifically proven, and to prevent overfishing. The requirement to set that level is important and one we will revisit in future amendments. On the basis of the Minister�s comments and the fact that we will come to those other amendments, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Luke Pollard
I beg to move amendment 60, in clause�18,�page�10,�line�2,�after �boats� insert �or foreign fishing boats holding rights to use British catch quota�.
This amendment would add foreign fishing boats to the determination made by the Secretary of State of the maximum quantity of sea fish caught, or of the maximum number of days at sea.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 61, in clause�18,�page�10,�line�3,�after �boats� insert
�or foreign fishing boats holding rights to use British catch quota�.
This amendment would add foreign fishing boats to the determination made by the Secretary of State of the maximum quantity of sea fish caught, or of the maximum number of days at sea.
Luke Pollard
Forgive me, I had no idea that I would be speaking so frequently. In Tuesday�s sitting, the Opposition were shocked to see the Government vote against an amendment that would have secured a level playing field in environmental standards for UK boats and non-UK boats using a UK licence in our waters. Time and again, the Minister�s tagline when it comes to fisheries has been �take back control,� but without this amendment we will have little control over what non-UK boats do in our waters, if the maximum of fish they can catch is not set.
In speaking to these amendments, we want to reacquaint ourselves with that notion of a level playing field and to have it in the Bill, so that there is no doubt about the difference between UK boats and boats from our European Union and Norwegian friends, in ensuring there is a level playing field at all times.
George Eustice
Although I understand the intention behind the amendment, I am afraid that it is, in my view, misplaced and this point is being raised with respect to the wrong clause, for reasons I will explain.
Foreign boats do not fish against UK quota limits, so they do not hold any rights to be managed under the terms of the clause. Only British fishing boats can fish against UK quota. British fishing boats are defined as those that are registered in the UK, are British-owned or are registered in the Crown dependencies. UK-flagged boats that are owned or part-owned by foreigners, as we discussed earlier, are covered by the economic link, but foreign-flagged vessels that have access to UK waters gain their quota from the foreign state that issues its share of the quota.
A French vessel fishing in UK waters off the coast of Devon is not accessing British quota, but is fishing against a quota allocated to it by the French Government. Clause 18 is very much about giving the British Government the power to set limits for British fishing boats. Separately, in other parts of the Bill, there are powers to grant access to foreign vessels, but we will not be giving British quota to those foreign vessels; they will be fishing against the entitlement from their flag state.
Luke Pollard
I thank the Minister for that clarification, but looking at the Public Gallery I see a few screwed-up faces, as if to say that foreign boats have to fish under British quota currently.
George Eustice
As I explained, there are foreign-owned British vessels, but that is different from saying that foreign vessels fish against British quota. They simply do not. French vessels in UK waters are not fishing against British quota; they are fishing against quota allocated to them by the French Government.
Luke Pollard
I suspect that this is an item we will revisit when considering a later amendment, so on that basis I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
I beg to move amendment 25, in clause 18, page 10, line 3, leave out paragraph (b) and insert�
�(1A) Determinations under subsection (1) must by 2020 at the latest must not exceed the FMSY reference point and be in accordance with international law, having regard to the interdependence of stocks, in order to maintain the stock population above a level capable of producing the maximum sustainable yield and to ensure long-term viability of the stock population.�
The purpose of this amendment is to set a target of 2020 for catch limits to be set at sustainable levels. It also removes the power of the Secretary of State to set fishing limits in line with the �days at sea� approach which can lead to overfishing.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 59, in clause�18,�page�10,�line�4,�at end insert�
�(1A) In making a determination under subsection (1), the Secretary of State must ensure that any maximum quantity of sea fish that may be caught by British fishing boats does not exceed the amount that, in the Secretary of State�s view, the best available scientific evidence suggests would ensure that populations of harvested species are restored and maintained above biomass levels and harvested at mortality rates capable of producing maximum sustainable yield.�
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to ensure that the determination of the maximum quantity of sea fish caught does not exceed the level required to produce a maximum sustainable yield, based on scientific evidence.
Amendment 105, in clause�18,�page�10,�line�4,�at end insert�
�(1A) No determination of effort quota under subsection (1)(b) may be made until the completion of a trial for the relevant area of sea, stocks fished, fishing methods used, documentation methods used and any other relevant considerations that demonstrates that there is no possibility of such a determination causing�
(a) a detriment to the achievement to any of the fisheries objectives;
(b) exceeding the maximum sustainable yield of any stock;
(c) reducing the accuracy of the recording of catches;
(d) increasing the risk of danger to the crew of fishing boats.�
This amendment would prevent the Secretary of State making a determination of effort quota until a days at sea trial has been completed and shown not to cause adverse impacts.
Amendment 26, in clause�18,�page�10,�line�19,�leave out paragraph (b).
The purpose of this amendment is to remove the power of the Secretary of State to set fishing limits in line with the �days at sea� approach which can lead to overfishing.
Amendment 27, in clause�18,�page�10,�line�29,�leave out subsection (8).
The purpose of this amendment is to remove the power of the Secretary of State to set fishing limits in line with the �days at sea� approach which can lead to overfishing.
Mr Carmichael
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. Amendment 25 would reassert the commitment to reaching the maximum sustainable yield threshold, to which we are currently permitted as part of the common fisheries policy, by 2020. The amendment was drafted by Greener UK and it has the support of a number of environmental lobby groups.
This is probably one of the most significant amendments that we will consider; it certainly comes to the heart of the matter. The lack of proper reference to the maximum sustainable yield is one of the most worrying aspects of the Bill. There is a nod toward this early in the Bill, but otherwise it is pretty well absent. I know there are concerns in the industry about maximum sustainable yields, but this is a commitment we have made and I am concerned that, at the very least, the Committee should hear an explanation from the Minister of why, at this stage, we should seek to walk away from it. I suggest that that is a somewhat poor signal to send.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
Will the right hon. Gentleman advise us how amendment 25 would work in relation to the devolved Administrations managing stock and quotas?
Mr Carmichael
I would very much hope that they, too, would be working with a maximum sustainable yield principle. I am not aware of any suggestion that they would not.
Luke Pollard
We appreciate the argument for amendment 25. The Opposition have committed to leaving the European Union without any roll-back of environmental standards and MSY by 2020 seems to be a glaring omission from this Bill. The Minister will know that we are signed up to that under the common fisheries policy and that it is Government policy under the UN sustainable development goals to continue to be signed up to MSY by 2020. However, I suspect he will say that, given that the Bill is set to come into force beyond that point, it is no longer necessary to have that commitment in the Bill. While I see his argument there, it is not good enough; we must strive to ensure that MSY is a guiding principle of how fisheries are looked at. That is why the Opposition have tabled amendment 59, in a similar vein to amendment 25, tabled by the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland.
We note that amendment 25 seeks to remove days at sea and effort-based quota provision. We will discuss days at sea in more detail later, on amendments 26 and 27 and our amendment 23, but in short, we do not want to exclude it from the Bill entirely, as some fisheries are already captured by this form of fishing. Any new effort-based quota allocation should be able to take place only following a robust trial�something that was featured in the White Paper, but which has mysteriously disappeared from the text of the Bill. We think amendment 59 is better placed than amendment 25: fishers need fish to fish, and thriving fish stocks are critical for a profitable and prosperous industry. They are affected by factors outside our immediate control�the temperature and acidity of the sea, for instance�but one thing we can and do control to ensure thriving and healthy fish stocks is how much fish we take from the seas.
Dr Abigail McQuatters-Gollop, a lecturer in marine conservation at the University of Plymouth, in the patch I represent, said:
�Decisions about how much we take from marine environment has to be based on scientific episode and needs to be a duty not an objective.�
The view that MSY is not firmed up enough in the Bill is shared by key environmental stakeholders and across the industry. Griffin Carpenter, from the New Economics Foundation, who gave evidence to this Committee, said,
�Something I think is missing from the Bill�is commitments to maximum sustainable yield�not just the stock commitment but the flow�Many of us were surprised that was not in the Bill.���[Official Report, Fisheries Public Bill Committee, 6 December 2018; c. 107, Q205.]
Helen McLachlan, also speaking to the Committee, said that the 2020 deadline turned things around in the EU from short-term policy making that overshot scientific evidence and increased biomass and decreased mortality and that, if we lose it, we take a backward step.
It is important that the debate around MSY is comprehensive and based on sound evidence. We must not lose that from the debate. We need to ensure that tone and that sentiment, which the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland raised, throughout the Bill and in the messaging we give. That is why MSY by 2020 is such an important consideration.
Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I rise briefly to support my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport and the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland and the spirit and intention behind all the amendments.
It seems to me quite straightforward that the Bill takes a retrograde step by not including MSY, which is so clearly hard-wired into the CFP and into UN sustainability goal 14. The Minister has on other occasions argued that including it is unnecessary, on the basis that it is captured by the Bill�s intention to not harvest biomass at levels above MSY.
However, it should worry us all that the real experts in this area�those in the third sector concerned with conservation in our seas�clearly see it as a mis-step by the Government not to put MSY in the Bill in the way that other legislatures have, including in Australia, New Zealand, the States and Canada, especially as the evidence from our own waters and elsewhere is that MSY targets have been very effective. Hake and North sea plaice are two recent examples of stocks recovering brilliantly as a result of MSY policy. I therefore cannot understand why the Minister is so coy about maintaining this standard.
The concern, bluntly, is that not including MSY in the Bill will give this or any future Government the wriggle room not to pursue sustainable fishing policies and to set catch levels above MSY, out of line with scientific evidence. If that is not the case, the Minister, who is evidently very expert in this field, has to explain to us, the House, the wider industry and those concerned with conserving stocks in our seas why he is determined not to put MSY in the Bill, which seems to fly in the face of the evidence.
George Eustice
Let me make clear from the outset to the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland that we are not walking away from the principle of MSY, and to the hon. Member for Pontypridd that MSY is indeed in the Bill. It is right there in clause 1(3)(b):
�to ensure that exploitation of living marine biological resources restores and maintains populations of harvested species above biomass levels capable of producing maximum sustainable yield.�
The only bit that is not in the Bill but is in the current EU regulation, which was drafted as long ago as 2013, is the 2020 target.
As I have described, it makes no sense whatever to include a statutory target that will already have lapsed and expired in a Bill that will probably not commence until January 2021 or the end of 2020. The right place to reflect any kind of timescale or commitments, or even on species, is in that joint fisheries statement, which will describe how all the Administrations will work together to deliver those objectives, including MSY. I therefore put it to hon. Members that the right way to replace the EU legislative commitment of 2020 is not to have an already-expired date in the Bill, but to reflect that commitment in the joint fisheries statement.
The other issue relates to effort and setting the maximum number of days that British boats may spend at sea. All the amendments, including the one tabled by the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport, would delete clause 18(1)(b), which covers the maximum number of days at sea. As he seemed to acknowledge, that would be counter-productive, as we already have something called the western waters regime, which is an effort-based regime that regulates the catches of crab, and in particular of scallops, of the over-15 metre sector.
Hon. Members may recall that scallops are a part of the fishery that can lead to conflict at times, not least over the summer. There are fishermen fishing out of Brixham, not far from the hon. Gentleman�s constituency, who have an allocation of kilowatt-hours at sea to catch scallops in the EU exclusive economic zone�in other words, on the French side of the channel. If we were to make it unlawful to allocate days at sea, the hon. Gentleman would have a scallop war of his own, probably outside his constituency, because he would find that those scallop fishermen would no longer be able to access French waters because we would no longer be participating in the western waters regime.
Luke Pollard
I invite the Minister to look at amendment 105, because we do not actually suggest deleting clause 18(1)(b). We suggest that
�No determination may be made�
under it, unless a trial has been completed. I would be grateful if he corrected his remarks.
George Eustice
My understanding, on the basis of my notes, is that amendment 59 would also delete clause 18(1)(b). It may be that the hon. Gentleman did not intend that to happen, but that amendment, which I understand is in his name, would also remove it.
I will make a point about amendment 105. Again, the western waters regime is already established and happening, so we would not necessarily want to subject it to a trial before being able to make any such determination, because if we were to leave the EU without an agreement at the end of March, we would nevertheless want to have some discussions and reach some agreements on scallops quickly.
Luke Pollard
Amendment 59 would actually be added at the end of line 4, rather than replacing it, so it would not remove it as the Minister has said. I appreciate that his notes on the amendment may be somewhat different, so perhaps he wants to reflect that in his remarks.
The Chair
It may help the Minister and the Opposition if I say that, as far as I can read, there are no deletions, only additions in amendment 59.
George Eustice
In which case, I withdraw the comments that I made in the context of amendment 59. I am afraid that the speaking notes that I have been given have an error in them.
On an effort-based regime, the wider point is that we made a clear commitment in the White Paper to explore the idea of using an effort-based regime, particularly for the inshore fleet. Sometimes, when small amounts of quota are attached to vessels�for instance, little more than 20 kilos of cod a month�it is very difficult and administratively burdensome to operate such a scheme.
We were clear that we would pilot an effort-based regime, because we recognise that there are also risks in moving to one. Generally speaking, such regimes work well for low-impact mixed fisheries where it is harder to run a quota scheme. Quota schemes work best in the pelagic sector, where a single species can be accurately targeted.
We have not made reference to an effort-based regime in the Bill because we do not need to. The Bill gives us all the powers we need to run such a pilot before considering rolling it out. Our White Paper was also clear that, for the time being, we will use existing fixed quota allocations as the basis for fishing opportunities. It is already implicit in our commitment to that effect that we are not going to make a rash move to an effort-based regime, but it could have a role for some of those inshore under-10 metre vessels. That is why we have said that we will consider a pilot.
Owen Smith
I may have missed my chance, as the Minister sat down rather briskly, but I was merely trying to ascertain something. I fully accept that the Government are clearly trying, in the language in the initial clause in respect to objectives, to state that they want to set catch limits in line with MSY, but is there anything in the Bill that would prevent Ministers in future from diverging from that and setting catch limits above MSY? As far as I can see, there is nothing that would stop Ministers from doing that, if they chose. That is the reason for wanting a rather tougher duty on Ministers to ensure they adhere to those limits.
George Eustice
We received some interesting evidence on this from Dr Carl O�Brien from the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, who is the leading expert on this. I know that a number of green NGOs have suggested that they would like to see the language tightened here, but we have to listen to those who have the greatest experience in managing maximum sustainable yield and in calculating the measurements, and direct experience of the negotiations. As he pointed out, there are two dangers. In a mixed fishery it is simply a scientific impossibility to set every species at MSY. When they are in a mixed fishery, it is necessary to place some at the lower end of the MSY range and some at the upper end. There will be challenges, as we have heard with choke species.
Secondly, Norway, for example, uses MSY as one of its guides, but not its only guide�it uses other scientific metrics as well. There will be times when it will make sense for us to reach an accommodation with countries such as Norway about the shared management of a shared stock, in order to ensure we have sustainable fishing. If we do not allow ourselves any flexibility to broach such a discussion with Norway and reach such an agreement, the only outcome is that everybody walks away from the table without an agreement and unilaterally sets their own fishing opportunities, which is the worst of all worlds for our marine environment.
This is a complex area, but it is right to have that statutory commitment in clause 1�a statutory requirement to have a plan that demonstrates how we will reach that commitment, while recognising that we will always needs some flexibility, due to the complexity of the marine environment.
Mr Carmichael
To deal with the question of days at sea first, as I said, these are probing amendments. The Minister�s comments are helpful and it is useful to have them on the record, so, as I indicated earlier, I do not intend to push the amendment to a Division.
However, I want to tease out the Minister�s thinking about amendment 25 a bit more. His objection to amendment 25 is twofold. First, he says these things can be put into the fisheries statement, which is absolutely correct. Secondly, he says that this commitment will have to be met by the time the legislation comes into effect. I see no problem with that. For us to say that by the time we implement this we should have got to this point is not a criticism of the amendment at all.
The Minister�s point about the fisheries statement is interesting. He is right: that is the good and sensible place for maximum sustainable yield to be enshrined, but there is no guarantee that it will be. As we know, the fisheries statement will be subject to a negotiation between four Administrations. There might be any number of reasons why maximum sustainable yield might fall from that particular safety net. If, for any reason, it were not to form part of the fisheries statement, there is nothing else in the Bill that would enshrine maximum sustainable yield as the guiding principle. For that reason, I am not persuaded by the Minister�s assurances and will press amendment 25 to a division.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Mr Carmichael
I beg to move amendment 28, in clause�18,�page�10,�line�7,�at end insert�
�( ) When determining fishing opportunities under this section, if the current biomass of the stock or the maximum sustainable yield are not able to be estimated reliably using the best available scientific advice, the Secretary of State must�
(a) not use the uncertainty in that evidence as a reason for failing to determine fishing opportunities for the stock, and
(b) determine the maximum quantity of sea fish that may be caught by British fishing boats which functions as a suitable scientific proxy to maximum sustainable yield, and is consistent with the scientific evidence and precautionary objectives.�
The purpose of this amendment is to ensure that a suitable proxy is used to determine fishing opportunities for data-deficient stocks.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 29, in clause�18,�page�10,�line�7,�at end insert�
�( ) For those stocks for which fishing opportunities are not determined, fisheries policy authorities must�
(a) ensure that exploitation does not exceed the level associated with maximum sustainable yield, or
(b) if the current biomass of the stock or the maximum sustainable yield are not able to be estimated reliably using the best available scientific advice, ensure that exploitation does not exceed a suitable scientific proxy to maximum sustainable yield, and is consistent with the scientific evidence and precautionary objectives.�
The purpose of this amendment is to set a target of 2020 for fishing mortality to be set at sustainable levels for those stocks that are not subject to catch limits, such as shellfish.
Amendment 62, in clause�18,�page�10,�line�11,�at end insert�
�(3A) The Secretary of State must ensure that a baseline stock assessment has been made for all non-quota species by 2030 and he must report on progress on an annual basis.�
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to gather a baseline stock assessment for those stocks that are not subject to catch limits.
Mr Carmichael
Amendments 28 and 29 can, I think, be dealt with in fairly short order. Again, they try to put a bit more environmental rigour into the Bill�the sort of thing that we saw in the White Paper, but which does not seem to have survived the translation from policy into legislation.
In relation to amendment 28, the Minister and the Committee will doubtless be aware that there are a number of species that are, to use the jargon, data deficient: that is to say, we do not have the useful data that we would require in order to set them as quota species. The procedures outlined in the amendment are guidelines that are to be applied to ensure that a lack of sufficient data is not used as an excuse, or a reason, for fishing those species irresponsibly. The amendment really is self-explanatory.
Likewise, amendment 29 sets a target of 2020 for fishing mortality to be set at a sustainable level for stocks that are not subject to catch limits, such as shellfish. It would bring to the overall framework of fisheries management a coherence that is currently lacking.
Luke Pollard
The principles contained in amendments 28 and 29 are good ones, as they deal with how to make sure that we are fishing sustainably.
Amendment 62, which we are also considering, talks about the need for baseline stock assessments by 2030. The reason I tabled that amendment is to try to get the Minister to set out his position on making sure that we are addressing data deficiency. A key reason why our fisheries cannot be classed as sustainable�as we have spoken about in previous sittings of this Committee�is that there is a deficiency of the data that guarantees those fish stocks are sustainable. Making a baseline stock assessment, especially of some of the non-quota species that are under severe pressure, is an important step towards achieving fully sustainable fisheries.
The Minister will know, for instance, about the importance of cuttlefish to the south-west�s mixed fisheries and to fishing fleets in the west country. The lack of a decent level of data regarding cuttlefish is one of the concerns about the future sustainability of that industry, especially as stock levels are going up and down. This year in particular, fishers have reported an alarming rise in smaller cuttlefish coming through where, in the past, they expected larger ones. The purpose of amendment 62 and, I believe, of the amendments tabled by the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland�the sentiment of which we can support�is to get better data, to make sure that no fishing levels are being set above the scientific data level.
George Eustice
I am grateful for this opportunity to explain the approach that we currently take to data-limited stocks, how we have refined that approach in recent years, and what we might do in future.
The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea has six categories of stock, according to the level of data and the analysis that are available. Categories 1 and 2 cover those stocks for which there is judged to be sufficient data for us to do a full forecast or a full stock assessment. Those are the stocks for which we use the maximum sustainable yield approach. Categories 3 and 4 cover the majority of our so-called data-limited stocks�those for which we have some reliable stock indicators but cannot do a full stock assessment. Category 5 covers those stocks for which we have little or no scientific data available other than the landings data. Category 6 covers those species for which there are negligible landings�typically those that are a bycatch only.
For category 3 and category 4 stocks, where we have some reliable stock indicators, the UK has been in the vanguard in the last few years in developing a methodology based on stock trends and biomass trends. My argument has always been that we should make the best assessment that we can with the knowledge that we have, rather than use too many other arbitrary proxies. Stock trends have therefore become the new methodology that we have tended to adopt for most of our data-limited stocks, where we have reliable stock indicators.
For category 5 and category 6 stocks, for which we really have only landings data, we do not really have any other option than to adopt quite arbitrary approaches to how we manage them. Typically, they tend to fall into two categories. One is called �use it or lose it��if a stock is not caught in sufficient quantities in the previous year, the quota is simply reduced to the level at which it was caught, and the landings are used as a proxy for the health of the stock. The other is the so-called precautionary principle, which is an automatic 20% cut, year on year, in the absence of data. That is also used on some of those very data-poor stocks.
Obviously, we want to improve the quality of the data, and we want to move more species to a full stock assessment so that we can do MSY. For instance, in the last two years we have moved megrim in area VII to a full stock assessment�previously it was data-limited. We want to make further progress on that. Dr Carl O�Brien explained some of the difficulties in his evidence. Some species are quite difficult to age, because the methodology where their eardrums are measured to work out their age is hard to use. With some species, there are technical challenges to getting to a full stock assessment. Nevertheless, we should continue to work to improve that, and to get more of those data-limited stocks into categories 1 and 2.
Finally, in his evidence, Dr Carl O�Brien said:
�I think you would be surprised how much evidence has been gathered for non-quota species. Seafish had a project called Project Inshore, which I think is now in its second phase, looking mainly at shellfish species.���[Official Report, Fisheries Public Bill Committee, 6 December 2018; c. 112, Q216.]
There is a lot of work going on to assess the health of scallop stocks and crabs, for instance. Quite a lot of data has been collected through Project Inshore. Obviously there is more to do, but a lot has been done, and work continues to be done in that space.
Luke Pollard
I am grateful for those remarks. The purpose of amendment 62 was also to try to put a date on when we will have better evidence. The fact that we have better science than people are aware of is useful, but does the Minister have any idea when we will have firm dates when data-deficient species will reach those points?
George Eustice
I do not have that data now, but I would be willing to bring the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science�s current projections to the House on Report. The hon. Gentleman will understand that, although I have been in this job a number of years and understand quite a lot about the science, I am not a fisheries scientist. It is an incredibly technical, complex area, and I rely on advisers such as Carl to assist on it. I will happily give the most detailed update that we can on Report about the progress on moving some of the data-limited category 3 and 4 stocks to full stock assessments.
Mr Carmichael
Every day is a school day. Who knew that we could age a fish by measuring its eardrums?
I am grateful to the Minister for a very detailed answer. These amendments are a bit more than probing amendments; they are about serious issues, which require full consideration. Again, this is another area where we see the general deficiency of the approach that the Government have taken to the Bill. I would be more impressed with the Minister�s views on getting more data in relation to data-poor species if he had taken a different attitude towards the amendments that we have tabled to document all fish that are caught.
Notwithstanding that, and to allow the Committee to make some progress, I will not press this matter to Division today, with the caveat that we will probably wish to return to it on Report. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)
I beg to move amendment 23, in clause�18,�page�10,�line�36,�leave out �negative� and insert �affirmative�.
It is good to see you back in the Chair, Mr Hanson.
I will speak relatively briefly about this amendment. It is a tweak, but I sense that it is quite an important tweak. It is on an issue that was brought to my attention by Fishing for Leave and I know that the Opposition will also support it.
Clause 18 gives the Secretary of State the authority to determine fishing opportunities. It proposes that the regulations for determining the number of days that a boat can fish are to be established by negative resolution; we talked about that this morning. Given the importance of this issue�views on it are held passionately, both by those who favour a days-at-sea regime and those who oppose it�there is a strong case that the regulations should be established by affirmative resolution, so that any decisions can be taken in a transparent way, and do not just go through on the nod and under the radar, so to speak.
My concern is that I sense we could be storing up a problem for later in the day. I would welcome a bit of clarification from the Minister as to how he reached this decision and whether he might review it.
Luke Pollard
I rise to speak, briefly, in support of the hon. Gentleman�s amendment. When we are talking about allocating fishing opportunities, it is important that Parliament is given the opportunity to scrutinise them, especially at the start of a new fisheries period for our country, to ensure that the allocations carry the confidence of the fishing industry that they are being allocated in a robust way.
George Eustice
This is a similar discussion to the one we had earlier on the use of the negative resolution procedure rather than the affirmative resolution procedure.
As I said earlier, the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee considered the Bill and said that of its 15 delegated powers that require a parliamentary procedure, only four are solely governed by the negative procedure, and justifiably so. I will explain to my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney why I think the negative procedure is justified in this particular instance.
Clause 18(1) replaces powers that are similar to those set out in section 4(6) of the Sea Fish (Conservation) Act 1967, and those are also made under the negative procedure. We followed the approach that has been taken not only while we have been in the European Union, but even before we were in the European Union, to have the negative procedure in relation to this measure.
I point out to my hon. Friend that the actual power to determine the number of days at sea is a straightforward power that the Secretary of State has without even the need for regulations, under clause 18(3), and the issue in subsection (8) is that,
�The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision for determining, for the purposes of this Act, the number of days in a calendar year that a fishing boat is to be regarded as spending at sea�.
The purpose of the regulations is to establish what happens if they do six hours. Is that half a day or part of a day? The regulations basically govern how we measure a day at sea and whether it should be, as in some cases, kilowatt-hours at sea or a straightforward days-at-sea measure. It is because we may use slightly different effort measurements in different sectors that we need to be able to define in the regulations what a day at sea is. The power to determine the days at sea is a flexible power that the Secretary of State will have, and always has had, so that we can manage our fisheries effectively.
Peter Aldous
I am grateful to the Minister for that explanation. He went into a fair bit of technical detail. As I mentioned, this is a big issue for our new regime and there are organisations on both sides of the argument that feel passionately about the issue of days at sea. I will not press the amendment to a vote at this stage, but I will take counsel between now and Report. If I have any concerns, I will pass them on to the Minister then. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
The Chair
We now come to clause 18 stand part. We have had a reasonable discussion, but it is a central clause with lots of subsections. If Members wish to speak to it, I am happy to take contributions.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
George Eustice
Briefly, clause 18 sets out in legislation the power of the Secretary of State to determine the UK�s fishing opportunities. He can do that by setting out the maximum quantity of sea fish that may be caught by British fishing boats and of days that British fishing boats may spend at sea in a calendar year. The effect of clause 18 is that the Secretary of State can ensure that the UK complies with its obligations to determine fishing opportunities, in line with international agreements.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 18 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 19
Duties relating to a determination of fishing opportunities
Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)
I beg to move amendment 2, in clause�19,�page�10,�line�38,�at end insert�
�(A1) A determination under section 18 may not be made or withdrawn without the consent of the Scottish Ministers.�
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 3, in clause�19,�page�10,�line�41,�leave out paragraph (a).
Brendan O'Hara
It is a pleasure to see you back in the Chair, Mr Hanson. I rise to speak to amendments 2 and 3, which appear in my name and the names of my hon. Friends the Members for Kilmarnock and Loudoun and for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock). The amendments would ensure that a determination under clause 18 could not be made or withdrawn without the consent of Scottish Ministers.
In moving the amendments, we agree with the Scottish Government�s position that clauses 18 and 19 run contrary to the devolution settlement and will seriously undermine the existing long-held powers of Scottish Ministers. We also share the Scottish Government�s concern that clause 18 deals with matters that fall squarely within the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament in relation to complying with international obligations. Although we accept that the United Kingdom is still responsible in international law for compliance with its international obligations, it does not automatically follow that the UK Government alone and in isolation are responsible for implementing and complying with those obligations in domestic law.
Of course, I do not need to remind hon. Members about paragraph 7(2) of schedule 5 to the Scotland Act 1998, which makes it absolutely clear that the observance and implementation of international obligations are not reserved matters. According to the 1998 Act, if powers are not reserved, they are devolved. Although I understand the UK Government�s view that the function being executed in clause 18 can be exercised UK-wide, it remains the case that the purpose of the clause relates to matters that are wholly devolved.
As currently drafted, clause 19 requires the Secretary of State only to consult with the devolved Administrations before making a determination regarding fishing opportunities in Scottish waters. For example, does the Minister intend to set quotas for Orkney crab, as clause 18 effectively gives him or the Secretary of State the power to do? Does the Minister intend to tell Scottish lobster fishermen how many days they can go to sea, as clause 18 gives him or the Secretary of State the power to do?
Our amendment seeks to defend the devolution settlement and require the Secretary of State to obtain a legislative consent motion from Scottish Ministers before seeking to legislate on any matters relating to the Scottish zone and the regulation of Scottish fishing boats outside of the Scottish zone, again, as safeguarded in section C6 of schedule 5 to the Scotland Act 1998. The legislative consent motion on the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, which was submitted to the Scottish Parliament in September 2017, sets out clearly that the Scottish Government�s position is that policy responsibility and expertise for matters within devolved competence lies solely with the Scottish Government, which is accountable to the Scottish Parliament. In these amendments, we are asking the UK Government to respect that position.
Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure, as ever, to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson.
Our view in the Labour party is that the Scottish Government, and therefore Scottish Ministers, do not currently have the competence to exercise powers to determine fisheries opportunities and, as such, the consent of Scottish Ministers is not a requirement. As per the devolution settlement, the opportunity to determine fisheries opportunities currently rests with the European Council. That will be transposed to UK Ministers when we leave the European Union. It is therefore the case that any provision requiring the UK Minister to seek the consent of Scottish Ministers in advance of the determination would in essence act as a potential veto on the Secretary of State and the United Kingdom�s ability to determine fisheries opportunities across the United Kingdom common fisheries area.
We have seen throughout the process of Brexit and the subsequent required legislation, such as the Trade Bill, the Agriculture Bill and now the Fisheries Bill, that the Scottish National party wish to extend the powers afforded to Scottish Ministers and what decisions require their consent. I disagree wholeheartedly with that approach, as it is not in line with the devolution settlements, including the 1998 Act, which would have been voted on previously. If SNP Members were to address this issue through the proper channels by trying to amend the devolution settlements prima facie, rather than by trying to do it by the back door, that would be a more acceptable approach.
Alan Brown
As my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute pointed out, the way the Scotland Act was originally set up, if matters are not listed as reserved, they are devolved. Surely it follows that the repatriation of powers from Europe to the UK should follow that devolution settlement and go to the rightful Parliament.
Mr Sweeney
Of course, the complexity lies in the interface with international obligations. The Scotland Act 1998 makes it clear that,
�If the Secretary of State has reasonable grounds to believe that any action proposed to be taken by a member of the Scottish Government would be incompatible with any international obligations, he may by order direct that the proposed action shall not be taken.�
That shows a clear inconsistency with the Scotland Act.
That is corroborated by the Law Society of Scotland, which states:
�We welcome the duties of the Secretary of State set out under Clause 19 when making a determination under clause 18. The provisions require the Secretary of State to consult with devolved administrations and the Marine Management Organisation before making or withdrawing a determination. The clause also requires the Secretary of State to publish a notice of a determination after it being made or withdrawn, lay a copy of the notice in Parliament, and send a copy to the devolved administrations. This will assist in terms of ensuring clarity and accountability.�
Of course, if our amendment had been upheld with regard to the dispute resolution mechanism, that would have been a far more sustainable way to have resolved any disputes, rather than leading to an inevitable impasse and total logjam in the processing of a common fisheries area in the UK.
Alan Brown
The hon. Gentleman talks about logjams and he mentioned the other Bills on which the Scottish Government are withholding a legislative consent motion. Is he saying that the Scottish Government should just acquiesce to Westminster and not defend the rights of the Scottish Government?
Mr Sweeney
That is a rather unfortunate characterisation of the situation. We want to have a consensual approach where arbitration is done in a sustainable way, not political opportunism leading to an impasse in the economic progress of this country.
Alan Brown
The hon. Gentleman�s own party voted with the SNP and other parties against the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill. The Scottish Government withholding legislative consent in some of these cases is actually in line with cross-party support in Parliament.
Mr Sweeney
Of course, these matters will be considered on a case-by-case basis, but let us paint a scenario where there is an impasse in the creation of a common fisheries policy. It would lead to huge economic difficulties as long as that situation�that impasse�persisted, and that is not manageable or sustainable from an economic point of view for Scottish fishermen, and it would not be acting in their interests.
That is why we will also not support amendment 3, which seeks to remove Scottish Ministers from clause 19 entirely. I fear it may have unintended consequences, and I ask the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute to clarify the consequences. If we are to remove Scottish Ministers from the equation and the clause, does he think that will mean that Scottish Ministers will have the power over this area, or simply that there would be no requirement to consult them at all? Both outcomes are incredibly undesirable and the Labour party is therefore unable to support that amendment.
Owen Smith
It is again a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I did not intend to speak to these amendments, but as a former shadow Secretary of State for Wales and for Northern Ireland I have a few things to say.
I heard with interest the contribution from the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute�the beautiful Argyll and Bute. I would say straightforwardly that I think he is wrong to say that the clause is contrary to the devolution settlement�I think the reverse is true. The clause reflects the current devolution settlement. It is for the UK as the sovereign body to determine our engagement with and adherence to international treaties, and to therefore determine what the fishing opportunities for the whole of the UK would be, in accordance with the agreements that are reached internationally on fishing.
My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East is completely right that the reality of the amendments is that they seek to change the devolution settlement by the back door. Given the long-standing and perfectly admirable�although, in my view, entirely wrong-headed�view of the SNP that it wishes to have an independent Scotland, it is entirely understandable that it should try to use this mechanism to get closer to that objective, but it is the wrong mechanism and the wrong Bill in which to seek to fundamentally change the nature of our devolution settlement, and my colleagues on the Front Bench are completely right to oppose it.
I would also add that I cannot understand the value of striking Scottish Ministers out of clause 19. That would be a retrograde step because it would mean no consultation with Scottish Ministers, which would be a fundamental mistake.
George Eustice
The purpose of clause 19 is to establish a requirement for the Secretary of State to consult the devolved Administrations. As other hon. Members have pointed out, this matter and the powers outlined in clause 18 are incontrovertibly a reserved UK matter. The amendment would undermine the power of the UK to determine UK resources for the purposes of international law, and relates directly to a UK function.
Where the UK is subject to an international obligation to achieve a result by reference to a fixed quantity for the UK as a whole, the UK Government are responsible for determining how that is achieved. In this case, the responsibility will fall on the UK, under the UN convention on the law of the sea, after we leave the EU.
Compliance with or implementation of international obligations is devolved, but determining UK fishing opportunities is not a function that is exercisable separately in or as regards Scotland or any other part of the UK. It is not within devolved competence to determine, or to block the UK Government from determining, fishing opportunities for the UK as a whole.
Clause 18(2) explicitly sets out:
�A determination under subsection (1) may be made only for the purpose of complying with an international obligation of the United Kingdom to determine the fishing opportunities of the United Kingdom.�
It makes crystal clear the scope of clause 18. It cannot relate to any devolved matter at all; it can relate only to matters relating to the UK�s compliance with international obligations. It would therefore not be appropriate to seek consent from any devolved Administration when determining fishing opportunities. In clause 19, we set out something that we think is reasonable: a requirement to consult.
Brendan O'Hara
I thank the Minister for his reply. As I said on day one, the Scottish Government and Scottish Government officials have worked very closely with him and his officials�for which we are very grateful�and this was one of the few major sticking points. I am disappointed that we do not appear to be able to take this further, but I reiterate that we believe that the amendment is entirely in line with the Scotland Act 1998, and I will therefore press it to a vote.
I am disappointed but not at all surprised by the contribution of the hon. Member for Glasgow North East. Members of the Scottish National party are here at least to defend the devolution settlement, which makes it perfectly clear that if a matter is not reserved, it is devolved. As my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun said, the powers that come back from Europe should go to the relevant devolved authority. In this case, I believe it should be the Scottish Parliament. That is why a legislative consent motion should be sought, rather than simply consultation.
Mr Sweeney
To clarify, section 58 of the Scotland Act 1998 makes it quite clear that this is an international obligation, and therefore the Secretary of State supersedes any devolved decision that would undermine the UK�s international obligations. This issue has a clear interface with the UK�s international obligations. Therefore, it is entirely consistent with what the Scottish people democratically voted for in the referendum that created the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government, and with the increased scope of the devolved powers under the Scotland Act 2016. Therefore, in our view it is entirely consistent with the Scottish people�s decisions.
Brendan O'Hara
I fundamentally disagree. I do not want to take up much more of the Committee�s time with dancing on the head of the pin of the Scotland Act, but let us be absolutely clear that the observance and implementation of international obligations is not reserved. It is not the sole responsibility of this Parliament and the United Kingdom to implement and comply with such obligations. I therefore wish to press the amendment to a vote.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Peter Aldous
I beg to move amendment 84, in clause�20,�page�11,�line�26,�at end insert �and,
(ii) for �environmental, social and economic nature� substitute �environmental and social nature, thereby recognising the fishery as public property held on trust for the people�.�
I will start by giving some background information to the amendment, which sets out provisions on the distribution of fishing opportunities. At present, the distribution is inequitable and the system needs to improve. As we move to a UK fishing policy, we have a golden opportunity to bring about those improvements.
Article 17 of the common fisheries policy is retained and amended in clause 20 by stating that the relevant national authorities�the Secretary of State and the MMO�shall
�use transparent and objective criteria including those of an environmental, social and economic nature�
when allocating fishing opportunities. That is a good start, but the existing wording states that the criteria to be used may include �historic catch levels�, as well as the impact of fishing on the environment and its contribution to the local economy. The wording in the CFP, coupled with the lack of a requirement to prioritise environmental, social and local economic criteria, has meant that �historic catch levels� has often ended up being the sole basis on which quota is allocated, giving rise to the present inequitable and unsustainable distribution.
The five largest quota holders control more than a third of UK fishing quota. Four of them belong to families on The Sunday Times rich list and the fifth is a subsidiary of a Dutch multinational. Some 49% of English quota is held by companies based overseas. As is well documented and figures very prominently in all debates in this place, the small-scale fleet�the inshore vessels known as the under-10s�gets a raw deal. Those vessels hold only 6% of quota, notwithstanding the fact that for every fish caught, the small-scale fleet creates far more jobs than its larger scale counterparts. It lands 11% of fish by value in the UK, but employs 49% of all those in the industry. Similarly, more than 90% of the small-scale fleet uses passive gears, which are far better for the environment.
Solutions to the problems can be delivered through the amendments I have tabled to clause 20. Amendment 84 would legally enshrine fish as a public resource, as recognised in the Government�s White Paper. While the UN convention on the law of the sea already touches on the issue, we have a great chance to confirm in primary legislation the principle of the public resource. That in turn would establish the right foundation for distributing quota based on the delivery of public goods and environmental, social and local economic factors, as opposed to simply on the basis of historic catch levels. I look forward to learning from the Minister how we will take up this golden opportunity.
Luke Pollard
I am sure it will come as no surprise to members of the Committee that I agree with the hon. Member for Waveney on the amendment. When we considered amendments to clause 1, we spoke about fish being a public good. It is no surprise that fish is still a public good, and that should still be in the Bill. The White Paper states:
�We aim to manage these fisheries�and the wider marine environment�as a shared resource, a public asset held in stewardship for the benefit of all.�
That is the right objective, but it needs to be in the Bill.
The amendment gives the Minister a chance to do the right thing and include fish as a public asset for the benefit of all. The opportunity here is to be clear about the tone. In previous remarks, the Minister said that putting fish as a public good or a public asset in the Bill was unnecessary because it was already a de facto position, just as Parliament is sovereign. The argument about whether Parliament is sovereign is an argument because there are differing opinions on it, as we have seen in particular in the past fortnight. Just as the Minister has sought to mirror sections in other legislation, which he mentioned earlier, it would do no harm�I think it would be of huge benefit�if it were clear in the Bill that fish is a public good. I would have preferred that to be right up front, in the objectives in clause 1, but the hon. Gentleman is attempting to get it in at clause 20. That would be a good amendment and it is one that the Opposition will support.
George Eustice
I appreciate that my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney is a long-standing campaigner on these issues. He will know that the Government have taken a number of steps to give additional quota to the inshore pool. My predecessor took unused FQA units from producer organisations to give extra fishing opportunities to the inshore pool. For my part, I have top-sliced the discard ban uplift to give additional fishing opportunities to the pool, and we have made it clear that we intend to do more. As I outlined earlier, our approach to the allocation of fishing opportunities will be, for the time being, to retain some stability by allowing existing opportunities to continue to follow the FQA lines, but we have been clear that any new fishing opportunities that come as we depart from relative stability will be allocated on a different basis, as a first step.
I have made it clear that we have at least three approaches under consideration. One is indeed to give additional fishing opportunities to the inshore pool so that our inshore fleet, which, as my hon. Friend points out, often lacks fishing opportunities, will have more fishing opportunities as we depart from relative stability. Secondly, we have outlined our plans to create a national reserve of quota that can be used to help to make the discard ban work as well in practice as in theory. Finally, we outline in other places in the Bill the power to tender new fishing opportunities to producer organisations based on their environmental track record and on what they give back to communities.
I believe that all those things, taken together, mean that, in our White Paper and in the powers that we are taking in this Bill, we have the socioeconomic interests of coastal communities at heart. The Secretary of State plan outlined in clause 2 is explicit about ensuring that we take account of and have a plan for those coastal communities that depend on fishing for their livelihoods. I have already given my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney an undertaking that we will seek to tweak some of the language in that provision, but when it comes to the question whether fish is a public asset, it is incontrovertibly the case that it is. We had a debate earlier about our common law tradition, and in a test case brought by the producer organisations, Mr Justice Cranston cited Magna Carta, no less, to say that fish stocks were a public resource. Specifically, he said:
�Consequently there can be no property right in fish until they are caught. That submission was a useful reminder but common ground.�
The fact that fish are a public asset is beyond question, and I do not believe that that needs to be placed in the Bill, but I am happy, as I said under an earlier group of amendments, to consider the Secretary of State fisheries statement to see whether we can more specifically address the point that my hon. Friend has in mind regarding fishing opportunities.
Peter Aldous
I am grateful to the Minister for that explanation. On Tuesday, when we debated whether the public good should be one of the objectives of the Bill, I did take on board his point: as fish is a public good already, what is the point of having it as an objective? However, in this instance, we are trying to redistribute fishing quota more equitably so that local communities can benefit, so I do not think that the earlier argument relates this time around.
The Minister has already said that he will look at the fishing statements in a bit more detail. I just ask that, before we get to Report, we ensure that the criteria for the distribution of fishing opportunities are as good as they can be. There was every intention of doing that when the common fisheries policy was reformed in 2012-13, and his predecessor, our right hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), did an lot of good work on it. However, fishing communities like the ones I represent are not yet seeing the benefits, and this strikes me as an opportunity to reinforce that point, to make sure it actually happens. I look forward to seeing what the Minister comes up with before Report, but I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Hon. Members: No.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Luke Pollard
I beg to move amendment 106, in clause�20,�page�11,�line�28,�at end insert�
�(5A) After that paragraph insert�
�1A The relevant national authorities shall distribute fishing opportunities made available to them, and may redistribute any fishing opportunities that were made available to them prior to the United Kingdom exiting the European Union. Any such distribution and redistribution must be carried out according to social, environmental and local economic criteria following national and regional consultation from relevant stakeholder advisory groups, including representative groups from across the fishing fleet, scientists, and environmental groups.��
This amendment would allow the redistribution of existing fishing opportunities, would also set criteria for the distribution of future and redistribution of existing fishing opportunities and require consultation.
Amendment 106 relates to the redistribution of fishing opportunities. A key aim of the Bill is ultimately to create a fairer system, and Members will forgive me if I take a moment to read out why it is so important. This is a key amendment for Opposition Members, and one that we believe would, if taken up, have a transformational impact on the health of our oceans and on the local economies of coastal communities right across the UK.
The logic of the amendment follows from the principle of fish being a public good, which, as we have just discussed, is not yet on the face of the Bill, but is something we all agree on. To acquire the right to fish, and use that for the public good, there should be a set of criteria that need to be followed to ensure that what we are taking balances out. The current FQA system is broken: half of English quota is held by companies based overseas, the small-scale fleet only holds 6% of quota, and the five largest quota holders�four of which belong to families on The Sunday Times rich list�control more than a third of UK fishing quota. Small boats provide the backbone of our fishing fleet, making up the majority of that fleet. They generally use low-impact gear and provide more jobs per tonne, but their share of quota is limited to around 4% to 6% of the total.
While there may be more fish for the UK after we leave the common fisheries policy, not amending the distribution of quota will exacerbate existing levels of inequality between parts of the sector, and will fail to incentivise best practice. The fixed quota allocation system, which has been heavily criticised for being unfair from the outset, has not been updated since the 1990s. Again, in the words of the hon. Member for Waveney:
�It is commonly recognised that the inshore fleet�the under-10s�has had a raw deal as far as access to quota and fishing opportunities is concerned.���[Official Report, Fisheries Public Bill Committee, 4 December 2018; c. 39, Q69.]
As a result of the existing system, ownership of fishing quota has become increasingly consolidated among larger-scale interests.
I will make the same remarks as I made in yesterday�s debate on the UK fishing industry: in the fisheries sector, we do not talk about small and medium-sized enterprises in the same way as we would in manufacturing, but if fishing were like manufacturing, the small boats would be the SMEs of our economy. There would be a much greater focus on the support system given to them, the investment into them and the jobs they create, and on making sure that they have the right and fair allocation of quota.
In our evidence session, Griffin Carpenter from the New Economics Foundation said:
�In essence, fisheries have been accidentally privatised. Every year, quota is allocated to the same holders, and there is a legitimate expectation that that continues in future. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and other organisations are too scared to break that hold on the quota and say, �This year we will allocate quota differently.� It has not been done; it is basically privatised now the claim is so strong. If there is ever a point to break that link, it is now.���[Official Report, Fisheries Public Bill Committee, 6 December 2018; c. 102, Q196.]
I agree with him.
The small-scale fleet has generally been excluded from the FQA system and producer organisations, which has led to the decline of coastal communities and ports. Since 1938�a year I am sure we all remember well�the number of fishermen on UK-registered vessels has decreased by 76%. Fifty years ago, the UK had 50,000 fishers; now we have almost 12,000�a huge decline.
The small boat sector is shrinking every year. Between 2007 and last year, the number of fishermen on UK-registered vessels decreased by 9% from 12,871 to only 11,692. Since 2007, the number of fishermen on English and Scottish-administered vessels decreased by 10%. It has fallen by 22% in Wales, and in 2017, 42% of fishermen on vessels administered in Wales were listed as part time. Under the combination of an unfair system and Tory austerity, which mainly hits coastal communities, or has had a disproportionate effect on them, small-scale fishing activity in coastal communities the length and breadth of the UK is a shadow of its former self.
There is now an opportunity to reinvigorate our fishing industry through better and fairer distribution of quota. Fishing quota provides an opportunity to commercially fish a resource that belongs to everyone. Fishing should be seen as a privilege, not a right, but it has effectively been privatised, as I mentioned earlier. The Bill is our opportunity to change that. We do not want to rob big boats of quota and give it to small boats; we want to use the Bill to create a new criterion for allocating quota based on social, environmental and economic factors.
Alan Brown
I acknowledge the opportunity that the hon. Gentleman is talking about. We heard evidence about possible opportunities for some future reallocation. How would his amendment work in principle in terms of the devolution settlement? Would it allow UK Ministers to redistribute Scottish quotas, or would it be an England-only matter?
Luke Pollard
I am grateful for that intervention, because it goes to the core of the amendment, which basically sets a different criterion for allocation. At the moment, quota is predominantly allocated on the FQA system. We are suggesting that there should be redistribution based on social, economic and environmental criteria, done on a species-by-species, zone-by-zone basis to take into account the varieties in our different fishing industries around the United Kingdom.
It is important that, when we set the tone for how fishing quotas should be allocated in future, the economic link that I spoke about earlier and the environmental consequences that the hon. Gentleman spoke about earlier are taken into account. That should be done by all fisheries Administrations, not just England or Scotland. It should be done by the entirety of the United Kingdom.
Quotas should be allocated on transparent social and ecological criteria to benefit fishing communities�for example, by offering a greater share for complying with relevant regulations, taking part in data gathering, fully monitoring and recording catches, and complying with discard rules. The UK has always had the ability to reallocate quota to reward particular types of fishing practice or to support broader social or economic goals, but has chosen not to seize the full opportunities that come from that.
Article 17 of the reformed common fisheries policy urged European member states to consider environmental, economic and social criteria when allocating opportunities. It was heralded as potentially revolutionary by senior EU officials when it was launched as part of the overall reformed CFP, but its lack of mandate meant that it failed to be implemented effectively in any EU member state. Greenpeace recently lost a case in which it made that argument in the High Court, but the Bill is a chance to fix that, using fairer criteria for the benefit of the small fleet in particular.
Mr Carmichael
Does the hon. Gentleman have a mechanism for ensuring that that redistributed quota does not become a tradeable commodity in turn?
Luke Pollard
That is at the heart of the current problem. The quota has been traded; indeed, a future Opposition amendment will deal with the problem that the right hon. Gentleman identifies of slipper skippers who trade their quotas as a commodity, using them not to catch fish but as financial instruments to derive income from by renting them out to others. We need to ensure that the economic criteria for redistributing the fishing quota take into account the importance of the quota holder�s using the quota to catch fish rather than as a financial product. Deriving income from a quota without using it damages the viability of the sector by increasing costs without increasing productivity.
David Duguid (Banff and Buchan) (Con)
I sympathise with the requirement to allow new entrants to get into the industry by giving them access to the quota, and I was thankful to hear the hon. Gentleman say that his amendment does not propose to rob Peter to pay Paul�or rob Peterhead to pay Plymouth, for that matter. However, when we discussed safety, it was mentioned that fishermen whose vessels are slightly more than 10 metres have shortened them, arguably creating a safety issue, and sold off their quota. How would he address the fact that many of those who are now small fishermen have benefited financially from selling off their quota in the past?
Luke Pollard
The hon. Gentleman�s point relates to the question whether fish is a public good. At the heart of it, as the Minister says, fish is a public good. The problem with our current fixed quota allocation system is that in many cases possessing a quota has become more profitable than using it for fishing. That seems to be an inherent flaw in the FQA system, so I am grateful that the Minister has set out his long-term intention to look at FQA and see where it gets to. The important thing is to provide determination and steel to the endeavours of the Minister�in his role not only as an English Fisheries Minister, but as a UK-wide Fisheries Minister� and of the devolved Administrations. Setting out the basis for any redistribution is really important, which is why our amendment states:
�The relevant national authorities shall distribute fishing opportunities made available to them, and may redistribute any fishing opportunities that were made available to them prior to the United Kingdom exiting the European Union. Any such distribution and redistribution must be carried out according to social, environmental and local economic criteria�.
There is a concern among many fishers, with and without a quota, that the current system does not work in the best way.
Our amendment would not mean big boats losing out�far from it. In all likelihood, only a small proportion of opportunities would be redistributed to the smaller fleet in the first instance, making a big difference to their livelihoods and the environment. We need to bear in mind that only 4% to 6% of quotas are currently held by smaller boats. Representatives of larger scale fleets told me that they comply with the principle of fairer distribution based on economic, social and environmental criteria. If they are living up to those aspirations they should have nothing to fear from this policy, because it is about incentivising best practice.
This is an opportunity to create a race to the top, rather than a race to the bottom, which is why the Opposition are bringing this measure forward. This new approach is entirely consistent with the White Paper�s recognition of fisheries as a public resource. It is also backed by Greenpeace, the entire Greener UK coalition, the New Under Ten Fishermen�s Association, the Scottish Creel Fishermen�s Federation and Charles Clover�s Blue Marine Foundation, while 6,500 people in coastal communities called for this change to the distribution of quota in the White Paper consultation.
Many of the Government�s own Back Benchers support the principle of reallocating quota. The hon. Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) said on Second Reading:
�Given that this fleet is not only more profitable to local economies, but employs more local fishermen and uses more sustainable fishing practices, will the Bill allow larger quotas to independent vessels under 10 metres?��[Official Report, 21 November 2018; Vol. 649, c. 905.]
If we are to make real that hon. Gentleman�s aspiration, we must provide the ability and incentives to redistribute that quota, as amendment 106 seeks to do. Denmark�s fish fund�the quota reserved for new entrants or those with good environmental performance�shows that that is already happening. It is time we caught up.
My hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Sue Hayman), in her excellent speech on Second Reading, mentioned the hope placed in the Bill by people living in coastal communities across the UK. Without quota allocation there is no hope of taking back control. This attempt to redistribute quota is an attempt to make real the promises given by the leave campaign, and indeed by Government Ministers since�that taking back control will have a beneficial effect on those small coastal communities. If we do not provide the ability to redistribute that quota in support of those coastal communities, what are we doing here? That is why the amendment is so important. I will be grateful if the Minister could back it in his remarks.
Mr Carmichael
As previously, I am in broad sympathy with the approach taken by the hon. Gentleman, but I am concerned that he suggests a big and fairly open-ended commitment here. As I implied during the evidence session, I fear that we would probably be at risk of producing a dripping roast for lawyers for some time to come.
Although it was probably never intended to be the case, fish quota has become a tradeable commodity over the years. Several fishing businesses have made and taken on fairly substantial financial commitments secured against the fact that they own quota and can derive an income from it. The words that start to come to my mind are �legitimate expectation�, and once that is the case we know that we will be heading towards the courts to determine the extent of that legitimate expectation, who has it and the basis on which it can be traded.
Not everybody who owns fish quota is a robber baron. Shetland Islands Council owns a substantial amount of fishing quota that it leases to local boats. That is for the public good, and I would be careful about interfering with the council�s property rights in that way. I would be very open to the idea of returning quota�quota that we do not currently have access to�being dealt with differently; it could be distributed in different ways. Some of the lessons of the past could be learned so that it did not become a tradeable commodity. The property rights could be defined in a very different way, which, with hindsight, we might wish we had done 30 or 40 years ago but did not.
As I say, the amendment would make a fairly big and open-ended commitment. I do not know whether it would necessarily be the best use of the money required. Before I went down this road, I would want to know a bit more than the broad principles. I would want to know how the practicalities would work. As the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport said, fish quota have essentially been privatised. He is effectively talking about nationalisation, and that comes with a price tag attached.
Luke Pollard
It is not about nationalisation; it is about the redistribution of fish quota, and the amendment is about being able to do so without a time limit. As the Minister said, distributing FQA takes time, which is why there is deliberately no time limit in the amendment. However, there is a commitment to consult with those groups, including the fishing fleets, to ensure it is redistributed fairly.
Mr Carmichael
That is helpful, but I am not entirely sure about the hon. Gentleman�s distinction between redistribution and nationalisation. At the end of the day, we risk spending public money. I am not averse to that�it may ultimately be necessary, and I can certainly see the end that is to be met by it�but at the moment it is a little ill-defined. I would favour an approach that dealt differently with the returning quota, rather than mucking about with the existing quota. I am not averse to the idea, but we should not be blind to the risks that come with it.
George Eustice
The purpose of clause 20 is predominantly to bring across article 17 from the European Union and make it operable. Article 17 will come across as retained EU law. All we are seeking to do is to make changes that make it operable and preserve its intent.
Article 17 states:
�When allocating the fishing opportunities available to them�Member States shall use transparent and objective criteria including those of an environmental, social and economic nature. The criteria to be used may include, inter alia, the impact of fishing on the environment, the history of compliance, the contribution to the local economy and historic catch levels. Within the fishing opportunities allocated to them, Member States shall endeavour to provide incentives to fishing vessels deploying selective fishing gear or using fishing techniques with reduced environmental impact�.
I believe that article 17, as currently worded, captures many of the intentions behind this amendment and the last one moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney.
There is a technical issue with the way amendment 106 is drafted. It does not make specific reference to fixed quota allocations�FQA units�as a basis; it simply talks about trying to redistribute historical fishing opportunities. It is therefore trying to reallocate opportunities that have already been spent�the quota that were attached to the FQA units. I would argue that, from a technical point of view, it would make more sense to have made reference to FQA units.
Greenpeace has had a longstanding campaign on article 17, since at least 2015. In 2016, it brought a judicial review against the Government, arguing that we had not complied with article 17, and it was roundly defeated in that case. Mrs Justice Andrews stated during the case that
�there is a large volume of detailed rules, licence conditions, schemes and policies, including the Concordat and the Quota Management Regulations�which are published and openly available and which have been notified to the Commission. There is ample evidence that they include environmental criteria as required by Article 17, and that far from paying them lip service, they are afforded proper weight in the allocation process.�
The judgment of the European Court of Auditors was that the case brought by Greenpeace was wrong.
Greenpeace has had a longstanding campaign on article 17, but in my view it has been barking up the wrong tree. The truth is that if we want to address the issue of fishing opportunities for the inshore sector, we should not do it by clinging to some article in residual EU law. The correct way to do it is to include, as I have committed to my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney that I will, a reference to fishing opportunities in the Secretary of State�s fishing statement, where it directly links to the socioeconomic impacts on coastal communities�not to attempt to play with the wording of article 17.
Luke Pollard
I am grateful to the Minister for setting out why this is what he wants to do, but that it is too difficult to do it in the way that we have set out. That is how I have interpreted his response. The important thing is that we are talking about setting a fairer framework for smaller boats in particular. I know the Minister seeks to label this as a Greenpeace initiative, and indeed Greenpeace is one of its supporters, but so is the organisation that represents small boats.
The amendment makes real the promises of the leave campaign. If we do not find a way of giving powers to the national fishing authorities to reallocate the existing quotas, what happens if no quotas come back at the end of the negotiations with the EU? What happens if people, admittedly above the Minister�s pay scale, come back with no additional quotas whatsoever? That is a very real risk at the moment. What happens if there are no unicorns in the nets of our fishers? That is the problem that we face.
The Minister cannot have it both ways. He says that he wants to reallocate FQAs. So do we, and there is an opportunity to do that. It is about asking, �How will we make a fairer system if no additional quotas come back?� If they do, I agree with the Minister that we need to reallocate them in a fairer way. Economic, social and environmental criteria are the ones that we agree on�there is commonality on both sides of the Committee Room in that respect.
If no additional quotas come back, because there is a real risk that our fishers will be betrayed in the upcoming negotiations, no matter how many reassurances Ministers give them, what then? The amendment gives Ministers the power to signal, and suggests that Ministers signal, that they wish to reallocate quotas based on those sound economic criteria.
That relates to the point that the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland made regarding the notice period that someone is given. The Minister has answered that question by setting out from the legal judgment that it is a period of seven years. A proper period should be determined, via consultation with the industry and other stakeholders, for when those allocations should have their value reset. It should be set in the public�s best interest, as fishing is a public good.
It is important to set that notice period. That is why the amendment is so important: it encourages Ministers to signal their intention that they will reset FQAs and redistribute them in a fairer way. It might well be that there are whole areas and whole species that we would not want to redistribute. It might also be that there are zones and particular fisheries that we would want to prioritise, as the Minister has said in terms of the small amount of redistribution that his Department has done.
I am not asking the Minister to learn the words of �The Red Flag�, including the difficult second verse, nor to embrace socialism in a way that would offend his sensibilities; I am suggesting that he embrace an amendment that would make real the promises of the leave campaign to our small fleet and our coastal communities. Give the powers to the national authorities to redistribute, if they wish to�in effect, that is what this says. There is no compulsion on them to do so, but the strong indication is that that is the right thing to do.
That is why the amendment is so important. Without it, there is no focus either on redistributing existing quota or on correctly redistributing the quota that is coming over�if we get any. I caution that we should not presume that we will get any, because I fear that decisions made by pay grades far above those of all in this room�including yours, Mr Hanson, unbelievably�might be for quotas to stay as they are. No matter what amendments the Government make, I fear that those decisions are out of our hands. That is why the amendment is so important and why we will put it to a vote.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Peter Aldous
I beg to move amendment 85, in clause�20,�page�11,�line�32,�at end insert�
�(c) the Scottish Ministers,
(d) the Welsh Ministers, and
(e) the Northern Ireland department.�
The amendment would require that all �national authorities� in fisheries that must abide by the new approach to fishing opportunity distribution includes devolved Administration Ministers as well as the Secretary of State and the Marine Management Organisation.
I should point out that this would not interfere with devolved powers over fisheries. It would, as the CFP does already, simply set the legal mandate for future distribution criteria according to environmental, social and local economic factors. The actual process beyond that of identifying and agreeing the criteria through consultation with experts and the public, plus any administrative approach locally, would be in the hands of the devolved Administrations and not the Westminster Government. I would welcome it if the Minister could clarify the issues and set out what he believes to be the right procedure to deal with them.
Mr Sweeney
I am happy to support this excellent amendment, because it seeks to ensure that in the distribution of fishing opportunities, Scottish Ministers, along with Welsh Ministers and the Northern Ireland Department�we hope, soon, a Northern Ireland Executive will be restored�would be recognised as �relevant national authorities�, alongside the Secretary of State and the Marine Management Organisation. The Labour party believes such an approach to be fair. It would ensure parity between Scottish Ministers and the Secretary of State.
In good faith, I urge the Minister to accept the amendment. A failure to do so would show that the UK Government are not at all committed to ensuring that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are equal partners in our Union of nations. The amendment is therefore critical.
Alan Brown
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the Scottish Parliament initially was happy not to be included in the clause, because the Scottish Government have worked with the UK Government on that basis?
Mr Sweeney
It seems that we are in violent agreement on some things�we cannot do wrong for doing right, can we? Interestingly, I think that adding the amendment to the Bill would define the process and make it clear. That is why we also supported a clear dispute resolution mechanism being in the Bill. That, too, would have provided a clear, unequivocal process that would have allowed us to resolve these problems with the different partners in the UK. I have to say that I was rather disappointed that the SNP abstained on that amendment, but we are where we are. I think this is a worthwhile measure and it will be helpful for us to proceed on this basis. I urge the Minister, in good faith, to support it to bind our Union together even more.
George Eustice
The simple reason that we have not included the Scottish Ministers, Welsh Ministers and Northern Ireland Department in this particular clause is that they did not want us to do so on their behalf.
As I have said many times, the Bill sits within the devolved settlement and it is for each Administration to make the changes that are needed to retained EU law to make it operable. The devolved Administrations are currently drafting many statutory instruments and other legislative vehicles to make retained EU law operable. In this Bill, we have chosen to make the changes that are necessary to make article 17 operable. None of the other devolved Administrations wanted us to include that in the Bill on their behalf. That may be because they intend to address these issues through legislation of their own.
Owen Smith
This is not something I can prove, but I understand from talking to colleagues in the Welsh Government that in an early draft of this clause, the Welsh Administration and others were included in subsection (6). I want to know why they were taken out.
George Eustice
My understanding is that the Labour Administration in Wales asked for it to be taken out. They no longer wished to be included in this clause. Clearly, hon. Members can ask a legitimate question: does that mean that no other part of the UK intends to abide by article 17 and are content to leave it inoperable; do they intend to address it in a different way; or have they not yet considered it, but might like us to add them to the list in subsection (6) at a later stage of the Bill�s passage? I will undertake further conversations with the devolved Administrations between now and Report to understand their intentions.
I hope hon. Members will understand that we respect the devolution settlement. Without the permission of the devolved Administrations, it is not proper for us to accept this amendment, since it is a devolved matter, but it is certainly an issue where we could have further conversations with the devolved Administrations ahead of Report.
Peter Aldous
On the basis that the Minister will seek clarification from the devolved Administrations on how they wish to handle this issue, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Peter Aldous
I beg to move amendment 86, in clause�20,�page�11,�line�32,�at end insert�
�3 The documents and evidence forming the basis for allocation decisions must be made available to the public within 20 days of the decision being made.�
The amendment would ensure that documents and evidence forming the basis of any allocation decisions must be made available to the public, so as to enhance accountability and transparency in the quota-setting process. Lack of such transparency has been a key issue with the current FQA situation under the CFP. Indeed, many urban myths have developed. Myths that certain football clubs and car manufacturers own fish quota have been doing the rounds for many years. The European Court of Auditors judged the FQA system as not being fit for purpose. It has led to the trading and renting out of quota at punitive and prohibitive prices, solely for profit and often at great cost to the inshore fleet.
Once environmental, social and economic criteria are established in law as the priority for determining future quota distribution, the environmental and social criteria should be identified, but transparently, by engaging public consultation at both national and regional levels. At a minimum, they should align with the definition of environmental in the Environmental Information Regulations 2004. Social criteria could include aiding new entrants to the industry; local landing based opportunities, both in ports and in processing factories; increased landings in ports; and enhancing local cultural identity and tourism.
Luke Pollard
The argument in favour of the amendment has been powerfully put by the hon. Member for Waveney, but the sentiment is worth echoing. It is really important that, as we set up a new fisheries management system after Brexit, fishers have confidence in that new system. As we have heard, there is a great deal of suspicion about how the current quotas are allocated, and the ability to have that available for public scrutiny is important. We support the amendment.
George Eustice
The methodology for distributing existing quota between the four Administrations is set out in the publicly available UK quota management rules. In addition, each Administration have their own rules for allocating their existing quota, which, again, are already publicly available. The rules are also subject to consultation.
In our White Paper, we set out very clearly that we would have a revised methodology for the allocations, and it is of course our intention that they will be published. I understand the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney, but I encourage him to read what we already publish before taking the decision to press the amendment to a Division. We already have publicly available rules, which are published, and we have committed to publish new ones. We publish a great deal of information.
As I highlighted earlier, in the judgment in the Greenpeace court case, Mrs Justice Andrews said that
�there is a large volume of detailed rules, licence conditions, schemes and policies...which are published and openly available and which have been notified to the Commission.�
A vast amount of information is already published. I would like to share some of those documents with my hon. Friend for his weekend reading, and then he could consider whether he still has a hunger for more statutory requirements of this nature.
Peter Aldous
I am grateful to the Minister for that reply, and I take on board the nature in which he makes that offer. Over the years, so much suspicion has grown up over this issue. I feel that there is a need for transparency so that the industry and the public can have confidence in the system. I do think it appropriate to have what is a fairly minor amendment in the Bill, and therefore I will press it to a vote.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 19�Criteria for the allocation of fishing opportunities�
�(1) When allocating the fishing opportunities available to the United Kingdom between the relevant national authorities, the Secretary of State shall use transparent and objective criteria including those of an environmental, social and economic nature, recognising the United Kingdom fishery as public property held on trust for the people of the United Kingdom. The criteria used shall include, inter alia, the impact of fishing on the environment and the social and economic contribution to the local economy, and shall comply with the fisheries objectives set out in section 1 and any JFS or SSFS.
(2) When allocating the fishing opportunities available to them, English fisheries administrations shall use transparent and objective criteria including those of an environmental, social and economic nature, recognising the English fishery as public property held on trust for the people of England. The criteria used shall include, inter alia, the impact of fishing on the environment and the social and economic contribution to the local economy, and shall comply with the fisheries objectives set out in section 1 and any JFS or SSFS.
(3) When allocating the fishing opportunities available to them pursuant to sub-section (2), English fisheries administrations shall provide incentives to fishing vessels deploying selective fishing gear and/or using fishing techniques with reduced environmental impact, such as reduced energy consumption or habitat damage.
(4) The documents and evidence forming the basis for allocation decisions under sub-sections (2) and (3) must be made available to the public within 20 days of the decision being made, and such documents and evidence shall not be treated as exempt information under sections 21 to 44 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
(5) In this section �relevant national authorities� means�
(a) the Secretary of State,
(b) the Scottish Ministers,
(c) the Welsh Ministers, and
(d) the Northern Ireland department.
(6) In this Act�
�English fisheries administrations� means�
(a) The Secretary of State;
(b) The Marine Management Organisation; and
(c) any of the Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authorities.
�English fishery� means such sovereign fishing rights as exist in the English inshore region and the English offshore region.�
Peter Aldous
The new clause sets out criteria for the allocation of fishing opportunities. I would like to place on the record my thanks to Dr Tom Appleby, who appeared before us in last week�s evidence session, for his work on drafting these proposed provisions.
As I have mentioned, clause 20 is a reworking of article 17 of the common fisheries policy, which seeks to incentivise better environmental practice. As currently drafted, the clause permits the Secretary of State to distribute fishing opportunities to the devolved Assemblies and English fishermen. There is a concern that it is too complex. The new clause splits those obligations into two parts, as the roles are subtly different�one is a UK determination and the other is a determination with respect to England only. There is also a concern that the way the clause was incorporated by references makes it difficult to read. The new clause seeks to improve on that.
The new clause provides the following. First, it provides a UK function in subsection (1) and an English function in subsections (2) and (3). Secondly, unlike other public assets, the nature of the public ownership of UK fisheries is not settled in legislation�we heard the reasons for that on Tuesday�although the courts confirmed in the 2013 case that has been mentioned at length that fish are a public asset. It is important that the nature of that public ownership is settled, as that would enable UK administrators to manage and dispose of the asset properly, with appropriate powers and duties being granted. It is proposed that ownership should take the form of a public trust vested in the Secretary of State in a similar way to other Crown assets managed by such organisations as the Crown Estate Commissioners.
Thirdly, the distribution of fishing opportunities would include social criteria as a means of tying in the joint fisheries statements and the Secretary of State�s fisheries statement. It would also include a means of rewarding better fishing practices. Finally, since the documentation recording the reasons for disposing of fishing opportunities to the commercial sector would involve the distribution of a public asset, there would need to be unequivocal transparency.
We examined in last week�s evidence sessions whether quota reallocation would leave the Government and the fisheries administrations exposed to legal threats. It is important to consider that question with regard to the new clause. In so doing, I highlight two issues. First, Greenpeace sought independent legal advice, which concluded that these changes would be compatible with domestic and international law and that
�a challenge to a new system of quota allocation enshrined in an Act of Parliament would be unlikely to succeed.�
That conclusion is based on two key points. First, the mandate for reallocation would be placed in a new Act of Parliament that overrides any common law and, after Brexit, will be supreme. Secondly, in the 2013 case, Mr Justice Cranston stated that in his view FQA units could be deemed as possessions falling within article 1 of the first protocol of the European convention on human rights�the right to property. He also said that FQA units had no value if no quota had been allocated or they were unused, and in any case the interference with the possession of FQA units was in accordance with law and was justified.
Taken together, these two points mean that in the scenario of mandating quota reallocation in UK law, as we are now considering in our discussion of this Bill, this is compatible�
Alan Brown
Will the hon. Gentleman explain how his new clause would work in terms of the devolved Administrations and how they manage their quotas?
Peter Aldous
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point. The intention is not to interfere with that management through the current devolution settlement, so I do not think that he has a particular worry on this issue.
Alan Brown
I accept that the hon. Gentleman says that he is not seeking to change the devolved settlement; it is just that the new clause lists the Scottish Ministers. That is why I am trying to understand how it would work practically in the future.
Peter Aldous
As I have said, the devolved Administrations would have a full role in this process; that should not present a problem.
This new approach would result in European companies that currently control UK quotas having to respond and show why they should keep this quota on the UK terms, and they would have to address the principles of sustainability and local employment. That approach is compatible with article 17 of the common fisheries policy and it would not be challenged by any other members of the EU. I look forward to hearing the Minister�s response.
George Eustice
Clause 20 simply revokes CFP rules on the distribution of fishing opportunities to EU member states, according to relative stability. Therefore, these rules will not be part of retained EU law.
Subsection (1) revokes article 16 of the common fisheries regulation. That article provides for the Council to distribute fishing opportunities to member states, which obviously will no longer apply when we leave the European Union. Subsection (2), which we have debated in some detail, simply makes article 17 of the CFP operable in the UK.
I turn now to new clause 19, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney. We have rehearsed many of the points in our consideration of earlier measures and amendments, so I will not dwell on them in detail. I have already pointed out that I do not believe that we need a statement that fisheries resources are a national asset or public property, because that is self-evidently the case and our common law has always held as much. Indeed, recent case law has held that very clearly and we have a common law tradition on some of these matters.
I have already given my hon. Friend an undertaking that we will look at the wording of the Secretary of State�s fisheries statements, so that we can consider the catch opportunities and fishing opportunities in the context of protecting coastal communities and those who depend on fishing for their living.
A number of the other elements of new clause 19 are already accommodated by article 17 of the CFP, which we have now made operable. The commitment to have transparent objectives already exists and is made operable by clause 20, so I do not believe that this proposed change is necessary.
I will also point out that the new clause would have the effect of bringing into scope the devolved Administrations when the way in which they allocate quota to their own fleet is a devolved matter. It is for the UK to allocate limits for the whole of the UK and to make determinations of allocations to each Administration, but it is for those devolved Administrations to decide how they then go on to allocate things to their own fleet.
Finally, new clause 19(6) seeks to bring the inshore fisheries and conservation authorities within the scope of this provision. I say to my hon. Friend that that is inappropriate, since we are talking here about the allocation of fishing opportunities and quotas. The IFCAs have a role in inshore fisheries conservation doing things such as setting closures and sometimes putting limits on the type of gear that might be used to catch lobsters, for instance. What the IFCAs certainly do not do is play any role in the allocation of quota.
Since we are talking predominantly about the allocation of opportunities to fish quota species, it is not appropriate to bring the inshore fisheries and conservation authorities within the scope of this part of the Bill. I hope, therefore, that my hon. Friend will see fit to not press his new clause.
Luke Pollard
We support the principles behind the amendment; it is extremely similar to amendment 106 and I refer back to the same arguments that I made on that.
The Chair
We will return to new clause 19 at a later date.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 20, as amended, accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 21
Duties to ensure fishing opportunities not exceeded
Luke Pollard
I beg to move amendment 107, in clause�21,�page�12,�line�5,�at end insert�
�(4) The relevant national authorities must publish, on at least an annual basis, a comparison of the number of each species of sea fish caught and�
(a) the catch quota for that species for that year, and
(b) the FMSY reference point for that species for that year.
(5) The publication under subsection (4) must, where the number of sea fish caught in a calendar year has exceeded the figures in paragraphs (4)(a) or (4)(b), note the impact on fish stocks that exceeding that figure is thought to have had.�
This amendment would require the publication of the quantity by species of fish caught to enable the impact on the sustainability fish stocks to be assessed.
This amendment continues the theme of transparency and freedom of information. Under clause 21, the fishery authorities have a duty to ensure that fishing opportunities are not exceeded in any year, whether by catch quota or by effort quota. To be able to hold the authorities to account for the exercise of that duty, we will need to have access to full, accurate and robust information. The amendment will also ensure that we have the necessary data to improve our scientific understanding of the seas, what is in them and how to ensure that we protect and conserve them for future generations.
The amendment, which is supported by various organisations, seeks to ensure publication at least annually of the number of species caught compared with the quota for that species and the reference points for fishing mortality at maximum sustainable yield. We want the publication to include an examination of the impact on stock for that species. I am sure the Minister already has plans for the publication of some of that data, but will he set out what information will be published and what the timescale will be?
George Eustice
It is important to note that, as drafted, this amendment cuts across the devolved settlement, because it would oblige not only the UK Government but the devolved Administrations to publish the data mentioned. Before accepting an amendment of this sort, we would need to seek the views and the consent of the devolved Administrations. It would also require the collection of data for each species of fish caught. With the landing obligation, that would include many species for which we did not have catch quotas or FMSY reference points, so comparisons could not always be made.
I invite the hon. Gentleman to take some weekend reading away with him. When it comes to statistics, we have incredibly detailed documents, including one from the MMO, which I have in my hands, and another from Marine Scotland. I urge the shadow Minister to read them on his train back to Plymouth this weekend and to then consider on Report whether he has an appetite for even more statistics than those that are already available in published form.
Luke Pollard
I wondered what the Minister�s little table was for, and now I understand it is to keep his reports on. I am grateful for the additional reading material. Transparency in this new fisheries management system is important. I am happy to take the Minister�s word that he already publishes a fair amount of data. We will look at this matter again and, if that turns out not to be sufficient, he should expect us to make a return trip to this amendment on Report. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 21 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 22
Sale of English fishing opportunities for a calendar year
George Eustice
I beg to move amendment 5, in clause�22,�page�12,�line�28,�leave out paragraph (h) and insert�
�() requiring or permitting rights to be sold, or not to be sold, to a person who meets such conditions (whether relating to the price offered for the rights or otherwise) as may be specified in or in accordance with the regulations;�.
This amendment would enable regulations to require or permit issues other than price to be taken into account when deciding who to sell fishing opportunities to.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Government amendment 6.
Clause stand part.
New clause 20�English Fishing Opportunities�
�(1) The English fishery shall vest in the Secretary of State and be held subject to the duties set out in this section.
(2) The powers exercisable by the Secretary of State in the management of the English fishery shall not include the power to borrow money against the English fishery.
(3) The Secretary of State, or the Marine Management Organisation or an Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority duly authorised by the Secretary of State, shall have the power to dispose of English fishing opportunities�
(a) for consideration;
(b) on the terms of a licence for a period of no more than 1 calendar year;
(c) in compliance with the criteria set out in section 20.
(4) Any licence of fishing opportunities granted pursuant to subsection (3) shall not create or transfer any proprietary right, title or interest in such fishing opportunities or in any fish before such fish are harvested by the holder.
(5) It shall be the general duty of the Secretary of State in any disposal of English fishery opportunities (whether by the Secretary of State or by the Marine Management Organisation or an Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority duly authorised by the Secretary of State) pursuant to this section to achieve appropriate consideration for any such disposal having regard to the criteria for disposal set out in section 20 and any JFS and SFSS.
(6) The Secretary of State shall by regulations make provision for the disposal of English fishing opportunities, which may include�
(a) for rights to be sold by competitive tender or auction,
(b) for a competitive tender process or auction to be run by such person as the regulations may designate,
(c) such fishing opportunities to be rented and an appropriate royalty charged,
(d) conferring functions (including functions involving the exercise of a discretion) on a person running a competitive tender process or auction, or on any other person,
(e) for terminating a competitive tender process or auction where there has been, or appears to the person running the competitive tender process or auction to have been, a failure to comply with the regulations,
(f) about how and when�
(i) payments for rights are to be made, and
(ii) payments received are to be dealt with,
(g) about appeals relating to eligibility for, or the outcome of, a tender process or auction,
(h) requiring a person running a tender process or auction to issue guidance.
(7) Fishing opportunities disposed of in accordance with this section are exercisable in relation to such fishing boats, by such persons, in such manner, and subject to such conditions, as may be specified in the terms of that disposal. In particular, the Secretary of State, or the Marine Management Organisation or an Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority duly authorised by the Secretary of State, shall have the power to, inter alia�
(a) specify persons, or descriptions of persons, who are eligible or ineligible to buy opportunities;
(b) require any person to pay a deposit, or do any other thing, in order to be eligible to buy opportunities;
(c) set limits on the opportunities that may be bought by a person or a description of persons;
(d) set a minimum price for fishing opportunities;
(e) prohibit or permit the transfer of fishing opportunities by the purchaser or the exercise of such fishing opportunities by someone other than the purchaser of those opportunities;
(f) extinguish or limit opportunities sold where any amount due in respect of them is not paid, or any condition attached to the exercise of the rights is not met;
(g) provide for the forfeit of fishing opportunities that are held by a person following a disposal under this section but not used, and for payment of compensation to that person.
(8) Regulations under this section are subject to the affirmative resolution procedure.
(9) In this Act�
�English catch quota� means so much of a catch quota as would (if not disposed of in accordance with this section) be available for distribution by the Secretary of State, or the Marine Management Organisation or any Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority on behalf of the Secretary of State, for use by English fishing boats;
�English effort quota� means so much of an effort quota as would (if not disposed of in accordance with this section) be available for distribution by the Secretary of State, or the Marine Management Organisation or any Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority on behalf of the Secretary of State, for use by English fishing boats;
�English fishing opportunities� means the right to use English catch quota and English effort quota.
�Fixed Quota Allocation Units� shall have the meaning ascribed to them in the UK Quota Management Rules 2015 in so far as they apply to England.�
George Eustice
In the fisheries White Paper, we made it clear that, on leaving the EU, any additional quota we may receive during the negotiations will be distributed using different methods from the current FQA allocation system. That will be done using a range of different mechanisms. We are amending the Bill to make it clear that quota will not necessarily be put up for sale to the highest bidder. We may allocate it on a range of other criteria, such as sustainability, the needs of coastal communities and the reliance of certain sectors on specific stocks.
Amendment 6 simply includes a duty to consult stakeholders prior to making any regulations governing the distribution of additional quota. That demonstrates transparency and supports our commitment to work with stakeholders to shape a new future for the UK industry.
Luke Pollard
I am grateful that the Minister has clarified that additional quota will not be auctioned to the highest bidder. Does he feel that that is sufficient to ensure that small fishers and new entrants to the sector will not be discriminated against? There is a real fear in the fishing sector that the auction function in the Bill will mean that if either this Government or a future Government want to earn some quick cash from the sector, they will seek to auction any additional fishing opportunities to the highest bidder, further cementing the huge monopoly that the large fishing organisations already have in the sector.
George Eustice
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his brevity in making an important point. I have been very clear that one of the ways of allocating new fishing opportunities that we are considering is a competitive tender process, but the tender is not just about the price to be paid. We want to judge producer organisations on their compliance track record and what they are doing to improve selectivity and reduce their environmental impact; to encourage new entrants into the industry; and to put economic benefits back into coastal communities. I believe that is the right approach. I can confirm that, as amended, the clause will make that explicit and broaden it out to ensure that we can have the type of competitive tender process that I have talked about at many stages during the passage of the Bill.
Peter Aldous
I shall speak to new clause 20. The distribution of fishing quota to the commercial sector is one of the Government�s most important functions. As we have heard, it will, to a very large extent, determine the success or failure of the fishing industry post-Brexit. It is generally acknowledged that the current system is dysfunctional as it encourages the over-concentration of ownership and has permitted the foreign dominance of the UK fishing business�something that other EU member states have managed to avoid.
There is a concern that the current regulations do not go far enough, as there is the matter of creating a disposal mechanism of English fishing rights as well as a regulatory mechanism. The new clause seeks to address that concern. I look forward to hearing the Minister�s response.
George Eustice
My hon. Friend has tabled a very long new clause. In essence, I think it seeks to do two things. First, it talks again about a national asset. It is an aspect of quota allocation that we have discussed many times before, so I will not repeat what I have said about our common law tradition and the fact that it goes without saying that it is a national asset.
Secondly, underlying the new clause is a concern that the new method of allocation that we might adopt might create new proprietorial rights for those who are successful in the tender. I can confirm that that is exactly what we are seeking to avoid through the Bill. That is why we explicitly talk about the use of catch quota rights for a calendar year. It would be possible to have a tender that had an entitlement to a particular right that would go to several years, but it would only ever be for the duration of that tender and would terminate at the end of that process. There will be no accumulated property rights in the tender or auction process that we set out in clause 22. I therefore hope that my hon. Friend will accept that, although a great deal of work has gone into drafting his very detailed and comprehensive new clause, it is in fact unnecessary.
Amendment 5 agreed to.
Amendment made: 6, in clause�22,�page�13,�line�7,�at end insert�
�( ) Before making regulations under this section the Secretary of State must consult such persons as the Secretary of State thinks appropriate.�.�(George Eustice.)
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to consult before making regulations about the sale of fishing opportunities.
Clause 22, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned.�(Iain Stewart.)
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Backbench Business
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Withdrawal Agreement: Economic Analyses
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Joan Ryan (in the Chair)
We begin with the Select Committee statement. Nicky Morgan will speak on the publication of the 25th report of the Treasury Committee, “The UK’s economic relationship with the European Union: The Government’s and Bank of England’s Withdrawal Agreement analyses”, HC 1819, for up to 10 minutes, during which no interventions may be taken. At the conclusion of the statement, I will call Members to put questions on the subject of the statement and call Nicky Morgan to respond to those in turn. Members can expect to be called only once, and questions should be brief. I call the Chair of the Treasury Committee.
Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for the opportunity to make a statement to the Chamber on the 25th report of the Treasury Committee on the economic impact of the withdrawal agreement and political declaration, and on the Bank of England’s analysis. I place on record my thanks to the Treasury Committee’s staff, my fellow members of the Committee, the witnesses who appeared before us, and all those who submitted written evidence—all of whom played a vital part in producing the report with great speed.
Over the summer, I wrote to the Chancellor, the Governor of the Bank of England and the Financial Conduct Authority on behalf of the Treasury Committee and asked them to produce and publish analysis of the economic impact of the Brexit withdrawal agreement and of the future framework, once it had been negotiated by the Government with the EU. The purpose of securing those analyses was to ensure that Parliament’s meaningful vote on the withdrawal agreement, whenever that may be, is properly informed. Like many other Select Committees, the Treasury Committee has spent the last few weeks poring over the details to ensure that all right hon. and hon. Members walk through the voting Lobbies with the best possible evidence.
When the analysis we requested was published a couple of weeks ago, there were accusations of “Project Fear Mark 2”. Some ramped up the rhetoric even further, with cries of “Project Hysteria”. Let me clear: the analysis of the withdrawal agreement published by the Treasury, the Bank of England and the FCA was requested by the Treasury Committee for Parliament. The timing of the publication was driven by us to ensure that there was enough time for evidence sessions on the analysis ahead of the vote as we then expected it. Any personal criticism of the Chancellor, the Governor of the Bank of England, our regulators or witnesses, all of whom were responding to parliamentary requests, is wholly unfair and does not aid constructive discussion of the issues—and they are important issues. The analysis that the Treasury Committee received helped it greatly in producing its report on the Brexit deal, which was published and sent to all Members of Parliament on Tuesday morning.
Although Committees can be divided along ideological, party and, more recently, Brexit lines, consensus is always sought. There are 11 Members of Parliament on the Treasury Committee, and I am sure that there are at least 12 different views on Brexit, but this report, like the other 24 reports that we have published since I became Chair 17 months ago, was unanimously agreed. That shows that while the House, and indeed the country, appears more divided than ever, compromise can be achieved. As I have told the House before, all hon. Members will have to compromise if we are to find a way through Brexit.
The firm aim of the report was not to recommend how Members of Parliament should vote, but to ensure that they are as informed as possible and as aware as possible of all the relevant evidence when it comes to choosing a Division Lobby. Unfortunately, the Government made this difficult to achieve. They provided economic analysis of the UK leaving the EU under five different scenarios. The White Paper scenario, which is akin to the Chequers proposal, represents the most optimistic reading of the political declaration, rather than a more realistic scenario. It does not represent the central or most likely outcome under the political declaration, and therefore cannot inform Parliament’s meaningful vote.
In the report, the Treasury Committee expresses its disappointment that the evidence provided by the Treasury does not analyse the backstop. The Treasury also failed to include any short-term analysis, including on public finances and on regional and sectoral job losses or gains. Members of Parliament, as representatives of their constituencies, will understand how important that regional analysis is now and in the future.
Specifically on the Government’s decision not to model the backstop, the Committee concluded that that was a mistake. The Governor of the Bank of England told us
“on average for a trade deal from start to finish, it is something in the order of four years”,
but we know that previous EU negotiations have taken longer—for example, the trade agreement between the EU and Canada took eight years. Even if the implementation period is extended for one or two years beyond December 2020, it is feasible that the UK could enter the backstop, which, as we know, is politically contentious, given what we have already heard in the withdrawal agreement debate. Despite it being neither the UK’s nor the EU’s preferred position, the Government should have modelled the backstop.
We as the Treasury Committee would not be doing our duty to the House of Commons if we did not look at the effects of the withdrawal agreement on the financial services sector. In each of the five modelled scenarios, the sector will contribute less to the UK economy, but we know that it is a critical taxpayer, as well as being part of presenting a face of global Britain on the world stage. The Financial Conduct Authority expressed its concern that the UK would be a rule taker during an implementation period. In assessing the financial services sector’s ability to withstand a no-deal Brexit, the Governor provided reassurance that the Bank of England is
“sleeping soundly at night, because the core of the financial sector is in the position that it needs to be in for the tough scenario.”
While the Governor’s sleeping patterns may provide some succour to MPs, it is clear that a vacuum of information exists. There is a dearth of analysis that shows how the economy will transition to a new trading relationship. There is also a lack of modelling on the future framework between the UK and the EU.
However, Parliament may wish to draw from the range of scenarios that have been modelled, in order to assess the economic impact of the draft withdrawal agreement and political declaration. The scenarios range from 0.6% less GDP under the Chequers plan than would otherwise have been the case, to 7.7% less GDP in a no-deal scenario.
Select Committees play an increasingly important role in the life of this Parliament, particularly given its make-up and the nature of the Brexit issue that it faces. I was very clear, and I would like to thank the Committee’s members again for their support, in saying that we wanted to make sure that analysis and evidence were put before MPs. As I said, we wanted to do that not to tell them how to vote—we are all grown-ups and should be able to make decisions on behalf of our constituents as their representatives—but to make sure that the information was out there.
We know what happened earlier this week, which is that the meaningful vote was suspended and postponed. It will come back before the House at some point—maybe not until the new year. I suggest to the Minister here today—the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury—that that gives time for some of the issues that are identified in our report to be potentially remedied, or for more evidence to be given to the Committee, which we will report to the House, as we have done before.
In conclusion, whenever this vote comes back to the House, I hope, on behalf of the Treasury Committee, that all Members of Parliament will find time amid the turkey, crackers and festive wrappings to read our report before that Division bell rings.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
I am delighted to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan. The Treasury Committee’s report is a damning read for those who had dared to hope that the Government’s withdrawal agreement analysis would enlighten the debate. We already knew that this Government’s Brexit was going to damage our economy; every piece of credible independent analysis has shown that, and the Government’s own analysis has shown it, too. As we see from the Committee’s report, the Government failed to provide all the evidence the Committee requested and
“modelled scenarios…yet did not model scenarios that are considered probable and have the potential to be persistent over the medium to long term”.
What is worse, none of the Government’s economic analysis even attempts to give Members or our constituents accurate information about the things that matter most, which are jobs, incomes and prices over the next year. Put simply, the Committee has confirmed that the Government have failed to show leadership at this time of immense uncertainty and fear in our country.
I have just a couple of questions for the right hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan), the Chair of the Treasury Committee. First, is it not true that none of the Government’s proposed options will be good for the economy, to the tune of at least a 4.9% hit? The Chancellor described that hit as being “slightly smaller”, but I must admit that a hit of more than 4% does not feel small to me. I would like the right hon. Lady’s view on that issue.
Secondly, as there is no analysis of what happens if we remain with the backstop, we can only conclude that the Government either do not know what the effects of that option are or that they do not want us to know what the effects are. Can the right hon. Lady enlighten us and say which of those she thinks is true?
Finally, given that the Bank of England considers that a no-deal scenario could be worse than the 2008 financial crisis, and given that the Government think that a no-deal scenario would cut as much as 11% from our economy, does the right hon. Lady agree that it is utterly irresponsible to threaten something that no responsible Government would ever consider allowing in their own country?
Nicky Morgan
I thank the hon. Lady for her questions, and it is good to have this debate—I am sure we would have had it on the Floor of the main Chamber if it had continued, but now we have time to reflect on all of this.
The hon. Lady is right to say that the first thing the Chancellor admitted—I think both publicly, when the analysis was first published, and before the Committee as well—was that none of the scenarios shows that there will not be a negative impact on the UK economy. A 4% hit is substantial, if we think about that figure in the context of the financial crisis, and we as MPs all know that many of our constituents still feel the effects of that financial crisis 10 years on. Wages are now growing, but it has taken some time for them to do so.
Another of the hon. Lady’s questions was in relation to no deal. I know the Minister will not answer now, but he will be more than capable of answering for himself at some point in the future. However, I have been a Treasury Minister myself, and to be fair to the Government, they have dropped the “No deal is better than a bad deal” language. Parliament has already made it very clear that we are not going to sign off on any kind of no-deal arrangement, although we all have to debate among ourselves how we will head that proposal off at the right time. It is very clear that the Government do not want there to be a no-deal scenario, and I am glad that the analysis has shown why a no-deal scenario would be so very damaging and why it is of such concern to businesses, importers, exporters and those employing our constituents.
The hon. Lady also asked about the backstop modelling. Members will see in the report and in the transcripts of our sittings that we asked all our witnesses and the economists who gave evidence whether it was possible to model a backstop. With any modelling, it is all about the underlying assumptions. Some assumptions would have to be made about the way the backstop would operate and how long it would last. The Government told our Committee that, because they do not want to be in the backstop and because the backstop is not the preferred Government policy, it did not have to be modelled.
I think we all hope that that is the case and that the backstop is an insurance policy not to be called upon. Undoubtedly, however, on the basis of how long it takes to negotiate free trade agreements, there is a possibility that the backstop will be needed. That would then have an impact on those relying on importing to and exporting from this country. There is time now, and it might well be that this is something the Government Economic Service might want to consider, although its staff also deserve a Christmas. They might want to consider how they might give some more evidence to the House on this issue before we get to the meaningful vote.
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
I congratulate the right hon. Lady and her Committee for producing this report, which could be summed up in one sentence: Brexit makes the country and every one of our constituents poorer. We see that when we get to the conclusions.
However, my question is about financial services. I have tens of thousands of financial services jobs in my constituency, and under all the models examined in the Treasury Committee’s report, the financial services industry shrinks, by anything between 9% and slightly less than 1%. That would have a disproportionate impact on Edinburgh, because of the way its financial services sector is set up. Was any modelling done on how many jobs would be lost and on what the Government need to do between now and 29 March next year to put in place a system, mechanism or part of a deal that would mean that the financial services industry would not shrink but, indeed, grow?
Nicky Morgan
I thank the hon. Gentleman very much for his question. I am pleased that he has mentioned financial services, because the view among those in the financial services industry is that they have not really had quite as much attention devoted to them as they should have, given that they are such a significant taxpayer and employer. I am also glad he mentioned Edinburgh, because we tend to think sometimes just about the City of London. He is of course absolutely right to say that there are many financial services jobs in his constituency and in other constituencies around the country.
Before I get on to his point that all scenarios will make us poorer, one interesting thing about the economic modelling for the Treasury is that it is done purely on the trading impact. It is fair to say—it is both a negative and a positive—that there is no domestic policy assumption made at all. Of course, it is possible for any future Government to consider how they might respond to the scenarios as they unfold.
There was not specific modelling of jobs. There have been estimates, and again we asked the chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority for some, as we have asked other financial services witnesses. The initial estimates of jobs moving overseas have not come to pass, but we are still looking at between 5,000 and 10,000 people being impacted.
The financial services sector now talks about “day one” and “day two” impacts. As for day one, we know that a lot of financial services firms are already putting in place contingency arrangements and that they are trying to keep job moves to a minimum. Depending on the deal that is eventually arrived at—this relates to the hon. Gentleman’s question about what deal could be put in place to help this process—the impacts of “day two” and beyond on jobs being lost or moved could be very significant for the financial services sector. Obviously, we could be talking about thousands of jobs. These are often well-paying jobs, and they are not something that any of us here today want to see disappearing from our constituencies.
Let me answer the hon. Gentleman’s question, though, which is actually about the deal on the table at the moment. The political declaration refers to a system of equivalence, but a lot of work needs to be done to work out the equivalence regime. Andrew Bailey, the chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority, went through with our Committee how he thought the equivalence regime needs to be enhanced, and I think he is right on that issue.
I do not think it is any great secret for Members of this House that I am in favour of a Norway-plus type of option, whereby we would retain access to the single market. I know that there are other objections to that proposal, but for financial services it would keep the passporting regime in place, which would be of significant benefit to financial services firms, and therefore in terms of the numbers of people they can employ going forward.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
I join in thanking my right hon. Friend and her Committee for the work they have done, together with their advisers and the witnesses. In conclusion 6, there is a reference to the backstop, which leads to paragraphs 35 to 40 in the report. There, Professor Nickell says that it is possible to model the backstop, and then says that the backstop might be in place for 15 years. I do not think that is a very serious kind of modelling to do, because we do not know what change there would be. Am I right in saying that, unlike most trade agreements, the ones we will need to make with the EU27 are based on equivalence now, rather than trying to bring people together?
Nicky Morgan
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. Of course, one of the issues is that it is not known how long the backstop might be needed for. One would hope that 15 years is probably a wild overestimate, but it is true that the Canadian-European trade agreement took eight years; however, as my hon. Friend says, they were starting from a very different position from the UK and the EU, given the trading relationship that we have at the moment and very much want to maintain.
My understanding, which I think comes from evidence that the Secretary of State for International Trade gave to the relevant Select Committee and to the Exiting the European Union Committee, is that significant progress has been made in rolling over existing trade agreements. It is not just the new trade agreement with the EU that has to be negotiated; the UK then needs to separate out, and become a party to, the trade agreements the EU has with other countries. Progress has been made on that.
However, my hon. Friend is right: the point about modelling the backstop is not that it is impossible, but that it is possible, with very clear explanations of how it has been done. Generally, the comment on all of this—we saw this with some of the reporting around the Bank of England scenarios—is that it is easy to overestimate or overinflate the damage. The Bank of England was very clear that these were scenarios, not forecasts. Again, that could be done with the backstop: we could set out some scenarios that can be modelled, while making it very clear that they are not predictions of what is going to happen in the future.
Protection for Homebuyers
(6 years ago)
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Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered protection for homebuyers.
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Ryan. I start by expressing my thanks to the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this debate; to Paula Higgins from the HomeOwners Alliance, and Emma Thomas and Steve Turner from the Home Builders Federation, who took the time to brief me; to the House of Commons digital team, which facilitated a digital debate on the subject earlier this week, in which hundreds of members of the public participated; and especially to the many individuals up and down the country who have been in touch with me to share their experience of buying a new home, particularly my constituents Lisa, Mike, Denise and Deepak. I also thank the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury—for listening to the introduction of this debate, at least. I hope he will find our discussion to be of interest.
I am sorry to say that the experiences that homebuyers have related to me are not happy ones. I regret that I cannot mention every individual case that has been conveyed to me, but I will do my best to reflect the wide range of issues raised, in relation to both the defects that homebuyers too frequently encounter when they move into a new-build home and the poor customer service that follows when they try to have those defects rectified. Of course, everyone expects to find snags in a new house, but I was pretty shocked that Shelter reported that more than half those surveyed in a YouGov survey in 2017 said that they had experienced some, or a lot of, major problems with their new home, and some of those problems were frankly dangerous.
In Woodsend in my constituency, residents moving into new Persimmon homes experienced a toilet that was flushing boiling water; a toilet that did not flush; dripping from the loft; holes in the walls; skirting boards that needed replacing; problems with light fittings; a front door that could not be closed; and a whole host of other problems. From across the country, I have heard reports of waste water from a lavatory not being connected to flow into the sewerage system, and gathering underneath the house; uneven floors; exposed nails; unfinished electrics; waterlogged gardens; issues with insulation; and problems with sinks, walls and fixtures.
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing this welcome debate before the House. Bellway Homes built homes in my constituency in 1988, and there is a suspicion that the gas installation did not meet the 1988 gas regulations. Residents have been fighting Bellway since, and the matter has now come to a head: the company has put its lawyers on to the question of whether it should comply with those regulations, despite the gas safety advisors saying that the homes do not meet the regulations.
Should we be highlighting these issues more often, and saying to people who are purchasing these homes that they require a much greater level of protection, either from Government or from insurance, to make sure they are covered for not just a few years but for decades into the future?
Kate Green
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. The issues of protections through statute and of information to purchasers will be among the many points that I hope to draw to the Minister’s attention during the remainder of my speech.
A couple of weeks ago, the BBC’s “5 live Investigates” reported on the shocking experience of a couple who had moved into a new Bovis home in Worcestershire. During that programme, homebuyer Craig read out a list of a staggering 354 defects in their new house. Last week, the “Victoria Derbyshire” programme reported on homebuyers who found that the mortar in the walls of their new Barratt and Taylor Wimpey homes was crumbling. Buyers report that once they have decided to buy a house, they are placed under considerable pressure to complete the purchase speedily, so that the developer is paid and managers meet their sales targets. Quality is clearly being compromised as a result of those pressures.
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
The pressure that buyers are put under to conclude purchases quickly is something I hope to talk about later on. Is my hon. Friend aware of issues with developers insisting that particular solicitors complete the transactions?
Kate Green
Indeed I am, and that too is a point to which I hope to return in the course of my remarks.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
I apologise for not being able to stay for at least the middle part of the debate, because of another parliamentary duty. Does the hon. Lady agree that one of the consequences of this debate and those BBC programmes is that publicity attaches to the builders? It would be a good idea for there to be some forum that other media could look at, so that the names of the builders that manage to build homes without defects or correct them quickly get praised, and those that do not get damned.
Kate Green
The hon. Gentleman has raised an important point about the impact on the reputation of the whole industry. Although some of the builders involved are household names, it is important to recognise that, as I have heard, some smaller local builders are implicated in delivering poor-quality build, whereas others meet a very high standard of both build and customer service. However, too often, it is the large developers—whose reputation people will be familiar with, and in which buyers might reasonably feel they could place some trust—that are letting their customers down so badly.
I will put on the record a few of the other major household names that I have heard mentioned, as although I will be talking about my constituents’ experience with Persimmon Homes, Persimmon is far from being the only offender. I have also heard about problems with Bellway Homes, which my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) mentioned; Harron Homes; Charles Church, which is an arm of Persimmon; Linden Homes; David Wilson Homes; and Keepmoat Homes. It is entirely possible that colleagues will add to that list in the course of our discussion.
The problems of defects are compounded by the appalling customer service, and sometimes outright bullying, that homebuyers experience when they attempt to have defects remedied. My constituents in Woodsend began complaining about their new homes many months ago. Lisa tells me that she waited a year and a half before Persimmon even gave her a named customer service contact, although the company did find time in that period to pay its then chief executive a £75 million bonus. I wrote to the company on Lisa and her neighbours’ behalf earlier this year and was staggered to be told that it was not Persimmon’s policy to deal with MPs. However, it was not dealing with or responding to the homebuyers either. I think the House will agree that that is truly shoddy and reflects systemic problems that are incumbent on Government to sort out.
Buying a house is the biggest, most important purchase most of us will ever make. People work hard and save up for their dream home, but too often instead they are suffering huge cost, stress and inconvenience.
Danielle Rowley (Midlothian) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for bringing such an important debate to the House. I want to add something about the frustration that her constituents feel, especially with Persimmon Homes. A constituent of mine said:
“Unfortunately, we have had nothing but continuous issues since we moved in. What should have been one of the happiest times for us has been plagued by bad workmanship and appalling communication and customer service.”
They expressed to me that it had had such an impact on their life at what should be a happy time. Does she agree that it is a life-changing moment and that bad house builders are causing such distress to constituents?
Kate Green
I absolutely agree. In fact, my hon. Friend’s constituents have been posting on Facebook about some of their experiences with Persimmon, which echo those of my constituents. She makes an important point about the impact these things have on people’s emotional wellbeing. Some of the homebuyers who have contacted me in recent weeks have talked about being forced to take time off work because of mental health problems created by the stress they are experiencing.
As my hon. Friend said, buying a new house is a life-changing moment for many people. In and of itself, it is a big, emotional, stressful experience and is often accompanied by other big life changes, such as leaving the family home for the first time or an enlargement to the family. It is important to acknowledge that that stress is significant, often lasts for a protracted period of time and is exacerbated by the reluctance of developers to engage with people’s problems.
Despite all that, house purchase is one of the areas of consumer law that is least protected in consumer legislation. Property is exempt from the Sale and Supply of Goods Act 1994, meaning that if it fails to live up to expectations, there is no right to reject it and demand a refund. The role of building control inspectors is to ensure that technical standards are met. They are not responsible for monitoring build quality.
What is more, the person carrying out the work—in other words, the developer—has the choice of which building control body to use to carry out the inspection. A confusing landscape of codes of practice, warranty schemes and even, as was reported on the “Victoria Derbyshire” programme, attempts to gag buyers from going public leave people at the mercy of the developers and warranty companies. All in all, as the HomeOwners Alliance says, people get less protection when buying a house than they do when buying a toaster.
What needs to change? The all-party parliamentary group for excellence in the built environment made a series of recommendations—I know the Minister will be familiar with them—in an extremely well researched and comprehensive report in 2016. Earlier this year, the Government undertook a much-needed public consultation on strengthening rights and protections for homebuyers. I welcome those initiatives, and I am glad the Government have indicated their support for the introduction of a new homes ombudsman, but there is no detail as yet or timescale for implementing that.
In the meantime, the multiplicity of codes, warranties and complaints systems makes things very complicated for homebuyers. The Home Builders Federation told me that it is working on a series of industry-wide reforms, including preparing for the introduction of an ombudsman scheme, a standard sales contract, a single code of practice and a minimum set of warranty standards. It hopes to work with mortgage providers so that compliance would be required for a purchaser to obtain a mortgage. That is all well and good, but I just do not think people will be reassured simply by a voluntary, industry-led approach. The Government need to be much more precise and prescriptive.
The HomeOwners Alliance and the all-party group have called for a number of measures that would significantly help to improve the situation for homebuyers. In her response, I hope the Minister will specifically address them. First, they propose a 2.5% snagging retention so that new-build homebuyers retain 2.5% of the cost of the house, which would be held back for six months, until the end of the defects period, where it would be paid over only if the defects have been corrected. That would create a powerful incentive for builders to sort out problems.
The HomeOwners Alliance and the all-party group propose a right for homebuyers to inspect their new home before moving in, without prejudice and with the right to bring their own surveyor or snagger. Builders selling their properties off plan will often refuse to let buyers inspect the property before they take the keys. That practice is unacceptable and should be ended.
Standardised contracts should include the full plan and specification as standard, rather than them being hidden away in an office. The contracts must include standardised terms and have more detailed specification so that builders cannot swap for cheaper materials. Consumer groups should be involved in the development of those contracts, otherwise the fear is that they will continue to be stacked in favour of the developer.
A focus on quality is much needed across the sector through the adoption of International Organisation for Standardisation standards. A review of the inspection and warranty regimes is required to give consumers reassurance that buildings meet standards set by Government and greater clarity about what is covered. Buyers believe their warranties will protect them for up to 10 years, but after the first two years, warranties typically cover only serious structural defects. Again and again in preparing for this debate, I heard reports of warranty companies refusing to take responsibility for sorting problems.
We also need minimum standards for compliance inspections. A single homebuyers code should replace the many different codes, which are so confusing for homeowners. The new ombudsman, funded by the industry—I think that is the Government’s intention—should be the guardian of the code. It should cover after-sales service as well as the quality of the building work.
Developers should not be able to recommend individual solicitors. That point was raised a few moments ago by my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders). Solicitors should be working for the homebuyer, but if they get most of their business via the developer, that naturally creates a conflict of interest.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
I am pleased that my hon. Friend has secured this debate. Does she not think that it might be an idea for the Law Society to look into the behaviour of solicitors who put themselves in the position of having that serious conflict of interest, which is so detrimental to our constituents?
Kate Green
I absolutely agree, and I hope the Law Society will take note of that suggestion.
The final suggestion for improvement and reform is for prospective homebuyers to have more up-front information about the property they are purchasing, including whether properties are leasehold or freehold and the implications of buying leasehold property. We have all heard reports of rip-off service charges and ground rents that rise every year affecting leaseholders in our constituencies. The Government need to act to address that scandal. There should be a standardised key facts document, as there is in financial services, such as for mortgages. Also, better information needs to be handed to the consumer once the property has been completed. I hope that the Minister will respond in detail to those suggestions.
Before I conclude, I should say that no debate in this House right now would be complete without a reference to Brexit. Fundamentally, the problems I have described come down to corporate greed, but they have been exacerbated by pressure to build the new homes needed to meet Government targets, which the construction industry is struggling to cope with. Poor quality workmanship has been attributed in part to being forced to rely on inexperienced, unqualified labour.
The Construction Industry Training Board tells me that, in response to the shortage of skilled workers, many developers are relying on EU workers to fill gaps in their sector, including electricians, carpenters and bricklayers. Those are skilled trades, and investment in upskilling the domestic workforce to meet demand is imperative. However, were we simply to turn off the tap on EU labour, the pressures that the industry faces would only increase.
We are still waiting for the Government’s immigration White Paper, although I was pleased to hear the Leader of the House promise in business questions this morning that we would see it next week. There are particular worries in this sector, not least because of the reliance on self-employed labour, yet there is a real lack of information about how the Government’s post-Brexit immigration system will work for self-employed workers. Will there, for example, be the possibility of third-party sponsorship schemes to enable such skilled tradespeople to continue to come in and provide labour in our construction sector? I urge the Minister to press her Home Office colleagues to ensure that the immigration policy that it introduces meets the needs of this crucial sector.
This House cannot sit by while so many of our constituents face such great cost, stress and disappointment when making such a significant investment. The industry needs to get its house in order, and the Government have a responsibility to ensure that it does so. The Minister must tell us exactly what steps she will take to protect our constituents from seeing their dream home become a nightmare. I look forward to her response.
Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair this afternoon, Ms Ryan, presiding over the debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) both on securing this important debate and on her excellent opening speech, which covered so much ground. I am grateful to the House of Commons Library and to the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership for their briefings. I will focus on two points: leaseholder tenure, which my hon. Friend mentioned, and, briefly, fire sprinklers.
I co-chair the all-party parliamentary group on leasehold and commonhold reform with the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) and the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey). It is good to see our inestimable vice-chair, my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), in the Chamber.
Governments of both persuasions have recognised that homebuyers are vulnerable to purchasing a property that does not meet their expectations. The Tories legislated in this area in 1986 and 1993, and Labour did more in 2002. Despite incremental increases in protection, the Government recognise that more needs to be done. As a result, the Prime Minister, and successive Secretaries of State and Housing Ministers, have been making promises on ground rents, the conduct of property management companies, the right to manage, dispute resolution and commonhold. We have had various statements—written and oral—a White Paper, calls for evidence and consultations. The Law Commission has been tasked with a major review of the law and is on the case.
The first anomaly comes with the purchase of the property. I say “purchase”, but as the Library briefing makes clear:
“Owners of long leasehold properties do not necessarily appreciate that, although they are owner-occupiers, they are in a landlord and tenant relationship with the freeholder.”
It might not be clearly pointed out by the solicitor acting for the purchaser. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston mentioned, that is perhaps no surprise when those solicitors are recommended by the selling developer and, it can be reasonably suggested, manage to juggle a conflict of interest that would be beyond most of us.
My constituency of Poplar and Limehouse has the second highest number of leasehold properties in the country, and had the highest number of leasehold sales in 2015. Whereas the Home Builders Federation says that more than 90% of new homebuyers say that they would buy a new-build home again—somewhat contradicted by the nightmare stories articulated by my hon. Friend—a national survey in 2016 conducted by the Leasehold Advisory Service, the Government-funded advisory body known as LEASE, found that 57% of leaseholders regretted buying a leasehold property. That is quite a contrast.
LEASE has come in for quite a bit of criticism for not doing enough for leaseholders. When Mr Gavin Barwell was Housing Minister, he stated that LEASE should be the leaseholders’ champion, but LEASE still has a remit for freeholders and developers. That looks like a conflict of interest, and I would be grateful if the Minister would give her view of where LEASE sits within the legislative framework.
There is no doubt that some leaseholders are perfectly happy with their homes. However, many are not. The duration of leases can be anything from 99 years, 125 years, 250 years or 999 years. That is quite a range. The Library briefing lists a range of potential problems, some of which were mentioned by my hon. Friend. They include high service charges and a lack of transparency over what people are being charged for; freeholders blocking attempts by leaseholders to exercise their right to manage; excessive costs for building insurance; administration charges; applications to extend lease agreements; and event fees.
I was contacted by a group of leaseholders in my constituency only last night, on the Aberfeldy village estate, complaining that their property management company, Rendall and Rittner, had raised service charges in 2016-17 by 12%, and this year by 6% in a new estate. Residents are also complaining about the poor service for the significant charges that they are paying—nearly £3,000 per year. The Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, the campaigning charity in this area, and the all-party parliamentary group secretariat, run by Martin Boyd and Sebastian O’Kelly, ably assisted by Ms Katherine O’Riordan, have been lobbying the Government on those matters for years.
One of their notable successes early on was getting the Department for Communities and Local Government—now the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government—to revise the figures for leasehold properties. The Department was working on the basis of 2.3 million properties for a number of years. LKP persuaded it eventually that there were many more, and the Ministry now uses the figure of 4.3 million. However, LKP calculates that there are more than 6 million such properties, and the all-party parliamentary group knows which figures we think are likely to be more accurate.
The Select Committee on Housing, Communities and Local Government is in the middle of an inquiry, the conclusions and recommendations of which are keenly anticipated by the sector. There is strong pressure to regulate the sector in respect of property management companies. Some are trying to do a professional job and are observing their own voluntary standards in the meantime—many are members of the Association of Residential Managing Agents. However, many others need regulation that requires them to perform to professional standards. Lord Best has been leading a working group developing a regulatory regime, which the Government have committed to introduce.
Helen Goodman
Does my hon. Friend not agree that it sounds as though there has been some serious mis-selling, and the Minister ought to refer it to the Financial Conduct Authority?
Jim Fitzpatrick
There are certainly anomalies in the whole system. I think that there are more problems with the actual tenure of leaseholds, which makes buyers vulnerable to a range of things. Developers and freeholders then abuse the power and privilege that they have. Whether that is a matter for the FCA or not is another matter. The Minister might want to comment on that when responding.
My last point about leasehold relates to cladding. After the tragedy of the Grenfell fire, and following a major review of high-rise properties across the country, many blocks were found to be at risk. It is welcome that the Government set aside £400 million for councils and housing associations in the public sector to remove and replace defective cladding in homes and carry out remedial work. However, in the private sector the Government have restricted themselves to encouraging and exhorting freeholders and developers to do the honourable thing and accept the costs. Sadly, that has not worked in all cases. More troublingly, where it is not working, in blocks such as New Providence Wharf in my constituency, companies such as Ballymore are passing the costs on to leaseholders simply because they legally can.
In some buildings, the National House Building Council 10-year warranty has provided protection, as it has in New Festival Quarter in my constituency. Along with the positive decision by Bellway that has already been referred to, that stands in stark contrast to Ballymore. These costs run into millions; most of the residents of these flats are young professionals who are mortgaged up to the hilt, with no capacity for additional borrowing even if they wanted that option.
On 29 November, the Secretary of State published a written statement on the matter, in which he stated:
“I am…writing to local authorities with buildings where the owner refuses to remediate unsafe ACM cladding, to offer them our full support to take enforcement action. This will include financial support where this is necessary for the local authority to carry out emergency remedial work.
Where financial support is provided, local authorities will recover the costs from the building owner.
I am determined that building owners will not evade their responsibilities and that local authorities will have all the support they need to ensure that all high-rise buildings with unsafe ACM cladding are made permanently safe for the people who live in them.”—[Official Report, 29 November 2018; Vol. 650, c. 18WS.]
Further to that statement, I submitted a written question asking
“what legal powers local authorities have to recover costs.”
The Minister for Housing answered:
“The Housing Act 2004 allows local authorities to take enforcement action…If local authorities need to take emergency remedial action but are unable to fund this work up front, we will consider requests for funding which would be repaid once the local authorities recover the costs from the building owner.”
I would be grateful if the present Minister confirmed, first, whether the 2004 Act is the relevant legislation, secondly which section of the Act can applied—perhaps her officials could highlight it for us—and thirdly how much money is being set aside for such contingencies.
Most of what I have to say about tenure relates to points that I have raised before, but I make no apology for raising them again because they still need to be pressed. The Government’s work programme is very welcome, but we want to see it reach a conclusion.
My final point, which is somewhat connected, is about fire protection and the use of fire sprinklers. The Scottish Government are legislating for fire sprinklers in houses in multiple occupation, following a private Member’s Bill, the proposed Social Housing (Automatic Fire Suppression Systems) (Scotland) Bill. The Welsh Assembly has passed building regulations to require an automatic fire suppression to be introduced into new and converted homes, which is due principally to my former Fire Brigades Union colleague, Ann Jones AM. Wales was the first country in the world to pass such legislation: the Building Regulations &c. (Amendment No. 3) and Domestic Fire Safety (Wales) Regulations 2013, which came into effect on 1 January 2016.
In its ninth report of 2017-19, published on 18 July 2018, the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee recommended:
“Where structurally feasible, sprinklers should be retro-fitted to existing high-rise residential buildings to provide an extra layer of safety for residents. The Government should make funding available to fit sprinklers into council and housing association-owned residential buildings above 18 metres, and issue guidance to that effect to building owners in the private sector.
We heard strong evidence recommending the Government require sprinkler systems be installed in a wider range of buildings, including student accommodation, hospitals and large commercial warehouses. The Government should undertake a consultation into whether it would be appropriate to require the installation of sprinkler systems in these buildings too.”
I would be grateful if the Minister updated us on where the Government stand on the installation of fire sprinklers in homes for vulnerable people, HMOs, buildings above 18 metres and high-rises above 30 metres, and gave us the latest news on sprinkler retrofitting.
There is much more fire protection work that can be done to protect people. The Government are moving towards better protection for people who have leasehold tenure, but that protection cannot come quickly enough. I look forward to the speeches of the Front-Bench spokespersons, especially that of my fellow West Ham United supporter, the Minister.
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) on securing this important debate. I would like to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) in speaking about leasehold issues that relate to the protection of homebuyers.
An estimated 12.4% of homes sold in Washington and Sunderland West were sold as leasehold in 2016. I realise that my constituency does not have the largest number of leasehold homes—certainly not as many as the constituencies of some of my hon. Friends—but the issue is still important to my constituents. That is why I recently began a consultation on leasehold homes in which I asked constituents to get in touch with me about their experiences. I only launched the campaign three weeks ago, but 30 constituents have already written to me with their concerns, in some cases in detail. I do not have time to go into the details of each, but I would like to share the themes that have become apparent from their emails.
Most homebuyers were not aware what a leasehold was when they purchased their home. There is a serious lack of knowledge about what leasehold and freehold are; I feel that developers have a duty to inform prospective buyers about the difference between the two and what it means for them. As we have heard, solicitors also have a part to play. It makes a person wonder who they act on behalf of—the buyer or the developer—especially when the developer includes free conveyancing as part of the sale. Solicitors should always act in the best interest of their client, who in this case should be the buyer, not the developer. I have to agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), who is not in her place at the moment, that this abuse should be referred to the Law Society. I hope that the Minister will make that recommendation; I am sure it is in her power to refer dodgy solicitors to the Law Society.
Does the Minister agree that if we are to protect homebuyers, we should educate them to know the difference between leasehold and freehold so that they can make the best decision for themselves and their families? That should certainly be the case for first-time buyers, and financial education lessons in schools have an important part to play in achieving that.
Notwithstanding the issue of educating the population as a whole, there should be complete transparency from very early on in the sale about whether the property is leasehold and what that means. Two of my constituents have told me that they were not informed that their property was leasehold until the very day of signing the contract. Another has told me that they were not aware that their property was leasehold until nearly 15 years after the original purchase—probably when they tried to make alterations or build an extension. Because of the lack of knowledge about leaseholds and the lack of information available to homebuyers, there is a lot of confusion and variation when it comes to buying the freehold.
Many leaseholders were told that they could purchase the freehold at a later date, perhaps when they had saved enough money. However, when some constituents inquired about purchasing the freehold, they found that the goalposts had moved and the price was much further out of reach than they had expected. Some have even been informed that the freehold is now not for sale—in some cases because it has been sold to a third-party company without the leaseholder’s knowledge.
Not only is the cost of buying the freehold out of reach for some of my constituents; so is the cost of ground rent, which can increase year on year. Then there are the admin fees that homeowners have to pay when asking the freeholder’s permission to make changes to their own property. One of my constituents was charged £400 by the freeholder to build a conservatory on their own property. Another constituent expressed great frustration that they are charged £100 for a yes or no decision on basic things, such as replacing a kitchen, bathroom or even a window. It can sometimes take more than eight weeks to hear back on whether that is a yes or a no.
I know that some leaseholders out there listening will now be horrified and will be deterred from making queries to the freeholder, for fear of being charged some of these exorbitant fees. Too many leaseholders are locked into a state of being regularly over charged by freeholders, being unable to afford their ever-increasing ground rent, or never being able to afford to buy their freehold due it to being linked to some sort of escalator that was hidden in the small print of the contract, which their solicitor never pointed out to them. I share the concerns of my constituents who feel like they have been ripped off by leasehold contracts and I call on the Government to launch an inquiry into the scandal as soon as possible.
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) on securing this extremely important debate and on the way she managed to cover a whole range of issues. There are many aspects to this issue. As my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) said, I am vice-chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on leasehold and commonhold reform. I pay tribute to him and the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) for the work they have done, ably aided by the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, in raising the many issues in many debates here.
The title of the debate is “Protection for Homebuyers”. The truth, as we have heard, is that there is little protection, if any. We have a system based on the historic principle of caveat emptor—buyer beware—which is a principle I often hear quoted back at me when I raise concerns about some of the more insidious practices developers have adopted over recent years. Buyers should beware, because caveat emptor relies on a buyer and a seller having equal bargaining power, and that is simply not the reality in 2018. We have a huge shortage of housing, there are significant barriers for buyers in getting on the housing ladder and there are a handful of huge companies responsible for the vast majority of housing delivery.
The situation has been exacerbated by the Help to Buy equity loan scheme, which offered support to first-time buyers for new-build homes only. That led to an effective monopoly being held by some developers. If someone wanted to purchase their first home in the area where they grew up, the only choice would have been to visit the sales office of an individual supplier.
Kate Green
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is not just individual homebuyers who are being ripped off by some developers, but the taxpayer, because it is public money, through the Government’s Help to Buy scheme, that is helping to boost their profits?
Justin Madders
I absolutely agree. The reliance on this small group of developers has been a very poor deal for the taxpayer, and it is against that backdrop that the leasehold scandal has emerged. Once-trusted household names such as Bellway, Persimmon, Redrow, Taylor Wimpey and Countrywide acted in, I believe, a deliberate way to exploit the circumstances and rip off thousands of people around the country—and the taxpayer, in the process.
For no other reason than profiteering, houses in many areas gradually began to be sold on a leasehold rather than a freehold basis. Punitive permission fees—where a leaseholder is forced to pay a significant sum for everything from putting up a shed to changing a carpet—were hidden in the small print of the leases. Service or maintenance charges were then added, charging leaseholders for the same services that they are already paying council tax for. If that was not enough, the developers then added onerous clauses, causing the ground rent in many cases to periodically double, taking them from an initial modest sum to thousands of pounds after a few decades, rendering the properties unmortgageable and unsellable in the future. The ground rent is, of course, being levied for absolutely nothing in return.
When purchasers query the leases on the properties, they are offered a range of scripted reassurances, being told that the properties are “virtually freehold” and that they would have first refusal to buy out the lease. In almost every case, the lease is then sold without the knowledge of the person actually living in the home, to become an income stream for a network of opaque investment companies. People are then told they can purchase the freehold of their own home only if they are prepared to offer tens of thousands of pounds.
As we have heard, purchases of these properties take place in an extremely tight and completely artificial timescale, imposed by the developer through a hard-sell approach. To compound the unequal relationship between the parties to the transaction, a variety of pressure and incentives are used by developers to encourage the use of a solicitor on their own panel. While the solicitor of course has a duty to act in the interests of the purchaser, the reality is that when hundreds of cases are being provided by the developer, that independence is inevitably put under some strain.
My constituent, Katie Kendrick, has helped to lead an incredible campaign on behalf of leaseholders around the country against this scandal, and I pay tribute to her for everything she has done to bring it to the attention of the public. Her own case is a textbook example of the kind of issues we have talked about. In July 2014, with her husband, she bought what transpired to be only the lease to her home from Bellway, a company with a revenue of more than £2.5 billion last year. It was bought through the Help to Buy scheme, and they had only 28 days to complete the purchase following payment of the £500 deposit to reserve the plot. Because of this developer-imposed and completely arbitrary timeframe, Katie and her husband were pressured into using the Bellway-recommended solicitors.
They were informed during the process that, after two years, they would have the right to buy their freehold without any problems and that it would cost in the region of £2,000 to £4,000. Less than two years later, in February 2016, they received notification that the freehold to their home had been unilaterally sold to Adriatic Land 4 (GR1) Ltd. When they inquired whether they could purchase the freehold, they were quoted an amount of £13,350.
I have concluded that Katie’s experience was deliberately manufactured, because it is simply not feasible for the exact same actions to have become standard practice across a range of developers throughout the country. If this situation, as I believe, was deliberately manufactured to exploit thousands of people up and down the country, what is the Minister going to do about it?
If the situation is so serious and inequitable that it should be banned from ever occurring in the future, as is the Government’s apparent policy, how can she justify taking no action to help those people who have already been affected? What examination has been undertaken of the Government’s role in the leasehold scandal? Does she accept that Help to Buy—a scheme created with good intentions—not only helped to create a monopoly position that was exploited, but has also subsidised the perpetrators? What is going to be done about that?
The Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee investigation into these issues is extremely welcome, and I would urge anyone who has not yet done so to look at the evidence provided to date. Some of the responses from developers are completely incredible, in the literal sense. All the developers were unanimous in their support for ending the leasehold scheme that they have already inflicted on thousands of people around the country. Taylor Wimpey told the Committee that when the doubling ground rent issue
“came to our attention...we made a very quick decision to convert the homes that we sell to freehold.”
That implies that until that point they were unaware of the basis on which they were selling their homes.
When Bellway was asked why it sold the freehold off to a third party rather than to the people actually living in the property, their chief executive, Jason Honeyman, replied:
“It is how we have always operated as a business. I am sure that is not the answer you want.”
A member of the Committee pressed him further on this point:
“I am asking why your customers do not get the chance to exercise the opportunity to buy their freehold. You are selling the freehold out from under them without their knowledge.”
His response was simply:
“Yes, we are.”
We know from many Bellway customers that they were specifically told by the sales staff they would be able to buy the freehold, yet here is the chief executive admitting that they have always sold them on to third parties. That, more than anything, shows that when I first called this scandal the payment protection insurance of the housebuilding industry, I was right to do so.
Although the initial response to this emerging scandal from the Government was the right one and was positively received by leaseholders, there is a huge amount of frustration at what are perceived as broken promises. Leasehold houses are no longer to be completely banned, as was promised by the Government. Ground rents will not be reduced to a peppercorn, but to £10, which creates an asset and again amounts to a broken promise by the Government. Will the Minister explain why there has been this backtracking from removing ground rents altogether to having a minimum cost? For all those people already trapped in leasehold properties more than two years on from the scandal coming to public attention, we have little more than warm words from the Government, and no action.
One of the reasons for people’s anger is that, although obscene bonuses have been awarded to Persimmon executives, the bulk of the profits have come from the taxpayer through the Help to Buy scheme. The Government need to accept that they are not simply a bystander, but a financer of the scandal. They cannot simply watch from the sidelines as our constituents continue to be ripped off while a handful of predators generate profits. It cannot be right that the companies that are guilty of this industrial-scale rip-off are the very same ones that we will end up relying on to get us out of the country’s very real, very damaging housing crisis. There seems to be an over-reliance on the market to deliver the new homes that we desperately need. I have seen very little evidence to suggest that developers will act responsibly.
As the leasehold scandal shows, developers have become ever more adept at squeezing cash out of homeowners. Another way of doing that is through the provision of grounds maintenance and other communal services. It seems that the idea of the developer paying the local authority a commuted sum to cut the grass and maintain common paths has had its day. I am not clear whether the blame for that lies with local authorities for asking for too much or with developers that are not prepared to cough up enough funds in advance. I am sure they will always blame each other. The net effect is that more and more homeowners now have, in effect, to pay twice for the maintenance of open spaces—once through the management fee and once through their council tax.
Of course, council tax pays for lots of things, but something as visible and obvious as grounds maintenance leads people to ask why they face a double-whammy. My suspicion is that developers will always be tempted to save themselves the expense of an up-front payment to the local authority by letting their customers pay further down the line long after they have fled the scene. It is not only a double payment; it is also inefficient and lacks accountability. If the grass is not cut on the verges in most parts of my constituency, either I or a local councillor will hear about it and respond. It is not that easy to get a response from a management company.
I want to say a few words about the difficulty in getting developers to comply with their legal obligations once they have completed the bulk of the work. Yet again, the name Bellway crops up. Although it finished building the properties on an estate several years ago, the roads have yet to be adopted by the local authority, because they are not yet up to highway standards. Years of wrangling and paperwork followed the work. We all know about the significant cuts in funding that local authorities have experienced, and yet they have to waste their precious resources chasing developers that are reluctant to face up to their responsibilities.
Another example of that in my constituency is in the Mostyn House development in Parkgate. Originally, it was a boarding school in a listed building. Once the school shut, the site was an attractive one for developers. It is now an impressive mix of new builds and apartments woven into the fabric of the old school, but it suffers from one major disadvantage: although some people have lived there for five years, it still does not have planning permission. The reason for that is that the revised plans were submitted halfway through the redevelopment. Despite the best efforts of the local authority enforcement officers, the developer, PJ Livesey, continually dragged its heels, and as a result there is still an outstanding long list of works.
Our Front-Bench spokesman, the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn), is not someone who goes around fishing for compliments, but she and the shadow housing team are very engaged on these issues. I hope they continue to develop a full suite of important policies that will tackle many of the injustices we have heard about.
The net effect of all this is that there is no protection for homeowners. Once the developers have left town, they show little interest in keeping to their legal responsibilities. Worse, they continue to market their properties as a revenue stream for third parties.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston said earlier, why can we not have a retention scheme for snagging? Part of the purchase price could be held by an independent third party, only to be released when everyone was satisfied that things had been resolved. We do that with deposits for tenancies, and we are talking about something much more significant—sometimes a once-in-a-lifetime investment. People deserve more protection than they currently get. The cowboys in the developer sector need to be consigned to the history books.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) on securing this debate and on the eloquent way in which she set out her case. She and other hon. Members showed that there is a major problem, and I hope the Minister will address it in her remarks.
When my hon. Friend said that she was seeking a debate on this issue, I immediately said, “I would love to be part of that debate,” because for the past eight or nine years I have been having problems with house builders in my constituency. I have been most struck by the fact that, of all the casework I deal with, they are the most difficult group to get a response from.
My hon. Friend said that Persimmon has a policy of not dealing with Members of Parliament, and that is certainly my experience. Despite numerous letters and telephone calls, it was only when I sent it a message saying that I was about to stand up in Parliament and make very derogatory remarks about its failure to respond that I even got the courtesy of a letter. It then took many months to get a meeting—I got one after, I think, five years of trying. That part of the house building community really needs to sort itself out.
We have heard a lot about the leasehold scandal. We have heard about snagging with new properties, and homeowners’ problems in getting that sorted out. I want to talk about two issues that have been a problem for me in my constituency. As a background, I should say that Hull is one of the most successful Help to Buy areas of the country. Lots of my constituents have scrimped and saved to get together the money to buy their home, and they are really proud that they have been able to do that. They are then faced with developers who, once the house has been sold, seemingly wash their hands and think they have no responsibility for sorting out the problems they have left behind. My constituents are left high and dry.
I want to give two examples. The first involves Harron Homes and Persimmon Homes, which developed a housing estate around Whisperwood Way in my constituency. The estate was completed in about 2007, but it took me and the residents four years of campaigning to get the road surfaced by the developers and adopted by the local authority. Of course, that should have been done before the residents moved in. It was unsafe, it damaged people’s cars and it was dangerous to children and the elderly. There were also problems with Yorkshire Water completing the sewerage works. Harron Homes dragged its feet to get the road surfaced.
It is clear that developers, utilities and, in some cases, local authorities, should have stronger responsibilities placed on them to ensure that issues such as that do not drag on for four years. The residents have to pay their council tax, their water rate bills and everything else, but there is seemingly no mechanism to ensure that the problems they face are dealt with.
While all that was happening, I was approached by some more residents from Whisperwood Way. They came to me because they had moved into properties in Leadhills Way that were built right up to the edge of the Sutton Cross drain. Those families told me that their homes had been built by Persimmon in 2006, and they were having two problems. The first was that the homes were built too close to the drain, which caused their gardens to sink and their fences to collapse into it. The second was that the pathways on the estate were not surfaced to a council standard. A local resident said:
“My children are extremely eager to play on their garden toys but I am reluctant to let them do so because of the fear that the fence and land near to it will simply fall/slip down into the drain if they so much as go near it. Our garden (and I’m sure several of our neighbours’ gardens) are extremely fragile due to erosion caused by the ‘drain’ and the tractors who ‘dredge’ the sides by simply pulling the ground away. I feel like myself and my children are living like prisoners. I appreciate that this sounds extremely dramatic, but this is how this issue is making us feel. It’s especially hard during the school holidays when both of my children are off.”
The key issue in that case is that there was no way for the council to take any enforcement action against Persimmon to compel it to sort out the problem that had developed on the land very close to the drain that it had built houses on.
If residents had someone—an ombudsman, for example—to turn to, backed by real powers to compel developers to put right problems, such matters could be sorted out, without adding to the years of stress and misery, which my constituents are still going through. Although finally, after five years, we got Persimmon to a meeting where we agreed that it would carry out a report into what was happening, proper resolution of the problem at the back of those houses is still lacking.
Danielle Rowley
My constituency of Midlothian is the fastest growing in all Scotland, and every town and village has a huge new development. That is the same for a lot of areas throughout the UK, which is why it is such a big issue. With huge new developments, although there are also good developers, a lot of problems come to the fore. Such issues need to be tackled now as we are building on a scale we have not seen in a long time. I hope that the Minister will take note of all the fantastic contributions today, because this is an urgent issue that needs to be dealt with.
Diana Johnson
We also want to see more house building, so we need to get this sorted out and to get it right.
My constituents have asked me to say that they feel that the way in which a company such as Persimmon has behaved—with disregard for their problem for so many years—is an utter disgrace. Persimmon should be facing massive fines for its behaviour, not giving out the massive bonuses to which many hon. Members have referred.
As I started by saying, in Hull we have one of the most successful Help to Buy schemes. Persimmon has benefited, as did the former chief executive Jeff Fairburn with much of that £75 million in pay, shares and bonus that he pocketed. He has gone, obviously, but his successor at Persimmon, David Jenkinson, is getting about £40 million from the bonus scheme. That is not acceptable, and I hope that the Minister will comment.
In conclusion, my constituents’ issue has gone on for far too many years. It needs to be resolved. I hope that we see progress on an ombudsman with some real powers on the side of residents who have done their best—they are aspirational and want to buy their own homes—but find themselves in a nightmare scenario in which companies can simply ignore them and their problems.
[Mr Virendra Sharma in the Chair]
Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) for securing this important debate. It is not before time that the House has had the opportunity to turn to the issues faced by homebuyers, in particular the buyers of new-build homes. At a time when we all recognise the need for substantial home building, we perhaps give too little thought to what happens after the homes are built, bought and sold, and to what happens to the buyers.
My hon. Friend has already spoken about the problems faced when defects are found after purchase and the difficulty of getting a response, let alone a solution, from the house builders. I can certainly echo her concern from experience in my constituency, but I want to look at a couple of other issues that also affect my constituents. The first is that of the completion and adoption of new housing estates. It has very much been a preoccupation for me, not just as an MP but as a local councillor in the years before that.
A new Barratt/David Wilson Homes and Persimmon Homes development was started more than 10 years ago. I will not name it because the residents have mixed views on whether that would be a good thing. Some householders were already living on the site when development stalled in about 2011, because many would-be buyers were unable to find mortgages after the banking crisis. It picked up again, however, and the last house was sold nearly two years ago—most of them long before that.
Families moved in with the promise of play areas for their children, but it took years for them to appear and, as many of those who bought early said, their children were now grown up and not interested in play areas—although, thankfully, the many younger children on the estate are. Buses that were promised to take people from the estate to the local bus interchange, avoiding the need to use a level crossing, did not materialise. The council proposed a price to adopt play areas and public open spaces, but the developers thought the price too high and opted to go with a private management company. Even now, however—one of the companies, Barratt’s David Wilson Homes, has been updating me—they are still arguing about the cost and arrangements of that contract, meaning that residents are concerned about maintenance and safety into the future, and of course about the appearance of their estate.
A spine road runs through the estate, in a loop from one entrance to the other, but it was not until this year that work started on completing the surfacing of the road and installing kerbs for drainage. Checking that latest update I received, I find that the date for completion of the work has been pushed back to January ’19. Residents are very concerned about that, with lots of young children on the estate and cars flying about on a very uneven surface. They are worried about damage to the cars but they are much more worried about damage to the children, who until recently had nowhere else to play. Furthermore, no fees have yet been paid to the council for the adoption of the roads, despite its best efforts, and street lighting is not finally sorted out. I could go on—but we get the picture.
We—residents, local councillors and me—have not sat back and let that happen. We have met with the developers, looked at enforcement action and complained like hell. We even had a liaison committee with the two developers, to work through all the issues, but, sadly, despite hours of talk, everything seems to come down to money and the developers not wanting to spend the money on the estate to complete it.
Mrs Hodgson
My hon. Friend is making some valuable points that have not been mentioned so far. The issue of unadopted roads came up on a new-build development in my constituency, especially with regard to an area where shops, the takeaway, restaurants, pubs and things have been built. The roads are unadopted, so people can just park wherever they like, creating huge issues with knock-on effects, such as on safety, which she has mentioned. I raised this in an Adjournment debate on the Floor of the main Chamber, and it would be great if something came out of this debate regarding unadopted roads on new-build estates.
Liz Twist
My hon. Friend reminds me of something else that I should have mentioned: at the time of buying the properties, my homebuyers were told that there would be a shop, a pub and a bus, but none of those things has come to pass. Even while we were telling residents that that was not going to happen, new buyers towards the end were still being told that there was going to be a pub on site—all the residents already knew that that was not going to happen. That is an important point, and she made another one about safety. As we all know, parking on new developments is a huge issue, with residents feeling it is insufficient and with the dangers that that can present.
Mrs Hodgson
On that very point, I am grateful that my hon. Friend has given way, because I do not think that I made myself clear—though she probably knew what I meant. Because the roads are unadopted, there are no yellow lines. On the roundabouts, articulated lorries can pull over to park, and no one can move them on because there are no yellow lines or anything—the roads are all still unadopted. That is a major problem in the whole area. Some measure should provide for temporary adoption of the roads for safety reasons, even while the estate is still being built.
Liz Twist
Thankfully, we do not have articulated lorries—we do not have a shop on the estate either—but there is a real problem of people parking wherever they want to because there are no lines. That is one of the issues we have talked about over the years.
It cannot be right that developers can start estates, build homes and sell them all, and then lost interest and leave them. We need measures in place to allow us to tell developers, “You must complete this work by this timescale and to an adoptable standard.” I know many residents on the estate; they are hugely frustrated by the process.
The second issue I wish to raise, which has been raised already, is future adoptions and maintenance of new developments. With local authorities seriously cash strapped, many are looking at policies that increasingly involve private management companies taking on maintenance of grounds and roads for a service charge. It is vital that there are clear and transparent ways in which those management companies are accessible and responsive to residents, and that residents have a voice in the condition of their estate. It is not good enough just to pass over a lump of money for someone to maintain part of an estate in perpetuity, with no way of redress thereafter.
That brings me on to the third issue I wanted to mention: leasehold. Service charges have some common features with leasehold. My hon. Friends the Members for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) and for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) have talked quite a bit about leasehold issues so I will not go over them all again, but I want to raise two points: service charges and the use of developers’ solicitors, either through encouragement or referral fees.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston referred to the inquiry of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee. As a member of that Committee, I heard from some leaseholders and other witnesses. Service charges are particularly important to leaseholders because of shared areas, but they affect new homebuyers, too, under the new arrangements where management companies may be involved in maintaining estates. It is important that people are clear about what their rights are and that they have redress when things go wrong. The problem of developers encouraging people to use their nominated solicitors affects both freeholders and leaseholders.
The residents on the anonymous estate that I mentioned and the leaseholders who gave evidence to the Select Committee said that they were not informed of important issues about their properties or their estate, whether they were planning issues, were about the leasehold or were about increasing ground rents. For leaseholders, that can have particularly long-reaching effects. Not being told about ground rents and service charges or the way they increase means that some buyers of first homes are trapped in what was their dream first home, because they have a growing family and need to move. The Select Committee heard evidence that a number of people are trapped by increasing ground rent and the wariness of mortgage lenders to lend on those properties. Those people are especially affected, having been told they can buy the freehold in future, when they find out it has been sold on to developers at extortionate costs. That cannot be right.
It cannot be right that referrals fees, arm twisting or inducements such as new carpets or garden landscaping can be used by the seller to encourage the purchaser into using their preferred solicitor. There are codes of practice that solicitors are bound by, which should protect buyers, but the number of people who told us that they were not aware of conditions shows that something is going wrong. The system has to be seen to fair and right. I hope the Minister will address that issue.
Homebuyers deserve protection and better ways of effectively addressing their concerns, whether they are freeholders or leaseholders. The proposed changes that my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston told us about would be helpful. However, as she said, voluntary codes are useful, but much more rigorous action needs to be taken to protect homebuyers. I hope the Minister will assure us that homebuyers will get the protection that they so need.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
I will not speak for all that long. I thank the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) for introducing the debate and those who have already spoken on leasehold and other issues.
In West Durrington, where 700 homes are being built, Chamonix Estates, working for Taylor Woodrow and for Persimmon, have some questions to answer from the residents. Although it is probably better not to use today to put those on the record in detail, if it does not solve the problems, I will.
What we are talking about has happened in the social sector, too. When I first became a Member of Parliament, I represented part of the Ferrier estate in Kidbrooke, where the Greater London Council had managed to build 5,000 homes, but where there was no pub, post office, church or chapel, and the sewerage system worked the wrong way rather than the right way. It was demolished within 20 or 30 years. Things were almost unbelievable until we heard the cases of some residents represented by Members of Parliament here in the debate.
I have a question for the Minister; I am sorry to put it to her without notice, so perhaps an answer by letter to Members would work. If she or her officials listened to “Money Box” on BBC Radio 4, they would have heard that if landlords charge leaseholders directly, there is no VAT, but if they charge them through a managing agent, there is VAT. Even taking the inputs into account, there is still a charge of between 15% and 13% extra. That needs to be sorted out before or after we leave the European Union. Apparently, it is a European Union requirement—I do not know whether that is true. It seems vital that we should take the opportunity, rather than having artificial arrangements, to make it plain that if the leaseholder pays the service charge there is no VAT, whether they pay it through a managing agent or directly to the landlord.
We understand that officials in the Department have to work on leasehold issues with greater width and depth than they did 10 years ago because, then, they did not know how many residential leasehold properties there were and it was not anticipated that so many more would be built. If the majority of homes are leasehold, we have to put the majority of our effort into ensuring that new leaseholders of flats, old leaseholders of houses and flats, and everyone else, get a fair deal. The Prime Minister talks about justice for all—justice for those leaseholders should be a big part of that.
Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Sharma. I congratulate the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) on bringing not only a very important but a highly interesting debate to listen to, which has included various Members around the Chamber. It is very challenging to sum up the debate because there have been so many powerful points made by so many hon. Members, but I will do my best to pick out some of the key points as I saw them.
The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston talked about the unhappy homebuyer experience and the impact that has on people when they have made a huge investment in their future. She also mentioned the number of problems that occur, particularly with new homes. Giving due praise to good home builders is important, because there are many. I am very fortunate: in the highlands, due to the scale—it is probably not the same scale as in other urban areas—the home builders are very good in general. They are not without problems—there are still issues, which I will talk about later. The hon. Lady was right to pick out those large developers who are getting away with some of the things she described.
The hon. Lady said that buying a home was one of the big, significant life changes, but that buyers were having to buy their houses more or less without having seen the final build. She also talked about the introduction of the new homes ombudsman. Like her, I would like to know more about what that will entail. It would be useful if the Minister covered some of those points, albeit she may want to do so briefly. The hon. Lady was right also to highlight the dangers of a voluntary approach when there is clearly such a widespread problem in house building.
The hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) mentioned issues for leaseholders as opposed to freeholders, and went on to address issues with ground rents and service charge hikes. I will talk later about property factoring charges. Those are important issues for people. Importantly, he also mentioned fire safety and sprinkler legislation, and pointed out the moves to tackle those issues in both Wales and Scotland.
The hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) mentioned shocking additional charges that homebuyers uncover after purchase. That is clearly wrong. No one should be put in a position where they buy blind and suddenly find additional costs coming out of the woodwork—literally, in this case.
It is important to highlight the serious issue of solicitors’ conflict of interest, which a number of Members raised. It makes no real sense for the system to exist in that way. Clearly, there has to be segregation so people have confidence in the legal process when they buy a new home. The hon. Gentleman talked about people being pressured to use a solicitor from a panel due to purchase time pressures. Consumers should not be put under pressure when making a purchase of such magnitude in their lives. He challenged the Minister on those issues. He also raised the issue of paying maintenance charges twice, which I will come to, and suggested that the Minister might want to look at a retention scheme.
The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) told us, shockingly, that she had waited five years for a meeting. That is disgraceful, and she rightly named and shamed Persimmon for doing that. She mentioned the issue of sinking gardens, which sounds horrendous, and one householder’s fear that her fence and land would slip into the drain, which the council could not take enforcement action on. Since Persimmon was mentioned a number of times, it is important to touch on the obscene bonuses paid to its chief executives. Surely, such grandiose remuneration is unacceptable.
Other hon. Members talked about completion and adoption, promises that are made about facilities and the scary arguments that come later with developers about costs. It is common for problems to occur a couple of years after the purchase price is paid and people move in, and for the developer either to be nowhere to be found or to argue. That is simply not good enough.
We do not know what consumer protection measures will be proposed—as was highlighted, they have yet to be published—but they are unlikely directly to affect Scotland because of the devolved nature of housing. However, that does not mean they will have no effect, so I am keen to see what comes from them. For a number of years, homeowners have had issues with property factors. The UK Government recently consulted on the issue as part of its implementation of reforms to the leasehold system, which is very different.
The Scottish Government brought forward the Property Factors (Scotland) Act 2011, which means that since 2012, registration has been compulsory for property factors operating in Scotland and they have had to follow a code of conduct outlining minimum standards. There is also a new dispute resolution system. The homeowner housing panel, and now the housing and property chamber of the first-tier tribunal for Scotland, have allowed homeowners to challenge property factors in Scotland.
Jim Fitzpatrick
Property factors being property management agents in Scottish speak, yes?
Drew Hendry
I am grateful for that translation from the Scots.
A test case was brought by Mr Michael Marriott, a householder in Clackmannanshire, against Greenbelt Group in 2015. He took his case to the Lands Tribunal for Scotland and won, because it was found that the deeds were not compliant with the legislation. Perhaps that is a learning opportunity for the UK Government. Where there is a clear breach, homeowners can pursue a course to get factoring clauses taken out of their deeds altogether.
That has made a big difference, but it would be foolish to say it has cured all the problems. There is much more work to be done in Scotland, including on issues with shared factor arrangements on private housing estates. There is one such estate in Milton of Leys in my constituency. One of my constituents was advised that his factoring bill had risen from £100 in 2005-06 to £173 in 2017-18, with no explanation—it was just applied to the costs.
Kate Green
The hon. Gentleman is making a really interesting point. I know from personal family experience that one of the difficulties with factors is that those homeowners are often older people who live in specialist or sheltered estates. Does he agree that it is particularly important that any regulation and legislation attends to the needs of more vulnerable homebuyers?
Drew Hendry
I am very grateful for that intervention. That is an important point. Lots of people are in a vulnerable situation. They tend to be elderly people and people with disabilities, but it is important to recognise that there are other vulnerable groups, such as the young and inexperienced, who may not be able to think about entering into a contract in the same way as other people. Some people have found it difficult to get recourse when work is not done to the standard they expect, and others have found that maintenance of communal landscaped areas is ignored completely.
As well as introducing measures to protect homeowners, the Scottish Government are working to ensure that those who aspire to home ownership are able to achieve it. I will mention a specific programme that the Minister may find it useful to hear about. Ensuring that everyone has a safe, warm and affordable home is central to the Scottish Government’s drive for a fairer and more prosperous Scotland. Since 2007, they have delivered more than 80,000 new homes—as a proportion of the population, that is a third more than in England and three quarters more than in Wales. More than 28,000 households have been supported through the Scottish Government’s low-cost initiative for first time buyers scheme and the Help to Buy programme. Nearly 20,000 houses have been built for affordable home ownership.
The Scottish Government have also introduced a new land and buildings transaction tax relief for first-time buyers, which will raise the zero-rate threshold for that group to £175,000, benefiting all first-time buyers in Scotland by up to £600. That reform means that more than 85% of those who have bought a property worth £40,000 or more since April 2015 have either paid less tax compared with stamp duty land tax, or no tax at all.
Affordable housing to buy is very important for my constituents and across Scotland. A recent survey found that increasing numbers of young people want to live and work in the highlands and islands. In 2015, when the survey was previously carried out, many young people cited poor connectivity and a lack of housing as barriers to wanting to stay.
Working together is delivering results. Mid-market rent projects are delivered through the city deal investment in a partnership between the Highland Council, the Scottish Government and house builders. Through partnerships with Highland Housing Alliance and others, young people who cannot yet afford a mortgage are given the opportunity to rent a home at a mid-market rate to allow them to save for a deposit and buy the property after a number of years.
I want to quote my constituents, Sally and Ruaridh, who have just moved into their new home this week through the Highland Housing Alliance mid-market rent initiative. They will be able to buy the property in five years, after paying a mid-market rent that allows them to save. Sally said:
“This move has been transformational for me and my partner. We are now in a secure home where we hope to start a family one day, and we’re able to save hundreds more each month to help us towards a deposit for a mortgage.”
The Raining’s Stairs development in my constituency in Inverness, which includes mid-market rent properties, won the award for the best residential development of under 70 homes at the Inside Housing development awards in London last month, so it is appropriate to mention it in this debate. Some 55% of Help To Buy recipients were aged 30 years or under. The Scottish Government recently announced a further £100 million to extend the scheme by two years to March 2021, to help even more people into home ownership.
The debate has been interesting. I wanted to touch on points specific to Scotland, but I will underline that some of the voices we have heard talking this afternoon about the costs incurred by constituents and homebuyers and about the activities of house builders have been eye-opening. I hope that the Minister has had her ears open and is willing to proactively address the many deep concerns that people have. I look forward to hearing her response.
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) for securing this important debate. I commend the exceptional and knowledgeable contribution that she made in opening the debate, which has taken us far beyond the debate’s title. The contributions have been wide and varied, but they all fall within the subject of justice and fairness for people buying their own homes.
If we are to end the housing crisis, we need to build hundreds of thousands of new homes every year, but what is sometimes lost in a number-focused, target-based approach to house building is the issue of quality. The desire or requirement to complete at speed overshadows the checks and details that people buying brand-new homes expect to have within the system of sign-off before properties are exchanged. Unfortunately, far too many new homes fail to live up to the standards that homebuyers should be able to take for granted.
A YouGov survey commissioned by Shelter found that almost all homeowners of recent new builds experienced some problems when moving in, with more than half of new homes having major faults. As a consequence, there is a crisis of confidence in the quality of new homes, with only two in 10 people thinking that new homes were built to a higher standard than old ones, and only three in 10 preferring to live in a new home rather than an old one.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston made some alarming statements in her contribution. There was a higher level of danger in some new homes because of poorly installed heating or electrics; a lack of security when front doors did not close; and a public health risk when drainage from bathroom facilities was not properly fitted. We surely cannot consider that acceptable in this day and age, so there is a clear quality problem within some new homes. The worst of it is that homeowners experiencing difficulties suddenly find that they have limited protections and guarantees regarding their new home’s standard.
All political parties accept the need to significantly increase house building output in this country, and that brings with it an urgent need for a more accountable system to check on new builds and restore confidence that buying a new home does not come with a Pandora’s box of problems and headaches for owners. That includes the issue of leasehold, which my hon. Friends the Members for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) and for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) dealt with in great detail. My hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse said that the Government recognise that there are gaps and failings in legislation relating to leaseholders, but no concrete action has yet been taken. I am sure he feels the Government owe it to his constituents to get it sorted.
My hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West talked about the lack of information about leaseholds. There is a real lack of knowledge and understanding, so perhaps the Minister will set out what she is doing to make sure that people are aware of their situation when they buy a home. Clear, concise information is needed. When people buy a new home, the amount of information they are sent is enormous, so how can we make sure that leasehold information is at the top of their list of concerns and is addressed and explained properly? My hon. Friend also highlighted the purchase of freeholds. The price is often set far out of the reach of individuals, or the freehold is sold to third parties.
There is also the issue of rip-off fees charged by freeholders. The Minister has overseen changes to rip-off fees in the rental sector to some extent. She took on board many of my comments in the Tenant Fees Bill Committee, and I thank her for that, but when will she take further action? If rip-off fees are not acceptable in the rental sector, we cannot say that they are acceptable in the home ownership sector.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston talked about the rip-offs around ground rents rising to extortionate levels, making homes unmortgageable and unsellable. He described the valiant efforts of his constituent, Katie, who led a campaign on behalf of leaseholders around the country to highlight that scandal in all our minds. There is an opportunity to take retrospective action, but the Government have been reluctant to talk about it. I have no doubt there are complications, but, as my hon. Friend said, this matter is the PPI of the homebuying and leasehold sector. If we can take action on PPI contracts, why can we not take action on those leasehold contracts?
The creation of a new homes ombudsman is welcome news for consumers, but when can we expect to see that ombudsman in action? Precisely what powers will they have? The Government must press ahead with greater enthusiasm to give homebuyers the sense of security they need when buying a new-build home. Despite a home being the most expensive and important purchase that most of us will ever make, homebuyers too often do not enjoy the same protections that we enjoy when we buy even the most basic everyday goods and services. If somebody bought a book with missing pages, a box of chocolates with their fillings missing or a TV that did not produce a picture, they would be able simply to return the product for a refund or a replacement. But when it comes to a new house, consumers are left to navigate a complex and inadequate warranty system, the whims of developers and the small print of warranty providers. When problems arise, new homebuyers have to go through toil and stress simply to get what they paid for and what they should rightfully be entitled to as consumers.
My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson)—a democratically elected Member of this House who is of some civic standing—said it took her five years to get a meeting with a developer. Developers must understand the potential for embarrassment when being held to account publicly in this place. It should not take a Member of Parliament to have to address this matter. It should be simple and straightforward for an individual to get action from developers, and it certainly should not take my hon. Friend five years to get an audience with these incredibly important people in the developer sector.
Helen Goodman
My hon. Friend on the Front Bench is making a strong speech. Does she not agree that the large number of cases presented today and previously shows that the situation is not accidental? We are talking not about one or two mistakes, but about a deliberate strategy by the developers to set things up so that they have all the cards and the homeowner has no rights.
Melanie Onn
My hon. Friend is right. Some of the dismissive responses from some developers have been mentioned in the debate: “Have you been doing this?” “Well, yes.” “Has it previously been to the disadvantage of leaseholders?” “Well, yes.” “Have you been able to do anything about it?” “Perhaps, but it is only now that we are prepared to do it.” It just goes to show that highlighting such things and putting pressure on the companies can have a swift effect, not least if they want to save their reputational skins.
It is not acceptable that people have to put up with major problems with their home or delay moving in, or even that they have to move out during belated repairs to bring the house up to scratch. The Government should bring forward a full suite of consumer rights for homebuyers when they introduce the measure on the new homes ombudsman. However, when more than half of new homes are built with major problems, it is clear that problems in providing protection and standards to homebuyers run deeper than consumer rights. There are clear failings across the house building sector, allowing homes to be built systematically in a way that quite clearly falls below the standard that anyone should expect.
That was highlighted well by my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist), when she talked about unfinished estates and issues of completion, adoption and delays. She mentioned people living for too long on building sites when there are delays in completing properties, as well as lack of transport and infrastructure, and the failure to provide basic amenities such as shops, play areas and community centres—the things that build a community. Instead, estates are left full of Lego houses, with no centre or heart.
We have a planning permission bidding system with too much flexibility on both affordable housing and standards of building, and bidders can see the building of a home to a high standard as a costly extra. Too often, they fail to recognise that they are not simply building houses; they are building communities, which confers on them a corporate ethical responsibility. They should take pride in the work they do, the homes they provide, and the communities they are building around the country. It sticks in the craw when large companies exploit the system and fail to live up to their moral duty to deliver affordable housing of an acceptable standard, but still pay uncomfortably high bonuses—despite benefiting from the Government Help to Buy system.
We have already heard about Persimmon’s horrendous customer service. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North may be surprised to learn that it gets three out of five stars for customer satisfaction. Perhaps she would think that that rates it rather too highly. It will no doubt be disappointed that it is not getting five stars in the HBF customer satisfaction ratings, but rather than concentrating on improving building standards or communication with customers, it insists on paying out £75 million in bonuses to its executives. That is alarming.
Last year, I met the new bosses of Bovis Homes, another company that was struggling to meet acceptable standards, because of a combination of over-expansion, too much subcontracting and being too distant from customers. For a long time it had a five-star building rating, of which it was incredibly proud, but it lost it. It was heartening for me—and it did not take me five years to get a meeting—to hear that Bovis bosses were determined to turn things around. They were quite crestfallen that the company’s reputation had been hit so hard. They had been known as a high-quality, trusted home building brand. Customers were pleased at the change of heart, but there were those who had hoped to move into their dream-forever home for whom the game change was too little, too late.
The need to build hundreds of thousands of homes a year should not lead to reduced standards in house building or allow companies to exploit the housing crisis by making a fortune from an under-regulated housing system. The Government should consider the call from the Federation of Master Builders for a licence to practise, to root out cowboy builders who forgo the rules during construction.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston talked about a single homebuyers code, developers not being able to insist on particular solicitors to be used by homebuyers—who would have a free choice—and an information pack post-sale. She also highlighted the issue of training for subcontracted staff, and looked forward to high-quality apprenticeships in the building sector. Those are issues that it is well worth considering.
My hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse talked about safety and retrofitting sprinklers, and that should not be forgotten. The issue is not just about houses; it is also about flats, of course. When we think about high-rises, the Grenfell tragedy and its effects should not soon be forgotten if we want citizens to be safe.
I hope that the Government will take seriously what has been said in the debate, which was a good and helpful one. I hope they will seek to tighten regulation of planning standards and materials quality, and ensure that the homes we build are safe and up to scratch. Like the HomeOwners Alliance, the Government should want better new build, and should take much stronger action, including retrospective action for leaseholders.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Mrs Heather Wheeler)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma, as it was to serve under Ms Ryan’s.
I thank the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) for securing the debate and providing an opportunity to debate all the issues. I understand that she and many of us present today want better protection for purchasers of new-build homes. The Government are committed to making the housing market work. We aim to increase house building to an average of 300,000 net new homes a year by the mid-2020s. As we move towards achieving that target, we will not sacrifice higher quality and standards. They must go hand in hand. It is vital that as housing supply increases the quality of new-build homes continues to improve. In our housing White Paper we set out our ambition for a housing market that works for everyone. We expect all housing developers to deliver good quality housing, to do it on time, and to treat house buyers fairly.
I, like other hon. Members, was shocked to hear about the terrible experiences of the poor families featured on “5 live Investigates”, including the home with 354 faults. For families who worked hard to save and buy their new home it should have been an exciting time, as so many hon. Members have said. The programme highlighted the plight of Mr Wakeman and his partner Tracey Bickford. It was heartbreaking to hear Mr Wakeman read the list of issues with their home, and describe the disgraceful disruption to their lives, including having to move out of their home. Although theirs is an extreme example, such cases happen far too often. We all hear of them happening. I have heard it from many constituents who write to me through their Members of Parliament, and also in my own constituency correspondence.
Equally familiar are stories of houses not completed on time and purchasers who are not kept informed, which the hon. Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) discussed. Families and households save for years to afford a new home. Those of us who are fortunate enough to have bought a home can remember the feeling of excitement and joy at getting the keys. Everyone deserves to be able to enjoy their home and start a new happy chapter in their lives.
We know that mistakes will happen. Building new homes is a complex undertaking, involving many different skills and trades, which necessarily means that there is a higher risk of something going wrong. The critical thing, however, is that when things do go wrong, house builders and warranty providers fulfil their obligations to put things right. The Government have been absolutely clear on that point. In too many cases problems with build and finish quality are not resolved quickly enough. The after-sale service that developers provide must improve. We shall therefore be keeping the pressure up on industry, not only to put things right but to prevent them from going wrong in the first place.
The Government are committed to reforming the process for purchasers of new-build homes to obtain redress. I acknowledge that the current process is complicated, and that the proliferation of schemes and warranties has resulted in varying levels of service and protection. That is why we are taking action.
In October—only two months ago—we announced our intention to bring forward legislation to require all developers to belong to a new homes ombudsman, because it is absolutely right that consumers should have fair, quick and easy ways to get things put right when they have a problem. Earlier this year we consulted on how we could improve redress, not just in relation to new-build homes, but for residents across all housing sectors. I will return to this later, but let me say now that we will be publishing our response to that consultation soon. At the same time as exploring more substantive reforms, we are challenging industry to simplify redress now and to provide proper support for consumers in the early years of a house purchase, when most problems occur, until we have the ombudsman in place.
In November—one month ago—I met the executive chairman of the Home Builders Federation, which is taking forward proposals to implement a better redress system, based on the recommendations in the reports by the all-party parliamentary group for excellence in the built environment published in 2016 and this year. I believe this work is a positive step in the right direction.
The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston was very agitated, as were many other hon. Members, about the potential conflict of interest with solicitors. It is not acceptable that there is a conflict of interest. The Secretary of State has written to the Law Society on the issue and has also written to the Solicitors Regulation Authority, in the context of leasehold reform and conflicts of interest between developers and conveyancers. I expect those two authorities to take note and come back to us on the matter.
A number of hon. Members mentioned that we often hear that new-build homes are not completed to the standards required under building regulations. These regulations set the standards for the design and construction of new homes. The primary responsibility for compliance rests with the people carrying out the work. Work on new homes is subject to building control either by the local authority or a private approved inspector. However, it is the responsibility of the building control body to take all reasonable steps to assess compliance. It is a spot check process carried out at certain points during the building work. A building regulations compliance certificate issued by a building control body is not a guarantee of the highest standards and the responsibility is not removed from the builder or developer. If a consumer feels that the building control body did not carry out its functions properly, they may complain to the local government and social care ombudsman in respect of a local authority. A complaint about an approved inspector can be made to CICAIR, the Construction Industry Council Approved Inspectors Register, which is the body that approves inspectors.
The hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) asked about sections in the Housing Act 2004 and about local authority powers to make developers undertake remediation for unsafe cladding. I will write to him about that and also about retrospective fire sprinklers.
Melanie Onn
I recently visited London Fire Brigade to talk about building regulations and the checks that are undertaken. The issue with spot checks is a real concern for safety. The failure to put an insulation sock underneath a window caused a new-build block of flats to be engulfed by fire just weeks after people had moved in. Can the Minister think of anything more that can be done to strengthen the system, to make sure it goes further than spot checks, so that key factors that support people’s safety in their homes are not missed?
Mrs Wheeler
I thank the hon. Lady for that very useful intervention. My team will take that back and we will write to her with an answer.
We know more needs to be done and expect more to be done. That is why the Government announced measures to champion the rights of buyers of new-build homes, including a new homes ombudsman. That will provide one obvious place for consumers to go, and will have the powers such a body needs and the interests of consumers at its heart. It will ensure that when people buy a new-build home and do not find the standard of build they expect, they are treated fairly and their concerns are dealt with quickly. We will work with consumers and the industry to develop our proposals, which will be published in more detail soon and will set out the scope and powers of the ombudsman.
In the meantime, we have been challenging industry to improve redress in the shorter term. The work being done by the Home Builders Federation could lead to a voluntary new homes ombudsman and better redress for consumers in the short term, while Government works towards legislation. In our response to our redress consultation we will set out the standard we expect these voluntary arrangements to meet. We also expect that any new redress scheme for buyers of new-build homes should be free to the consumer, as in other sectors.
We believe there should be a clear and quick escalation route for issues of building safety and are exploring a number of options. Again, we call on the industry to implement actions and processes so that the examples we heard on BBC “5 live Investigates” do not happen in the first place. We want to see a marked improvement in the standards of new homes and will ensure that home buyers get those standards, not only for new-build homes but across the market.
Further to building regulations and standards of new-build finish, the leasehold system needs to be fair and transparent to the consumer, so that their home truly feels like their own. Unfair practices in the leasehold market have no place in the modern housing market, nor do excessive ground rents, which exploit consumers who get nothing in return. In July, the Government announced that no Government-funded scheme would be used to support the unjustified use of leasehold for new houses.
Sir Peter Bottomley
We are all grateful for what the Government have said in the past and what the Minister is saying now. One of the problems with ground rent is the question of what it is there for at all. The commonhold gets rid of ground rents. We do not know whether the help to buy scheme is used to commonhold. Can the Minister make an announcement about how that problem will be solved, so that commonhold homes can be accepted for help to buy?
Mrs Wheeler
There are discussions going on about commonhold. I will be happy to talk to my hon. Friend about this offline.
Our technical consultation on how to improve the leasehold market and make it fairer for consumers has now closed, and we are analysing the responses. We want to see developers support everyone who has onerous ground rents, including second-hand buyers, and for customers to be proactively contacted. We are helping existing leaseholders by making it easier and quicker for leaseholders to form residents’ and tenants’ associations. We are proposing a single, mandatory and legally enforceable code of practice covering letting and managing agents, giving people a clearer and simpler route to redress. We are publishing a how-to-lease guide for consumers and looking carefully at how we currently give support and advice to leaseholders.
The hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) was very interested in educating leaseholders. We are publishing the how-to-lease guide, which will educate leaseholders. We have also held workshops with the industry to develop the how-to-buy and how-to-sell guides, which will be published in 2019.
The hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse asked about leasehold reforms. LEASE, the group that we use to help give information, is unambiguously on the side of leaseholders. LEASE no longer pursues any commercial interests and it does not advise leasehold professionals. [Hon. Members: “Good.”] Yay—I just had a good. Get that in Hansard—sorry, I shouldn’t say that.
The hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West asked about permission fees. Lord Best has a working group that is considering permission fees and whether they are reasonable or they should be banned in total.
The hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) mentioned the £10 ground rent. For a peppercorn to exist there must be a consideration of exchange of money. We are concerned that peppercorn could be open to abuse and therefore we have considered that an amount should be specified in statute. We have chosen £10 because that is the annual amount used for right to buys.[Official Report, 21 January 2019, Vol. 653, c. 1MC.]
Justin Madders
It is helpful to have that explanation, because I have been mystified about what led to that situation. Obviously, peppercorns have been around for centuries; I do not know whether there is some legal advice that the Minister may be able to share, even confidentially, about why we still have to have a financial figure rather than a peppercorn.
Mrs Wheeler
Given the previous week’s history of sharing legal advice, I might skip over that one, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind. Perhaps he and I could have a cup of tea. The £10 peppercorn ground rent was part of our recent leasehold consultation and we will be considering our approach in light of the responses to the consultation.
Mrs Wheeler
Or pink—yes, please—or green; we could have green pepper as well. This poor Hansard writer, dearie me.
I recognise that many freeholders have to pay charges toward the maintenance and upkeep of communal areas on an estate. That is especially prevalent on new estates, exactly as the hon. Member for Blaydon mentioned. Freeholders who are unhappy about the transparency of those charges are becoming an increasingly frequent part of my ministerial postbag, and I understand why they are unhappy. Leaseholders have a whole suite of protections and rights that enable them to hold management companies to account, but freeholders have no such equivalent, even though they may be paying for the same or similar services.
The Government agree that the current situation is unfair to freeholders, and we are committed to legislating to plug that gap. We have set out our proposed approach to implementing those measures in part 4 of the recent leasehold reform consultation, which closed on 26 November. We intend to create a new statutory regime for freeholders, based on the rights enjoyed by leaseholders, which will ensure that maintenance charges must be reasonably incurred and services provided of an acceptable standard, and include a right to challenge the reasonableness of charges at the property tribunal.
Helen Goodman
The Minister is being generous in giving way. I do not know whether she noticed my ten-minute rule Bill on that precise point, but when she brings forward the legislation or proposals on freeholders, would she consider capping the charges and making it possible for the freeholders to buy and self-manage the common areas, which, as she knows, are being sold on and on and on to a series of exploitative management agents?
Mrs Wheeler
The hon. Lady poses a number of questions, all of which are very interesting. I will reread Hansard after the debate and take on board what I can.
The Government agree that the situation is unfair, so we intend to introduce a new statutory regime and are considering whether freeholders should have a right to change the provider of maintenance services by applying to the tribunal for appointment of a new manager, which may be useful if a freeholder is dissatisfied with the service they are receiving. As it happens, my officials are now analysing the responses and the Government intend to bring forward legislation to implement changes as soon as parliamentary time allows.
We move on to another area in this vast debate, home buying and selling. Around 1 million homes are bought and sold in England each year, but another 25% to 33% of planned sales fall through, costing consumers around £270 million and creating stress for far too many people. The Government published our response to the home buying and selling call for evidence in April 2018, setting out an ambitious programme of action to make the buying and selling process in England cheaper, faster and less stressful, in line with our manifesto commitment. There is no silver bullet that can change everything at a stroke and fix the process. Instead, we will need to make a number of practical changes, some big, some small, which taken together will make the experience much better. To put hon. Members’ minds at rest, we as a Government are here to tackle those issues.
We have already started work. We have created a new working group focusing on the regulation of property agents, chaired by Lord Best. We have begun working with industry and the National Trading Standards estate agency team to develop guidance on making referral fees more transparent and to look at the case for banning them. We have also doubled the funding available to that team. We have written to all local authorities reminding them of the Government’s ambition to have a property search request completed within 10 working days. We have consulted in implementing reforms to the leasehold system, seeking views on fixed timeframes and maximum fees for freeholders and managing agents to provide leasehold information.
We have held workshops with industry to develop detailed and thorough how-to-buy and how-to-sell guides to inform consumers, to be published in 2019. We have started work with industry and consumers to make conveyancing data more transparent so that buyers and sellers can make a more informed choice and we have worked with industry to develop a standardised reservation agreement. We will commission behavioural insight analysis to support its implementation; it will increase commitment between buyers and sellers much earlier in the process. Together, our reforms will create a much better process, which guides buyers and sellers and gives them the information they need at the time they need it, allowing them to make the biggest purchase of their lives with confidence.
I confirm to the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse that I will write to him regarding cladding and sprinklers. My hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West kindly brought up the question of VAT on service charges. As he will know, that is a matter for Her Majesty’s Treasury, but it is something that has only recently raised its head, so I will write to him about that.
On bonuses for those larger businesses, we announced in August that we are helping to improve shareholder scrutiny of executive pay, strengthen the employee voice in boardrooms and build confidence in how large companies are run. Under those reforms, all quoted companies will be required to disclose and explain annually the rationale for the chief executive’s pay and the ratio to the average pay of their UK employees. The new reforms will provide greater transparency on the impact of share growth and executive pay.
The Government have been clear that this should be a country that works for everyone. That means building more of the right homes in the right places and ensuring the housing market works for all parts of our community. We must ensure that ordinary people purchasing a new home have the protection they deserve and are treated fairly.
Mrs Hodgson
I was listening carefully to the Minister, but I may have missed this—if I did, I am very sorry. I wonder if she could say something about a point that both my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) and I mentioned, about referring some of these dodgy lawyers, conveyancers or solicitors to the Law Society when they are not acting in the best interests of their client, who should be the buyer.
Mrs Wheeler
Absolutely. I am sorry that the hon. Lady did not hear me say it, but the Secretary of State has written to the Solicitors Regulation Authority, the SRA.
Mrs Wheeler
My absolute pleasure. We must ensure that everybody has the protection they deserve and is treated fairly, and that all efforts are made to ensure that builders build to the standards and finishes that we expect. Once again, I thank the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston for securing this valuable debate, and I look forward to her summing-up speech, right now.
Kate Green
I thank all hon. Members, the Front-Bench spokespersons and the Minister for their contributions to this wide-ranging and, if I may say so, very well-informed debate. I again thank all the individuals who shared their stories with me and with other colleagues who are here—in particular those who joined in the discussion by participating in the House of Commons digital debate.
I very much welcome the Minister’s commitment this afternoon to improving protections and redress for homebuyers, and I look forward to—I hope it will be soon—the Government’s publication of their response to the consultation responses that they have received. There is considerable enthusiasm in the House for receiving further details of the homebuyer’s ombudsman scheme and further information on the strengthening of protections for leaseholders. The House will have noted the Minister’s promise of legislation when time allows, and I hope that that time will come shortly. We also will have noted that she sees industry-led reforms, although welcome, as only an interim step in underpinning the protection that buyers need.
I echo the comment made at the start of the debate by the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley): that many builders do a good job and many buyers are delighted with their new homes. However, we are all very pleased to have had the opportunity this afternoon to give voice to the very legitimate concerns of those who have been treated shoddily. As the Minister undertakes to hold the industry to account, we in the House undertake to those individuals to hold the Minister to account. We will not allow the encouraging commitments that she has made this afternoon to our constituents simply to slip away.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered protection for homebuyers.
Written Statements
Reserve Forces and Cadets Associations
(6 years ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Defence (Gavin Williamson)
I have today placed in the Library of the House a copy of the Reserve Forces and Cadets Associations (RFCAs) combined annual report and accounts for 2017-18. I am very grateful to the RFCAs for their valuable work in support of the reserve forces and the cadet organisations. I should also like to thank Lieutenant General (Retd) Robin Brims for all he has done as chairman of the Council of RFCAs, as he prepares to step down from the role at the end of the year.
[HCWS1179]
Telecommunications Council
(6 years ago)
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The Minister for Digital and the Creative Industries (Margot James)
The telecommunications formation of the Transport, Telecommunications and Energy Council took place in Brussels on 4 December 2018. The deputy permanent representative to the EU, Katrina Williams, represented the UK.
The Council began with the formal adoption of legislative “A” points, during which the Council adopted the European electronic communications code (EECC) and body of European regulators of electronic communications (BEREC) proposals. The Austrian presidency then secured a partial general approach on the digital Europe programme, which the UK supported. A progress report and policy debate then took place on the European cybersecurity industrial, technology and research competence centre and the network of national co-ordination centres proposal. Following this, a progress report and exchange of views took place on the ePrivacy regulation.
Afterwards, the Austrian presidency provided information on the progress of current legislative proposals, namely: the recast public sector information directive; the .eu top level domain regulation; and the Cybersecurity Act. The Austrian presidency also provided an update on the state of play of the digital single market. The Council ended with a presentation from the incoming Romanian presidency on their work programme for the first half of 2019 and their priorities for the digital single market. These were: innovation; cybersecurity; skills; and women in tech.
[HCWS1182]
Agriculture and Fisheries Council
(6 years ago)
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The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (George Eustice)
As the provisional agenda stands, the only item for fisheries will be a Council regulation on Atlantic and North sea TACs and quotas for 2019, for which a political agreement is sought.
The primary focus for agriculture will be on the post-2020 common agriculture policy (CAP) reform package. Council will consider a progress report, covering three regulations: one on CAP strategic plans; a second on financing, management and monitoring of the CAP; and a third on common market organisation (CMO) of agriculture products.
Council will also hold an exchange of views on the updated EU bio-economy strategy.
There are currently six items scheduled for discussion under any other business:
information from the Croatian delegation on the inter- parliamentary conference “The role of Parliaments in shaping the future of food and farming” (Zagreb, 22-23 November 2018)
information from the Commission on the current legislative proposal on a regulation amending regulations (EU) No. 1305/2013 and (EU) No. 1307/2013 as regards certain rules on direct payments and support for rural development in respect of the years 2019 and 2020
information from the presidency on the conference “The development of Plant Proteins in the European Union—Opportunities and Challenges” (Vienna, 22-23 November 2018)
information from the presidency on massive forest damage in Europe
information from the Commission on the follow-up to the Fipronil incident: state of play of implementation
information from the Danish delegation on the establishment of an international centre for antimicrobial resistance solutions (ICARS) to strengthen the fight against AMR internationally and especially in low and middle-income countries.
[HCWS1176]
Chemical Weapons Convention
(6 years ago)
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The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
On 19 and 20 November 2018, 160 states parties to the chemical weapons convention (CWC) met for the annual conference of states parties (CSP) to discuss implementation of the CWC and agree the annual budget for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). This was the first CSP since the UK and international partners called a special session in June 2018 to address the threat from chemical weapons use following recent use in Syria and Salisbury.
The former Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), updated the House on the June special session on 9 July 2018 (HCWS835 and HLWS809). The November CSP was vital to consolidating the success achieved in June and implementing the decision to enable the OPCW to attribute responsibility for chemical weapons attacks in Syria, and potentially more widely at the request of an affected state party.
On 20 November, states parties overwhelmingly rejected attempts by Russia, Iran, China and Syria to reverse the June decision. Equally importantly, the CSP voted by 99 votes to 27 to adopt the budget proposed by the OPCW director-general for 2019. This included a 2.4% increase to the budget specifically to fund part of the Syria attribution work and to improve cyber-security. The vote sent a clear signal of broad-based commitment to upholding and strengthening the CWC and the ban on development, production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons.
The UK is proud to have been at the forefront of diplomatic efforts to secure this positive outcome. We look forward to supporting the OPCW technical secretariat and fellow states parties to enable Syria attribution arrangements to become operational as quickly as possible, and to further discussion of the director-general’s proposals on verification and technical assistance work, including attribution work beyond Syria.
The five yearly review conference, designed to review the operation of the convention, immediately followed the CSP. This year consensus on a final report from the review conference was not possible. This was in part due to Syrian and Russian refusal to include references to Syrian regime responsibility for chemical weapons use, including the findings by the OPCW-UN joint investigative mechanism. A lack of a formal report is not unprecedented and will neither affect continuing implementation of the convention nor prevent implementation of the CSP decisions, including the UK-led June decision.
The UK will continue to work with states around the world to support progress towards universal and effective national implementation of the CWC and to uphold the global ban on chemical weapons, including through the provision of £1.1 million of funding to the OPCW to assist the implementation of the June decision and the OPCW’s work more broadly.
[HCWS1177]
Independent Breast Screening Review
(6 years ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Steve Brine)
The independent breast screening review was announced on 2 May to look into a serious incident in the breast screening programme in England, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of women aged between 68 and 71 not being invited to their final breast screening. I would like to apologise for the distress and suffering caused by this incident.
The review concluded that the policy on the upper age limit for breast screening had been ambiguous since the outset of the programme in 1988. A new specification, issued in November 2013 by the Department of Health and NHS England (NHSE), attempted to clarify how the upper age limit should be defined. However, the specification inadvertently changed the policy, which resulted in a discrepancy between the specification and the IT systems in use, and was not consistently implemented by the breast screening units. This was the source of the incident, which first became apparent in January 2018. The impact of the change in policy was not fully understood at this time.
While subsequent advice provided to the then Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Mr Hunt), was based on an incomplete understanding of what had happened, we welcome the review’s conclusions that the former Secretary of State was correct, based on the information provided, to inform the House of the breast screening incident. The review makes clear that the number of women affected by this incident is significantly lower than previously estimated. Based on the review’s conclusions, Public Health England’s (PHE) current estimate of the number of women who may have had their lives shortened is zero to 34. We agree with the recommendation that PHE progresses as quickly and as sensitively as possible the clinical review with the NHS of all women who may have suffered harm.
The protection of the public’s health has been, and remains, the paramount consideration when responding to this incident. Although PHE was slow to develop a clear understanding of the incident and its causes, we reiterate the review’s praise of the operational response. We would like to put on the record our tremendous gratitude to PHE and the dedicated NHS staff in breast screening centres across England who worked tirelessly to manage significant additional demand and pool capacity across centres to ensure that additional appointments were made available and offered to all women who wanted one.
We agree that there is an urgent need to clarify how we define the upper age limit for breast screening. We will commission the UK National Screening Committee (UKNSC) to provide advice as soon as possible on the scientific evidence to support a precise definition of age. On the basis of the committee’s advice, we will ensure that a new, fit for purpose specification for our national breast screening service is agreed and is reflected in the programme’s delivery. DHSC will work with NHSE and PHE to ensure that the management of local breast screening units, quality assurance of the service they provide, and the national breast screening programme performance indicator are consistent with the new service specification.
We agree it is vital to ensure clarity in roles and responsibilities within each of the national cancer screening programmes, and in accountability arrangements for how these services are commissioned and delivered. We welcome the report’s reference to the comprehensive review of cancer screening programmes by Professor Sir Mike Richards that was recently announced by NHSE. Terms of reference will be published once we have had an opportunity to fully reflect on the review’s recommendations.
We also need to ensure that our current systems adequately support effective delivery and we acknowledge the review’s criticisms that the current national breast screening system (NBSS) is outdated. We welcome the review’s conclusion that the introduction of breast screening select by PHE in 2016 was a step forward. I can confirm that Government have already committed an initial £1.8 million to design a replacement for NBSS.
We will continue to monitor closely all screening IT systems to ensure they are robust and operating as they should. A series of fail-safes to ensure the monitoring of the use of “call and recall” systems within breast screening offices has already been put in place, together with additional national assurance to ensure that these fail-safes are being used effectively.
The AgeX trial will continue as planned. The trial will provide significant new evidence on screening women under 50 and over 70 that simply is not available now, providing the evidence needed to make decisions about the age range for breast screening.
It is essential that we take all necessary actions to learn from the mistakes made. We will consider the review’s report and its recommendations in detail over the coming weeks and will provide a substantive response in the new year. I would like to record my thanks to the co-chairs of the review for their thorough report.
[HCWS1175]
Immigration
(6 years ago)
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The Minister for Immigration (Caroline Nokes)
The Government are committed to making it easier for lawful residents to demonstrate their right to work in the UK, and to strengthening the support we provide to employers when complying with the provisions in the Immigration Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 to avoid employing illegal workers.
In April this year, the Home Office launched a new online checking service. This service enables UK employers to check the current right to work, in real time, of a person who holds either a biometric residence permit or a biometric residence card, and to see whether they are subject to any restrictions.
The system works on the basis of the individual first viewing their own Home Office right to work record. They may then share this information with an employer if they wish, by providing their employer with a “share code”, which can be used to access the record. This authorisation represents an important safeguard and means employers will only view an individual’s information having received their consent and the share code allowing their access.
We have worked closely with UK employers and with users of the service in developing this new system, which has been operating effectively to provide employers and migrants with additional assurance where used to support right to work checks.
In order for employers to actually rely on the new online service to discharge their legal responsibilities under illegal working legislation, it is necessary to amend the Immigration (Restrictions on Employment) Order 2007 to properly integrate the service into Home Office legislation which stipulates the checks employers should conduct to avoid a penalty for employing an illegal worker. These checks are currently largely predicated on a face value examination of a physical document.
Today we have laid before Parliament the Immigration (Restrictions on Employment) (Code of Practice and Miscellaneous Amendments) Order 2018, in accordance with the 2006 Act, together with a revised code of practice, which provides that employers will be able to rely on an online check from the end of January 2019, where a prospective employee has an immigration status that is compatible with the online checking service (holders of biometric residence permits or cards, and those with online immigration status).
From the end of January 2019, employers will be able to request either the online check or the existing document-based check. Online checks will therefore be a voluntary option while migrants and employers develop familiarity with the new service and take up becomes more prevalent.
The online checking service has also been developed to enable EU migrants granted leave to remain under the EU settlement scheme to view their status and to share it with employers and other service providers where appropriate. Current arrangements, under which EU citizens can demonstrate their right to work in the UK by producing their national passport or identity card, will continue after the UK leaves the European Union and for the entire duration of any implementation period. However, with the latest development, EU nationals may alternatively choose to rely on online status issued following a successful application to the EU settlement scheme, by using the online service to share their right to work with their employer. Further detail on the future immigration system will be set out in a White Paper shortly.
The Immigration (Restrictions on Employment) (Code of Practice and Miscellaneous Amendments) Order 2018 also seeks to amend the list of documents which demonstrate a right to work, to remove the requirement that a British birth or adoption certificate must be the full certificate for these purposes. The intention is to make it easier for British citizens who do not hold a passport to demonstrate their right to work, using a short birth or adoption certificate with a national insurance number.
In addition to the order, we have also laid the Licensing Act 2003 (Personal and Premises Licences) (Forms) (Amendment) Regulations 2018. The regulations make consequential amendments to prescribed licence application forms to reflect changes to the order.
Successive UK Governments have introduced measures to tackle illegal working which represents the principal pull factor for illegal immigration to the UK, and the 2018 order underscores our commitment to improve the necessary system of checks for employers and workers alike. I would be happy to arrange a demonstration of the new online service for hon. Members.
[HCWS1181]
Chief Coroner’s Fifth Annual Report
(6 years ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Edward Argar)
I am pleased to lay and publish the Chief Coroner’s fifth annual report to the Lord Chancellor on the operation of coroner services under section 36 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 (“the 2009 Act”). The report covers the period 1 July 2017 to 30 June 2018.
In particular the Chief Coroner’s report sets out:
the continuing work to promote consistency in the resourcing of and practices in coroner offices across England and Wales;
the training and guidance that coroners and their officers have received and the engagement with a wide range of stakeholders;
recommendations to improve coroner services further.
I am very grateful to His Honour Judge Mark Lucraft QC for building so effectively on his first year’s achievements.
I am grateful, too, to all coroners and their officers and other staff, for having supported the Chief Coroner to improve services for bereaved people and for their valued and continuing frontline work.
Copies of the report will be available in the Vote Office and in the Printed Paper Office.
The document will also be available online at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/chief-%20coroners-annual-report-2017-to-2018.
[HCWS1183]
Supreme Court Judgment on the UK Withdrawal from the European Union (Legal Continuity) (Scotland) Bill
(6 years ago)
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The Secretary of State for Scotland (David Mundell)
Today the Supreme Court handed down its judgment on the UK Withdrawal from the European Union (Legal Continuity) (Scotland) Bill. The Bill was passed by the Scottish Parliament in March of this year. In April the UK Government’s Law Officers referred the legislation to the Supreme Court for a ruling on whether it is within devolved legislative competence.
As I stated when the Bill was referred to the Supreme Court, given the view of the Presiding Officer that the continuity Bill was not within the legal competence of the Scottish Parliament, it was right to seek clarity. The reference was simply in line with the processes provided for in the Scotland Act 1998, which anticipated such situations occurring.
And so I am grateful to the Supreme Court for examining the issues here and for providing greater clarity. This is not simply a question of where constitutional powers lie, important as those questions are. Greater clarity was needed to ensure that our statute book functions properly and that the law is clear for businesses and individuals.
The UK Government thank the Court for its time in considering this case.
The Court’s judgment that significant parts of the Bill are outside the competence of the Scottish Parliament shows that the UK Government was right to refer the Bill to the Supreme Court. We will now carefully review the Court’s judgment.
We want to continue to work with the Scottish Government to provide much needed clarity for businesses and individuals in Scotland. This has been our aim throughout this process.
I have always been clear that it is in the best interests of the people of Scotland for the UK and Scottish Governments’ to work together as we leave the EU.
This remains my commitment and this will continue following this judgment.
[HCWS1180]
Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council
(6 years ago)
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The Minister for Employment (Alok Sharma)
The Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council met on 6 December 2018 in Brussels. The deputy permanent representative to the European Union, Katrina Williams, represented the UK.
Two legislative proposals achieved general approach at the Council. These were the proposed regulation establishing a European labour agency and a third batch of amendments to the worker protection directive on carcinogens and mutagens.
The Council reached political agreement on a recommendation on access to social protection for workers and self-employed and there were presidency conclusions on gender equality, youth and digitalisation.
The Council also discussed the European semester. As part of this agenda item, the Council approved a contribution to the draft recommendation on the economic policy of the euro area made jointly by the Employment Committee (EMCO) and the Social Protection Committee (SPC); endorsed their joint messages on aspects of digitalisation and robotisation; and endorsed EMCO’s key messages on the latest biennial assessment of member states progress tackling long-term unemployment.
There were a number of progress reports and information items during the Council. These included an update on progress in negotiations regarding a regulation on the European globalisation adjustment fund (EGF); a proposal from 2008 for a directive on equal treatment; and a presentation from the Commission on its 2019 “Autumn Package” of annual growth survey, alert mechanism report, and draft joint employment report.
The Council closed with updates on the status of other legislative files, broader developments in the field of employment and social policy, and an overview of the priorities of the incoming Romanian presidency.
[HCWS1178]
House of Lords
Wheeled Goods Vehicles
(6 years ago)
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Baroness Gardner of Parkes
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to repeal the exemptions from the requirement for wheeled goods vehicles to be fitted with sideguards.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, under regulations made in 1986, most new heavy goods vehicles—HGVs—are required to be fitted with sideguards. There are limited historical exemptions—for example, a motor vehicle that does not exceed 15 mph, and fire engines—which were put in place for good reasons. Work is focused on amending regulations to ensure that where sideguards are required on new HGVs, these are retained and maintained. I anticipate that these proposals will be published in 2019.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)
The Minister may be aware that the typical cases at the moment are the mixers and tippers—heavy goods lorries that are exempt. It is the front wheel that hits you if you are on a bicycle and too near, but when you get dragged under the vehicle, the back wheel is the one that kills you. It is better to abolish this exemption, particularly as companies such as CEMEX, the Mexican cement-mixing firm, have deliberately and carefully put these barriers on, although they are not required; CEMEX is trying to persuade other cement people to do it. But would it not be simpler and better for the Government to just change the regulations? Is the Minister able to tell us figures for fatalities and casualties?
Lord Young of Cookham
I am grateful to my noble friend. Cement mixers are not exempt under the regulations, and since 2012 all tippers have had to be fitted with sideguards. On the figures, in London over the past three years, 70% of cyclist fatalities involved HGVs, so my noble friend is quite right to draw attention to this. I speak as someone who came in on a cycle. My noble friend asks about injuries. Of the 29 cycle fatalities and life-changing injuries in two years, 25 were caused by the cyclist being knocked over by the front or side of the cab; in other words, ahead of the sideguard. Once the cyclist is knocked over, the sideguards are of no value because they are two feet above the ground. So the Government have been focusing on other measures to improve vision and cyclists’ safety, as well as making sure that the existing regulations on sideguards are honoured.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, we have an increasing number of foreign vehicles—some of them not EU ones—on our city streets these days, with drivers driving on what is to them a strange side of the road. How confident are the Government that those foreign vehicles meet the standards and regulations that we require on sideguards?
Lord Young of Cookham
The standards that we follow on sideguards are international standards imposed under one of the United Nations sub-committees. So a vehicle, wherever it has been constructed, will have to meet those international standards, which cover sideguards. We are now taking extra steps to make sure that, in addition to the vehicles being fitted with sideguards when they are manufactured, the sideguards are maintained—for example, if they become damaged, quite often they are not replaced—and those are the regulations that we are looking at bringing in next year.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, will the Minister explain to the House how much enforcement of these regulations takes place? I was kindly invited to a demonstration of enforcement down by the Tate Gallery a couple of years ago, where the police and VOSA were combining to enforce the regulations on tachographs and all other rules relating to trucks. They must have spent a lot of money on this around the country but they said that the main achievement was to put a board on the back of scaffold lorries to stop the poles falling off. If that is all they can do, surely we need much more enforcement of these regulations?
Lord Young of Cookham
As the noble Lord will know, there are regular spot checks on roads in this country where heavy goods and other vehicles are stopped and checked to make sure that they comply. I will supply the noble Lord with more information on the effectiveness of these spot checks and how often they are carried out.
Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)
My Lords, I had direct experience when I was a Member of the European Parliament of a constituent whose daughter was killed by a lorry because the visibility from that lorry was not adequate. I think that changes have been made in relation to the requirements for extra mirrors for observation around a vehicle of that kind. But sometimes the outside mirrors are obstructed with debris or become, frankly, useless during the vehicle’s use. Are we sufficiently able to move on and do things quickly when we find new ways in which we can help to protect those who are in contact with or close to heavy goods vehicles?
Lord Young of Cookham
My noble friend is quite right that the UK played a leading role in changing international standards. In July 2016, measures for large HGVs with improved mirrors came into effect, largely as a result of our intervention. More work is going on in what is called detection technology, which detects vulnerable road users, and measures using cameras. There will be new requirements for buses and lorries, which could come into effect in 2021 under the direct vision standards initiative.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I do not really understand the Minister’s reply to the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner. He said that the Government are focusing on other measures. What other measures? I do not find it acceptable if he says it is either/or, when it is in fact a simple change that the Government could make which could save lives or prevent life-changing injuries.
Lord Young of Cookham
I am sorry if the noble Baroness did not understand my reply. What I hope I said was that cement mixers are not exempt; in other words, they have to comply with the sideguard regulations. Since 2012, all new tippers have be fitted with sideguards and we are taking other measures. On 22 November, we published proposals to increase road safety for cyclists, pedestrians and horse riders. The Government are taking a wide range of initiatives to promote road safety. Our roads are among the safest in the world but one casualty is one too many.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
My Lords, the death of cyclists in this scenario is a tragedy. The problem, which I think the Minister has alluded to, is that the vehicles are very heavy and the cyclists are very light. Sideguards are relatively ineffective when turning left over a prone cyclist. The modern technology available that powers alerts with radar or sensing systems and so on, including on modestly priced cars, is here and available today. It is actually on the car that I own. Is the department taking direct action to accelerate the trialling of this sort of equipment on lorries and contemplating regulations to require it to be fitted?
Lord Young of Cookham
We are playing our role, in this case along with the European Commission. In May 2018, direct vision for trucks was one of the safety measures included in the European Commission’s review of general safety regulations. We are also supporting measures under the European Commission’s third mobility package further to improve the protection of pedestrians and cyclists. The European Commission is also doing work, which we support, to reduce what it calls the “aggressiveness” of HGV fronts in the context of vulnerable road users. The noble Lord is quite right that there is a lot of work going on supported by the UK which we hope will improve safety for pedestrians and cyclists.
Childhood Obesity
(6 years ago)
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Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress has been made, if any, in discussions between the BBC and Public Health England regarding a joint strategic plan on childhood obesity.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord O’Shaughnessy) (Con)
My Lords, Public Health England and the BBC are firmly committed to working together on childhood obesity. Since July, the teams have met three times for discussions and are currently working on the detail of future plans.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
I am grateful to hear that there have been three meetings since we met in July. Unfortunately, the latest statistics on obesity in children aged from 12 to 16 show a further deterioration. It is time we really got something moving in the form of a national campaign on obesity. The BBC has an important part to play in that. Will the Minister persuade his Secretary of State to lean on the BBC and Public Health England to get a move on so that we can see programmes being introduced, and then issue chapter 3 of the obesity plan to incorporate that into it?
Lord O’Shaughnessy
I agree with the noble Lord about the importance of the issue and I am grateful to him for the role he has played in bringing that relationship together. He knows very well that the BBC has played a critical role over decades in many very important health campaigns, such as on HIV or the “Just Say No” campaign on drugs. The BBC is absolutely committed. Of course, it would be inappropriate for Ministers to lean on the BBC, which has editorial independence that I am sure we are all anxious to protect. However, it is committed to doing more. It is doing a number of activities through its programming, including the “Blue Peter” cooking club, various CBBC programmes and so on. I do not think anyone doubts the BBC’s commitment to this, and we will see the fruits of that soon, I am sure.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, is the Minister aware that food economists have calculated that, calorie for calorie, fruit, vegetables and high-quality proteins are much more expensive than foods high in carbohydrate and fat? Is it surprising that poor parents find that they have to fill up their children with those foods that eventually often lead to obesity? The structural underpinning of this problem is poverty, which goes much wider than the Minister’s department. It should be a whole-government issue. What are the Government doing about that?
Lord O’Shaughnessy
I absolutely recognise the problem that the noble Baroness has pointed out. The prevalence of childhood obesity doubles between the least deprived and the most deprived areas. The Government are committed to reducing that deprivation gap and taking a broad range of actions to combat poverty, none more so than making sure that everybody has the chance to work, which is why we have more people in employment than has ever been the case.
Baroness Boycott (CB)
My Lords, following that point, more than a quarter of year 6 children in the most deprived areas are now obese, compared with just 11% in our richest communities. Poorer people cannot afford the Government’s Eatwell plate. What will the Government do post Brexit? Every document I have read has promised rises of between 4% and 20% in food prices and not one has said that food will get cheaper. We already know that we have a deep problem here. What are the Government doing to help, whether through Early Start, by subsidising fruit and vegetable consumption, or through doctor prescribing, to ensure that poorer children can get the food they need to ensure that they do not become—looking at it economically—a time bomb for us later?
Lord O’Shaughnessy
The noble Baroness is quite right about the scale of the problem. It is worth pointing out that obesity and overweight issues cost the NHS alone £5 billion a year. There are two parts to the answer. First, the Government are making sure that plans are in place to ensure the continuity of food supply as we leave the EU, whatever the outcome of the negotiations. Secondly, there are two aspects to her key points: about £26 million is going into breakfast clubs as a result of the sugar levy, and of course free fruit and veg are available to young children in primary school.
Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Con)
My Lords, ITV and Veg Power are teaming up to launch a major initiative in the new year designed to appeal to children, as well as a public health initiative through ITV’s programmes. Does the Minister agree that ITV and all the other broadcasters could look at similarly imaginative ways of doing this through their programmes?
Lord O’Shaughnessy
That is an excellent suggestion. Before this debate I looked at the Veg Power campaign, the ITV campaign to promote the eating of vegetables, which looks excellent. ITV has demonstrated its commitment and certainly shows an example to other broadcasters.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly produced a report some months ago on childhood obesity, covering all the jurisdictions it represents. Could the Minister take another look at that, because a number of issues came out of it—for example, the need for local authorities to take action, the need for action in schools and the need for action in the voluntary sector? Could the Minister come back when he has looked at what further action could be taken on those recommendations?
Lord O’Shaughnessy
I should certainly be happy to do so. It is worth pointing out that that document and others have informed chapter 2 of the Government’s obesity strategy, which was published recently. Because the problem is not yet being dealt with, as we know, and we have an ambition to halve obesity, we are determined to act on things such as banning promotion of sugary foods and further restricting advertising.
The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, is the Minister aware of the report today from BBC News which shows that, while information has been provided that 600 calories is a decent meal, fast-food providers provide 750 or so on average, but chain-food suppliers provide 1,500 calories? What will the Government do to encourage those providers to provide lower-calorie-option meals for the public and for young people?
Lord O’Shaughnessy
The noble Earl makes an excellent point. That is why in chapter 2 of our strategy, as I mentioned, we propose mandating consistent calorie labelling in out-of-home settings; indeed, the consultation on that has just closed and we will be publishing our results shortly.
Brexit: Health and Social Care Workforce
(6 years ago)
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Baroness Wheeler
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the report by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, Brexit and the Health & Social Care Workforce in the UK, published on 6 November.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord O'Shaughnessy) (Con)
My Lords, the Government are determined to recruit and retain the staff that the health and social care sectors need. This will include a robust domestic recruitment drive as well as ensuring that EU staff, who play such an important role in caring for and supporting patients, are able to stay in this country. That is why on Monday 3 December, we launched the EU settlement scheme pilot for the EU workforce in health and social care.
Baroness Wheeler (Lab)
I thank the Minister for his response. The Cavendish report on the current and potential staff shortages across all the key health and social care professions makes for alarming reading and shows how dependent we are on the work and dedication of EU nationals. I want to focus on social care workers. What is the Minister’s response to the Government’s Migration Advisory Committee, which says that these vital staff fall into the category of “low-skilled” and therefore do not merit preferential rights here in any post-Brexit scenario? In the past he has acknowledged the skilled, caring jobs that these staff do in community services, people’s homes, nursing homes and care homes. Does he agree that they are definitely not low-skilled? What is he doing to convince the MAC otherwise? What is the strategy for recruiting the 130,000 new social care workers that we need each year just to stand still, let alone to address the future demands of the service?
Lord O'Shaughnessy
I thank the noble Baroness for her question. First, we want to ensure that EU staff working in Britain are able to do so, and course that is why the EU settlement scheme pilot is so important. The social care workforce in this country has increased a lot, with a mixture of domestic and foreign staff. One of the ways in which we are increasing the attractiveness of that profession is by increasing the living wage, which has benefited so many staff in social care. Of course, many of them are highly skilled, and we want to ensure that we continue to be able to attract such skilled staff. We continue to discuss with the Home Office exactly what the right thresholds are for our future immigration system so that we do not lose out on these kinds of staff.
Lord Laming (CB)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that the problem is caused primarily because of the low esteem given to social care staff? This is extraordinary because most people who find themselves dependent on those staff value their contribution enormously. Would it not be helpful if the Government attached greater importance to those staff, not only through reward but through training and proper support?
Lord O'Shaughnessy
The noble Lord is absolutely right. The Government certainly do not hold those staff in low esteem—quite the opposite. As we know, we need increasingly to think of health and care staff as one workforce and ensure that professional paths lead through all those professions. I am sure he will be aware of the work being done by Skills for Care, which provides the overarching policy in this area, has made recommendations about pay and helped to inform our increase in the living wage, and is providing better training facilities for those staff.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, in addition to the report referred to, Coram has today published its annual survey confirming that there is not enough care available for older people, with only one in five local authorities reporting enough care in the area to meet demand. As a result, more than 4.3 million people aged 75 and over are living in an area with insufficient social care. The Minister talks about discussions with the Home Office, but we also see from the report that there was a big peak of EU staff leaving, and a big reduction in nurses, dentists and allied healthcare workers coming in from the EU. This is a perfect storm, so when will the Home Office understand that we need a range of staff in this country? Secondly, can the Minister confirm when the Government’s paper on health and social care will be published?
Lord O'Shaughnessy
Of course, care needs are increasing—a fact that flows from having a growing and ageing population. I should point out that the Government have increased funding for social care by more than £9 billion over three years in recent Budgets, so we recognise the seriousness of the issue. We of course want to retain those staff—it is good that there were more EU staff in the NHS in June 2018 than in June 2016, and we want them to stay. As for the social care Green Paper, it will be issued shortly.
The Lord Bishop of London
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for the value that he places on those working in the social care and health sector, but the National Institute of Economic and Social Research identifies that the sector is under considerable pressure, even before we consider Brexit. The Royal College of Nursing states that fewer nurses started training in our universities this year. Fifteen per cent of all our nursing roles have vacancies in London. Experience tells us that recruitment is complex. Can the Minister reassure the House that in an environment that uses the language of taking back control of our borders and controlling immigration, steps are being taken to reassure not just those within the EU but outside it that they remain a valued and essential part of our diverse health and social care sector?
Lord O'Shaughnessy
I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate for the opportunity to say that we value every person who works in this country in those professions. We want to ensure that they are able to stay and contribute to the health and wealth of our country. I point out we are improving both recruitment and retention not only through increases in the living wage but through changes to the Agenda for Change pay deal concluded earlier this year. It will give 1 million staff at least a 3% pay increase by the end of 2018-19, and increase the starting salary of a nurse by nearly 10% to almost £25,000 by 2021.
Baroness Verma (Con)
My Lords, we all value the increased living wage—I speak as a provider of social care, and my interests are listed in the register. Will the Government ring fence the extra funding that they rightly put into social care, so that local authorities have to pass it on to providers? Providers have increased costs, and we cannot pass the money on to our care workers because we simply cannot afford it.
Lord O'Shaughnessy
I recognise the picture that my noble friend paints. It is of course incredibly important that money gets to the front line. I am sure that she is aware of this, but I would point out the operation of the Better Care Fund, which brings together local authority and NHS funding specifically to support social care provision. The amounts of money going through that have been increasing over recent years.
Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)
My Lords, the statistics quoted by my noble friend on the Front Bench are pretty frightening, but the knock-on effects on the 6.5 million unpaid carers upon whom our health and social care system depends are even more alarming. In a recent survey, 70% of them doubted their ability to continue caring if more support, much of which comes from these care workers, is not available to them. Will the Minister assure the House that the forthcoming Green Paper, which we know is imminent, and the NHS plan, will take full account of the needs of carers?
Lord O'Shaughnessy
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for raising the matter and for her persistence in doing so; she is quite right to. We were pleased to publish the action plan earlier in the year and I can tell her that the Green Paper, as I have said before at the Dispatch Box, will contain more policy on supporting carers.
HS2
(6 years ago)
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Lord West of Spithead
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have revised their estimates of (1) the cost of, and (2) the timetable for completing, HS2 following delays and increased costs in relation to Crossrail.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, HS2 Ltd regularly reviews project plans and is currently working with its contracted suppliers to update and agree its latest cost and schedule confidence assessments for phase 1. HS2 Ltd is always examining lessons learned from major infrastructure projects, including Crossrail, to improve its understanding of the risks to delivering on time and to budget. We will publish updated cost and schedule estimates for phase 1 as part of the full business case in 2019.
Lord West of Spithead (Lab)
I thank the Minister for his Answer. A huge amount of money is involved. There is not much money around and things have changed. Does the Minister think that increasing capacity on the west coast main line is more important than, for example, sorting out the shambles in the civil nuclear industry and thereby safeguarding our future energy supplies for the nation? Does he think that it is more important than getting a secure GPS system to replace Galileo, from which we were so disgracefully excluded by the EU? Does he think that it is more important than resolving the funding crisis in our Armed Forces, when Russia is confronting and destabilising our nation? If so, does he not think that this is the time to pause and reconsider where this money should be spent?
Lord Young of Cookham
The noble Lord will know that the question of allocation of resources between a range of government departments is one taken collectively by the Cabinet and announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the appropriate time. It is not for a junior Minister to comment on the allocation of public expenditure between the Ministry of Defence and a whole range of departments, including those for transport and energy. On the last part of the noble Lord’s question, I think that it is right to go ahead with this project. It is expensive, but the phase 1 funding has not increased since the spending review settlement in 2015. Phase 1 is scheduled to cost £27.18 billion in 2015 prices and we are determined to keep it within that cost estimate.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, will the noble Lord—a much-respected and much-liked former Secretary of State, as well as a junior Minister in your Lordships’ House—comment at least on the prioritisation of railway needs and demands? He will have noted, following the resignation of Sir Terry Morgan, that the Mayor of Liverpool resigned last week from the board of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership citing as his reason for doing so the lack of rail investment to service the £1 billion renaissance of Liverpool dockside. Can he say where HS3 and the proposed linkage of northern cities now stands? Should not the revitalisation of the north be a much higher priority than HS2, which by comparison will contribute far less to northern regeneration?
Lord Young of Cookham
The noble Lord makes a powerful case for more resources for transport in addition to the money that we have already committed to HS2, in both phase 1 and phase 2. He wants additional resources to improve connectivity with Liverpool. A spending review is just starting in which I am sure the Department for Transport and those departments that have an interest in the northern powerhouse will make bids. I note his strong representations that improved connectivity for Liverpool should be a high priority.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
Has the Minister had the opportunity to read the reports from the Economic Affairs Committee of this House on HS2, and can he confirm how many billions could be saved by a marginal reduction in the speed of this train?
Lord Young of Cookham
Can I write to my noble friend with the answer to that question? At the moment, as I indicated in my first reply, there is a dialogue between HS2 and the suppliers to ensure that the bids come in within the overall envelope that the Government have allocated. This may involve looking at some of the specifications that my noble friend has referred to. We are determined to stick within that envelope and all options will be looked at to make sure that we maintain the costs of this project.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, Sir John Armitt from the National Infrastructure Commission thinks that HS2 could cost an additional £43 billion. Is it not time that the Government gave us an up-to-date estimate of the true cost of this plan? Do the Government accept that the north of England needs better east-west rail connections as much as it needs HS2 going all the way to the north and not stopping at Birmingham?
Lord Young of Cookham
To answer the first part of the noble Baroness’s question: as I said in my original reply, we will publish updated cost estimates as part of the full business case in 2019. In the second part, she reinforced the bid for more resources to go into public transport in the north; that has been noted and will be taken up in the spending review.
Lord Adonis (Lab)
My Lords, on behalf of the whole House, I am sure, I say that we would welcome the Minister’s appointment as Secretary of State for Transport so that he can take some responsibility for these issues. He might be a great improvement on the current regime. In respect of HS2 and HS3, it is vital that we improve intercity connectivity between London, the Midlands and the north. It is also vital that we improve connectivity between the northern cities. We should not have to choose between them. Does the Minister agree that the right thing to do is to proceed with HS2 and HS3, and that if we were not having to spend £39 billion on Brexit we could do both very comfortably?
Lord Young of Cookham
My Lords, you do not see one Transport Secretary for a long time and then two come along at once. The noble Lord is right: HS2 will directly connect eight of the 10 largest cities in the country; it is about connectivity and capacity as much as about speed. He has reinforced the strong bid I have already heard for more resources to HS3 and other connectivity within the cities of the north. That bid will be taken forward as part of the spending review. The added weight that he has just given to it will, I am sure, cut a lot of ice in the Treasury.
Business of the House
(6 years ago)
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Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
That Standing Order 40 (Arrangement of the Order Paper) be dispensed with on 19 December to enable the motions in the names of Lord Moynihan and Baroness Neville-Rolfe to be taken before the motions in the name of the Lord Bishop of Chichester.
Business of the House
(6 years ago)
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Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
That the debate on the motion in the name of Lord Foulkes of Cumnock set down for today shall be limited to 3 hours and that in the name of Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top to 2 hours.
Constitutional Convention
(6 years ago)
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Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
That this House takes note of the current constitutional challenges within the United Kingdom and the case for the establishment of a United Kingdom-wide Constitutional Convention to address issues of democratic accountability and devolution, particularly in England.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)
My Lords, I am particularly grateful to my noble friends in the Labour group in the House of Lords for agreeing to this topic and allowing me to speak to it. It is very important, as indicated by the number and distinguished nature of the speakers who have put their names down for the debate. I hope others will forgive me if I start by saying how pleased I am that my friend and former colleague, in the other place and in this House, the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, has agreed to make his valedictory speech in my debate. I am honoured by this; we look forward to it very much indeed. But we shall miss his wisdom when he is no longer with us.
It is encouraging that we are debating a constitutional issue that is not Brexit. Is that not a relief? This issue is a long-standing interest of mine—some might even say that it is an obsession. I was first motivated to become interested in it in the late 1960s and early 1970s by the late Professor John P Mackintosh, a Member of Parliament whom some noble Lords will remember. He was a very powerful and eloquent advocate of the need for devolution of power away from Whitehall and Westminster to the nations and regions of the United Kingdom. He was the author of the seminal book The Devolution of Power and a very good friend of mine. He and all of us who were concerned about devolution of power at that time saw a central metropolitan bureaucracy here in London that did not understand or take account of the different needs of the different parts of the country—not just Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland but the regions of England.
We sought to remedy that for Scotland with the devolution of both legislative and administrative power to a Scottish assembly, as we called it at the time, and we campaigned for it. I am glad that my noble and good friend Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale will speak today, because he and I fought shoulder to shoulder in that campaign, along with my noble friend Lord Maxton, who I am glad to see is also here, and many others. Sometimes it seemed like a lone fight but it gathered momentum—if noble Lords will excuse that word—as we went along.
We succeeded in persuading the Labour Government to agree to a referendum, which was held in 1978, but frustratingly, although we got a majority in that referendum, it failed to achieve the 40% turnout threshold that had been forced into the legislation by opponents, led by the late George Cunningham. Sadly, 1979—a date I will never forget, as it was when I was honoured to be elected to the House of Commons—saw the return of a Tory Government, which meant that nothing was done to pick up the idea and campaign for devolution. Some felt that the opportunity had been lost for ever.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
Would the noble Lord like to put it on the record that the Tories in Scotland will always be grateful to the SNP for bringing down the Labour Government on that issue and thus enabling Margaret Thatcher to become Prime Minister?
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
For once, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, for intervening because he has reminded me of that, and we should keep reminding the people of Scotland that it was the SNP that helped to bring down Jim Callaghan’s Government and gave us Margaret Thatcher and a Tory Government for nearly 18 years.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
Where was I? As a result, nothing was done by that Government and some of us felt that the opportunity had been lost. However, after some reflection, the campaign was revived and, although unfortunately we were not able to persuade the Thatcher Government to act, we came up with a very novel idea, which will be the central part of my argument today. It was that the Labour Opposition should take the initiative in setting up a convention.
Therefore, Labour, with the support of the Liberal Democrats, I am glad to say, along with the Greens and the Communist Party, set up the unique Scottish Constitutional Convention, consisting of all Scottish MPs, Peers and party and union representatives, as well as the Churches—one of the Church representatives, Canon Kenyon Wright, chaired the executive of the constitutional convention—and representatives from all civil society. The purpose was to devise a plan for a Scottish Parliament. In spite of subsequent claims to the contrary, neither the SNP nor the Tory party supported the convention officially, although, to their credit, individual Tories and nationalists did.
The report of that convention became the blueprint for the Scottish Parliament—almost every detail in the report was incorporated into the Bill for setting it up—and it enabled the Labour Government elected in 1997 speedily to introduce legislation to do so. It showed what can be done if all sections of society come together early on. Rather than legislation starting from a blank sheet of paper once a Government were elected, we had that blueprint.
That Scottish Parliament, as we know, has now been operating for nearly 20 years. Together with the subsequent Welsh Assembly and the revival of the Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont, despite its recent suspension, it has given substantial, though variable, administrative and legislation devolution—perhaps best described as asymmetric devolution—to those three parts of the United Kingdom. But, as the House of Lords Constitution Committee rightly and wisely reported in 2016, that leaves England,
“the largest, most powerful nation in the UK … without separate recognition and … representation”.
It has also produced some anomalies. The late Tam Dalyell—although an opponent of devolution, he was my friend—used to argue that, as a Westminster MP, he was able to vote on education in Blackburn, Lancashire, but not in Blackburn, West Lothian, which he represented. It was useful for two towns to have the same name for him to make that comparison. That anomaly became known as the West Lothian question.
As we know, David Cameron tried to deal with the legislative democratic deficit faced by England with the unfortunately titled English votes for English laws, or EVEL—that is E-V-E-L, or maybe not—which has restricted non-English MPs from voting on purely English Bills at certain stages. However, a recent report from Queen Mary University concludes that it has not answered the West Lothian question decisively. It has instead opened up a series of new and equally intractable questions. It has been a damp squib at best, but is perhaps better described as a spectacular failure.
Only the kind of coherent and comprehensive devolution I am arguing for can resolve it. That brings me to administrative devolution, where—as my noble friend Lady Quin reminded me just yesterday—the English regions feel as alienated from Whitehall as Scotland did and does. Here there has been what might be called an à la carte menu—more like a dog’s breakfast—of different schemes with catchy titles such as northern powerhouse, metro mayors, city deals and Midlands engine. All this has resulted in a piecemeal pattern, with most of the powers still residing in Whitehall. For example, the northern powerhouse—as we heard earlier at Question Time, the mayor of Liverpool has resigned from it in protest—was described by the Institute for Public Policy Research last week as,
“a top-down agenda dominated by central government”.
Of course, much of rural England is outside this network and feels increasingly left behind. The disparity in fiscal devolution is reflected by the control of revenue. The Scottish Parliament now controls 43% of tax revenues, Wales 21% and Northern Ireland 14%, while English local authorities trail behind, collecting only 9% of their revenue.
The challenge is how to produce a more coherent and comprehensive, but not necessarily uniform—that is an important qualification—system of devolution for the whole of the United Kingdom, which addresses the English democratic deficit. Some argue in favour of an English parliament, which may be attractive for legislation but does not deal with the demand for administrative decentralisation to the regions. Various attempts to start regional devolution in England—including my noble friend Lord Prescott’s plan, which died with the failed referendum in the north-east of England—have perished because Whitehall departments clung on to the real powers. They kept the real powers and would not allow them to go to the proposed regions. Nor, of course, does that deal with legislation.
The clue to solving this conundrum lies in looking at the example of the Scottish Constitutional Convention I described earlier, which is why I strongly support setting up a UK constitutional convention to come forward with a coherent and comprehensive plan. It could advise on how decision-making can best be devolved administratively and legislatively, where appropriate, throughout England as well as the rest of the United Kingdom.
The Labour Party is committed to setting up such a convention, but only when elected, and the Liberal Democrats support such a convention to move towards a federal or quasi-federal UK. Robert Hazell of the Constitution Unit supports a similar convention to build cross-party consensus, and advocates a high level of public engagement, which I hope we can all agree is essential. Others involved in this issue, including the Constitution Society, argue for and support the idea of a constitutional convention.
Such a structure could enable those of us—I know it is not all of us—who seek reform of the second Chamber to replace the House of Lords with an indirectly elected senate of the nations and regions. It would have some democratic legitimacy, but would not challenge the primacy of the directly elected House of Commons.
I am glad that we have one of the more flexible and powerful Ministers answering the debate today—flattery will get me everywhere, I hope, but it is true. I hope he will agree to look at setting up such a convention. I know he cannot give us an immediate answer but I hope he will take it to his colleagues. However, if the present Government refuse to set up a convention, I do not see why it cannot be done now by Labour and the other opposition parties, working together with Churches and civil society, as we did in Scotland. I have suggested this to my noble friend the Leader of the Opposition on two or three occasions now. That way, we would have a blueprint ready to implement when we return to power—as inevitably we will. It was done by an enlightened Scottish Labour Party in the 1990s. Where Scotland led, surely the UK can follow.
Lord Norton of Louth (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, on introducing this important and topical subject. I understand why he makes the call he does, but I reach a different conclusion on establishing a convention, as the term is normally understood.
Over the past two decades, we have seen constitutional change on a scale that has not been seen for 300 years. We have seen major constitutional changes over those centuries, but they have tended to be specific measures which have had time to settle in before some other major change has come along. There were several constitutional changes in the period from 1911 to 1918, but that is the closest we have come to change comparable to that of recent years.
As the noble Lord touched upon, several measures of constitutional change were introduced by the Labour Government returned in 1997. Each was justified by its advocates on its individual merits. There was no attempt to locate these measures within an intellectually coherent approach to constitutional change; they were essentially disparate and discrete measures. In 2002, when I introduced a debate on constitutional change in your Lordships’ House, the then Lord Chancellor, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, conceded that the Government had no overarching theory. The same applies to measures introduced under the coalition Government. That was entirely predictable, given that the coalition was formed of two parties which adopt diametrically opposed views of the constitution. In this Parliament, we have seen further and fundamental change.
Throughout this period, there has been no attempt to look holistically at our constitution, at how these changes affect it and at how they relate to one another. There is no clear view of the type of constitution deemed most appropriate for the United Kingdom. Successive Governments have not been able to identify their constitutional destination.
I appreciate that this analysis leads some to argue the case for a constitutional convention. However, as I shall argue, that is to get ahead of ourselves. As Professor Robert Hazell, to whom reference has already been made, has noted, a convention may be established for one or more reasons. These include—again as has been mentioned—to build a cross-party support for further constitutional reform; to harness expert opinion to chart a way forward; and to develop a more coherent overall reform package. He lists others, but they all have a common thread: namely, to come up with proposals, essentially to generate a package of constitutional reforms.
That omits a necessary stage. We are all familiar with the phrase, “If I was going there, I would not start from here”. A convention would focus on the destination—that is, where to go. My argument is that we need to step back and make sense of where we are. I have argued that we should be engaging in an exercise of constitutional cartography. For that reason, I have made the case not for a constitutional convention but for what I have termed a constitutional convocation.
Having a body to make sense of where we are has a number of advantages over a convention. It avoids—or, at least, does not raise to the same degree—issues of legitimacy that may attach to a body set up to come up with a new constitution for the United Kingdom. One can utilise expertise in a way—or at least to an extent—that may not be possible with a convention. It can also ensure that we understand where we are, rather than be under pressure to come up with some constitutional blueprint that may be either or both overly ambitious or politically contentious. Given what has happened in recent years, there may not be a popular appetite for more fundamental change. Indeed, current events reinforce the case for standing back and making sense of where we are.
If one looks at the period of our membership of the European Community and then the European Union, we regularly agreed changes but, in constitutional terms, we were always playing catch-up. We never stood back to establish clearly how our membership fitted with our constitution. Had we done so, we may not be in the situation we find ourselves in today.
Therefore there are problems with a constitutional convention. It is a problem if it seeks to produce prematurely a constitution for the United Kingdom. It is also a problem if, like the Kilbrandon commission, it ends up addressing only part of the constitution. We need to look at our constitution as a whole. That requires reflection, not rushing ahead of ourselves with a grand scheme. Hence my case for a body to put the change that has occurred within a clear and coherent constitutional framework.
Sir Sidney Low, in his short book, The British Constitution, published in 1928, wrote:
“In England we often do a thing first and then discover that we have done it”.
Let us first of all stand back and make sense of what we have done.
Lord Morris of Aberavon (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for tabling this subject for debate and I endorse his remarks about the late John Mackintosh.
This debate gives us an opportunity to turn our gaze from the subject which has been dominating politics recently. Until the Brexit proposals, the most important constitutional change in our history since the Reform Acts and electoral suffrage were the devolution proposals and their fulfilment. The first point I make is the comparison in the preparation and timescale of the two issues. EU exit proposals, a referendum, an election and the triggering of Article 50 without a plan have barely taken three years. No plan B or C, and probably no plan A either.
Devolution took much longer. The catalyst was Harold Wilson’s royal commission in 1968. Ideas were maturing by the 1974 election and, when I became the Welsh Secretary, I was asked by the Prime Minister to bring forward my proposals. This was followed by the ill-fated legislation between 1974 and 1979, when I had the privilege of being one of the architects of Welsh devolution. The proposals were felled by a referendum and underlined the need for greater preparation and acceptance by the electorate. It is a lesson that we all learned.
Long before that, going back to my days as a graduate student in 1953, I had been mulling over the way forward for Wales. Some 18 years went by after the referendum, but it gave me immense pleasure as the Attorney-General to guide the Cabinet committee in 1997 on the legal implications of the legislation which substantially built on the work done in the 1970s. I am glad to have been at the coalface during both periods. Such is the degree of acceptance now that I do not know of anyone who would seriously try to put the clock back. That does not mean that the evolution of devolution has not been without its difficulties and, indeed, unintended consequences. Later Acts to further the process in Scotland and Wales prove this. As my noble friend’s Motion implies, looking at the UK as a whole, the problem that remains to be cracked is legislating for the sheer size of England compared with Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. I think that most people would agree that there is no appetite in England for such jurisdictions to be created.
I confess that I do not know the answer, but I have noted the piecemeal reforms being made in some of our cities. What I am conscious of is that the divergence between different parts of the United Kingdom could be the cause of strains and difficulties in the future. It has been said that royal commissions have fallen out of favour. I believe that the Royal Commission on the Constitution was the last. That royal commission was set up in order to find a way forward. It and its sub-committees were made up of eminent men and women of different persuasions and experience. Not surprisingly, there were many divergences in their conclusions. The only unanimity was on the need for reform. In our case in Wales, they offered a range of solutions in a series of minority conclusions. This was not catastrophic; it offered choices to politicians. The Cabinet, after many meetings and two or three all-day sessions in Chequers, proposed limited devolution for Wales.
It was not intellectually unsustainable, as one of my noble friends described it in this House many years later. It was the considered view of a Cabinet made up of the Prime Minister and a small number of Members who wanted devolution, but with a substantial number, differing at each meeting, who wanted nothing to do with it or were simply bored with it. All you have to do to find out what happened is to look at the diaries of my noble friend Lord Donoughue. As the years have rolled by, I have been an enthusiastic supporter of further progress.
The second point I wish to make is that there has been a learning curve, and a steep one at that. I am pleased about what has happened and the work that has been done. Devolution is fundamentally about giving power to people where they are and ensuring that they are able to diverge in their actions as they think fit. The Welsh Assembly has diverged and initiated actions in anticipating the dangers of plastic and in the presumption of organ donation. I surmise that the same has happened in Scotland. Others may follow in devolution practices in health and education.
Some years ago I gave the annual political lecture in Aberystwyth where I suggested that since our devolved Governments had been in existence for more than 10 years, there was a case for inquiring how effective the devolved Government had been in each political field which had been devolved. I proposed an inquiry to be set up by each Government and assisted by eminent people.
Thirdly, are there any dangers in divergence? For example, welfare payments, university fees and free prescriptions go to the heart of people’s needs but since the public purse, short of local taxation powers, is at Westminster and divergence can cause dissatisfaction—indeed envy—elsewhere, is there a limit to divergence? A constitutional commission—I would prefer to call it a royal commission—which has served us well in the past could look at what we have achieved and propose a way forward.
Baroness Janke (LD)
My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to discuss this issue. As a member of the APPG on the constitution, I also welcome the chance to contribute to the report of the inquiry into better devolution for the whole UK chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake.
As a former leader of Bristol City Council, I want to focus on devolution at a local level, particularly in England. We see devolution as the transfer of power and funding from national to local institutions, meaning that decisions are made closer to the local people, communities and businesses that they affect. Governments have been slow to recognise the frustration suffered at a local level. Powers and funding are controlled by central government and the local authorities that people vote for are seen as little more than a means of delivering government policy at a local level.
Anyone who has knocked on doors in elections knows that the major issues raised are not decided at a local level. Investment in housing, transport, jobs and social care is not determined locally; it is controlled by the far-reaching grasp of the Treasury. French local government raises three times more of its own finance locally than English local government; in Sweden, it is 12 times as much. As we have heard, 9% of local government income in England is raised locally.
There is huge potential to increase economic growth through local devolution. We have heard today about HS2, the failure to invest in the regeneration of Liverpool and other northern cities and the shortage of investment in transport across and between the northern cities. Myriad reports from different sources—such as the City Growth Commission, the London Finance Commission and the non-metropolitan commission, which produced the Devolution to Non-Metropolitan England report—testified and have examined evidence to show how much can be achieved by giving more powers to local government. The issue of whether that happens at a regional level, for example through metro mayors, needs to be looked at by a constitutional convention.
The Government’s response of creating combined authorities and elected mayors has improved circumstances in some cases, but compared with many international cities that raise their own long-term finance, the level of powers devolved to English cities is derisory. In a quote in the London Finance Commission report, the Mayor of London said that when he explains to the mayor of New York or Berlin that he must go, cap in hand, to the Government to seek funding for major infrastructure improvements, they are incredulous. When I was a city leader working with core cities in Europe, there was incredulity at the minimal powers that city leaders and mayors in this country have.
More devolution has been given to metro mayors but it is controlled by a web of government lawyers and civils servants. The restraints are time-consuming and extremely frustrating. As the APPG report I referred to says, devolution is not just about economic benefits. Professor Vernon Bogdanor states:
“The fundamental case for devolution is the stimulus it gives to local patriotism and pride in the development of services, a patriotism and pride which can well stimulate improvement in services”,
as well as much better public satisfaction. The possibility of a constitutional convention could be a means of enabling central government to listen and act upon the aspirations of people in the cities and regions of our country, but it would have to be backed by resources and a commitment to real change if that is what people want. Any new constitutional settlement must start from the grass roots. A rolling programme of consultation could go some way to answering the anger and frustration we are seeing increasingly across the country. The problems are particular to different areas. The cost of living in London is unaffordable for so many people, yet jobs and investment growth are concentrated in the south-east. There are huge differences in income and the quality of services across the country.
If a new settlement is to be achieved it must be based on a contract with the people of this country, not determined centrally by Whitehall. It also has to be based on a real commitment to give power. If we are really to have devolved democracy across our country we must make sure that it is firmly rooted in the needs and circumstances of the people in the regions, cities and counties of this country. Any new settlement must be transparent so that people and groups can and will participate and, better still, hold it accountable. It also must have real powers, including fiscal devolution, that enable real investment and economic development. Without these it will continue to be no more than an outpost of central government.
Lord Owen (Ind SD)
My Lords, I strongly support the Motion and the concept behind it. We cannot go on in this country, particularly in a post-Brexit situation, without doing more to bring together all parts of the United Kingdom. Postponing this issue is one of our most serious and grave errors. I also believe that the noble Lord has made the most realistic proposition. It will not be done by this Government. Therefore, it is much more sensible for all those other parties in another place to come together now and start to have a mechanism for building a great deal more trust. Of course it will be difficult because of differences between the Labour Party and the SNP in particular. Nevertheless, the most likely next Government of this country will be another one composed of more than one party. Those parties that aspire to come together had better start learning to talk to each other.
The problem is the asymmetry of the United Kingdom. It is very hard to deal with it. The population of England accounts for 84% of the UK’s population. Scotland accounts for 8%. The population of Wales is 5% and the population of Northern Ireland 3%. Therefore, we have to look at the UK as a whole and recognise this. It is a great tribute to the Conservative Party that it has started on a serious pattern of devolution for England. I welcome that.
I used to believe that it was possible to reform this place to elect it and make it a federal Chamber. The reality is that will never happen. It is not legitimate and most of us in our hearts know that a Chamber that purports to legislate has to be totally rooted in elections. This Chamber will go. I was looking back at some of Winston Churchill’s speeches when he was a Liberal in 1905, going onwards for four or five years, and the vehemence with which he said that this place had to be abolished. Unfortunately that has been dissipated by time, but it will be abolished. In the meantime, we will need to build federal structures.
I think it is important to take a completely different way over this and look at this federal mechanism as allowing elected Members at Holyrood, Cardiff Bay and Stormont, as well as devolved and decentralised government structures in England, to participate in a UK federal council. It is a very different and potentially more acceptable form of federal governance. It would involve a devolved London Assembly and the eight big cities emerging now with devolved powers in England. For the rest of the UK, it would have to rely on separate representation for county and borough councils and unitary authorities in England. These already have their mechanism for concerting their views.
It seems to me that we should be humble enough in this country to look at the one structure that actually works. It is not very far away; it is the Bundesrat in Germany and it had a lot of help from constitutional experts in this country in the aftermath of the Second World War, trying to help the German people devise a new constitution. Look at their problem: they faced the problem of asymmetry in the Bundesrat. Baden-Württemberg has a population of more than 10 million; Bavaria, more than 12 million; Berlin, 3,395,000; and then there are smaller Länder such as Bremen, with 663,000 people. This is a structure that has come together; it deals with the issue of asymmetry and the problem of elections, but they come to it from the Länder, so they were not creating another body to be elected. The House of Commons will not let this happen. Those of us in this place who have been in the House of Commons know perfectly well that they speak with forked tongues: they advocate elections for a second Chamber but they are never going to do it, because they know, quite rightly, that there will be a constitutional clash as soon as we have this.
We have to accept it, we reformers who thought we could live with this situation: it is not going to happen, there will not be an elected second Chamber. Eventually, this Chamber will be abolished and before that, slowly, we will build up a structure that creates a federal UK, and the sooner the better. Instead of waiting for the Government, I wrote to the Prime Minister as soon as she took office and asked her what she would do about this, and, basically, the answer was negative. This Government have enough on their plate. They are not going to do anything if they survive until the year 2022, when we will have a fixed-term election. In the meantime, the opposition parties should start a process of dialogue and discussion and I hope very much that it is along the lines of this. If any noble Lord wants to see the much more detailed proposals that I have put forward on this, I would be very happy to send them details of a federal UK council.
Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)
My Lords, it is always a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Owen, who has very interesting ideas.
In 1978 I was the treasurer of the Labour “No Assembly” campaign in Wales. Over 20 years I changed my mind on devolution—which was fortunate, otherwise my future jobs as Secretary of State for Wales and for Northern Ireland would have been very uncomfortable. I did so because the people of Wales, Scotland and indeed Northern Ireland accepted that devolution was here to stay and was part of the political landscape. Things settled down. Now, of course, we are dominated as a country and a Parliament by Brexit—and Brexit will, of course, affect devolution. It will affect the powers and funding of our Assemblies and Governments. European funding, particularly for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, is remarkably high and the Government have to give a promise, eventually, that if or when we leave the European Union, that level of funding will be maintained. It is there, of course, because Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are generally poorer places than parts of England.
The other issue which is so relevant is that over the last week the whole of our politics has been dominated by Northern Ireland, the issue of the backstop and Brexit. The idea that, suddenly, Northern Ireland has to be taken notice of has become pivotal in the debates over the last 24 or 48 hours. The sooner the Government get down to ensuring that the institutions in Northern Ireland are restored, the more significant that will be in dealing with the Brexit issue. The failure of the negotiations over Northern Ireland has led to the failure of the negotiations over the European Union. There is a huge job to be done on that. Of course, 56% of people in Northern Ireland voted to remain in the European Union; Scotland did so by a bigger majority; unfortunately, Wales did not. But these are very important issues.
If we do get Brexit, and even if we do not, there are still issues that the Government have to address regarding the present devolution settlement. Joint ministerial committees must be used a lot more. Over the last year or so they have been resurrected and have proved partially successful, but more has to be done. There has to be a greater awareness in Whitehall departments—among Ministers and civil servants—of the existence of devolution. Certainly, in the 20 years that I was involved in ministerial life, devolution was very often totally ignored by United Kingdom government departments—“Devolve and forget”, the phrase has been. Well, they cannot and they have to ensure that that is part of the political landscape as well.
My noble and learned friend Lord Morris has often talked about whether the territorial Secretaries of State for Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland should continue. They certainly should as far as Northern Ireland is concerned, until we resolve the issue there. But there may be a case, as time goes by, for there to be a single constitutional Secretary of State, with Ministers of State for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—and, indeed, England—around the Cabinet table, with non-voting rights, to ensure that we still have that link but there is an overarching Cabinet Minister as well.
The problem is England—it always was; it always will be. It is too big. Compare the 11 million people in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland with the huge numbers in England. How do you deal with that issue? As has been said, there has been piecemeal development in England. We have a Mayor of London—the only truly devolved part of England—and mayors in Manchester and elsewhere. We have the northern powerhouse. None of it is the same as the proper devolved administration system in the rest of the United Kingdom. The answer is certainly not so-called English votes for English laws. That has been, is and will be a disaster. It divides Members of Parliament from each other. In this House, it does not matter where you come from—Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland or England—your vote is the same as everybody else’s. That is no longer the case in the House of Commons. No other European country has that system, and the sooner it goes, the better.
It is a problem but we can have asymmetric devolution—of course we can. Germany has it, Spain has it; other countries have it. There is no reason in this wide world why we cannot have different forms of devolution to suit the nations and regions of our country. In so doing, I believe, we will see not only a healthier and more wholesome politics but a type of politics that will have to react to whatever happens after we have dealt with devolution.
I remind your Lordships that to ignore what happens in the devolved nations of our country—over the past 24 hours, such ignorance would have been obvious to people outside. The devolution of powers in our country is absolutely necessary to ensure that democracy thrives and that we have a uniform system, even though it is asymmetrical, throughout the United Kingdom, so that we have decentralisation of our powers and a proper democracy in our country.
Lord Higgins (Con) (Valedictory Speech)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, on his speech and the Motion he has tabled. He has been fortunate to find time for it. I thank him most sincerely for his extremely kind remarks about me. They are greatly appreciated.
It has been noticeable with the relatively new practice of valedictory speeches that they are often attached to debates that have nothing whatever to do with them, but that is certainly not so in this case. I am here because of the significant constitutional change whereby it was decided that Members of the House of Lords could retire—after centuries and centuries when that was not so. I therefore find myself here today, having reached the conclusion that I ought to retire.
I should make it clear why. I am absolutely convinced, as many others have been, that the House of Lords is too large. The Lord Speaker has initiated a series of actions, including the reports from the noble Lord, Lord Burns, on how it can be reduced and that programme of reduction is now proceeding through various people retiring or by natural causes and so on. I have come to the conclusion that since I have always believed that one’s vote should follow one’s voice and that, if possible, actions should follow one’s vote, I should take action as part of the campaign that has been initiated to reduce the size of the House. That is my only reason for retiring, but I should also say that it would be quite absurd if existing Members decided that they should retire, for the reasons I have given, and we then find the numbers creeping up again. The crucial outstanding point in the report of the noble Lord, Lord Burns, is that once we have reduced the size there should be a cap on that size, regardless of complications with regard to the royal prerogative.
I was first elected to the House of Commons as the Member for Worthing on 15 October 1964. I had not stood before and, despite the assurances of my agent, I was very worried about what the outcome would be; in the event, I was elected with a majority of 18,883. I am glad to say that while that majority somewhat declined since, my former constituency, which was split up, is now represented by two outstanding Members of Parliament: West Worthing by Sir Peter Bottomley, and East Worthing and Shoreham by Mr Tim Loughton. I am happy to say that my former constituents are very fortunate to have such good Members of Parliament and very clever to return them with what are, even now, extremely large majorities.
I served in the Commons from 1964 to 1997— 33 years—and then in your Lordships’ House from 1997 until now, which is 21 years. That is a total of some 54 years and one naturally looks back at some events in that period. One that stands out is the problem with Rhodesia, over which I had some difference of opinion with my constituents culminating in a public meeting of 1,200 people. I do not think that kind of thing happens nowadays but, at all events, that was one problem. Another problem was with the Ugandan Asians. I was in government at that time and we had serious trouble with Mr Idi Amin. Various solutions were proposed, such as that we might have a better relationship with him if we made him a field-marshal in the British Army. That solution was rejected but Ted Heath set up a very small Cabinet committee consisting of Robert Carr, as Home Secretary, Paul Bryan and me to make recommendations. We came out by saying very strongly that the refugees from the crisis in that country should be admitted to this country. That has had considerable economic benefit to this country and it is something of which I am rather proud.
I made my maiden speech in the other place on the plight of old age non-pensioners who had been left out of the original scheme, but nothing happened until I arrived in the Treasury, when I was able to rectify that injustice and make sure that at least they got that part of the pension not covered by national insurance contributions.
Many things in political life are transitory, so one inevitably thinks about what one has done which might pass the test of time. I notice three in particular. One is decimalisation. I was put in charge of it on arrival in the Treasury in 1970. Ian Macleod had advocated a 10 bob unit. Jim Callaghan had argued for a pound unit, on the grounds of the international prestige of the pound, but a few weeks later he devalued the pound, which rather undermined his argument, and I was left with the problem when I arrived at the Treasury. We went ahead with the situation that we inherited and I think, on the whole, it has worked pretty well. Indeed, although the latest coin is very attractive compared with the ones I introduced, the situation has been resolved quite satisfactorily.
More important was the huge taxation reform I brought in with Ian Macleod by abolishing purchase tax and selective employment tax and replacing them with VAT. That has certainly stood the test of time. The basic rate is now double, or rather more, what it was when I introduced it. We went for a single positive rate with zero-rating for essential items so that the tax would not be regressive. The problem with that was that, as I carried the reform through the House of Commons, endless amendments went down stating that this or that item should be zero-rated, but we survived that, with one exception—children’s clothes and shoes. I see that some Members opposite remember that. An amendment had been put down by one of my colleagues to zero-rate it and I stood up to make my usual speech saying that it was a universal, wide-ranging scheme and so on, and then I received a note from the Whip saying, “Do you realise that everyone on this side is at the Royal Garden Party?”, so I succeeded in announcing that there would be a special inquiry into this item, and as a result children’s shoes and clothes are zero-rated, which they would not have been before.
I am conscious of the time. In the Lords I went straight on to the Front Bench when I left the Commons and served there for a period in opposition against Lady Hollis of Heigham, whom we all greatly miss as she recently left us. It is a huge advantage in opposition to have someone against you who knows all about the subject. Indeed, she knew more about the subject than anyone else in the world. It was a very enjoyable period in my political life. I sat on a number of committees, including the Committee on the Speakership, the Committee on the Conventions on the Relationship between the two Houses of Parliament and various other ad hoc committees, which I enjoyed. I have been particularly engaged with the Campaign for an Effective Second Chamber, which was initiated by my noble friend Lord Cormack and supported by my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth, both of whom are in their place. I think we are very grateful for the work which that all-party committee has done, which has certainly improved the constitutional changes that have been made. I hope there will be further constitutional changes in future.
I think it is true to say that your Lordships’ House is probably more effective now than it has been at any time in its history. It is making an outstanding contribution, it has taken on a great deal of the legislative burden from the other place—which I do not think is fully appreciated—and, generally speaking, it operates extremely well. It is an extraordinary place. The mass of expertise and experience that your Lordships devote to business of the House is very important. It is also a quite extraordinarily friendly place, which I have greatly appreciated.
In conclusion, I thank very much all the staff of the House—the badge messengers, the staff in the catering department and so on. If I may, I will say how grateful I am for the support I have received throughout from my wife and family. That is very important; one cannot do a good job here or in the Commons without it. I thank noble Lords for the kind remarks that I have received, and I appreciate very much the opportunity to say this today.
Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, it is an honour tinged with much sadness for me to follow the noble Lord’s valedictory speech. He was heard today, as he has been throughout his years in Parliament, with interest, respect and affection. He has been valued in both Houses of Parliament for his good sense, his expertise, his courtesy and his evident passion for the good of the country. I have known the noble Lord since 1983 and I have always been in some awe of him. He was an Olympic athlete, a sprinter, but in politics he has been noted not only for his speed but for his stamina. As he told your Lordships, he represented and served his constituents in Worthing in the House of Commons for 33 years.
Then the noble Lord came to your Lordships’ House and, as he mentioned, for part of his period in this House he took the opposition brief for work and pensions. I was very touched by what he said about my noble friend Lady Hollis. I know that she relished such a worthy opponent across the Dispatch Box, how highly she rated him and how fond she was of him.
It has been my good fortune for the 13 years past to share an office with the noble Lord. He has been a kind friend and a wise counsellor to me during that time, and he takes no responsibility for the occasional extravagance of my views. I have noticed that he has experienced, as I have, some bafflement with the parliamentary IT system. I hope it is not the arrival of the new telephones that has finally driven him out. I imagine that he is really retiring for the natural and proper reason that at his age he wants to spend more time playing golf. Whatever the reason why he has chosen to retire, we wish him well and hope that he will still come and see us often.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, as my noble friend Lord Foulkes has said, constitutional challenges abound. He said that this was not to be a debate on Brexit, but Brexit is a giant constitutional issue. He would have his constitutional convention address issues of democratic accountability, but we Brexiters seek to escape the democratic deficit of the EU. My noble friend really should not be such an ardent remainer; I think he should reconsider his position and perhaps see the virtues of leaving after all.
In the process of leaving, facilitated—though that hardly seems the right word—by a referendum, we have seen the nations of the UK split asunder and we are seeing Parliament floundering as it seeks to acquit itself of its responsibilities, floundering perhaps particularly because there is a conflict between two democratic principles: the principle of direct democracy, as expressed in the referendum; and the principle of indirect democracy, which is the customary mode in our parliamentary government.
That is one colossal issue, but other great issues arise out of the disproportionate centralisation of power and economic strength in London. We have had the development of the move for Scottish independence and, as my noble friend described, the uncertain and fitful progress of devolution in England. Even more important is the atrophying of local government, which has long seemed a profoundly important problem because, unless we have vigorous local government, our democratic culture withers at its roots.
We see the crisis of our justice system brought about by wanton austerity. I also consider to be a constitutional issue the mismatch between the needs of the media and the needs of our democracy, the trivialisation of public debate, the decline of the local press and the disintegration and—arguably—subversion of our political culture by social media. These are hugely important and hugely difficult issues. Is the right way to address them by means of a UK-wide constitutional convention?
If it were to be a convention of academics and think tanks, perhaps with the participation of Select Committees in both Houses, that would be very valuable. They would articulate the issues and help to educate the politicians who have to take decisions.
The convention as proposed is really a variant of a royal commission. Of course, there was the Kilbrandon commission, which sat for four years between 1969 and 1973. It produced 16 volumes of evidence and 10 research papers. I read an article in the Liverpool Law Review of October 2017, which stated:
“Largely forgotten is the work of the Kilbrandon Commission, established to consider the allocation of executive and legislative power within the UK”.
I am not persuaded that a convention would necessarily be an improvement on a royal commission, and it is my hope that the Labour Party would not repeat its manifesto pledge to set up such a convention. It would be unwise for any Government to commit themselves to a blueprint for wholesale constitutional reform. The clever and enthusiastic members of the convention would certainly get it wrong. They would be unable to foresee the developments that lay ahead.
My noble friend takes the Scottish convention as an encouraging precedent, and undoubtedly it did useful work. It is a good thing that we have a Scottish Parliament but, as his national poet wrote, the best-laid plans “Gang aft agley”. It was forecast by an eminent Labour politician that devolution would kill nationalism stone dead, but nationalism is a long time petrifying. It was not supposed to work out like this, but the SNP secured a majority in the Scottish Parliament. The independence referendum took place in 2014, generating bitter emotions, and the possibility of a second independence referendum hangs like a sword of Damocles over Scottish politics and the union.
If it was difficult in Scotland, a small country where everybody knows everybody else and where the issues are relatively contained, how much more difficult would it be to get it right if we held a constitutional convention on a UK-wide basis? The scale and the complexity of the problems would be impossible to wrestle with.
Another fear that I have is that it would be almost inevitable that such a convention would propose a written constitution. If you have had a revolution or devastation by total war, it makes sense to start again in year zero, as it were. But I devoutly hope that that is not our case, and we see that written constitutions do not always produce the satisfaction that their authors hope. The European Union was ambitious to have a written constitution, but that was turned down by referendums in France and the Netherlands. None the less, a written constitution was sneaked back in in the treaty of Lisbon. I see no evidence that the existence of a written quasi-constitution has better enabled the European Union to address itself to the great intractable problems of immigration or the malfunctioning of the euro.
In this matter, I am a Burkeian. I believe that constitutional change should be organic. That wise Whig, Lord Holland, when asked by the Neapolitan revolutionaries whether he would be so good as to equip them with a draft constitution, responded, “You might as well ask me to build you a tree”. The way to approach constitutional change is incremental, by reform that is responsive to political events and pressures and that moves forward selectively and is expedient. We should develop our constitution by building on centuries of experience, by testing ideas and the structures of power, and by taking account of changes in public engagement, the varying perceptions of people across the country and their developing aspirations. Cumulatively, we should gain consent.
Preoccupation with constitutional reform is a displacement activity. Re-engineering the constitution is no substitute for good government, in which political leaders address the problems that people really care about and which produces shared prosperity and optimism about the future of the country.
Lord Greaves (LD)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, is one of the nicest and most sensible Members of the House—of his party anyway—and he will be very much missed.
I will talk about the north of England. It is the second region of England after London and the south-east together, and has 15 million people—three times as many as Scotland and five times as many as Wales. It is a region that shares considerable cultural, economic and social cohesion and history, and many current problems. I speak about the north as a whole because the north should stand together as a whole.
What we have had so far is asymmetric devolution. Scotland, and to a lesser extent Wales have become increasingly fairly fully functioning units of a federal system, except there is no federal system for them to be the units of. This is not a system that is sustainable in the long run. We still have a highly centralised state, not least in England, with a number of peripheral anomalies. If I call Wales and Scotland peripheral anomalies, I do so with great admiration that they have been able to break free from the grip of London to the extent that they have. Then we have gimmicks such as EVEL.
We have people who believe that the answer is a fully federal system with an English Parliament, but the result of that would be the complete detachment of Scotland and Wales in due course and it would do nothing to change the concentration of economic and political power within England. We have had a series of feeble initiatives. There was the rather pathetic attempt of the noble Lord, Lord Prescott, when he was in the other place, to have a north-east England assembly with no powers, which was rightly rejected. In Labour’s regional offices, civil servants from different parts sat in the same building, usually on different floors, and talked to their bosses in London rather than to each other. There was the coalition’s regional growth fund and its local enterprise partnerships—nobody has really noticed that they exist.
The north of England is being fragmented into city regions in the name of devolution, but it is not devolution: it is almost entirely the reorganisation of local government. It is the concentration of power within local government, with all power going to the big cities, but what is that except the power for those involved to carry begging bowls on the train to Whitehall and Westminster and, if they are lucky, to go home with their railway fares? In so far as power is being concentrated in big cities through city regions and mayors, the people who suffer in the north of England are those in the areas on the edges and the places in between and particularly towns, which have lost so much of their civic culture, power and society in recent years.
However, we are getting a greater recognition of the north of England as a region in its own right, not fragmented into three or four different regions, but as a unit. We also have the northern powerhouse. It was a slogan invented by George Osborne when he was Chancellor, but it has resulted in meetings, conferences, projects and all sorts of things. It has resulted in the relabelling as northern powerhouse projects of projects that would have been happening anyway, but it might have some value in the recognition it has encouraged of the north of England.
Transport for the North is far more important. Here is a devolved transport body which has real powers. It still has to go with a begging bowl to London for pretty well everything but, nevertheless, it is a body with powers, it covers the north of England, and transport is perhaps the place to start. Network Rail and NHS England both have a director for the north; we have the Northern Housing Consortium; the IPPR has set up IPPR North, a dedicated think tank for the north of England; the Northern Powerhouse Partnership has meetings and, no doubt, lots of pleasant dinners; and we are told there is Northern Powerhouse Rail, whatever that turns out to be in the long run. The Mayor of Liverpool has said he is fed up with it all because there is no power: these groups put forward good proposals to London for why things should be set up and funded, and London says, “Well, you can have a bit of it”. It is not very satisfactory. He says the Northern Powerhouse Partnership was,
“set up by a Government which isn’t prepared to listen”.
The begging-bowl mentality continues.
I believe the future lies in devolution to the north of England, with a body which, in an asymmetric system—inevitably, as the legal and other systems are different—can stand alongside Wales, Scotland and, indeed, Northern Ireland, if it can ever get its act together again. The proposal for a UK convention, or even an English convention, is worth while, but what is needed before any national convention can take place is a convention of people in the north of England. It is time for those of us in the north of England to get together, sit together across the whole of the north of England, and work out the options for what we would like. This should be discussed by the people of the north of England; we would then come to a national convention and say, “This is what we want”. That is what Scotland did; it is what the north of England has to do. It requires a considerable change of attitude, not just by central Government but by people across the north.
Lord Hain (Lab)
My Lords, I too pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, for a remarkable parliamentary career. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. I should reveal that, nearly 50 years ago, he was chair of the National League of Young Liberals and I was one of his very independently minded national officers, whom he had to control, mostly unsuccessfully—
Lord Greaves
I remind the noble Lord that he put out press releases in my name, which I had to forget about afterwards.
Lord Hain
That is what I meant, my Lords. I believe that, without wide-ranging constitutional reform, the very future of the United Kingdom is imperilled, not least by the strong possibility of Brexit triggering Scottish secession, and even Northern Irish secession through a referendum provided for under the Good Friday agreement.
One way to address this is through the new Act of Union Bill in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, printed on 9 October and available in the Printed Paper Office. It offers the holistic approach advocated, I believe, by the noble Lord, Lord Norton. As Members of your Lordships’ House may be aware, it is the product of discussions in the Constitution Reform Group, a cross-party group to reform the relationship between the nations and regions of the United Kingdom, which was launched in 2015 and on which I sit.
Until now, the main pressure for reform has come from Labour, Liberals, Greens and radical constitutionalists. But the CRG was initiated by leading Conservatives and is chaired by the noble Marquess of Salisbury, the former Conservative Leader of your Lordships’ House. Also on the steering committee is the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, former Clerk of the Commons, former parliamentary counsel Daniel Greenberg, Paul Silk, former Clerk to the Welsh Assembly and before that himself a Commons clerk, and the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Pittenweem, representing the Liberal Democrats. Joined by me from Labour on the steering committee is Lisa Nandy MP, who is doing some very interesting work on towns and their alienation, both economic and political, in our current culture.
We have identified important areas for reform and have suggested different options. These include addressing the asymmetrical devolution that has left England with an understandable grievance—not just on the political right—as the most centralised and therefore disenfranchised part of the UK, London excepted. As has been said, the introduction of English votes for English laws procedures in the House of Commons is an unsatisfactory symptom of this.
I believe that England outside London should have a permissive form of devolution, enabling regional government or city regional government to evolve as desired. Given the opportunity, Cornwall and the north-east would almost certainly go for regional government right now, to be followed perhaps by others, maybe with Yorkshire leading the way. However, crucially, these bodies must have real power, not the Mickey Mouse powers offered in 2004, which were defeated in the north-east referendum in which I campaigned.
On the House of Lords, some on the steering committee suggest that it should be abolished and replaced by an elected English Parliament. However, representing 85% of the population, it would be so dominant that it would effectively replace the Commons as the fulcrum of Parliament, sidelining Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland even more and thereby promoting separatism. My own view is that a senate or House of Lords should be majority-elected on the same day as a general election, ideally by a list system of proportional representation on the same boundaries as apply to European elections. That would enable each of the nations and regions within the United Kingdom to be properly represented, helping bind us back together again in a way that both Houses of Parliament have palpably failed to do.
However, a new settlement must not be drawn up—still less imposed—from on high. There must be wide consultation, as my noble friend Lord Foulkes has argued, through a constitutional convention similar to the one that successfully preceded devolution in Scotland.
It is not simply Scottish antipathy, Northern Irish instability or English discontent that threaten the future of the United Kingdom; there is now a widespread sentiment across the great majority of our citizens that our democratic system no longer represents their interests.
The Act of Union Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, addresses the main issues at stake, from finance to security. Crucially, it proposes a bottom-up rather than the top-down arrangement that we have had until now. It turns the devolution settlement on its head by creating a new federal structure in which the constituent parts or nations voluntarily vest the sovereignty they choose at the centre—for example, for foreign, defence and security, taxation and pensions matters. Otherwise, every policy area remains with them.
Our society today is hugely polarised by bitter Brexit divisions, towns left behind as metropolitan cities forge ahead, with never-ending austerity and widening inequality. The new Act of Union Bill does not and cannot address all the issues breeding these serious divisions, but it is an important start, because the bell is otherwise tolling for the United Kingdom as it is now.
Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale (Lab)
My Lords, in the autumn of 1987, while spending a very cold and damp day in Stirling at the annual conference of the Campaign for a Scottish Assembly, I could never have imagined that 15 years later I might be First Minister of Scotland, partly because the prospect of a Scottish Parliament seemed so far away. A small group of members of the campaign were asked by the then chair of the assembly campaign, the late Jim Boyack, to convene in a bar after the conference to discuss a new idea that he had for a commission to look at the way ahead in building greater unity and a sense of purpose on the campaign for a Scottish Parliament. Shortly after that small group met and discussed the idea that day in Stirling, Sir Robert Grieve was commissioned to chair a commission to look at the drafting and the agreement of a claim of right of sovereignty for Scotland. Several months later, after much discussion and debate, Sir Robert Grieve produced his report outlining that claim of right—the sovereign right of the people of Scotland to choose their form of government—and the demand that we find a way of taking forward what was then clearly the settled will of the Scottish people and giving it greater clarity and momentum towards achieving that eventual goal.
To his great credit, the late Donald Dewar later that year accepted the idea, launched the constitutional convention and put Labour at the centre of it—contrary to many of the ways in which the party had operated for decades before—working with other parties to develop the scheme and the consensus. As leader of my local authority, Stirling District Council, I was a member of the convention from 1989, when it first met, to 1992. I was then a member of the executive committee of the convention between 1992 and 1998, when we finalised the scheme and set about turning it into a reality in the 1997 referendum. That convention had many strengths, and I will highlight three in this debate.
The first is that the convention had democratic legitimacy. It was not a collection of interested individuals, a gathering of civic Scotland or a campaign. There were one or two observers, but the full members of the convention were either Members of Parliament or leaders of local authorities. Those were the people who signed the claim of right and made the decisions. That gave the convention democratic legitimacy.
The second thing is that the convention had a sense of purpose. It was pulled together, through the signing of the claim of right, to design a scheme and to try to turn it into reality. The clarity of that sense of purpose was very important to its eventual success.
The third thing—this is critical for this debate in your Lordships’ House—is that the convention reflected the settled will of the people of Scotland. The discussions in 1987, 1988 and 1989 resulted from a 1987 election in which the settled and expressed democratic will of the people of Scotland—for example, on the poll tax or community charge—was so radically ignored by the Government of the day here in Westminster. That challenge to the legitimacy of Westminster to govern in Scotland required a solution, and the convention helped provide that. The settled will was for a democratically elected Parliament in Scotland as part of the United Kingdom.
So I thank my noble friend Lord Foulkes not just for initiating this debate here but for the work he has done on this issue over many years and his relentless campaigning over many decades to improve the governance of this country. I also welcome the intervention by the noble Lord, Lord Norton, who has campaigned long and hard for a convocation, as an alternative to a convention. While I absolutely agree with Members of your Lordships’ House who have expressed concern about the current state of governance in the United Kingdom, I think we should be cautious on this proposal and ensure that whatever steps we take are effective. There is no doubt that one of the many missed opportunities of Brexit over the last three years has been the absence of the initiation of a debate on what returning sovereignty to the United Kingdom might mean for improving the governance of the United Kingdom. That opportunity is perhaps now gone, but it does not mean we do not rise to the challenge.
Your Lordships’ Chamber cannot exist for many more years. We need to find an alternative solution that is better representative and reflective of our country. But we also need, 20 years on, to look at the relationship between the devolved Administrations, Governments and Parliaments and Whitehall, Westminster and the UK Government. In my view, it is ridiculous that we still have territorial Secretaries of State. They should have gone when Tony Blair first proposed that in 2003, but 15 years on we still have them sitting around the Cabinet table. It is a dysfunctional system that needs to go. We need to ensure that a whole number of other changes take place as well, and it has been rightly raised that local government has been messed around with by Governments of all parties over the years and has never had a proper, concrete, long-term solution that enhances our democracy or the provision of services.
If we are going to bring people together, either in a democratically legitimate convention that is representative, authoritative and purposeful or a convocation that might be a more open-ended discussion, we need to be clear about the purpose of that body, why it has been established, who its members will be and what the outcome might or might not be. If we do that, perhaps over the next 20 years we can take steps towards sorting out some of the problems in UK governance that were at least partly solved in Scotland 20 years ago next year.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, I am sorry that I cannot agree with everything the noble Lord said, although he did make some extremely pertinent and very important points. Not for the first time, I am grateful to my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, who has been friend, colleague, sparring partner and sometimes fellow campaigner both in the other place and this one. I did not know about this debate until yesterday. I came out of hospital to lead a debate last night on the Royal Academy—a totally uncontroversial subject—and, sitting next to my noble friend Lord Higgins earlier in the day, I learned of this debate and that he was going to make his valedictory speech. That is why I put my name down. I went through a slight wobble this morning and am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Bryan, for allowing me to come back in to the debate after I had scratched.
Listening to my noble friend Lord Higgins, I felt that I must say how much I have valued his wise, counsel and long friendship since 1970, when I entered the other place as a new and very raw MP. I owe a great deal to my noble friend, who began his public life as a spectacular sprinter but has become the long-distance runner of British politics. He has been an invaluable Member of both Houses of Parliament. In the Commons, one always looked to him for sound sagacity. He was absolutely dedicated to the parliamentary ideal and—we did slightly conspire together, although we were not successful—would have made a wonderful Speaker of the other place. He has been a very successful Member of your Lordships’ House, on both the Front and Back Benches. I am grateful for what he said about the campaign for an elected second Chamber, which many of your Lordships present are supporters of and which the noble Lord, Lord Norton, and I have attempted to steer for some 18 years now. Among the most regular attenders and those who have made a real contribution are the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, who spoke so movingly about my noble friend Lord Higgins, the late Lord Howe of Aberavon and my noble friend Lord Higgins.
I believe we are debating an important subject today. I am more in favour of the convocation than the convention, but I believe it is crucial to engage public interest in the democratic process and democratic institutions. We see now, in the aftermath of a bitterly divisive referendum, widespread disillusionment with the parliamentary practice and process that has made our country what it is. If we are to keep faith with people such as my noble friend Lord Higgins, we have to latch on to that and do something about it.
I believe, as does my noble friend Lord Higgins, that there is a continuing place for this Chamber. But it is important that its size be reduced, and that we recognise that we are not as effective as we should be because of our size. However, an assembly of those who do not in any sense challenge the unambiguous democratic authority of the other place has a continuing role to play in our democratic process. Yes, it should be more representative of the country as a whole, and yes, its numbers should be contained, but I believe it has a real and continuing role.
Following this debate—although it will not be immediate—I would like to see an appointment of a royal commission, as advocated by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon. That should be followed by a convocation that takes evidence from around the country in a judicious and balanced way, always recognising the danger implicit in 85% of the population of the United Kingdom being in England, a point made splendidly by the noble Lord, Lord Hain. Such a convocation must take a long, balanced look at what our democracy should look like and what the relationship between the two Houses of Parliament should be as we move through the 21st century.
The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, has done us a service by bringing the subject before us today. My noble friend Lord Higgins has adorned the debate with his wit and wisdom in a way that will make it memorable. I hope it will also lead to something in the years ahead.
Baroness Bryan of Partick (Lab)
My Lords, I join others in thanking my noble friend Lord Foulkes for initiating this debate. For me, it is an honour to take part in a debate with so many experienced and knowledgeable contributors. One thing is certain: after the past few days, no one could argue that constitutional issues are dull. But unfortunately, if we took the idea of a constitutional convention to the wider world, it would probably be met with a large yawn.
If we are trying to persuade people to think about constitutional issues, it makes sense to start not with the structures but with how best the state can provide for its citizens, and, following on from that, the best means of delivery. Regardless of what parliamentarians and the national media may think, for many people the most important political institution is their local council. In our system, however, local government is treated as the least important. But if we genuinely believe in subsidiarity, and that power should reside at the closest level to the people affected by it, we need to turn that idea on its head.
Councils should not be at the mercy of the next tier of government for limits on their powers or funding. In Scotland, we see creeping centralisation within a devolved parliamentary system that is becoming increasingly centralised, diminishing the responsibilities of local authorities. To stop this, I argue that the role and powers of local government need to be regulated by the constitution. It is not sufficient to have political democracy; we should aspire also to economic democracy. Billions of pounds of local funding goes to the private sector, yet councils are restricted from using the procurement process to ensure that that money comes back into the local economy. They should have the powers to insist on local recruitment, payment of the real living wage, setting up apprenticeship schemes and using local businesses in their supply chain—or, if they choose to, to bring those projects in-house.
The second tier of government should bring local authority areas together in meaningful geographical combinations, where the needs of the different communities can be dealt with co-operatively and not competitively. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have structures that already enable this; but then there is the “English question”. Rather than the “strongman” metro mayors—and they are men—fighting each other for resources and investment, we need a fair distribution of resources based on need. All regions have within them areas of wealth and poverty, and the aim should be to equalise the life chances of everyone. I argue that this can be done through a system of regional assemblies exercising devolved powers. The third level of government would then have responsibility for external matters, such as cross-territorial regulations, trade deals, international relations, human rights issues, defence and macroeconomic decisions.
To ensure equalisation between the regions and nations, a simple three-level state with a bottom-up rather than top-down approach allows for common standards where needed but also for diversity within those common standards. I believe that we are looking at a federal arrangement, and this will require a constitution to match. By necessity, it would have to be a written constitution, to guarantee the rights of the different tiers.
We can all agree that our piecemeal approach to constitutional change has left us with inconsistencies and contradictions, which will be further exposed outside the EU. That brings an element of urgency to resolving the situation, in particular the cross-territorial issues that will arise. Personally, I do not think that intergovernmental committees are an acceptable approach. The devolved parliaments and assemblies, and those in the regions, should be involved through whatever mechanism, rather than replicating some of the ways the EU has dealt with matters—with a lack of transparency and accountability. I argue very strongly that there is an urgent need to bring together people from the regions, assemblies and parliaments, not just their Governments.
I hope this House agrees that, if we are to have a constitutional convention, it needs to be carried out quickly and in a focused way. It might not solve all the issues in one go but it could tackle those that are urgent. As my noble friend Lord Foulkes explained, the Scottish Constitutional Convention brought together political parties, trade unions, business representatives, the voluntary sector and local government. Such a convention would be a starting point to discuss the principles that should govern any new arrangement. Once we agree—as I hope we would—that we start with the principle of subsidiarity and then include accountability and transparency, we will have formed the groundwork for building a new constitution.
The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, for securing this important and timely debate. I declare my interests as a trustee of a mental health service for children and adolescents, and as a trustee of the Michael Sieff Foundation, a child welfare charity. For those of us working in that area, particularly, the system is not delivering geographically nor to the most vulnerable.
I do not refer to any particular Government. In our experience we have seen disjunction and discontinuity between successive Governments in areas such as housing policy and the development of apprenticeships. We have recognised these problems for many years but we have not got to grips with them. There is a lack of continuity in governance—a short democratic horizon—in this country. I hope that whatever facility is used to reflect on our constitution, and perhaps improve it, we will look across the world at the countries which seem to be doing best and learn from them.
My noble friend Lord Owen, who is in his place, referred to the Bundesrat and the German experience and practice. I am a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Germany, with which I visited the Bundestag last spring. I was struck by the fact that Germany seems to have a successful, prosperous economy and a good, healthy social contract. In contrast to the housing concerns here—130,000 children living in bed-and-breakfast or hostel accommodation this Christmas —in Germany, where they certainly have their issues, there is a more secure private sector and social housing set-up. In so many ways, one could see failures on our part where Germany has been successful.
A German journalist to whom I was speaking a while ago had visited Blackpool for a week to talk to families there. She said, “I am afraid it seems that your social contract is broken. In our country, Germany, it is more secure”. I hope that as part of this process we will look abroad and consider what has been successful.
In preparing for the visit to the Bundestag, I was struck by the continuities in German governance—in the leadership of Kohl and Merkel, and in the parties. Its multiparty system allows certain parties to continue through several Administrations so that there is continuity in fiscal policy and foreign policy, and that has benefited Germany. So I hope we will look at Germany and other nations when we consider this matter.
Turning to another important issue, there is a sense—I may have misunderstood this—that the membership of Parliament is becoming increasingly middle class and that the connection with people at the very bottom is being lost. I may be mistaken, but I wonder whether we can consider how to facilitate connecting Members of both Houses with the dispossessed.
We have an armed services facility to make it easy for Members to work in the Army, the Royal Navy and so on. We have the Industry and Parliament Trust to make it easy for Members of both Houses to get experience of industry. We do not have a social protection trust, which would make it easy for Members of both Houses to spend time with social workers and to live on a housing estate for a while. Clement Attlee—a middle-class/upper middle-class man and a barrister—went to live and work in Toynbee Hall as a youth worker. He got to know and have affection for young people living in poverty. It was a tremendous experience in his life.
There are various ways in which politicians who wish to can learn about how those at the nether end of society are living. Yesterday we heard from the head of security in both Houses of Parliament. He referred to a push system, a default position under which parliamentarians would be provided with information about security. What about some kind of push system to make it easy for parliamentarians to have that kind of experience?
Edward Timpson, who grew up with fostered and adopted brothers and sisters and used that experience in Parliament, told me that it was quite normal for parliamentarians to visit fire services and ambulance services, but quite rare for them to go out on calls with health visitors or to visit with social workers on the front line. If that became more normal, it might make a huge difference to the quality of policy and legislation.
The noble Lord, Lord Hain, emphasised what is at stake. In recent years we have not delivered as we might have done for the British people. I am reminded of a German 19th-century poem about a child and his father riding through a German forest. The child said, “My father, my father: I am being pursued by some terrible demon”. The father said, “No, no, you will be fine. You will be home in a minute”. The child keeps complaining and the father keeps saying, “No, no, it’s okay”. We cannot afford to be complacent. Our constitution has not been delivering for some time and I hope that the proposals brought forward by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, will be enacted in one way or another.
Lord Adonis (Lab)
My Lords, I strongly support the proposal of my noble friend Lord Foulkes for a constitutional convention. I am not instinctively in favour of royal commission-type arrangements. I tend to take the view of Harold Wilson that royal commissions take minutes and last years. However, on something as profound as major constitutional change—including the replacement of this House with a federal senate on the lines set out by the noble Lord, Lord Owen, of an equivalent to the Bundesrat, which I agree could be a model for the reform of this House and the wider reform of the United Kingdom—I do not think it will be possible to get to that kind of arrangement without a constitutional convention.
I pay tribute to my noble friend and the many others who made a success of the Scottish Constitutional Convention in the 1990s. This, without doubt, paved the way for the Scottish and Welsh devolution settlements and rescued us from the bitterly divisive and partisan state that the devolution debate had got into in the 1970s and 1980s. It created a consensus and, although it did not at the time include the Conservative Party, as my noble friend said, many Conservatives were sympathetic. Indeed, historically, the Conservative Party got to devolution in Scotland first with Alec Douglas-Home and his commission going back to the 1970s. It created a consensus which meant that the new Scottish Parliament arrangements bedded down quickly. So I am sympathetic to it.
I absolutely agree that the position of the Labour Party in opposition gives us a golden opportunity to take the lead while the Government obsess over Brexit. I believe that Brexit will no longer happen—that we will have a referendum and it will be ended. However, whether or not that is the case, we will have to move on to the reform of the constitution of the United Kingdom—not least because of the issues that Brexit has raised and which, to some extent, led to Brexit—because of the great sense of alienation in the Midlands and the north of England, which have not benefited from substantial devolution.
I wish to make two comments on the work of the convention and the form its proposals might take. My noble friend and others said that there has not been substantial devolution in England, but that is not true of London. The four great constitutional reforms affecting the United Kingdom which the Labour Government, of which we were proud to be members, carried through were the Northern Ireland Good Friday agreement, the National Assembly of Wales, the Parliament of Scotland and, crucially, the establishment of the Mayor and the Assembly for London. In their own way, all four of those reforms have been successful—not least the creation of the Mayor and the Assembly for London. The test of any institution is: if it did not exist, would you recreate it? If your Lordships’ House did not exist, I am not sure that anyone would recreate it, but I am absolutely sure that if there was not a Mayor of London, we would definitely seek to put one in place, together with accountability arrangements such as the Assembly. The other test of a machine is the work that it does. If one looks at what has been accomplished by the three Mayors of London since the office was established in 2000, it has been an outstanding success. I take a particular interest in infrastructure and I emphasise that the renovation of London’s transport infrastructure would not have taken place with anything like the degree of investment and efficiency if it were not for the Mayor of London.
Earlier at Question Time we debated the regrettable cost overruns of Crossrail. Crossrail will open and will represent a dramatic transformation of London’s public transport capacity, but it would not exist at all but for the Mayor of London. It is not just about the political authority of the mayor but also, crucially, the mayor’s tax-raising powers, including the ability to raise a supplementary business rate which two successive mayors, Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson, persuaded the London business community to sign up to because they were so desperate to have a credible scheme for improving London’s public transport capacity. The mayor put forward a plan for which he managed to gain consent from the Labour Government and then the subsequent coalition Government. There was a strong belief on the part of the London business community that the project would be delivered that led to it being advanced. The same is true of the congestion charge in London, which would not conceivably have happened without a mayor, and the doubling of the rate of investment in London’s public transport.
I have always adopted the Chinese adage that R&D stands for “rob and duplicate”. We need to see that when you have institutions that work well, the job of effective policymakers is to rob and duplicate them. What we now need is arrangements such as those that apply in London with the mayor and the Assembly in all the major metropolitan parts of England. It is starting to happen with the metro mayors, but they have nothing like the power or the resources of the Mayor of London. The task I strongly encourage the Government to undertake, because they are sympathetic to business and have taken steps forward with mayoralties outside London, is to significantly enhance those mayors’ powers, including tax-raising powers, and their accountability arrangements. That can and should happen now. It should be a key part of what is happening in this thing called the northern powerhouse, which at the moment is largely vacuous. If that happened, it would provide the building blocks for the establishment of a federal second Chamber based in England on the major cities and city regions. You would then need to bring counties together with similar arrangements in those parts of England not covered.
I strongly welcome what my noble friend said. I note that there is a broad consensus across the House in support of his recommendations. It is not total because we have constitutional conservatives who essentially do not like any change and provide elegant reasons for why no change should happen, but the consensus seems to extend to most parts of the House and we need to build on that.
In conclusion, the noble Lord, Lord Owen, cited Churchill’s once radical views on reform of the House of Lords, which he described as,
“one-sided, hereditary, unpurged, unrepresentative, irresponsible, absentee”—
he was never given to understatement. He also said that to abuse the Government was,
“an inalienable right of every British citizen”.
That is certainly true, but we hold the Minister in very great esteem and we do not abuse him. We look forward to his constructive response to my noble friend’s proposal.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, on bringing forward this debate. It is obviously very timely and we all have strong opinions about it. It feels slightly odd to be following the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. I have a slight grudge against him because he is one of only two politicians to have blocked me on Twitter, the other being Donald Trump, the President of the United States.
Lord Adonis
My Lords, I would willingly unblock the noble Baroness. It must have been some particularly insulting remark she made in respect of me, but I am sure she regrets it and I regret blocking her.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb
I am afraid that I cannot promise not to be insulting again; that is how Twitter works.
The noble Lord, Lord Higgins, was absolutely fascinating about all the issues that he has worked on. It means that I now know where to go with any complaints on those matters, so I hope that he will not be leaving us too soon.
At the moment we are in the awful throes of what to do about Brexit. Whether or not we leave the European Union, we have to grapple with something that other noble Lords have touched on: how to heal the divisions within our deeply divided country. Anger, frustration and mistrust is endemic in parts of society. We need a complete overhaul of the so-called British constitution, which could begin with a constitutional convention.
Many people were surprised and confused when proceedings in the other place on Monday night came to a halt because someone had picked up the Mace. A lot of foreigners were expressing their confusion on Twitter and wanted to know why it mattered. The explanation illustrates an incredibly important point, which is that the Mace represents the authority of the monarch. Parliament sits only under the authority of the monarch and when the Mace is removed, Parliament has no authority. I was deeply saddened to disagree so strongly with my friend the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport. He, I and the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, have a little leaver block-sympathy going on on this side of the House, so I was sad to disagree with him. I do so because the British constitution is not a democracy in any sense of the word. We have a feudal monarchy with a few bits of democracy bolted on to it. It is difficult to identify a single development in the British constitution which has not been the result of a compromise between the ruling elite and some sort of opposing force that threatened its power. A little bit of power is ceded by the most powerful people in order to keep the greater amount of their power intact. Most of the rights and freedoms that exist in our country have come about through these little compromises. It has never been about doing the right thing for its own sake.
For example, we celebrate the Magna Carta as the “Great Charter of the Liberties”, but it was actually a very small step in reducing the power of the king. The English Bill of Rights was another deal where the rich men in Parliament obtained a guarantee of their rights and freedoms in exchange for granting the throne to William and Mary. The Representation of the People Act and the Parliament Acts have all been compromises that have allowed us to call ourselves a democracy when in truth we are not. Each of these developments has its unique historical and factual quirks, but the overall narrative is one of a power struggle resulting in a compromise to maintain as far as possible the status quo.
As another noble Lord has mentioned, almost every other country in the world has a written constitution. These have normally come about after some massive historical event such as a civil war or a revolution. We have never got to that stage. It means that we have something which is wholly unfit for a country that wants to call itself a 21st-century democracy.
Now we have Brexit. As has been said, in a sense it is a symptom of people feeling excluded and alienated by a system that was only ever devised to protect the rich—the ruling elite. The intense frustration directed at Brussels is made up of a sense that politics is something done to us, rather than something we are active participants in. This is just as true of our local, regional and national politics as it is at the EU level. The Green Party policy is very much about devolving power down to the most appropriate level. An example of that failing utterly is up in Lancashire, when the Government overruled every level of local government and imposed fracking on a community that did not want it. Democracy has failed utterly in that case because the Government were not the best part of our system to decide what to do.
Leaving the EU will not resolve that intense frustration and anger. People will feel just as disfranchised by our electoral system and our politicians. Equally, if the tide turns and we end up remaining in the EU, people will be just as frustrated because neither option on its own provides a viable way forward. I would therefore argue that a constitutional overhaul is the only solution. I have a lot of questions that I would like to put privately to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, about how he sees this going forward, and perhaps I will contribute in various ways. Organic change, as has been suggested, is simply not enough. There has to be an overhaul.
We in this House have tried to discuss changes that will make us more relevant. I brought forward a Bill on reforming the House of Lords to the point where it would be abolished completely. I almost did not get it through its First Reading because of the grumbles from all around the House. It did in fact get a Second Reading, and I will be tabling it again. I look forward to hearing from noble Lords who have said in this debate that they would like to see reform. Reform of this place is inevitable, and I look forward to their supporting the Bill when I bring it back.
I would also argue that first past the post has absolutely failed to supply strong and stable government in the way we have always supposed it would, so it is time to consider proportional representation. I have been elected under first past the post and under proportional representation. They are both perfectly valid ways of being a voice for people who would otherwise go unheard. I spent four years on Southwark Council as one of 63 councillors, which was very hard, and then I served for some years on the London Assembly combating Boris Johnson, which was much worse. The only way forward now is to rethink our democracy, and this convention would be a good way forward.
Lord Dykes (CB)
My Lords, I agreed with every single line of what was said by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, but is it not a pity that I could not persuade her to be in favour of the European Union? That is the one thing lacking in her panoply of subjects and issues. I thank both her and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, whom I have never known make anything other than a very wise speech. I agreed with everything he said, too.
I particularly want to thank the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, for his remarks. I will embarrass him deliberately by congratulating him on his speech yesterday evening, alongside Timothy Garton Ash, about the future and what we will give up if we foolishly leave the European Union. He spoke about the history of Europe and what it means to everybody. That applies to us, too. Why do people think we are an exception, talking about “wicked foreigners”? We are not like that. I will annoy everybody by mentioning Brexit; I do not know whether anybody else has; I was out of the Chamber for a while.
I will also annoy everybody by saying that although I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, on his interesting suggestion, which I support, none of these attempts will work until we agree to have a written constitution for the United Kingdom. I am glad somebody mentioned that earlier, as I think the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said. I do not know who it was as I was out with visitors; I shall read the Official Report with interest. People still shy away at the mention of a constitution, saying, “Oh no, that’s a foreign invention. We don’t like that”. The middle paragraph of the excellent committee memo says that there is no movement forward because we cannot get it. It is always in the knapsack of the unruly party-political game. Scotland has been a success because it was removed from that, to some extent, but I will be careful about what I say because I do not want to annoy anyone.
We must think about what leaving Europe means, particularly for younger voters. They, and people travelling and working in other European countries, will lose the European citizenship rights courageously brought in by John Major in the Lisbon treaty. If that treaty is abandoned and we lose those European citizenship rights, as well as pride in our national sovereignty, we are doomed to a foolish system where no one will agree. There is no agreement on party funding, which we have been discussing for years. There is no agreement on changing the voting system; again, I agree with previous remarks. The first-past-the-post system is ludicrous and must be changed, but that cannot be done through politicians. The public will shy away from an agreement to have politicians round the table trying to set things up, so enormous is the hatred of and mistrust towards politicians after what has happened in the past few years.
We need an official body in charge to look at these things dispassionately, not in the way of party politicians fighting their corner, furthering their own interests and not agreeing on anything. We have seen the terrible experience of a paralysed country in the past few years. I did not get on very well with Mrs Thatcher when I was a Conservative MP; I think I was the most left-wing one. Somebody said, “You’re almost as left-wing as Harold Macmillan”. I replied, “That’s impossible”. I remember trying to tell her a joke once, which was a disastrous mistake. I had come from a visit to Germany, where I had seen the Bundestag in action; they were working on privatisation after we had done the same. The coalition government spokesman in the Bundestag said, “We’re going to do three very careful privatisations, after six months of discussions with all parties to get an agreement”. In the Division Lobby, I foolishly told Mrs Thatcher this. She said, “What a mistake. They’re so weak”. The joke was the idea of her agreeing with anyone else, although I suppose the Northern Ireland agreement, for which history will thank her, was the exception in the end.
The voting system must be changed and a written constitution introduced. That must be done through a super-high commission of officials and experts—people from universities and so on—to make sure that the politicians are kept under control and not allowed to rampage around with their prejudices and foolish ideas. Why have we not had agreement on party funding after so many years? Cameron said that we would have a £5,000 maximum. Why has that not been done? The crux of what other European member states say when we go to see them is: why are we paralysed? I also live in France, which has a written constitution. That makes its system much more democratic than ours; I am sorry to say it but that is the reality. The more we go on with our pride in our past and our historical empire analogies, the more doomed we will be.
Lord Lipsey (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I strongly support the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, for a constitutional convention. This is as well, because I will not say a single word after now with which he will not vehemently disagree. I hope he will forgive me.
As the last two speakers have done, I want to speak briefly about electoral reform. I know that AV was decisively rejected in the 2011 referendum. As a campaigner for electoral reform, that came as no surprise to me. It was a rushed, botched referendum where the pros were destroyed by the serial misjudgments of Nick Clegg, the then Liberal Democrat leader, and the treachery of David Cameron. However, as we are fast learning, no referendum result is for ever. When the facts change, the British people are entitled to change their view, and I think the facts have changed on electoral reform.
What facts on electoral reform have changed? Most significantly, since 2011, the traditional main argument of first-past-the-post supporters—that it provides strong and stable Governments—has been left in ruins. In truth, the system has always been liable not to produce such Governments, but between 1979 and 2010 a series of flukes led to majority Governments: under Labour because the Tories were unelectable and under the Tories because Labour was becoming unelectable. It remains the case that we are now mostly getting Parliaments in which another party holds the balance of power. Currently, it is the DUP; we can all see where that is getting us.
A sharp decline in marginal seats is spotted less often in this country, although it is commonly remarked on in the United States. Even since 2010, the number of marginal seats has fallen from 85 to 74, so the chances of a huge swing leading to an influx from a different party that then enjoys an overall majority have declined greatly. It is harder than ever for a big party to build up a lead in seats big enough to outnumber the MPs who do not belong to either main party. The reality is that, except in unusual circumstances, strong and stable Governments have gone—and that defence of first past the post with them.
The change in the nature of the two parties, partly caused by first past the post, is equally important. When I was being brought up in politics, I was taught that the main aim was to attract the centre ground; if you did not, you would not get into office. Of course, it is now possible to become a successful party by appealing to just a third of the electorate, as was said to be the strategy of Mr Ed Miliband in 2015. That strategy makes sense. At the same time, perhaps more crucially, the danger of the growth of a new party to the existing two big parties has been virtually removed by first past the post. The SDP nearly did it, under peculiar circumstances, but anyone who starts a new party now would not, I think, be optimistic about their chances of success.
So we have a terrible distortion in our democracy: two monopoly parties, each aiming at a smallish section of the electorate, each ever more a prisoner of their activist members. Arthur Balfour famously said of the Conservative Party that he would rather take advice from his valet. Nowadays, the activists in each party are in charge and call the shots, so we see the Brexiteers forcing the Prime Minister into the situation we saw yesterday, with many Conservative MPs cowering for fear of their local associations, and we see what we see in the Labour Party. There is no threat to the big parties’ monopolies because it is nearly impossible to establish a new party. I am not saying that we should do so; I would like the two big parties to behave differently and start to appeal to the centre ground again, but they will not while the situation is like that. The two big parties have not just a monopoly, but a protected monopoly.
I am not a supporter of pure proportional representation on, say, the Israeli model. I sat on the commission chaired by Lord Jenkins, which came up with the attractive, if a trifle complicated, solution of AV+. Times move on and today I would be content if a referendum approved AV tout simple, but the indefensibility of first past the post is clearer than ever. A constitutional convention is the best way to start a national debate on whether it should be replaced and by what.
Before I sit down, I shall pay my own tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, of whom I was a friend before either he or I were in this place. He is the greatest Speaker that the House of Commons never had. We shall miss him terribly.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
My Lords, I am really grateful to my noble friend Lord Foulkes for his characteristically entertaining speech, though I did not particularly like his trip down memory lane to 1979, which, as he said, was one of the happiest days in his political life. It was one of the grimmest in mine, when the people of Lichfield and Tamworth decided that I should spend more time with my family.
I echo everything that has been said about the contribution that the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, has made over the years. How I envy the way the House clearly empathises with him, the tributes being paid to him and the warmth felt towards him, which so contrast with my experience when I involuntarily retired in 1979, when, I am sad to record, at the count there was much rejoicing in my departure. Those are two speeches that I shall not forget.
There is time for me to address only two issues relating to the debate. One is the state of English regional and local government, which my noble friend Lord Foulkes referred to as a dog’s breakfast. That is not a bad description. I also want to say a word or two about the dreaded issue of referendums, which have been an integral part of the various constitutional changes that have been made in Scotland, Wales and the north-east of England.
First, my noble friend said that the structure of local and regional government in England is a dog’s breakfast. There is such a variety of provision, with challenging and different powers and methods of election that are unintelligible to anyone without a degree in local government. How on earth are people expected to travel from one part to another in a unitary state and understand the completely different systems of local government to which they must turn for planning, housing, education, social services or any of the rest of it? It simply is not a defensible system.
Repeated constitutional experiments have led to this. The only thing they have in common is that most of them have not resulted in exultation and acclaim by the public. I remind Members of the House that we have mayors, metro mayors and police commissioners. We still have the unitary authorities. We have two-tier systems all over the country, but with this common factor: the failure of these new systems to engage the public.
To remind the House, the turnout at the 2016 police commissioner elections was consistently in the low 20s. The much-heralded mayoral elections in 2017 had a 21% turnout in Tees Valley, 26% in the West Midlands and 29%—the highest turnout—in Greater Manchester. This is no criticism of the people who fill these positions, as many splendid people have been elected as mayors, but that is hardly in any way validatory for those who said that this would bring a new drama and dynamism to local government. We know that the referendums in 2012 as to whether the city mayoral elections should be established resulted in nine noes and one yes. Public support is a pretty good basis for introducing any new system. We need a convention on English local and regional government before we move on to my noble friend’s convention.
Secondly, referendums have come and gone throughout the devolution process. There were two referendums in Scotland and Wales, and the north-east devolution referendum in 2004 in England. We can learn a bit from these referendums. They are relevant to our present dilemmas.
One thing I would say is: do not have any system of referendum that has any kind of fancy or problematical component to it, as the first referendum in Scotland did, where the winner was not the winner. That is not a good system. Keep it simple, binary and straightforward. Also, there has been a sea change since the referendums I referred to in Scotland, Wales and the north-east. For all of those the results were accepted, despite them being wafer thin, particularly in Wales, as referred to. In that referendum there was less than 1% difference between establishing devolution or not. At least those referendums were accepted.
What has characterised the two most recent referendums—the Scottish referendum on independence in 2014 and the EU referendum in 2016—is that almost from the day the results were declared campaigns began to reverse them. I do not for a moment argue that it is not possible to review matters and to have second referendums, as happened in Scotland and Wales. I acknowledge that parliamentary elections are once every five years. But the idea that you can reverse a referendum result in two or two and a half years makes a joke of the whole referendum process.
At the very least, I hope these kinds of basic decisions about the conduct and operation of referendums can be considered in any convention. I suggest as an opening gambit that it should not be permissible for a referendum to be held with the same question in less than a 10-year period. I am being generous; we had to wait 40 years between the 1975 referendum and the one we held in 2016. There certainly should be a minimal period before you insult the public by asking them the same question twice.
I cannot help but remind the House that some care should be taken about expenditure in referendums. We know that there have been various challenges about the expenditure in the 2016 one, but the hugely well-financed campaign for a so-called people’s vote should also come into focus. I do not know how transparent all the figures are about where the money is coming from and how long it will be available for, but glossy brochures and opinion polls are quite common and familiar all around the country. We need a bit more transparency there too.
I support very much what my noble friend Lord Foulkes said in respect of ultimately having a convention, but in the meantime we want one on English local government. We also ought to tighten the rules on referendums.
Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)
My Lords, this has been a very interesting debate about our very complicated constitution, with a disparate range of views, not all of which are going to be easy to reconcile: that in a sense makes the case for having a convention. I join the tributes to the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, who has had a very distinguished career, both in this House and in the other place. He and I were reminiscing just a few weeks ago about a visit we made to Zimbabwe—he mentioned Rhodesia in his speech—at a time when we hoped we might be able to help Zimbabwe in a more positive direction than it turned out. We tried very hard; unfortunately, not enough people listened. He recounted to the House the wide range of activities he has been involved in, as a Minister and as a Member of both Houses, and the House has demonstrated how much it appreciates him and wishes him well in his retirement.
I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, on securing this debate: I absolutely support the objective behind it of having a constitutional convention. A number of points have been made, but I reflected on what happened yesterday. It brought home to me just how dysfunctional and medieval our political system is. A dispute in a minority party at the other end of the House, which nobody but 317 people were involved in, was supposed to keep us all on the edge of our seats about the destiny of our nation. If that is British democracy, it is a shameful humiliation that it has been brought down to that. The reality is, as the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, says, that in fact our British political system is at the mercy of the minorities who control the two largest parties—which are in themselves minorities—and we have the nerve to call that a democracy. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, on that. We have some very fundamental thinking to do, because people are angry, disengaged and alienated. If we do not do something about it, I actually think we have to worry about civil disorder and unrest when people do not find any democratic outlets for securing the things that matter to them.
I pick on the big picture—the more focused picture. The dimension of England is always the problem for those of us who believe that some form of federal United Kingdom is the only way we can resolve the piecemeal reforms that we have initiated. The argument is that England is too big, so we can do nothing about it, but my noble friend Lord Greaves and others have made some suggestions. For example, my noble friend Lady Janke said we could look at how local government was secured in other countries, and mentioned Sweden and Germany. One of the problems with local government is that it just does not have its powers or financial resources secured: these should be constitutional rights enshrined in the law, and not subject to the will of some passing Secretary of State to start changing the powers or the allocation of how money is distributed, if he needs to please the Daily Mail on a given day for a headline.
Yet this is how our country is being run and has been run and there is very little that people can do. People in local government are asked to do more and more with less and less and as a result people say, “You are no use, you can’t do anything, you are not actually delivering for us”. We need a radical rethink, from top to bottom and side to side, but I suggest that before we have a federal constitution for the United Kingdom we absolutely have to address proper, effective, accountable devolution for England. However, I say in passing that that one of the bad consequences of the Scottish devolution settlement and the creation of a majority SNP Government is that it has been the victim of exactly the same paranoia that has been characteristic, in England, of taking control away from local government and centralising it under the control of a few Ministers. In Edinburgh we have lost control of the police, the fire service and many aspects of planning. We have lost control of our ability to actually fund the services that the Government expect us to provide.
We need, therefore, to start thinking about how we can draw people together, analyse the dysfunctionality that is characteristic of the way we run ourselves and, yes, learn from other countries. The interesting thing about Europe, never mind over 50 years but over the last 20 or 30 years, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, is that when countries had the opportunity to look at the kind of democracy they wanted to be, none of them looked at the United Kingdom as the model to follow. They looked at countries that had proper constitutions and proper arrangements. My noble friend Lord Steel once famously said, “The British constitution is not worth the paper it isn’t written on”. Nobody quite knows what it is: it is there to be manipulated at will by minorities who happen to be in control at any given time.
I was a member of the Scottish Constitutional Convention and was very proud to be part of it. To be fair to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, he acknowledged that while we naturally and unsurprisingly give the Labour Party credit—which it deserves because it had had a bloodied nose and needed to learn from it, and did learn from it—the convention was an offshoot of the Campaign for a Scottish Assembly, which was cross-party and non-party, which is really important. When we established the convention, we wanted to be sure that it was as representative and as legitimate as possible, so every elected Member of Parliament and of the European Parliament from Scotland was invited, ex officio, to be a member. Every council in Scotland was invited to send representations and it was supplemented by representatives of trade unions, business organisations, churches, women’s groups and a whole variety of civic society, to enable them to participate and be involved in it. It was not official; the Government of the day treated it with a degree of dismissive contempt and the SNP turned up only to walk out—with the intention of walking out, I think it would be fair to say.
That was unfortunate because there was plenty of room for building consensus, and we did. Indeed, I remember an occasion on which the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, and I were on the opposite sides of the argument about the voting system. He claimed that I had a gun to his head and the chair of the Labour Party at the time said that the gun was loaded. It was not loaded by me; it was loaded just as much by the Labour movement and other members of the Labour Party, because they recognised that if you were going to secure a Parliament in Scotland commanding the support of the people of Scotland, it had to be genuinely representative of all parts of Scotland—I think that the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, will understand that— not just the Glasgow Labour Party, which was what people feared. I give credit to Donald Dewar and other leaders for acknowledging that that was necessary. As a result of that, we moved from having an assembly to having a Parliament, to having more than the powers of the Scottish Office and to being elected by a proportional system.
That takes us on to issues such as referendums. If anything has been a constitutional outrage and abuse, it has been the use of referendums in this country. We have no constitutional basis for a referendum. We have a representative system of government, which the people boast about and celebrate, and then we suddenly throw into it the whim of a referendum, which is nearly always to meet the needs of a particular party in a mess. The net result of that political party in a mess has made the country a mess. What a disgraceful piece of leadership that turned out to be. The Scottish independence referendum was possibly the only way to address an issue: if a nationalist party wins a majority and says, “We have a mandate to try for independence”, a referendum is the way to test it. However, I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, that a simple question and a simple majority is the answer. Something as fundamental as constitutional change has to carry a very substantial majority for it to stick. If not, we have exactly the situation we have now; a country split down the middle, incapable of resolving its differences by any proper mechanism.
I am personally not very keen on the idea of a second referendum. I support a people’s vote only as a default mechanism because there does not seem to be any other way of resolving the dilemma. If Parliament can find a majority for a system that is genuinely uniting, I would support that, but the reality is that that does not look likely so it seems to me that we have to consult the people.
Fundamentally, I suggest that a constitutional convention needs to look from the bottom up. It needs to consult as widely as possible. It needs to include politicians: I do not think we can exclude them because in the end it will be politicians who have to implement it. The people making suggestions and having ideas who do not have political antennae need to be informed by that, but I agree that the politicians should not be the drivers. It should be a collective decision that draws from all opinions and especially from the grass roots up.
It has been done in other countries. The founding fathers of the United States built their system on it. Talking about the United States perhaps builds in one particular factor, which is that the lack of a written constitution and of real guarantees means that we have a lack of checks and balances built into our constitutional system. To those who say that we should just do everything gradually, bit by bit, I say that doing it that way is how we have got to this state. We have failed to do anything fundamental by analysing what we need to do. Some say that having gone down the road we have, with a Northern Ireland Assembly, a Scottish Parliament, a Welsh Assembly, a London Assembly and the demand now for much more local and regional government in England, we are well on the way to creating a quasi, if not actual, federal United Kingdom. It is not possible to have a federal constitution that is not written down. By definition, you have to define where the powers lie and how disputes are resolved and the mechanisms for doing so. The whole point about a federal constitution is that power is divided according to the appropriate body for delivering it, and the powers and resources for that body are secured by the constitution, not by the Government of the day or the political minority that happens to be in control.
That would be a fundamental, radical change to the way we do things in this country. It is a citizens’ contract that has never been built. To the extent that we have acquiesced in the way that the country has been run, it is now breaking down to the point where it threatens our ability to make the country governable. The Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, is very timely. I point out to him that my noble friend Lord Purvis suggested a Bill three or four years ago. Indeed, there is a fairly proud history of doing that. But the reality is that we need to move and to recognise that this constitution does not work.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Foulkes of Cumnock for tabling this Motion for debate today. I join other noble Lords in paying tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, for his diligent and exemplary service in both Houses, totalling 54 years. I have had the privilege of benefiting from the noble Lord’s wise counsel during my eight years as a Member of your Lordships’ House. I agree with other noble Lords that he will be much missed on all sides of the House.
Despite what else is going on in the political sphere—or perhaps because of it—it is good to have this debate today. Since 1997 in particular there has been considerable constitutional change in the United Kingdom. Most of it has been very welcome and needed and has made our country better. The devolution settlements in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were long overdue. It is a tragedy that the Northern Ireland Assembly is presently suspended and, like other noble Lords, I hope that an agreement can be reached to get it up and running again soon.
The establishment of the Greater London Authority, the Mayor of London and the London Assembly has been very welcome. I agree with my noble friend Lord Adonis about the success of the office of the Mayor of London and the London Assembly. I pay tribute to the members of the London Assembly. They do a very good job holding the mayor—of whatever political persuasion—to account each and every day. The establishment of the Supreme Court and the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into domestic law were also welcome initiatives.
Not so welcome, in my opinion, have been the Fixed-term Parliaments Act and the English votes for English laws procedure in the House of Commons, which my noble friend Lord Foulkes also referred to. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, that there has to be a holistic approach to constitutional reform and the fact that there has not been has helped create the problems we face today. The decision in 2015 to have English votes for English laws highlights that we have not completed the constitutional changes needed and have left ourselves with a particular problem in England. Most noble Lords who spoke accepted that there is an issue there. So this debate is very welcome in that context.
My noble friend Lord Foulkes spoke about the need for a constitutional convention and he makes a very powerful case. Whether it is a convention or a convocation, as suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, I do not really mind. We have to accept that we have a serious problem and we need to deal with it.
Our present Brexit crisis means that the Government are doing little else. That is a problem for us all. From what I can see, there is no strategic thinking about what changes are needed in the governance of the United Kingdom, no analysis of the problems, and no looking at how we can meet the challenges that we face and how we can do things in a better way that gives our citizens better engagement, understanding and ownership, and a feeling that that their views matter.
Nowhere is that more of a problem that in the present arrangements in England. I agree with my noble friend Lord Murphy about devolution in England —the lack of it, the problems that has caused and the urgent need for this to be readdressed. Many noble Lords made comments about the derisory powers of city leaders and mayors in comparison with those of their European counterparts. Boris Johnson is not a man I often agree with, but even he made the case for the additional devolution of fiscal powers to London during his term of office many years ago, although of course even he was unsuccessful in achieving that.
I also contend that the failure to deal with the issues in England has created much greater pressure on the union. I very much agree with the Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House, which observed that while there had been devolution of power elsewhere in the United Kingdom, England was a centralised unit, and:
“As a result, there is dissatisfaction within England with the current territorial constitution”.
I believe that a lot of our problems can be tracked back to one central issue. My noble friend Lord Foulkes of Cumnock referred to the comments made by the Mayor of Liverpool about this being a top-down agenda. We have heard that he has left the board of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership. When George Osborne was Chancellor of the Exchequer, he looked at the whole question of where power is and created the northern powerhouse initiative. He sought to devolve powers—we can argue whether he was right or wrong—and to reorganise governance arrangements. I did not agree with all this but today, with his departure from government and now from the House of Commons, it has stalled. There appears to be no reforming zeal anywhere in government. There is no interest in the Treasury. There is no interest in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to move this forward. There is definitely no interest in Downing Street for this agenda. The combined authority/metro mayor model is flawed and confused and now lacks a champion in government.
I remember a contribution to a previous debate by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley—he is not in his place today—in which he told us that where he lives in Cambridgeshire, there are actually five tiers of local government: the metro mayor and the combined authority, the police and crime commissioner, the county council, the district council and the parish council. That is no way to deliver services and to be accountable to the local electorate.
To be fair, there is not much thinking in my own party on this at the moment. We need to look at these things. One of the benefits of being in opposition—there are not many—is that you can look at these matters, do some thinking, bring something forward and challenge ideas. That is important and we need to do that. The Member for Oldham West and Royton in the other place, Mr Jim McMahon MP, has begun some important work looking at the devolution settlement for England. As an Opposition we need to be coming forward with ideas to meet the challenges of governance that we face today. I agree with my noble friend Lord Hain’s comments about devolution in England and how we need to develop things. He also referred to the Member for Wigan in the other place, Lisa Nandy MP, and the important work she is doing looking at towns and how they can feel isolated and not engaged.
There is also a big job to be done by think tanks and organisations such as the Fabian Society, a much-respected organisation on the left of British politics, which has been affiliated to the Labour Party since its formation. If you look at our 1997 manifesto, the society had great influence on the issues we fought and won that election on. I should also make it clear that I have been a member of the society for 30 years and serve on its executive committee.
Thinking in other political parties is important as well. We need to make sure that political parties and organisations aligned with them also think about these things. No one party or organisation is the source of all good ideas. In the 2017 general election the Labour Party supported a constitutional convention as a way forward. Getting some sort of body together to consider these very important issues is a very welcome idea. It should comprise representatives of political parties, civil society and academia. We may need a number of different organisations to consider these questions urgently, because it cannot be just a body or a group of people who are seen to be detached. The issue of real citizen engagement has to be central to the work that any convention or convocation does.
The Library briefing was very helpful. I was interested to read about the work of Professor Hazell and Dr Renwick and agree with them that,
“genuine, well-grounded deliberation does not take place spontaneously”.
To go down this route would take considerable planning but could produce recommendations that are reasoned and coherent and, most importantly, address the issues that need addressing. Their Blueprint for a UK Constitutional Convention is a good piece of work and could form the basis of how we move forward, notwithstanding the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, and my noble friend Lord Howarth of Newport about how we deliver constitutional change in our country. As I said earlier, however, there also needs to be thinking within the political parties and I suspect—unless the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, surprises us all when he responds—that the Government are at present not persuaded as to the merits of these proposals from my noble friend Lord Foulkes. There is plenty of time for us in the political parties to consider these issues carefully and maybe to persuade the Government at a later date.
I thank my noble friend Lord Foulkes of Cumnock for bringing his Motion forward today. It has been a very useful debate and I look forward to the response from the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, I commend the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, on his choice of subject and its timing, this debate coming as it does in a month when a number of important constitutional issues have captured the headlines. I join all noble Lords in paying tribute to my noble friend Lord Higgins. I first heard him speak from my party’s Front Bench in 1974, when he was part of Ted Heath’s opposition team, and have followed his career ever since. I remember him in particular chairing the Treasury Select Committee in the 1990s. The debates here will be the poorer without him. I hope that he does not entirely absent himself from political discourse, but uses other platforms. I was touched by his genuine tribute to his successors, the fact that he has done 54 years in public service and the way that he stuck up for his beliefs at a time when they were unpopular. The children of this country are for ever grateful to him for the rebate of VAT on children’s shoes.
It has been a real pleasure for me to listen to this debate, well informed and topical as it has been, as I have a long-standing interest in constitutional issues. I was my party’s spokesman in another place on the subject at the turn of the century, when we debated what became the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act, along with Lords reform. I served on a democracy taskforce, chaired by Ken Clarke, with fellow members including the noble Lords, Lord Butler and Lord Tyrie, which promoted the policy of English votes for English laws. I shall come back to that in a moment. As the leader of the House in another place, I promoted some reforms in the coalition Government to give back to Parliament some of the powers the Executive had taken away. I have also done some time on the council of the Hansard Society and worked with my noble friend Lord Norton, when he was commissioned by the then leader of my party, now my noble friend Lord Hague, to work up his report on strengthening Parliament.
However, the pleasure of listening to and learning from this debate has been moderated by the knowledge that I am expected to wind it up. Noble Lords have given me a long frontier to patrol and while I will try to address some of the key issues raised, my remarks will mostly be a contribution to the debate rather than a summation. The wide-ranging nature of this debate highlights one of the problems with a constitutional convention—a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth. Noble Lords have raised so many issues that any convention looking into them would take years to do them justice. When I got the brief from the Cabinet Office for this debate, it was over 100 pages long and covered over 25 topics that could come under such a convention. Noble Lords have raised many others.
I am not averse to independent conventions looking at certain constitutional issues. Indeed, there have been many successful examples which we have heard of during this debate. We have had the report of the noble Lord, Lord Burns, on reforms to this House; there were the Silk and Smith commissions on devolved powers; recent commissions, such as that of the UCL Constitution Unit on referendums, have added greatly to the debate and knowledge in this area. The noble Lords, Lord Foulkes and Lord McConnell, reminded us that they were both part of the Scottish Constitutional Convention and I applaud the success of that convention in producing two reports prior to the devolution changes in 1997. I also applaud the work of the noble Lords, Lord Lisvane and Lord Hain, on the Act of Union Bill, which I understand we will now be debating early next year. But the point about all these conventions is that they were narrowly focused, rather than the wide-ranging agenda proposed by the noble Lord. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, reminded us of the fate of the Kilbrandon commission.
The helpful Library briefing note for this debate referenced the work undertaken by Professor Robert Hazell and Dr Alan Renwick, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, on their Blueprint for A UK Constitutional Convention. However, the quote that he used was not this one. The summary to the report said:
“While some activists would like to see an overarching constitutional review, there is good reason to think this would be too complex and controversial to yield useful results. Limiting the convention to one aspect of the constitution is likely to be better”.
As this suggests, it would be worth considering how such a large topic could be disaggregated and prioritised, with the key issues being more clearly defined.
The Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, helpfully does not stipulate that the Government should initiate such a convention; indeed, he implied in his opening remarks that this was something the Opposition should do. Anticipating a government response the noble Lord, Lord Owen, said that there was no way that the Government would agree to this. What struck me during the discussion about the nature of such a convention was what the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, said when he spoke of the convention on which he served: that it was successful because it reflected the settled will of the people of Scotland. That convention had a purpose and that was why it succeeded. The whole argument behind this convention is, because there is no settled will or purpose, there is clear disagreement. Some noble Lords want a written constitution, including the noble Lords, Lord Bruce and Lord Dykes; others who have taken part in this debate would be firmly against a written constitution. The suggestion by the noble Baroness, Lady Bryan, that we should do this quickly and urgently is not an optimistic prognosis, given the difficulties it would have to cover.
While our debate has been wide-ranging, it has not covered everything that affects democratic accountability. For example, I regret the recent erosion of collective responsibility in government and the selective briefing of exchanges in Cabinet, both of which I believe hinder good government. Another issue central to democratic accountability in this country is the role of our political parties, hardly mentioned in this debate. Half of all voters think that British politics is broken. Only one in seven thinks that the Tories and Labour represent the views of the public—I will come to the Liberal Democrats in a moment. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, rightly spoke of those who feel disfranchised and dispossessed. The noble Lords, Lord Bruce and Lord Adonis, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, spoke of alienation.
Half of those who spoke in this debate served in the other place. As the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, pointed out, as party membership declines, as has happened in my party, with its centre of gravity shifting to the right, or is swollen by supporters with a particular ideology, as has happened to the Labour Party in its shifts to the left, it may become more difficult for candidates in the centre of the political spectrum to get selected. Putting aside our age, how many of us who have spoken in this debate—predominantly remainers or Blairites—would be selected today?
Meanwhile, what has happened to the Liberal Democrats? For all my political life, when a Conservative Government have faced difficulties, whether that be under Macmillan in the 1960s, Heath in the 1970s, Thatcher in the early 1980s or Major in the 1990s, the third party has been a safety valve and has won by-elections, particularly when the Opposition party have also been unpopular. There was Orpington, Berwick, Crosby, Hillhead, Newbury and Christchurch among a long list, which brings back painful memories. Today, with a Government who are facing unprecedented difficulties and visibly divided, and a Labour Party led by its most left-wing leader in history—without Michael Foot’s gift of oratory and Cabinet experience—where is our third party? It is languishing in single figures. I make this point not to provoke but to underline the central importance of our parties to democratic accountability and the risk of their being seen as not relevant to voters. I reinforce the point made during this debate about the broad terms of reference of any convention on democratic accountability.
No one, except I think the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, mentioned the role of social media in our democracy. Last Saturday a former head of GCHQ said that Facebook poses a threat to democracy without tougher regulation. As I have said before, usually in response to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, we have an analogue regulatory system for our elections in a digital age. During the last three decades, the internet has revolutionised not only the way we interact with each other but the way we do politics. The digital landscape poses challenges for our democratic accountability that we cannot afford to shy away from addressing, so it is incumbent on this Government to keep pace with the changes to technology. We are determined to have a system that is fit for purpose, and we will be introducing reforms once relevant court cases have been disposed of and the relevant Select Committee and Electoral Commission reports are available to achieve that objective.
As others have outlined during this debate, constitutional conventions can work in some circumstances, but it depends on the situation. Other countries which have tried have found the process challenging. The recommendations of the conventions in British Columbia and Ontario were rejected when they were put to the public in referendums. In Ireland, of the 18 recommendations made by the Irish constitutional convention, only two were put to referendum and only one passed. In Iceland, where a more wide-ranging constitutional convention was undertaken, all six of the proposals of the constitutional council were passed following a referendum. However, they have not been taken forward by subsequent Governments. That highlights one of our key concerns with proposals for a constitutional convention: that they often fail to deliver the intended result.
I shall try to touch on some of the points that were raised during the debate. The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, touched on AV and criticised first past the post. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, that he has seen the hurdles facing those who want a second vote on the referendum where the result was 52% to 48%. What hurdles will confront those who want a second referendum on the result of the referendum we had on AV, when the vote was 67.9% to 32.1%, particularly against a background of the comment made by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, that we should not repeat referendums too often?
A number of noble Lords made a valid point about the potential tension between government by referendum and government by representative democracy. What would have happened 40 years ago if any of us had stood for Parliament and been elected making it quite clear that we were opposed to capital punishment but there had been a referendum and the people decided that they wanted it? Would MPs have had to respect the result of the referendum and go against what they had said in their election address? There is a potential tension there which was rightly brought out in a number of comments.
English votes for English laws came in for a little bit of criticism from one or two noble Lords. I remember sitting in another place on a Standing Committee considering the Labour Government’s proposal to ban smoking in public places. In Standing Committee, there was an amendment to extend the ban to pubs, which was opposed by the Minister in the Standing Committee. There were enough people on the Standing Committee to demand a vote and the Government were saved by a Member of Parliament from Scotland, where smoking had already been banned in pubs, voting not to ban smoking in pubs in England. From that moment I became a strong advocate of English votes for English laws. Contrary to what a number of noble Lords have said, I think it has embedded fairness and balance into Parliament’s law-making process. I think it has strengthened England’s voice, just as devolution strengthened the voices of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland within our union. I think it is right that elected Members of the House of Commons who represent constituencies in England have the opportunity to give their consent on domestic legislation that affects only them, simply mirroring the position in Scotland.
On the case for an English Parliament, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris, cast some doubts as to whether it would work, and the noble Lord, Lord Owen, pointed out the asymmetry in the United Kingdom with such a large component of it being accounted for by one unit. If one looks at Andrew Blick’s pamphlet Federalism: The UK’s Future?, he makes the point that an English Parliament would not deliver the benefits of decentralisation associated with devolution. I think there is no consensus that an English Parliament is the way forward. I believe that English votes for English laws delivers a coherent constitutional response without the upheaval of an English Parliament.
Rather than work up the case for an English Parliament, we prefer to strengthen communities and regions within England through, in particular, the northern powerhouse and the Midlands engine and by developing a devolution framework for England, providing clarity for all English authorities about the future of English devolution. I was interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Owen, said about the German Länder, but it seems to me that we do not have the building blocks that they have in Germany to create the structure that they have there.
A number of noble Lords mentioned regional assemblies. This was piloted in the north-west by the noble Lord, Lord Prescott, and did not find favour, so since the Cities and Local Government Devolution Act 2016 came into force we have taken major steps to decentralise governance in England through devolution deals and combined authorities headed by elected mayors in seven city regions, with an eighth mayor in North of Tyne to be elected in May. A number of noble Lords said that this is asymmetrical and a muddle—I think that was the expression used—but it has happened only when it was what local authorities asked the Government to do. Combined authorities are created when that is what local authorities have decided to do. Likewise, if they want elected mayors rather than the traditional local authority settlement, that is what they can have.
I was interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said about building on the success of elected mayors. Looking not just at London but at Manchester, we have arranged for particular combined authorities to assume the delivery of central government programmes such as the work and health programme and the life chances fund, and to help to develop new and innovative ways of working with local public services such as health and justice. I agree that this is a model we should build on. I think my noble friend Lord Heseltine can claim to be the champion of mayors in advance of anyone else who may make that claim.
I think elected mayors have been one of the successes in the British constitution. They chair their combined authorities and ensure strong and strategic leadership across a clear economic geography as a recognised leader who is accountable to voters in their region. They can act nationally and internationally as an ambassador for their region, boosting the area’s profile and helping to attract inward investment. Mayors also have soft powers, such as the ability to convene a range of stakeholders to tackle complex issues such as homelessness, and I applaud what Andy Burnham is doing on Manchester on that point. I think the introduction of strong mayors has been one of the most important constitutional changes in past years.
With two minutes left, I am not going to be able to do justice to the issues that were raised about Brexit and the impact on devolution, but I was struck by what two noble Lords said about having a single constitutional member in the Cabinet or, as I think was suggested by the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, getting rid of the Secretaries of State for Scotland and Wales altogether. As an English MP, I would have been worried about the potential impact on sentiment in Scotland if it no longer had a voice in a UK Cabinet but if he—
Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale
I said to your Lordships’ House that I would support the proposal that was put by my noble friend because of course you would have to replace the Secretaries of State with another post in Cabinet that could reflect those national interests throughout the UK.
Lord Young of Cookham
Right.
Perhaps I may say in conclusion that I was struck by what the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, said towards the end of his remarks, that rather than go for this all-singing, all-dancing convention we should stand back. I was also struck by what my noble friend Lord Norton said about, instead of having this convention, starting off by having a good look at exactly where we are. I conclude conscious that I have not responded to the debate, but I thank all noble Lords who have taken part—and leave the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, a second or two in which to sum up.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
My Lords, this has been an exceptional debate. It has gone a bit wider than I expected, but who am I to complain about that? It has been notable that the reply was clearly a ministerial reply, not a reading of a Civil Service brief. It was very welcome. I would like to tackle many of the points that have been raised but I do not have the time to do that. I finish by saying that I hope we will see the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, back again, and, if I am allowed to do so, I think we should dedicate this exceptional debate in his honour.
Motion agreed.
Disability-inclusive Development
(6 years ago)
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Baroness Anelay of St Johns
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the role of their Strategy for Disability Inclusive Development, published on 3 December, towards meeting the United Kingdom’s commitments given at the Global Disability Summit in July.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns (Con)
My Lords, the Global Disability Summit in July was co-hosted in London by DfID, the Kenyan Government and the International Disability Alliance. It marked the first time that the humanitarian and development sectors had come together formally to plan action on making aid more inclusive of people living with disabilities. More than 800 delegates from Governments, civil society and the private sector attended and discussed four broad themes: addressing stigma; supporting inclusive education; promoting economic empowerment; and the importance of the effective use of technology and the reasons for providing better access to it. Of course the summit was important, but we can judge how important it was only when we consider the global challenge faced by people with disabilities and how effective the results of the summit prove to be.
On Monday last week, DfID again showed welcome leadership on the issue by taking the further step of publishing DfID’s Strategy for Disability Inclusive Development 2018-23 to establish the ground rules for the UK’s fulfilment of pledges made at the summit. It sets out a renewed vision of disability-inclusive development. My right honourable friend Penny Mordaunt, the Secretary of State, made clear the scale of the challenge when she said:
“One billion of the world’s population have a disability, with an estimated 80% of people with disabilities living in developing countries”.
They are one of the hardest groups to reach. They often face exclusion by their communities or even their families, which limits their voice, choice and control over their own lives. Too often, international aid does not reach them. Too often, they are not involved in decision-making processes about the delivery of policies that should assist them.
Penny Mordaunt recognised that the UK and the world as a whole have made far too little progress in tackling the root causes of the stigma, discrimination and abuse that hold back those who live with disabilities. She committed the UK to raise our efforts and be more accountable for them. The new disability strategy therefore focuses on four strategic pillars of action: social protection, routes to economic empowerment, humanitarian action to strengthen inclusive humanitarian approaches and inclusive education.
I have a few questions for the Minister that follow on both from DfID’s commitments made at the summit and the publication of the strategy last week. At the summit, DfID said the UK would set up, fund and lead the new inclusive education initiative that is to become operational next year. What progress has been made on that? Is the Minister still optimistic that tangible results should be delivered before 2021? More substantively, when will DfID set out clearly how it will implement the strategy for disability-inclusive development in the long term? The importance will be in that detail.
How will DfID measure change in the lives of people with disabilities, and by when? Will the strategy encompass a whole-of-government effort? For example, has DfID had discussions with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office about the principles underlying the strategy and the implications for FCO procedures in awarding its grants to NGOs for overseas projects?
I have witnessed the delivery of outstanding work by projects overseas funded by both DfID and the FCO in my travels as a Minister and as a Back-Bencher, and I admire the work of our diplomats and DfID officials, often in areas where the security environment is highly challenging—countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq or South Sudan. However, I am all too aware that there is often an assumption in government, here and around the world, that development policies and programmes targeting extreme poverty will automatically include people with disabilities. It is becoming clear that this is not always the case. They can be routinely excluded from development and its benefits. Too often, disabled people are invisible from official statistics, left out and, as a consequence, disempowered in society.
I am one of the co-chairs of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Street Children and therefore have a particular concern for street-connected children living with disabilities. They are visible on the streets but usually invisible from official statistics. They have increased vulnerability to violence, abuse and exploitation; more difficulty in overcoming the barriers to accessing services for their welfare and protection; and are more vulnerable to the harms that can be caused by institutionalisation. How will DfID ensure that its strategy addresses the needs of street-connected children with disabilities?
I appreciate that unless data is disaggregated it is difficult to learn how best to target resources and ensure that people with disabilities are not overlooked. This issue was raised frequently at the Commission on the Status of Women, which I attended in New York earlier this year. I therefore welcome the UK’s commitment, in section E of DfID’s form for submitting pledges at the summit, published online on 23 July, that,
“DFID’s Inclusive Data Charter Action Plan will be finalised and launched in autumn 2018”.
On rather a chilly day in December, I ask my noble friend: what progress has been made and what lessons have been learned in preparation for that? I also welcome DfID’s commitment, published on 3 August this year on its website as part of the summary of commitments made at the summit:
“Working alongside our co-host, the International Disability Alliance (IDA), we will soon be publishing a new global tracker on the IDA website to ensure we all deliver on the promises made”.
What progress has been made on that matter?
I am grateful to those who have provided briefing for this short debate: Sightsavers, our redoubtable House of Lords Library and the Conservative Friends of International Development, whose founder, my noble friend Lady Jenkin, is taking part in our debate today. I very much look forward to hearing the contributions of all noble Lords around the House. It is only by working together that we can make sure that people living with disabilities around the world see positive changes in their lives.
I welcome the leadership that has been so clearly shown by DfID. The strategy is an important symbolic step, but symbols need to be turned into reality. We must ensure that the global political movement created by the summit is not lost if we are to meet the goals of the SDGs. As my right honourable friend Penny Mordaunt said, now is the time to turn those ideas into action—and how.
Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale (Lab)
The whole House should be grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, for initiating this debate today, at the end of a year that has been incredibly productive for the Secretary of State and her department in this area of policy. We should give credit to the Secretary of State for the way in which she has managed to put this issue on the agenda in less than 12 months in her position, at a time when almost every other member of the Cabinet seems to be preoccupied with another topic. She deserves credit for that. It shows two things: first, that it is possible to make progress on policy and strategy in a department, even in the current times, if you are clear enough about your objectives; and, secondly, that it is not just, or even, about money—it is about strategy, priority and effectiveness. I therefore welcome both the summit earlier this year and the specific departmental strategy that was launched in the autumn.
In the brief time available to me today, I wish to make three points. The first is in relation to the global goals. One of the things that I like about the new Secretary of State is that she mentioned the global goals. She wears the badge and champions the goals at home and abroad, unlike her predecessor. Unfortunately, however, the global goals do not run through the strategy. They are mentioned in the charter that was published at the time of the summit and are mentioned upfront in the first sentence of her introduction, but I believe the department could integrate the global goals and the strategic priorities and actions more effectively in this kind of policy and strategy document.
If the Minister takes only one thing away from today, perhaps it could be that although global goal 10 refers to inequality, “leave no one behind” runs right through the global goals. Although there are many categories of people to whom the objective of leaving no one behind refers, in my experience, in country after country, community after community, those with disabilities are definitely left behind. Therefore, closer integration of our strategy on the global goals and the disability strategy would be welcome, particularly leading up to the voluntary national review, which the UK will publish in 2019.
My second point is a question for the Minister. This may be a fault of mine and many others, but instinctively, even today, after these many years of progress, we are still talking about disability rather than ability—which a contestant on “Strictly Come Dancing” reminded us last weekend is a much better way to look at things. We think about physical disability. I hope that the strategy also covers what might be described as learning disabilities and other forms of disability and that the Government will have that in mind, particularly in the education and employment programmes that they support around the world.
My third and final point relates to capacity. It would be a tragedy if all this great work, commitment and strategic approach resulted in the addition of a few programmes to our work internationally. It would make the biggest difference in country after country if we could assist those countries to develop their own strategies and programmes, properly integrating work and opportunities for people with disabilities into their education and health systems, local economies, professions and so on. It will be critical that we adopt an approach that is not just about the projects we support or the ways in which we can tweak our programmes. If we can use some of the skills that we have developed to improve legislation, regulation and opportunity in this country to build capacity for regulation and legislation elsewhere, that will make the biggest difference in the longer term.
Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)
My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, not least because to hear “Strictly” mentioned in your Lordships’ House is always a bonus on a Thursday afternoon. I congratulate my noble friend Lady Anelay on securing this most timely debate, with the strategy being published only on 3 December. I also declare my interest, as set out in the register.
I salute the Minister for all his work in this area. He is a Minister who not only grips his brief perfectly but puts it into action. The work and commitment of the Secretary of State have already been mentioned. She has not only pushed this from day one of taking office but, at the disability summit earlier in the summer, when she made her opening keynote speech, she took the time to learn BSL to sign the first half of her presentation. That was impressive and demonstrated true commitment to inclusion.
I shall limit my comments to the area of technology and the global disability innovation hub. The fourth industrial revolution offers such potential, such tools for intelligence: machine learning, AI, the internet of things and so on. They are fabulous opportunities for all of us. Why do I believe that disabled people globally have so much more to gain through a fully deployed fourth industrial revolution? I believe it because disabled people globally have all too often been on the wrong end of policy, strategy and approaches that have not only not included but actively excluded them from almost every element of the public and civic space.
I was lucky enough to participate in the Global Disability Summit in July. It was held in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park for one simple reason: it is as good a blueprint as we have on planet Earth for what inclusive design can look, feel and be like when operating such an event. It was an extraordinary event—not only a unique conversation but one that led to real, solid and achievable commitments. The Olympic and Paralympic Park was the right place to host the summit.
We located the Global Disability Innovation Hub in the same park for the same reason. What is the GDI hub? It has tremendous support from DfID and is a legacy programme from the London 2012 Paralympic Games. Many people know—not least because of my endeavours—about the inclusive nature of the 2012 Paralympic Games. What is perhaps less known is that the Olympic Games 2012 were also the most inclusive ever staged, so it was the perfect place to host an innovation hub to reach out right around the globe, to form a movement to accelerate disability innovation for a fairer world, not least through collaboration and co-creation. It considers issues of inclusive design much broader than the physical environment: assistive technology, participation, partnership, human-computer interactivity and, of course, sport, art and culture.
More than half the world’s disabled people live in situations of conflict or disaster. The mission is in no sense easy, but if it is possible to get inclusive assistance to disabled people in enemy-held Syria, and to construct refugee centres predicated on inclusive design, that golden thread of possibility can and must run through everything we do in international development. As I said, the mission is massive, but as my noble friend knows, even a marathon starts with a first step. The strategy set out on 3 December is a fantastic more than first step on this journey. Ultimately, it boils down to a pretty simple mission—as is so often the case for disabled people globally—of addressing that fundamental blight: around the world, talent is everywhere but, currently, opportunity is not.
Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)
My Lords, I salute the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, for securing this short debate on a very important subject which I fear has not made the headlines that it deserves—in this country, anyway. However, those of us who live in the disability landscape are used to comparative invisibility. It is very good for us here to lift our eyes from our travails for once to look outwards to the wider world, where we see millions of disabled people far worse off than we are.
I also pay tribute to the Secretary of State for this ground-breaking initiative. Formerly, she was Minister of State for Disabled People, a role that meant our paths often crossed. I am sure her experience in that department influenced her thinking on the global stage.
The strategy is right to emphasise the importance of access to education, particularly that of women and girls, which is not seen as important everywhere, even if a woman is not disabled. I spoke to Noshila in Pakistan on Sunday, who told me that women’s education, particularly in rural areas, could not be taken for granted, meaning that those who are widows or disabled struggled to earn any money. Because all disabled people find it so difficult to get jobs, some questioned why they should go to school, let alone university. She said that the whole mindset had to change.
I also had an interesting conversation with Rabia in Pakistan, who is almost blind. She is 25 and has a degree in international relations, but is finding it very difficult to get a job. Getting about is obviously a challenge for her. Dogs, even guide dogs for blind people, are not looked on favourably in Pakistan and I am told that even walking down the street with a white stick is sometimes ridiculed. I asked Rabia if she ever saw people using wheelchairs; she replied that this was uncommon. In any case, there is an acute shortage of wheelchairs in Pakistan, and many roads are too rutted for them. Interestingly, there is a jobs quota for companies in Pakistan to employ disabled people, which has recently been raised from 2% to 3%, but it is not enforced. We here know all about the question of no enforcement.
Turning briefly to the humanitarian context, this will be particularly important in war-torn countries such as Somalia. Perhaps the Minister might write to me about that, particularly the Garasbaley Community Development Organization, a self-help group in Mogadishu, which is doing great work. There must be hundreds of young people with disabilities as a result of the conflict there.
It is absolutely crucial that disabled people themselves must be involved at every stage. “Nothing about us without us” will not sound so poetic in other languages, but the sentiment should always be attempted and we must not think that we have all the answers. We should be eager to learn from other countries, where disabled people have to be far more creative in finding ways to live with a disability that we have to be, simply because there is no alternative.
As a newcomer to DfID, I am struck by its soaring rhetoric, although I am not sure about the image conjured up by “taking concrete leaps forward”. I see that there is to be DfID-wide disability inclusion delivery board and I make a plea that disabled people should not just be represented on it, but will be members of it.
Lord Shinkwin (Con)
My Lords, I also welcome this strategy and thank my noble friend Lady Anelay for securing this important debate. I also thank the Secretary of State, Penny Mordaunt, for her leadership on this issue, her ministerial team, DfID itself, NGO partners such as Sightsavers and, of course, our partners in the developing world for the way in which they have come together to make the Global Disability Summit happen and now to develop the strategy.
Although there are a few aspects of the strategy that I would query, I welcome it. It may not extend to anything like 585 pages, but it has substance. Is it not refreshing, noble Lords, to read a document that neither fudges nor says one thing while meaning the opposite? How exciting to read a strategy with a clear sense of purpose and urgency, which recognises that bringing people together in some of the most challenging parts of the world requires clarity, transparency and trust.
The strategy is clear in both its vision and its priorities. With an estimated 1 billion people with disabilities globally, an estimated 80% of whom live in developing countries, the challenge is huge. So the strategy’s vision is bold and ambitious and is worth repeating: a world where all people with disabilities, in all stages of their lives, are engaged, empowered and able to exercise and enjoy their rights on an equal basis with others, contributing to poverty reduction, peace and stability. Its four priorities or “essential outcomes”, as they are described in the strategy, make sense.
I also largely agree with the four strategic pillars for action particularly, as others have mentioned, the focus on inclusive education, given that more than half of the 65 million children with disabilities in low and middle-income countries are not in school. Although my own experience of being excluded from mainstream state schools as a child because of my disability pales into insignificance, I can relate very much to the importance of accessing inclusive and equitable quality education.
In conclusion, I just highlight one other distinctive feature of this document—its confident tone, which its commitment to transparency and visible accountability reflects. That confidence both informs its vision and inspires trust in an ability to deliver. At a time when Parliament has seldom been more divided, on Brexit, this strategy surely reminds us all that transparency, clarity and projecting fact-based confidence are fundamental to bringing people together. For if we do not believe in ourselves, how can we expect anyone else to take us seriously? To its credit, this strategy shows that people should do exactly that.
Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con)
My Lords, I too join in thanking my noble friend Lady Anelay for initiating this debate. But before we start advising other countries what they should do to improve services for disabled people, perhaps it would be wise to examine our own recent past and how we failed even in the 1970s and 1980s to provide adequate services for disabled people. In particular, I shall illustrate this by describing the pitfalls in providing services for those who need artificial limbs and wheelchairs.
Prime Minister Thatcher realised that something was radically wrong with these services, so I was asked to chair a national inquiry to find out exactly what it was. Our committee found that there was no shortage of money in the provision of this service but the management was deplorable. First, the attitude to disabled people showed arrogance and a lack of respect, as well as incompetence. The artificial legs with which disabled people were fitted very often simply did not fit, were painful to walk on and were hopelessly out of date in design. The commercial firms were given cost-plus contracts with no system for controlling the cost. The plus should have been limited to 4% but in some cases was as high as 16%. But we were told that it was all above board and that the contracts went out to tender. When we attended these tendering occasions for wheelchairs, one company tender was £119, another was £120 and a third was £121. Does that not sound suspiciously like a cartel?
I was fortunate in having on our committee outstanding members including the late Lord Hussey and the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Fforestfach, but the trouble was that we were outnumbered by civil servants, who tried to block almost every idea we put forward. We called them the congenital snag hunters. We therefore sacked them and went on to produce a report that was critical of the civil servants who had run the service for many years.
When it was presented to the senior civil servant, a knight of the realm, no less, and Permanent Secretary, he was very angry—in fact, he was white with rage. He told me that my report would be buried. He went on to say, “Most of the reports done by people like you we put on the shelf and they collect the dust”. I replied, “Never mind my report, though I spent a lot of time doing it; what are you going to do about disabled people?”. He shrugged; that was my signal to go to Prime Minister Thatcher and tell her exactly what was going on. You can imagine what she said: “What are the names of these people?”. When I told her, she was surprised. It is a regular feature that senior bullies and abusers are deferential to those above but abuse those below. Our report was implemented and improved services for several million disabled people.
What advice could one give to developing countries seeking to offer a good service for disabled people? The person at the top—the senior person in charge—must have the right attitude; they must be competent, free of arrogance and understand the meaning of “service”. It goes without saying that corruption must be eliminated because that undermines government departments and services all round. In the end, our report was a success story but we had to fight tooth and nail to get it implemented. I have illustrated all these problems so that developing countries may be able to avoid them. They should have senior people at the top who believe in service and are neither arrogant nor incompetent.
Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Con)
My Lords, I too thank my noble friend Lady Anelay for introducing this debate so ably, as always, and I thank other noble Lords who have made inspirational speeches. The noble Lord, Lord McColl, and I share a room and talk about these matters often; it is always a great pleasure to follow him.
DfID is clearly delivering on its promise to work towards a fairer world where no one is left behind. I am sorry to have left my global goals badge behind this morning; I would otherwise be wearing it with pride. The current Secretary of State has continued the work of her predecessor, Priti Patel, in making disability a key focus. Her first speech in November 2017 reinforced this commitment and, notably, the Secretary of State was also the first Minister to use sign language at the Dispatch Box when discussing this summer’s Global Disability Conference.
I welcome the substantive action taken by DfID and the Secretary of State to meet the commitments made at that summit. The recent release of the Strategy for Disability Inclusive Development demonstrates its seriousness in making society inclusive for all those who live with a disability, setting out in some detail how it will achieve those goals. It is worth reminding ourselves that we still have challenges with our own disabilities policy in this country, as raised by my noble friends Lord McColl and Lord Holmes. As a member of the 2016-17 Select Committee on the Equality Act 2010 and Disability, chaired so ably by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, I am only too well aware that we do not get everything right and still have much to do in this country.
The 1 billion people worldwide with disabilities are often trapped in a cycle of poverty, unable to access key social services; they face exclusion and stigma. Nineteen million children have no access to education and many face unequal health outcomes due to little or no access to services and treatments. As my noble friend Lady Anelay mentioned, the strategy has been welcomed by organisations such as Sightsavers, which by happy coincidence has had its exhibition, “Cast Your Vote”, in the Upper Waiting Hall this week. It has focused on how, for people with disabilities living in developing countries, there can be multiple barriers to participation, which prevent their taking part in decisions that affect their lives. The pledge of £250,000 to cover disability-related expenses will help resolve problems that people might face when seeking elected office. These are all clear indicators of DfID’s commitment to tackling barriers to democratic participation.
DfID has a record of achievement to be proud of. It is championing female education, with 46,000 disabled girls given access to schooling through the Girls’ Education Challenge. The construction of accessible toilet facilities in Mozambique and trained health workers in Ghana are further examples of support. Others include the funding of education programmes in opposition-held areas of Syria—pioneering the use of new assessment tools to help meet the needs of children with disabilities—and a young boy of 11, himself with a disability, teaching coding to people with autism and Tourette’s in Bangladesh.
By centering the strategy on inclusive education, social protection, economic empowerment and humanitarian action, DfID is committing to empowering disabled people and enabling them to exercise their rights and freedoms. Practical initiatives are what will make a difference: ideas such as improving access to financial services and digital technology, with best practice sought from countries that do this well. The department itself has pledged to increase the number of disabled people in its workforce, with minimum standards on inclusion to be implemented by the end of 2019. Like my noble friend Lady Anelay, I look forward to hearing more from the Minister, with details of how DfID intends to implement the strategy, how it will measure change and by when.
Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)
My Lords, I too welcome this debate and the publication of the Government’s strategy following the disability summit in the summer. I am particularly pleased that the initiation of disability as a priority, which started effectively with the International Development Committee’s investigation into aid and disability, initiated in 2012 and reporting in 2014, has been maintained. There is always the fear of a response but no follow-through; there has been follow-through and that is very welcome. I commend my noble friend Lady Featherstone, the first Minister with that specific brief, who formulated the disability framework, which was taken forward.
I also commend Penny Mordaunt as Secretary of State for the big focus she has given to disability and her determination to make it a mainstream part of delivering development assistance in DfID. We all recognise that this is the kind of thing that, fortunately, unites politicians who want to see action, rather than divides us. I have some questions for the Minister, but they are all in the spirit of ensuring that we get positive action. We have here a declaration of commitment and objectives that the Government are signing themselves up to, but we really need to see it followed through in detail and in specific action.
I declare my interests, particularly in disability relating to deafness. I am an honorary vice-chairman of the National Deaf Children’s Society and of Action on Hearing Loss. I am also president of DeafKidz International, which, I am glad to say, is carrying out work in Pakistan on deaf-screening, funded by DfID—a specific example of the kind of programme that is possible. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord McConnell. We are trying to build awareness about disability, end stigma and help countries to address the problems themselves, while giving them practical and financial support to do so.
My questions arise from ICAI’s evaluation of the strategy, which the Government say they have taken on board. I hope the Minister, either in his answer or in writing, will be able to give me some answers. First, on ensuring that there are more visibly disabled people in DfID helping to deliver these programmes, those who are there say that they do not believe DfID is doing enough and they are looking for more action. DfID needs to recruit people with disabilities rather than just find disabilities that already exist within the department. What is being done about that?
There is also a need to involve disabled people directly in the formulation of policies and programmes in-country, to consult them and ensure that what is done takes proper account of their needs. ICAI suggests that country managers should be required to look at all the programmes they are implementing, to ensure that the disability element is specifically addressed and, if not, to ask why not. In some cases there will be a need for specific programmes that target specific disabilities without compromising the fact that disability should feature in every programme and be built into the mainstream. There are also practical requirements that poor countries and poor people have for disability aids, whether hearing aids, prosthetics or wheelchairs. These should not just be rejects and failed ones, but ones that meet their needs and are suitable to the circumstances in which they are operating, so that they can be supported and maintained, and are practical and useful. I should be grateful if the Minister would take those questions away.
I also suggest that the department produces an annual audit on disability, not only on the aspirations and objectives but on the practicalities regarding how many disabled people it has reached, specific examples of where it has helped disabled people and how they have been built into the programme. I absolutely believe that the Government intend to do that—that is what the objectives are about—but I hope that the Minister and the House will understand that in the end people want to see very positive outcomes that will make a difference. We have made a very good start and I have complete confidence in the Minister’s and Penny Mordaunt’s commitment to this but we want to see it turned into practical action and practical results.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, for initiating this incredibly timely debate. My noble friend Lord McConnell referenced the UN’s 2030 agenda. Disability is referenced specifically in the SDGs relating to education, growth and employment, inequality, and accessibility of human settlements, and that is key to delivering this strategy. Education is fundamental to ending the poverty, discrimination and exclusion faced by disabled people in developing countries, yet it is estimated that in most countries disabled children are more likely to be out of school than any other group of children.
Nor should we forget the older population. In developing countries, people over 60 account for at least 43% of the population living with disabilities, compared with 38% globally. Raising awareness of the experience and rights of older people with disability requires data and evidence about what happens throughout a person’s life course. Can the Minister tell us how DfID is backing the work of the new UN Statistical Commission Titchfield City Group on Ageing, which is developing standardised tools and methods for producing data disaggregated by age and ageing-related data?
The 2018 disability strategy, which has recently been published, recognises the economic potential that can be unlocked by tackling discrimination and exclusion. Of the 1 billion people with disabilities, 80% live in developing countries. Economic growth has the potential to be the engine to drive change, but growth without jobs, inclusion, healthcare, education and human rights simply will not deliver on the SDGs or, for that matter, see the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, said, the strategy is an action point from the first Global Disability Summit held in July. I was very pleased to participate in a very small way in that summit, and I thank the Minister for facilitating that. It brought together not just Governments but civil society and the private sector, and of course it was co-hosted by Kenya. We should not forget the important role of civil society. It is not just a question of raising awareness among Governments; faith groups and trade unions also have an important role. Certainly, following on from the Rana Plaza disaster, trade unions played a key role in trying to help the injured and disabled, who were facing really terrible conditions, back into work.
However, as the noble Baroness said, to be effective and deliver lasting change for people with disabilities, DfID needs to set out clearly how it will implement the strategy long term and how it will measure change in the lives of people with disabilities, and by when. Can the Minister tell us how often DfID will update its delivery plan, which accompanies the strategy? We need to ensure—I hope that he will be able to reassure us on this point—that adequate human and financial resources are in place to implement all of the commitments set out in the strategy. That is key. However, I very much welcome the Government’s commitment and the Minister’s involvement in this initiative.
The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Lord Bates) (Con)
My Lords, I thank all who have taken part in this debate, which has very much brought us together. My noble friend Lady Anelay led it in her characteristic style, with great expertise and knowledge drawn from being a distinguished Minister in the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development. Her ongoing passion has been expressed through the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Street Children. She spoke about people with disabilities being invisible and in the form of statistics.
The noble Lord, Lord McConnell, focused his contribution on the sustainable development goals and the need to make sure that, although there might be explicit references in only five of the 17 goals, there are, through No One Left Behind, implicit references in all of them. My noble friend Lord Holmes reminded us of that great parliamentary moment, which I think will go down in history, when Secretary of State Penny Mordaunt was the first to announce the disability summit in British Sign Language at the Dispatch Box. He also spoke about how technology, far from creating barriers, can remove barriers and create great inclusion. The noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, spoke about access to education by women and girls, particularly in conflict situations. My noble friend Lord Shinkwin talked about the disability strategy having a clear sense of purpose and urgency, bringing people together.
My noble friend Lord McColl reminded us to approach all our dealings, strategies and actions with a sense of humility. He reminded us of the struggles that we went through to provide a decent service for people with disabilities as recently as the 1980s. My first job in government was in 1993 when I was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to the then Minister for Disabled Persons, Nicholas Scott. Some of the work that we did then paved the way for the Disability Discrimination Act, which was ground-breaking legislation. On a personal note, that Act and the Modern Slavery Act are probably the two pieces of legislation that I am most proud of being associated with.
My noble friend Lady Jenkin, who has done extensive work in promoting female involvement in our democratic processes, reminded us of the Voice & Vote exhibition in the Upper Waiting Hall organised by Sightsavers. In democracies, exercising a vote and standing for election are very powerful ways in which people can become visible and ensure that their needs are addressed fully.
The noble Lord, Lord Bruce, made a very profound point, saying that it was important to get better at involving people with disabilities in driving forward these changes, both in DfID operations and in programme delivery in-country. The noble Lord, Lord Collins, talked about how education was critical in giving people a pathway out of poverty. However, people with disabilities are the most excluded of all groups from that important right, and that needs to be addressed.
My challenge in the remaining eight minutes is to respond to 22 questions and to read the speech that has been prepared. I should say to my noble friend Lord McColl that since the 1980s the nature of the Civil Service has changed dramatically, particularly in the Department for International Development. They are very much focused on the “service” part of their title.
There are an estimated 1 billion people with a disability worldwide—that is, 15% of the global population—yet people with disabilities and their families are still poorer than people without disabilities in every social and economic area. My noble friend Lady Anelay reminded us that during the UK Government’s first ever Global Disability Summit in July 2018, which the noble Lord, Lord Collins, and many others were party to, the world promised to do more for disabilities. The Secretary of State for International Development—the former Minister for Disabled Persons and currently the Minister for Women and Equalities across government —said that the UK will take a lead in working towards a fairer world in which no one is left behind. At DfID we have been working diligently on this and have already met a significant number of the commitments that we made at the summit. Over 170 Governments made commitments, and civil society and private sector organisations made new global and national commitments at the summit, with over 320 organisations signing our Charter for Change.
The noble Lord, Lord Collins, mentioned the importance of civil society, particularly trade unions, in raising the issue of increased access for those with disabilities. We must work together with our partners and hold each other to account and, as the noble Baronesses, Lady Anelay and Lady Thomas, reminded us, learn from one another. Alone, we cannot achieve our vision of a world where all people with disabilities are engaged, empowered and able to access and enjoy their rights on an equal basis, but, together, we can. Unless all truly put disability inclusion at the heart of everything they do, we will not eradicate poverty and deliver on the sustainable development goals, as the noble Lord, Lord McColl, mentioned, or uphold and implement the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, referenced by the noble Lord, Lord Collins, and others. That is why the new disability inclusion strategy, which my noble friend Lord Shinkwin referred to, lays out how we can raise our ambition beyond the summit and build on our achievements to date.
The strategy identifies four thematic areas where DfID can make a significant difference and where we will focus our work. The first is ensuring that all children with disabilities can access high-quality education—my noble friend Lord Shinkwin gave some powerful personal testimonies as to how things were in this country not so long ago, while the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, urged us to take more action in that regard. The second area is working with other Governments to ensure that social protection systems, referred to by my noble friend Lady Jenkin, are inclusive of people with disabilities and their families. Thirdly, we should ensure that people with disabilities have access to economic opportunities, as the noble Lord, Lord Collins, mentioned. Finally, we must promote a fully inclusive humanitarian response in conflict situations, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas.
The strategy highlights three cross-cutting themes that will run through our work. The first is tackling stigma—the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, gave testimony in relation to Pakistan, and the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, spoke of his personal experience in his work with DeafKidz International, an organisation that I have visited and am enormously impressed by. The second theme is empowering women and girls and, the third, enabling access to life-changing technology, of which my noble friend Lord Holmes reminded us. I pay tribute to the work of my noble friend through the Global Disability Innovation Hub and share his pride at the worldwide legacy of the London Olympic and Paralympic Games. We have also committed to step up our efforts on mental health and psychosocial disabilities, an area that has been seriously neglected by the international community for too long.
Let me try to answer as many of the specific questions asked in the debate as possible. My noble friend Lord Shinkwin asked about education. We will support millions of children with disabilities out of school and are delivering targeted interventions to improve learning outcomes. The noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, asked about conflict situations in Somalia. Our office in Somalia is developing an action plan on disability inclusion. It will do more to get reliable and comparable data on disability and push its partners to prioritise the issue. The noble Baroness talked also about women’s and girls’ access to education. We are committed to supporting women and girls with disabilities who are marginalised both for their gender and their disability. The Girls’ Education Challenge has supported 40,000 girls with disability into education and we will continue that work.
My noble friend Lord Holmes asked how we could make greater use of technology. Access to appropriate assistive technologies such as wheelchairs, prosthetics, hearing aids and glasses—mentioned also by my noble friend Lord McColl—is a key enabler and can be transformative. We have now launched with the Global Disability Hub the AT 2030 programme, which we hope will take action towards that end. The noble Lord, Lord McConnell, asked whether we could assist countries to integrate the disability strategy into their own policies. Across the department, every country team will be expected to meet a set of standards by the end of 2019, including standards on leadership, engagement with disabled people’s organisations, influencing programmes on collecting data and shaping systemic reform.
My noble friend Lady Anelay asked what progress had been made on the global tracker on the International Disability Alliance website. A database of all commitments made at the summit is being developed on the IDA website, to be launched early next year. The “one year on” report is looking at initial progress made against the commitments and will be published later in 2019. My noble friend asked about progress on disaggregation of data. Key international partners made commitments at the summit to collect and use disaggregated data. For instance, the World Bank committed to include the Washington Group’s short set of questions for disability aggregation in at least 12 countries, with the upcoming household surveys reporting back to the bank by 2020. My noble friend asked what measures we were taking to ensure that the strategy addressed the needs of street children. Street children are among the most vulnerable people in the world. We have said that we will intensify our commitments to protect them. Our support around the world helps us develop systems, services and policies to that end.
The noble Lord, Lord Bruce, asked how many disabled people were employed by DfID. As part of the disability strategy, we have committed to increasing the attraction, retention and career progression of people with disabilities within DfID. One of our aims is to ensure that our workforce reflects the proportion of disabled people within the wider UK population. It is not compulsory for staff to declare that they have a disability. In September 2018, about 9% of staff within DfID confirmed to us that they had a disability. Our aim is to reach 12% in the next few years.
My noble friend Lord McColl asked how we were leading the way as an example to developing countries. We have some of the strongest equalities legislation in the world, including the Equality Act 2010, which my noble friend Lady Jenkin also referred to. The Government do not limit themselves to upholding the rights of disabled people in the UK; they champion disability rights across the world.
With my 12 minutes up, I thank again my noble friend Lady Anelay for leading a powerful and persuasive debate which, in this week of all weeks, has brought all sides of this House and all persons in it together.
Young People
(6 years ago)
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Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top
That this House takes note of the challenges facing young people.
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)
My Lords, it is a great honour for me to be able to introduce this debate on the challenges facing young people. I have deliberately made it a wide-ranging debate. There are therefore topics that I will not cover, partly because I know that many of my colleagues intend so to do. I look forward to hearing from them. I want before I continue to thank all those organisations that have briefed me and, I am sure, other Members. It is a topic that has encouraged a lot of organisations to let us know what they are doing and to challenge us on how we are working with young people.
We have all been young, even if some of us have almost forgotten what it was like. Sometimes, this means that we think that we know what it is like for young people growing up in the UK today. The reality is very different. Some stories are good. Far fewer young people today smoke; they spend more money on mobile phones than on drink; they are not using as many drugs as did a previous generation; many more will get qualifications at school and go on to university, and there are fewer teenage pregnancies than we have ever recorded before. I am quite pleased about the latter because I was in charge of that policy when I was a Minister.
However, there are significant challenges for young people today. Social media has opened up incredible opportunities for young people: they can self-publish poems and books; they can stream their own music; they can communicate with friends and family around the world, but they can also be bullied and be subject to grooming, exploitation and to a different form of loneliness laced with insecurity and lack of self-worth.
The Prince’s Trust has produced the Macquarie Youth Index for the past nine years. This year’s reveals that young people’s happiness and confidence are at their lowest since they started to be measured. The number of young people who do not feel in control of their lives has increased by one-third year on year.
We know from a range of evidence that mental health challenges have really increased in recent years. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health reports that in 2017 one in eight five to 19 year-olds had a diagnosed mental health disorder; that one in 20 had more than one; and that half of adults’ mental health problems start before the age of 14 and 75% before the age of 24. These are diagnosed problems. All the organisations contacting us tell stories of the additional problems that young people face—from academic pressure, where exams have become the norm in a way that was never imagined when I was young, but also from social media.
But there are positives. Young people are just as likely as adults to volunteer. Noble Lords who know me well will not wonder that I talk about this. I have had the privilege of being involved with Voluntary Service Overseas in different ways over the last 50 years, twice as a volunteer. My first volunteering experience was in Kenya for two years. VSO has been the lead charity running International Citizen Service, a programme for 18 to 25 year-olds initiated by the coalition Government in 2011. A diverse range of young people go to a developing country in small groups and work for three months with a group of young people from the host country, who are also volunteering, on a project. They are all expected to contribute some volunteering in their own community when they return. I have met lots of ICS volunteers, here and when I have visited the developing world, and it is the most inspirational activity. Many of them will be the leaders of tomorrow, here and abroad. All of them are clear about their learning, what matters and what contribution young people can make. I just hope the Government can sort out the reprocurement quickly and make sure the programme can continue. The uncertainty has been going on for quite a long time.
We have to face the reality that young people today are part of a generation that is deeply divided in its opportunities. We know about intergenerational inequality, with benefits for my generation not having been reduced by the Government when for young people they have been. Layer rising inequality between young people and families on top of that and there is an even bigger problem. It matters more than ever what sort of family you are born into; not just how much money they have—of course, that does matter—but where you live, what value the family puts on education, and the stability within the family in this very unstable world. For young people coming from families where they experience trauma from domestic abuse and so on, the challenges are even greater. We know all too well that the number of children and young people ending up in care has risen to very difficult and challenging levels. We also know the problems that too many young people and children face and experience in the care system. Too many of them end up in the criminal justice system or in exploitive relationships when they try to move on.
The rise in knife crime has also shown us how vulnerable some young people are, particularly in poorer neighbourhoods, to exploitation by gang leaders and drug traffickers, with the perpetrators often also being victims.
The rise in homelessness is having severe consequences for some young people, who are moved with their families miles from where they were living, meaning that they have to move schools, work out a new set of friends and get to know a new area, which all add to their vulnerability. Too many are sofa-surfing, which puts them at risk, and hidden from services. Too many young women end up being asked for sexual favours to get a room for the night. The New Policy Institute found that, in 2015, 30% of 14 to 24 year-olds were living in poverty. A survey this year found that 40% of local authorities had experienced a rise in youth homelessness. The lack of affordable housing is a real problem for young people. There has been a substantial rise in the number living in the private rented sector, with home ownership among 16 to 24 year-olds falling substantially.
Young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are losing out in education and are less likely to have power in their communities or in politics. If you have a degree, you are three times more likely to engage in civic life, although many reject traditional institutions—they may be deeply political in what they think about, but they are certainly not joining political parties. Only 50% of young people believe parliamentary institutions are essential for democracy. I suspect that number is greater at the end of this week. Maybe that is another reason why young people generally support a second vote on Brexit. Young people want to remain in the European Union—another area where my generation is totally out of touch with young people’s ambitions—by seven to one.
There are lots of other challenges, but all this is happening in a context of diminishing opportunities to find support. Young people are being left on their own, with no one to share ideas with and to help them work out how to shape their future. Since 2010, youth services spending has declined by 64%. Having been a youth and community worker when I was a lot younger, and having trained many youth and community workers, I know the opportunities that good youth work can open up for young people, and the safe spaces it provides for them to work things out and challenge themselves. How short-sighted we are to lose these opportunities.
Young people have ambition: they want a better world, decent homes and decent jobs. But we are building so many barriers for them. We need to listen to them, and to recognise that there need to be new ways of communicating and of enabling them to make a contribution. They need to be safe too. The Government cannot provide the whole answer but they set the context. They can close down opportunities or help to open them up. My problem is that there seems little chance at the moment of the Government recognising this, let alone engaging effectively to do it. Young people have something important and powerful to say about the future—theirs and ours—and we should listen to them.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
My Lords, the maths for this debate rather stretches the definition of tight timing. I ask that noble Lords start winding up their speeches as the clock reaches four minutes, otherwise the Front-Bench speeches may have to be foreshortened.
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)
My Lords, I warmly congratulate the noble Baroness on introducing this debate. She has created an appalling dilemma for us all, because there are so many points to which each of us wants to respond—particularly as I find myself in agreement with a huge number of her points. It is a paradox that, at a time of greater prosperity, physical health and opportunity, we have young people who are anxious and uncertain. Maybe that is partly because we live in a time of such change.
Before moving on to more substantive matters, I want to comment on the wretched fetish of social media, to which so many young people are addicted. It feeds them false facts and a false reality, but they are obsessed with Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat or Facebook—I cannot remember them all. It portrays all their friends as having a deliriously happy time while they are the only ones feeling lonely and isolated. It encourages them to compare themselves with their peers and causes problems around body image. The situation is extraordinarily serious: it causes bullying and much else besides. It is enormously important for us to do all that we can to create shared opportunities and purposeful activities in settings where young people feel part of a larger whole. Dangerous material can also come through on social media, and the NSPCC’s Wild West Web campaign tackles the sexually inappropriate and violent material that young people see.
The noble Baroness mentioned Dame Martina Milburn of the Prince’s Trust, who has now gone on to chair the Social Mobility Foundation. Dame Martina said:
“The single most important thing we can do to empower these young people is to help them into a job, an education course or on to a training programme”.
On all these counts, the Government deserve credit. Despite all the problems, it is the case that youth unemployment in the UK is at 11.5%. In France it is almost double that, at 20%; in Italy it is 30%; in Greece it is 43%; and the EU average is 15.1%. Whatever one thinks about the types of jobs or zero-hours contracts, they are an opportunity for meaningful activity, and the Government deserve credit.
It was Disraeli who wisely commented:
“Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of this country depends”.
The House will know that the Government have been relentless in their attack on inadequate schools. I know only too well, from my work in Camberwell, Brixton and Peckham, long ago in the 1970s and 1980s, about the inadequate education and the lack of expectations and rigour. Through UTCs, free schools and academies, the Government have been determined to raise standards. The Minister himself is a wonderful exemplar, as chairman of the Inspiration Trust, which has 14 academy schools in East Anglia. Will he tell me how many children previously in a failing local authority school are now in academies rated good or outstanding?
Only last week, at Battersea power station, the Secretary of State talked about the key need for skills. Further education and technical paths must be of equal esteem and effectiveness to revered universities. The CBI estimates that the greatest growth in jobs will be in management, professional and technical roles, all of which will require specialist skills that higher technical training courses could provide. This is an issue that unites the House, but we have to make real progress.
I move now to young people’s mental health, which the noble Baroness also mentioned. The increase in the figures is, I am sure, in part because people feel alienated and confused. We live in a diverse society, but in some ways that creates greater anxiety. David Goodhart’s book is about “anywhere” and “somewhere”, and the “somewhere” model gives more people a sense of space and belonging.
It has become more acceptable to talk about mental health problems, and I pay tribute to celebrities such as Jo Brand and Stephen Fry who have made mental illness an acceptable form of distress that can be discussed. I pay special tribute to the Charlie Waller Memorial Trust. Charlie Waller took his own life in 1997. His parents, Mark and Rachel Waller, set up a pioneering charity which has been an exemplar for best practice by equipping young people to look after their mental well-being, helping people recognise the signs of depression and ensuring that expert and evidence-based help is available.
My particular preoccupation when Secretary of State all those years ago was to achieve proper recognition and understanding of mental health and in particular to insist that it was part of the health of the nation strategy. I welcome the transforming programme being set out to assist young people with mental health problems, with a partnership between the NSPCC and schools. The Prime Minister said that every school should have someone who knows about mental health. Nelson Mandela said:
“There can be no keener revelation of society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children”.
I agree, and we have more to do.
Lord Adonis (Lab)
My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the passionate speeches of the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, and my noble friend Lady Armstrong.
I have always regarded policy on education and youth as, in principle, straightforward—the principle having been set out by the great philosopher RH Tawney:
“What the wise parent would wish for their children, so the state must wish for all its children”.
If the principle is straightforward, the problem is that what the wise parent would wish for their child is emphatically not delivered by the state for all children at the moment. I know that the Minister shares the great sense of urgency about the change and improvement needed. In the short time I have, I wish to raise three issues where I believe the state is not remotely living up to the expectations of the wise parent.
The first is exclusions from school. We face a crisis at the moment in the rising number of exclusions from schools, which lead directly to serious social disaffection and, in many cases, to the youth and adult justice systems. The figures are alarming. Permanent exclusions from school have gone up in each of the past five years. There were 4,630 in 2012, 4,950 in 2013, 5,795 in 2014 and 6,685 in 2015. Then, last year, there were 7,720. That is a rise from 4,600 to 7,700 in only four years—a totally unacceptable situation.
Fixed-period exclusions, which tend to escalate to permanent exclusions, have risen by just as much. I will not go through the figures for every year but there were 268,000 in 2012 and 381,000 in 2016. As a percentage of the pupil cohort, that is a rise of 3.5% to 4.8%. If you extrapolate from that, you get a social crisis that is truly alarming.
Edward Timpson, a former Children’s Minister, has been looking at this issue for some months. It needs intensive and urgent examination and we await his report with keen interest. I hope the Minister will be able to tell us something about it.
There is also the problem of off-rolling—of large numbers of pupils simply being taken off the rolls of schools. This practice is not properly policed and is becoming a rising problem on top of the figures I have already set out to the House.
My second issue is apprenticeships. The wise parent would wish for their child to have equality of opportunity whether they go on to university or a non-university course. We in this House and beyond have been going on about this issue now for at least a generation. The problem is that there is not equality of opportunity at the moment. The quality of provision and the amount of state investment are, out of all proportion, greater for pupils and young people going on to higher education than for those taking non-higher education routes.
I applaud the Government’s introduction of the apprenticeship levy in principle—it started two years ago—but it has not been properly managed. The number of youth apprenticeships on offer is declining, not rising, even as the apprenticeship levy has been introduced. The levels of youth unemployment, youth underemployment and inadequate training for young people are alarming, particularly in the more deprived communities, which also, as the Minister knows only too well, suffer from poor-quality schools. This also generates disaffection.
The third issue, touched on by my noble friend Lady Armstrong, is citizen engagement and how we train our young people for citizenship. I use the word “trained” deliberately because, like all social skills, it can and should be taught. I hugely regret that this Government have dismantled the citizenship education provision put in place by the last Government, but the issue is now becoming urgent because of Brexit. There is massive interest among young people in the Brexit process. I address meetings up and down the country on Brexit at the moment and I have never known larger meetings of young people. To put it bluntly, young people do not want to be excluded from the citizenship of Europe and they are expressing their views in numbers that I have never seen before in politics. To come to the nub of the issue, if we are to have a referendum next year, 16 and 17 year-olds should have the vote, there should be a ballot box and a polling station in every school, college and university in the country, and 16 and 17 year-olds should be automatically registered so that they do not have to go through the labyrinthine process of individual registration, which is keeping a large proportion of young people off the roll.
We face big and urgent issues and I have able to highlight only three. However, I would be grateful for the Minister’s comments on them at the end of the debate.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, when we talk about young people in a debate, we tend to go in one of two ways. One is, “It were tough when I were a lad. They don’t know what anything is about nowadays”, and the other is all gloom and dreadfulness. The answer is always somewhere in the middle. We are facing a world that is changing faster than anything anyone in this Chamber has experienced. Through the digital revolution, everything is happening more quickly. I think that the best thing the various bits of government could do is look at how we tell people what is out there and what the opportunities are.
At the moment, we have an entire society that seems to be going through something similar to the familiar story we hear in this Chamber from people who have held office about the red box with the one piece of relevant information tucked away at the bottom. You do not know where it is and you cannot find it. If you understand the systems you are dealing with, you will get the best out of society because the variety of information will come through in waves. If you do not know where to look, you will not. If you have guidance from family, friends and so on, it will help you to get the best out of society. It has always been the case that if you know what you are looking for, you will find it.
At the moment, the huge opportunities of the modern world are often missed because the people we are talking about have no one to show them where to look. There is a changing variety of opportunities in the types of work available in the creative industries, but we are not training people to tell young people how at least to get their foot in the door. If you do not get that sort of information, you stand very little chance of being in a position to exploit what will happen tomorrow. We must at least react to what is going on today.
In my experience, democratic government is at its best when it reacts quickly to what is happening now. Future-gazing has a bad record of getting things horribly wrong, but if we react to what is happening today, we tend to get better results. At the moment, we are not getting the best out of the environment around us because not enough people know how to get into it or access it properly. We need to accept that the old structure of careers guidance and advice, which asks young people what they want to do next, has to be better.
We may well have to provide better structures for lifelong learning in this rapidly changing world, but unless someone tells a young person what is available now and helps them to think about their jumping-off point, they will miss out. If we continue to underinvest in the knowledge of what is out there and the guidance to take people through, the groups with the least input from those around them in the form of family and close-knit support structures will continue to underperform on a massive scale. Unless people are at least informed about what is available, we will not get the best out of them.
I could go on for longer on this subject and one or two others, but I will leave it by referring to a debate from a few days ago. We found ourselves talking about another problem we face today: people going to the gym, pumping themselves up and taking drugs. I could not find anyone who could tell me exactly what these drugs do to you and why they are bad for you. I know that they are bad, but I could not find out how exactly. If that can happen to someone reasonably well-informed, heaven help a 17 year-old who has not been told anything about the subject.
The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, for calling this timely and important debate and laying out the context so helpfully. If I may say so, feeding her experience as a community and youth worker into political discussion and policies in this area benefits the House greatly.
I declare my interest in the register as a trustee of an adolescent mental health service, the Brent Centre, which grew out of the Anna Freud Centre 50 years ago—I am sorry; it is rather difficult for me to concentrate while the noble Lord, Lord Baker, is speaking. Anna Freud’s last work on adolescence was entitled Adolescence as a Developmental Disturbance; I see the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, laughing. Adolescence is an extremely challenging time. Freud highlights physiognomic changes and, particularly importantly, the fact that this is the time when a child makes his or her transition from dependence on the mother or father and moves towards adulthood.
During that difficult period, the peer group becomes extremely important, which is why youth workers and community police officers are so important for young people then. They need positive role models in younger adults who they can identify with. If one wants to understand why gangs are such an issue, one needs to recognise that children moving towards adolescence who lack guidance, good role models and support from youth workers may be excluded from school and left to their own devices. It is not hard then to see why gangs exist, according to Freud’s developmental model.
I want to talk in particular about adolescents in children’s homes. They are often the most traumatised young people because not only have they been traumatised in their family home, but they have been removed from their families—a traumatic experience. Often, they are placed in the children’s home only after several placements in a foster care environment. They have had multiple losses. I welcome the efforts and interest of successive Governments in improving the experience of children and young people in residential care. According to Anna Freud’s model, residential care and children’s homes are absolutely appropriate for adolescents. The peer group can be a very good tool in working on these issues. It is no wonder that boarding schools can be an excellent place for many adolescents to grow up in.
However, the level of need in our country was identified some time ago—in 2004, I think—by the Office for National Statistics, which found that 69% of children and young people in such homes have a mental disorder of some kind and 45% of them have a conduct disorder. Those high levels of trauma are typically being managed by people with low qualification levels; if you are fortunate, the residential childcare worker may have an A-level and the manager may have a degree. There have been some improvements in that direction.
There is a variety of young people in such homes. Some of them do not have those kinds of issues, but many of them do. One needs to ensure that those staff are well supported; that is a cause for concern, especially regarding this level of need. Will the Minister look at forming a working group to ensure that staff and managers in children’s homes have the support of a clinical psychologist or a child and adolescent psychotherapist on an ongoing basis? They could then form the healthy and strong relationships with these challenging young people that will prevent them entering the criminal justice—as they do too often—and being sexually exploited, instead going on to have careers, have families of their own and avoid having their children taken into care at a later date.
The Lord Bishop of London
My Lords, I also thank the noble Baroness for securing this debate. It has been said that young people are our future. They are not; they are our present. They hold the potential to reimagine the world to see possibilities, not obstacles. They are a transformative presence today, while shaping their and our future. But, as we have heard, life is complex for them. As the noble Lord, Lord Addington, commented, the world is changing fast for them. Yet I recognise more than anything else, as the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, commented, that their concerns are over identity and belonging.
In October, BBC Radio 4 announced the results of the “Loneliness Experiment”—a nationwide survey conducted by BBC Radio 4’s “All In The Mind”, in collaboration with the Wellcome Collection. The survey results indicated that 16 to 24 year-olds experience loneliness more often and more intensely than any other age group. Some 40% of respondents aged 16 to 24 reported feeling lonely often or very often, while only 27% of people aged over 75 said the same.
The young are also disproportionately affected by violent crime. This is true for those from black and minority-ethnic or disadvantaged backgrounds. Last month, 250 churches across London gathered with youth workers, the police, those in education and young people to ask what we can do together. As part of their place in the local community, churches made a commitment to work in partnership with other organisations to build on the existing work of schools, after-school clubs and youth projects to make their communities places where young people could find their identity, and feel they belong and are safe. However, one of the greatest challenges is how we fund, recruit and retain good youth workers—people who will remain in the community as young people grow up. As we have heard, role models are highly important for us psychologically. They help to guide us through life during our development. They teach us to make the important decisions that affect the outcome of our lives.
I also know from my previous life as a nurse that the only way to tackle these problems is through a whole-system approach, which I understand is now the consensus view. Funding is central to this, and I welcome the £250 million allocated by the Mayor of London to establish a violence reduction unit. But, as the commission on youth violence has spoken of, funding is often given in silos, with youth clubs regularly competing against one another for narrow funding streams.
As others have, I pay particular testament to the vital youth work going on, particularly what is happening in places of worship in community halls across this country. In part of my diocese, in the London Borough of Camden—according to the End Child Poverty coalition, 40% of children there live in poverty—the youth workers of St Mary’s, Primrose Hill, mentor more than 20 young people a week, undertaking multiple prison visits a month. The likes of St Mary’s are working hard to give our young people the hope that they deserve.
One of the wonderful characteristics of London is its diversity. It is multifaith and multiracial. At the same time we have seen growth in young people feeling marginalised, but I believe that we have more in common than divides us. I end my remarks by reminding noble Lords that there is reason to be hopeful. Earlier this year I attended a youth Iftar—an opportunity for young people across different religions to celebrate their diversity and to discover new things about each other. Our conversations planted seeds that will build community bonds and friendships. It also helped us to learn to value each other, to help build the peaceful and just society that all our religions seek. I reflected that this type of grand vision begins by us taking simple steps towards each other, but at times we need to help each other to do that.
Lord Chadlington (Con)
My Lords, I join others in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, for initiating this important debate. In the United Kingdom 90% of 16 to 24 year-olds own or have access to a smartphone and more than one-third spend more than 40 hours a week online. Teaching and learning moderation and constructive use of technology during formative years is essential for healthy young minds and bodies. Already, young people relate to each other differently. In just 15 years the number of teenagers who see their friends daily has halved. There is also evidence that young people in social situations are finding it harder to read the implications of facial expressions and body language. However, it is their behaviour online that indicates real trouble ahead, and I will talk about one of those behaviours—namely, youth gambling.
In the United Kingdom there are now 55,000 problem gamblers aged 11 to 16—a 400% increase in just two years—and a further 70,000 young people are at risk. As noble Lords will know, I have campaigned for years to at least reduce gambling advertising on and offline. I therefore welcome the industry’s decision to ban gambling advertising before the 9 pm watershed, during televised sporting events and for five minutes before and after the whistle. But let me be clear: this can only be the beginning of a long road to reform. Australia, which introduced the whistle-to-whistle rules originally, has now decided that these do not work effectively and is now banning gambling advertising between 5 am and 8.30 pm. Spain is considering bans from 6 am until 10 pm, and in January Italy is banning all gambling advertising on and offline. Avoiding a gambling epidemic among today’s young people also requires addressing gambling advertising online, where the industry spends five times what it spends on television.
The mental health issues to which this gives rise are considerable. Combined with the excitement of gambling is the release of dopamine in the brain, causing increased impulsivity and impaired decision-making. Addiction specialists indicate that those with these heightened levels of impulsivity are more vulnerable to risk-taking and to becoming addicted, meaning that young people are more at risk than adults. This is a key contributing factor to gambling-related suicide. What can be done? The DCMS and the Department of Health are already taking important initial steps, but more is needed and it is not all down to government. First, the normalisation of gambling through advertising on and offline must be addressed, and that should be the duty of the gambling industry, including organisations such as the Football Association.
Secondly, research that I independently commissioned suggests that parents, GPs and others do not know what to do to help young people manage their time on technological devices. They need education, guidelines and support. Thirdly, we need a 1% gambling industry levy to fund treatment, education and research into gambling-related harm, the latter being essential to widen the current evidence base upon which any legislation may be based. Finally, we need the age verification systems being introduced for porn under the Digital Economy Act 2017 to be extended to gambling websites.
Some argue that all these initiatives should be taken by the Government. I do not agree. Although I accept that some do require government assistance and support, the gambling industry must accept responsibility for moderating gambling-related harm among the young. They have a moral and social responsibility. I hope that the recent steps taken over television advertising are the beginning of a new and enlightened era in which the industry will voluntarily accept its moral responsibility in this area and help young people to grow up healthy in mind and body.
Lord Haskel (Lab)
My Lords, in her excellent introduction my noble friend spoke of many issues. But when you ask young people what is the biggest challenge they face, at the top of virtually every list is the lack of employment opportunities. There is a paradox here. The noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, sees a country at work. However, young people looking at the job market see 10% of the workforce under- employed, 5 million underutilised and 5.8 million earning less than the living wage. They see a growing insecurity at work, with zero-hours contracts and work on IT platforms. At the same time there is a strong demand for skilled labour. That is what young people see.
I am sure the Minister will remind us of the Government’s efforts to deal with this. But manifestly they are not working. Let us take apprenticeships. We have been promised 3 million by 2020 but we know we are not going to reach that target. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, told us why. Some levy payers have been accused of spending the levy refund on training their own managers while importing workers. The Institute for Apprenticeships has tried to get more balance but studies show that poor management skills are partly responsible for our low productivity. We certainly need young people to be in management training but in addition to, not instead of, good apprenticeships.
Some employers rely on FE colleges for skills training. We have debated many times in this House how the funding for FE colleges has decreased, considerably reducing the opportunities for young people to earn and learn. Of course, the FE sector is where the young underemployed who want a second chance to train can go to learn.
Yes, the Department for Education has a skills budget and much of this work is subcontracted to the private sector. But like most public service companies, the training companies are in financial difficulties. We had a Question about this yesterday. The culture of financial survival has become more important than the culture of training young people. No wonder many of the companies that remain are graded poor by Ofsted—yet another hazard to be faced by young people.
Of course, a major contributor to this uncertainty are zero-hours contracts and platform work. By employing people outside the legal definition of “worker”, companies absolve themselves of any responsibility for training, developing skills or welfare. Eighteen months ago the Taylor report called for action on this very point; 18 months later there has been little movement. Does the Minister have any news on this?
Perhaps the Government think the answer lies in technology. Yes, online courses—or MOOCs—are well developed. I have done a couple myself and they are excellent for providing background learning, but they work far less well when you get down to the particular. It is much the same with artificial intelligence. Our own Select Committee tells us that it augments, rather than replaces, our intelligence. So we still need the computer science, maths and engineering skills, together with the creative skills. What steps are the Government taking to implement this in their future plans for young people’s transition into work?
We have to do a lot better at providing the means, the opportunities, the chances and the encouragement for young people to become good economic citizens. Indeed, this has to be central to a successful industrial strategy. I hope Ministers are working on it.
Lord Ramsbotham (CB)
My Lords, after thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, for tabling this timely debate, I shall confine my contribution to the challenges facing those at the bottom of the pack, namely those young people who become involved with the criminal justice system. I also thank Edward Scott for his very helpful Library briefing.
To begin with numbers, as of June 2018 there were 894 children under the age of 18 in custody. This is a fall of more than 70% over the last 10 years, for which the Youth Justice Board must take much of the credit. Forty-seven of these were aged 14 or under and held in local authority secure children’s homes. Meanwhile 14,077 prisoners, or 17.5% of the total prison population, were classified as young adults in the age group 18 to 24. Young offenders used to be held in separate institutions which were for those aged from 15 to 18, or 18 to 21, or contained both age groups. However, in recent years too many young adults have been held in adult prisons on the grounds that they might grow up more quickly if held with adults, which I believe to be dangerous nonsense. All too frequently, adult prisons have no staff trained to look after or suitable facilities to cater for the educational, work training, social or medical needs of young adults, among whom were many “vulnerable and troubled”, as inspectors reported.
Moving on to the challenge that the YMCA believes causes most harm to young people, when released from custody only 27% of them had a job to go to. In 1991, in his seminal report on the prison riots in 1990, my noble and learned friend Lord Woolf identified the three things most likely to prevent a person reoffending: a home, a job, and a stable or family relationship, all of which were put at risk by the way that imprisonment was conducted. In 2017-18, inspectors gave only 43% of the prisons a positive rating for providing positive activity, finding that much of that provided was mundane, repetitive and rarely linked to resettlement objectives. I have always favoured the regionalisation of prisons, again recommended by my noble and learned friend in 1991, the impact of which I can best illustrate by describing an incident that I saw in a young offender institution which the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, knows well.
At Deerbolt in Barnard Castle, to help solve local skill shortages the local chamber of commerce brought in an aptitude test to see whether any of the young offenders had the potential to fill jobs. I shall never forget the grin that lit up the face of one young man, whose potential had been identified, when he was told that he could be trained in that skill while in prison so that, on release, he had a job to go to with a future. I believe that this could be repeated in every region in the country, thus helping to ameliorate skills shortages and the reoffending problem.
In addition to the 30% of people aged 14 to 21 in the United Kingdom who are living in poverty, 38% of those in secure training centres and 42% of those in young offender institutions have been in care. Forty-six per cent have been excluded from school and at least 70% are suffering from one or more personality disorders, about which virtually nothing is being done. In 1998, when the Office for National Statistics first disclosed this figure, it also found that the type of household they were living in,
“poor intellectual functioning and a history of sexual abuse or of bullying, were the factors most strongly associated with evidence of psychotic disorder”.
All this is on top of too many being locked up in their cells for 23 hours a day, with only limited access to the gym and almost none to playing fields, only 14 hours’ access to education per week, and their exposure to drugs and alcohol. Small wonder that 69% reoffend within a year.
What is to be done about all this? The only raw material that every nation has in common is its people. Woe betide it if it does not do everything possible to identify, nurture and develop the talents of its people—all its people—because unless it does, it has only itself to blame if it becomes a failed nation. I fear that on the evidence of the way that the criminal justice system is failing to respond to the challenges facing young people, that is where this great country of ours may be heading.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, I would like to say a few words building on the excellent speech by the noble Lord, Lord Chadlington, on the extraordinary effect that gambling is having on young people today.
The Gambling Commission’s report Young People & Gambling 2018 revealed the extraordinary scale of the problem. After years of progress, gambling participation is up with 14% of 11 to 16 year-olds having spent their own money on gambling. That is more than those who have drunk alcohol, smoked or taken illegal drugs. As we have already heard, the report estimated that 55,000 young people are now classed as problem gamblers.
It is extraordinary that some companies seem to encourage gambling. For example, the “Victoria Derbyshire” programme did an exposé on a casino company running a student poker league and offering student discounts and free drinks. I think of the children who are encouraged to gamble by associating it with celebrities. Recently, Logan Paul, made famous on YouTube, participated in a boxing bout watched around the world by young people. It was sponsored by a gambling firm. It is exactly this kind of event that attracts children and socialises them into believing that gambling is normal and—this is the key thing—an integral part of sport.
For many of us it is sport where gambling’s most malign influence becomes apparent, whether it is the wall of gambling advertisements on the TV, often by former stars of the sport, or the pitch-side adverts. I too welcome the whistle-to-whistle ban proposed by sections of the gambling industry, although it does not deal with pitch-side adverts, online targeted advertisements and football shirts bearing the logos of gambling firms. It was this relationship between football and gambling that prompted Simon Stevens, the head of NHS England, to designate gambling addiction as one of the “new threats” facing our health service, yet despite nine Premier League teams being sponsored by betting companies and the estimated gross gambling yield of £13.9 billion last year, the situation remains that the gambling industry has privatised profits and nationalised social costs.
Children love sport, and so they should, but why should they be bombarded without any choice with endless adverts? They see on average 3.8 gambling adverts a day and 66% of children have seen gambling adverts on television. In response, the charity BeGambleAware has started a campaign called “Can we have our ball back?” It is aimed at taking back sport from the gambling industry. If it does not succeed, we will create a generation who know the enjoyment of sport only through the prism of betting.
My third point is about the changing nature of gambling. The digital natives of the younger generation are wonderfully adept at using the internet and smartphones and are most at risk from the switch by gambling firms to online methods such as running adverts on social media, creating accounts followed by people with no age-verification necessary, and infecting game apps—even educational ones—with a constant barrage of betting adverts. Yet, more than that, the very nature of gambling is changing. No longer are people young or old limited by how long a bookie’s shop stays open and no longer are people easily prevented from gambling if they are underage, which is why we urgently need age verification. Phones with apps promoted by television personalities and games with in-app gambling facilities mark the change in the nature of gambling since 2005 when the Gambling Act was passed. Back then, no one had heard of loot boxes and skins, which is why countries such as Belgium have designated them as forms of gambling.
This debate is centred on the challenges facing young people and I have no doubt that one of them is the huge rise in gambling, which is why I hope we may have a special inquiry committee to investigate the social and economic impacts of gambling today.
Lord Norton of Louth (Con)
My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness on raising this important issue. Despite the speed and ease of communication that we have heard about today, there is a danger that people may feel distant from those taking decisions that affect them. There is a problem especially for young people, who face challenges not faced by their parents. I wish to focus on the challenge that they face in making sense of who makes decisions affecting their lives and the means by which those decisions are made. A real danger is a sense of detachment from our political system.
The challenge faced by young people is making sense of the political community of which they are a part but to which they may not necessarily feel that they belong. The danger is that we shall have a population characterised by political apathy and distrust. That is to no one’s benefit. It is a threat to the health of the British political system. If young people have a sense that they can affect the decisions that shape their lives, the more likely we are to have an active and stable polity. We benefit from having an informed and engaged citizenry.
As Dr Avril Keating told the Select Committee on Citizenship and Civic Engagement,
“research studies from other countries … have shown that civic participation during adolescence can have a wide range of benefits, both for individuals and for societies. In particular, these studies have found that participation in civic activities can have a positive effect on young people’s civic dispositions such as tolerance, trust, civic knowledge, political activism, political efficacy, sense of commitment to the community, and self-esteem”.
Society benefits from civic participation. It is thus a public good to ensure that young people have an awareness of our political system and how they can engage with it. I make no apology for returning to the theme that I developed in the recent debate on the report of the Select Committee on Citizenship and Civic Engagement. The report made a powerful case for enhancing citizenship education in our schools and it is particularly appropriate to return to that case today, not least given that it is my noble friend Lord Agnew who is to reply to the debate.
In the debate on the Select Committee report, I argued that for citizenship education to be taught effectively three conditions must be met: the subject must be taught by qualified teachers; it has to be distinctive and not combined with other subjects such as PSHE; and it needs to be taken seriously by schools. There is no real incentive for schools to invest resources in teaching citizenship. Given school budgets, the opportunity cost is too great.
On the first point, I remind my noble friend of his Answer to my Written Question in May when I asked him about the number of qualified teachers of citizenship in secondary schools. He revealed that in November 2016, of 4,800 teachers in state-funded secondary schools teaching citizenship, only 8.7% had a relevant post A-level qualification in the subject. A further 10.6% had a post A-level qualification in history. Even with those included, we are left with a situation where eight out of 10 teachers of citizenship lack a relevant post-A-level qualification. One could argue that it is better to be taught than not to be taught at all, but I would question that. Teaching citizenship badly can cause more harm than if it is not taught at all.
I therefore have three questions for the Minister. First, does he agree that the teaching of citizenship to young people is vital to the health of our democracy? Secondly, does he agree with the conditions that I have advanced as necessary for citizenship to be taught effectively? Thirdly, if he does, what steps are the Government taking to ensure that those conditions are met?
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, am very grateful to my noble friend Lady Armstrong of Hill Top for introducing this excellent debate with such an outstanding speech, and I am grateful to other speakers. I shall speak about obesity and its relationship with mental health. Tackling childhood obesity is one of the biggest challenges that face us and, in turn, young people.
The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health cites obesity as one of the top three challenges facing young people. The statistics are startling. Data from the national weighing programme shows that children aged 10 to 11 are now the heaviest they have been since recording started. Government figures also show that almost one in five children are obese when they start primary school, which rises to one in three by the time they start secondary school at age 11. These figures come from the national child measurement programme, which measures children’s height and weight at the ages of four and 11. Between the ages of 12 and 15, the statistics are not as strong but seem to indicate that, if we extrapolate, they are probably even heavier. The most recent return from the national health survey shows a spike among those aged between 12 and 16, which is very worrying.
We are all aware of the risks from obesity—chronic, life-limiting conditions such as diabetes—but healthcare professionals are also seeing an increase in bullying, low self-esteem and mental health issues among overweight and obese children. That should be of grave concern to us. Mental health is a big issue, as others have described, and I shall not recite or repeat the statistics given to us so far. An emerging point that we need to address which we are aware of based on evidence is that half of adult mental health problems start before the age of 14.
This brings me to the three recommendations made in the Green Paper on child and adolescent mental health published in December 2017. The first was to,
“identify a Designated Senior Lead for Mental Health to oversee the approach to mental health and wellbeing”,
in schools. The recommendation went on:
“This link will provide rapid advice, consultation and signposting”.
The second was to,
“fund new Mental Health Support Teams, supervised by NHS children and young people’s mental health staff, to provide specific extra capacity for early intervention and ongoing help”,
in schools. The suggestion in the Green Paper was that this would be rolled out by 2025, stating that all areas would get training to help identify and train a designated senior lead for mental health. I should like to know whether the senior lead for mental health will assist in the campaign to fight childhood obesity. Will they be given specific training in this area? Will they be able to signpost children and their families to appropriate resources? Given the increasing problems we have with mental health, will the Government consider increasing the programme with a faster rollout aiming for an earlier date in 2025?
I recognise that these issues cross departmental boundaries and I normally speak on health topics, but increasingly we find that schools have been drawn into this and hear from teaching professionals that they are unhappy that they are required to carry additional burdens which they believe go beyond their remit. I should welcome a comment from the Minister on that, given that he now has substantial responsibilities. Recently, I read the report from the Chief Inspector of Schools, who felt that the balance was going way beyond what should be expected of professionals in school, and that it should revert to where it should properly be dealt with: with parents. Can he give a view on what she had to say and how we can resolve the issue, as the chief inspector believes that responsibility should not rest in schools?
Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, for initiating this debate. I declare my interest as a governor of Coram, the children’s charity. Part of Coram, Coram Voice, delivers on behalf of the Department for Education the national advocacy safety net and advice service for looked-after children and care leavers, which goes under the name Always Heard. Our role is to attempt, as best we can, to voice the needs, concerns and experiences of the children and young people who are not represented here in person and who, in most instances, do not yet qualify to have their voices heard through exercising their right to vote.
The Prime Minister, yesterday morning, in what was perhaps even by her standards a rather busy day, said that she wants,
“a thriving economy with nowhere and nobody left behind; a stronger society where everyone can make the most of their talents”.
Those are laudable aims, but Brexit is, and has been, so all-consuming and reactive that it has allowed far less focus on those in danger of being left behind than they deserve. Debates such as this remind us of other pressing priorities. Surely, helping children and young people who are in many instances being left behind is a priority in which we all have a personal stake.
I will focus first on the issue of providing adequate independent advocacy for the more than 70,000 children and young people in England who are reliant on the state for their care and well-being because their families cannot safely care for them or they have suffered abuse or neglect. The complexities of and inconsistencies in the system mean that many children and young people are unaware of their rights and unsure where to turn for help, and they struggle to access the support to which they are legally entitled. An independent advocate could ensure that children’s views and wishes are communicated clearly and are taken into account—a point made clearly by the noble Lord, Lord Addington.
A 2016 report from the Children’s Commissioner for England indicated that half of local authorities were supporting less than 8% of the children they considered eligible for advocacy. Less than 10% of children in care and care leavers accessed a service in half of local authorities.
Secondly, I want to highlight the concern that many local authorities are struggling to provide timely or effective support to children who present as homeless or at risk of homelessness. The charity Centrepoint estimates that 103,000 young people in the UK presented to their council in 2017-18 as homeless or at risk, and less than half received effective support. And this is nearly 10 years since the Government issued clear joint guidance to children’s services and local housing authorities about their duties to secure or provide accommodation for homeless 16 and 17 year-olds—guidance that has recently been reinforced as a result of the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017. An important part of that Act is a new data-collection initiative, H-CLIC, which has the potential at last to create a central uniform hub of information that can be used to inform wider policy. What progress has been made on implementing the H-CLIC software and putting in place the necessary staff training programmes?
I suggest four ideas to the Minister for the Government’s consideration. The first is a duty on local authorities to provide an active offer of advocacy support. The second is the right to an independent advocate, enshrined in law, for all children and young people receiving or seeking care or support from the state, including those leaving care to adoption. Thirdly, there should be a requirement for local authorities to ensure provision of independent advocacy support and its active promotion to any child approaching local authority children’s or housing services. Fourthly, there should be a requirement to collate data on children presenting as homeless, including how many receive support under Section 17 of the Children Act 1989, how many receive support under Section 20 and how many were refused support.
Data is king; without it one is flying blind. It is difficult to identify trends, good or bad, in a timely fashion without it. It is essential in helping to identify best practices, and without reliable data it is impossible to establish appropriate key performance indicators, which create an easily intelligible shorthand to understand and analyse the extent to which we are succeeding in our legal and moral duty to help these children and young people.
Lord Sawyer (Lab)
My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, for initiating this debate. I will focus on forgotten young workers; in so doing I refer to a report, The Forgotten Workers, which highlights the plight of young workers in our economy. Launched a couple of weeks ago, it captures research by Dr Jo McBride of Durham University and Dr Andrew Smith of Bradford University. It examines an emerging social phenomenon of low-paid workers who have no choice but to work in multiple jobs in order to make ends meet.
The beauty of this report is that it is dominated by the evidence of the workers, not the opinions of academics. These young workers cannot get enough pay or hours; they do not get sufficient opportunities to acquire decent full-time work. They are trapped in a cycle of multiple low-paid jobs because of the lack of secure, full-time, better-paid work. The report is not solely about young people but they form a large part of the sample. Most are overqualified for the work they are involved in; despite having A-levels, degrees and even master’s degrees, they feel pressurised into taking any job—anything available—regardless of their qualifications.
The young workers studied often had two, three, four or even five different jobs at once. One had five, as he could not get one decent full-time job with a reasonable salary to support his young family—and he had a master’s degree. McBride and Smith class these workers as “the underemployed” as they are low paid, cannot acquire sufficient working hours to make ends meet and yet are overqualified for the jobs they do. They also heard from older workers explaining how their sons and daughters were still living at home as they could not afford to leave. They were referred to as “boomerang kids”, as they could not afford rents or mortgages, given their low-wage employment.
The report brings to our attention that the rise in insecure, precarious work in the UK is reducing the chances of many people to attain decent, secure, better-paid work. The rapid growth of temporary, agency, casual, term-time only, seasonal and zero-hour contracts is reducing opportunities for our younger workforce to get full-time, secure jobs. These types of contracts are becoming more and more accepted as the norm; this needs to be addressed as it affects many of our people and has the potential to harm more young workers in the future. We all know that young people are finding it difficult to buy property. When they cannot get a full-time job, they also cannot get a part-time mortgage, rent, council tax, water rates or whatever.
The report recommends, among other things, that employment protection and policies need to be updated to address the changes that work and the wider labour market are undergoing. It also argues that there needs to be better regulation of wages and working time, with guaranteed hours and pay premiums restored for working non-standard hours. There also need to be more opportunities for young people to attain full-time, secure and better-paid work to make work pay. I will send a copy of the report to the Minister and place a copy in the Library for Members who would like to look at it.
On 20 November, I attended a meeting organised by the noble Lord, Lord Bird, to listen to Sophie Howe, the Future Generations Commissioner in Wales. She spoke of her role as the guardian for future generations to meet their needs, and how she was engaging with and encouraging public bodies to take action to meet the needs of future generations. I was inspired, pleased, surprised and encouraged by this encounter; the British Parliament ought to have a look at the important work being done in Wales. If we do so, and if we look at the future with an objective eye instead of stumbling from crisis to crisis, we might be able to get the kind of future that is not set out in the report.
It is heartening to hear that we have our own Select Committee, which I was not absolutely aware of, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord True, looking at intergenerational issues. I am sure this will produce some helpful suggestions on matters covered in this debate. I wish the Minister good luck with reading the report. We look forward to hearing back from him and to debating it in the House.
Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Armstrong for initiating this debate and for introducing it so powerfully. Coming last of the Back-Bench speakers is not enviable, and less so after a debate of such variety, covering so many important aspects. Noble Lords have spelled out eloquently many of the challenges facing young people. I shall not repeat their wise words.
The challenges facing young people are often diverse, complex and not of their own making. It is important both to protect young people and to empower them; these are basic human rights. I believe it is also important to involve young people in defining their own needs and to respond to their concerns with positive and appropriate interventions. That means asking young people and involving their energies in solving the problems. I thoroughly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, about citizenship education and involving young people in education.
We can begin to have an impact on the challenges facing young people only if we listen to them and take their views seriously. Sometimes the biggest challenge for young people is being listened to. I want to give a couple of examples of the way that this might work. Last year, I was involved in a seminar in Portcullis House on child mental health and child-friendly justice, organised and funded by the Council of Europe and the UK Parliament. “Children” means those up to the age of 18. Half the participants were children and some older young people; the other half were European parliamentarians, NGOs and the police. Discussion took place in small groups, feeding back to plenary sessions. The young people were vocal about the challenges that they faced. They were totally involved and the seminar received some moving statements and suggestions for improving services. I will give noble Lords a flavour of what they said.
One said, “We are experts by experience. Policies are often good but badly implemented. There are problems of access, of waiting lists. There are not enough counsellors in schools and not enough mental health services for young people where they are treated in a child-centred way. Early diagnosis is important, otherwise the challenge of mental health gets bigger and bigger. We need key workers who follow the progress of the young person step by step”. I think that noble Lords will appreciate how sensible that advice is.
I shall now relate a few of the comments on child-friendly justice. I am pleased to see that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, is here, as he has always supported child-friendly justice. The young people said that the training of professionals needs to make systems more child-friendly; that there are passionate and committed people in the workforce but they need support and funding; that children get passed around and that is not helpful; and that multi-agency work is needed. They said that some children have particular challenges—BME young men, refugees, and lesbian and gay young people, for example; that the justice system is designed for adults but too often applied to children; that the system should be built around the needs of the child and should rehabilitate rather than punish; that a child should be encouraged to grow out of crime; and that the age of responsibility—10 in England—should be raised.
Due to these young people expressing their feelings, a report involving them was produced last November, with follow-up round tables with Ministers—Jackie Doyle-Price and Ed Argar, in particular. The young people’s movement has grown and become more determined. Peer support and self-help are also growing. Can the Minister say how the Government are encouraging the voice of the child to be heard, in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child? Can his department perhaps provide examples of good practice? I believe that listening to young children and taking on board what they say is supremely important.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, for initiating this debate. I have very many happy memories of her time as Secretary of State for Local Government, when we had a vibrant youth service throughout the UK.
What are the challenges? They include jobs and unemployment, poverty and homelessness, a lack of affordable homes, physical health, education disparity, growing up too quickly and bullying. I suppose that those challenges have always been there but today we have some 21st-century challenges, which many of your Lordships have mentioned: the pressure of materialism, negative stereotyping, the pressures of 24-hour social networking, issues related to body image, eating disabilities or emotional difficulties with food, obesity and knife crime.
What we have heard is a sad catalogue of young people challenged in many ways. Jobs and unemployment continue to be an issue. Poverty and homelessness go hand in hand, and the number of young people living on our streets should be a matter of shame. Sadder still is that a significant minority of our young people tick several boxes on the list. Someone who is unemployed is also likely to be living in poverty. This same group of young people is unlikely to be in good health. Some of them will end up in the criminal justice system, often for petty crimes.
Of course, these issues have always been with us to a greater or lesser extent, certainly for as long as any of us can remember, but some things have improved. There are now more educational opportunities for young people, with most young people staying on until 18 and half of them moving into higher education—the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, is not here, but I should say that maintained schools are now outperforming academies. Job opportunities for young people are available, although many of the new jobs that this Government have created are zero-hours contracts which do not help them plan for their future.
Only yesterday, we heard the Prime Minister in Downing Street restate her determination to improve things in Britain. We first heard it on 13 July 2016, when she spoke so passionately about “burning injustice”. Unfortunately, this Government have done little to reduce such burning injustices in the past two years, largely because much of their energy has been spent on trying to get us out of Europe, with the rest spent on trying to sort out internal disagreements in the Conservative Party.
I want to focus on a range of 21st-century pressures which the Government have failed to take action on or been slow to react to—they are pressures that nobody in this Chamber will have experienced as a young person. The noble Baronesses, Lady Armstrong and Lady Bottomley, and a number of other noble Lords mentioned the internet. While the internet is not the root of all evil and has many good and valuable features, the failure of Governments, including ours, to establish any proper regulatory control over content and over how social media are used is totally unacceptable. Such lack of regulation—I do not pretend that regulation is easy—means that young people are exposed to many unwelcome influences.
Many of the profits of the big internet providers come, directly and indirectly, from pornography. It is legal somewhere in the world for almost any sexual activity to take place between two or more adults. All such activities, and some that border on the illegal, can easily be found on the internet by entering two words in Google or other search engine and clicking once on the top entry. There is immediate free access to more than 10 million hardcore videos. Thank goodness the British Board of Film Classification is now taking action following an initiative from the Government, but we must not be complacent; we must be really strict about what we do.
A major concern of young men and young women is body image, where a standard of perfection is made to seem the norm. Websites used by young people are populated by what we might called the “Love Island” generation, with perfect bodies. Even on the Mail Online, the front page is always half full of beautiful people, with women who all seem to be size 8 and men who must spend all their time in the gym.
Social media are a recent phenomenon, but the majority of young people now use them daily on their mobile phone, iPad and computer. While they are a great communications tool if used wisely, misuse is also significant in a number of ways.
Age verification has been the subject of frequent discussions between government and internet providers. In 2015, the Independent carried a story about the age limit for Facebook being raised to 16. Nearly four years later, it remains at 13 but seems very easy to circumvent, with figures showing that nearly four out of five young people under 13 have social media accounts. I remember at my school children as young as seven and eight having Facebook accounts. It is now clear that we cannot put the internet genie back in the bottle, so we must make sure that children and young people are resilient enough to cope as best they can with these 24/7 pressures—perhaps Mr Clegg could help us on that score.
I was going to talk about gambling, but the noble Lord, Lord Chadlington and the right reverent Prelate the Bishop of St Albans gave us a tour de force on that subject. There is something perverse about seven and eight year-olds going to the souvenir shop of their football club and coming away with a football shirt with an advert on the back for internet betting. It cannot be right that over half our Premier League football clubs are sponsored by betting companies.
Most of these problems have led to a huge increase in mental health problems. I will not repeat the figures given at the beginning by the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong. I will give only the two alarming and terrifying figures that frighten me most: of those 11 to 16 year-olds with mental health issues, 25.5% have self-harmed or attempted suicide at some point. Currently, 65% of children and young people with mental health problems do not have access to mental health provision. What are the Government doing about it? Let me give you something good. I came across a young girl who suffered from severe depression, which was picked up at her school by CAMHS. She had to wait a while for CAMHS to be involved, but it referred her immediately to her doctor, who gave her medication, sent her to a counsellor and gave her an app to use. That was fantastic and almost immediate. This sort of reaction should be available to every young person with a mental health problem, which sadly is not the case.
The Government have set up seven trail-blazers. Great. These trail-blazers will do the work and report, but what are we doing with other schools in the meantime? I am concerned that our mental health initiatives are more health-based than school-based. I want to see not just a mental health awareness champion but quick access to mental health experts in every school. CAMHS—child and adolescent mental health services—was good but was reduced to a shadow of its former self by local government cuts. As I said in an Oral Question, we have a fantastic psychological service in the local authorities, which could be the solution to many of these issues. We should look at what is happening in Wales, where in most schools there is access to counsellors. The solution is not about just putting some money in and setting up trail-blazers but about seeing that young people do not slip through the net.
The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, raised two issues. I agree with him entirely about school exclusions. It is rather interesting that at one end there are huge numbers of school exclusions—something like 45 schools have excluded 20% of their pupils—and at the other end a huge and increasing number of young people are in home education. Schools are off-rolling their pupils to private companies, which they pay so that those children are not in school. That cannot be what our education service is about.
Finally, how successful are we in engaging young people to decide their own future? It is alarming that the number of young people who vote in local or national elections is pitifully low. If we could encourage them to register to vote, Governments of all political persuasions would take notice and do something about their issues and concerns.
Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)
My Lords, it is a privilege to speak in a debate of this kind. I just wish that the levels of passion with which we began the week and with which a few of us at the fag end of the week are obliged to debate this important issue had been in inverse proportion—that we could be truly full and passionate now and that just a few people had been worried about Europe at the beginning of the week. Would that not have been a wonderful and proper reflection of our priorities?
Lord Griffiths of Burry Port
It is so marvellous to see the Government Front Bench giving me a hearty “hear, hear” on that—I mention it so that it will go into Hansard. How wonderful, too, to speak in a debate initiated by my noble friend—she was a noble friend before she was ennobled and became a Member of this House—who has not only led and shaped policy that was humane and reached parts that are not normally reached from government levels, but has also done it on the streets and in the communities, which gave authority to what she said.
I have made a patchwork of notes of the speeches that have been made. It would be invidious to mention people by name but it is worth me trying to describe the pattern. The subjects fixed on by various Members were duplicated by others. More than one person spoke on each of these subjects and they all reflect the list in the very helpful Library briefing: mental health, loneliness and identity, employment, citizenship, obesity and mental health, care and gambling—which got a special mention. Members have felt it important to emphasise each other’s points, as we reach out to give an adequate response to the challenge implicit in the debate. I am happy about that.
I have been thinking more generically. I am the president of the Boys’ Brigade and that gives me access to lots of young people across the countries of the United Kingdom. I spent quite a lot of the summer on leadership training courses in Belfast and Edinburgh, and at the Boys’ Brigade headquarters here in England. My work in schools and communities has gone on and on, particularly through my church work, and if there is a voice that I want to presume to have heard, it is that of the young black boys and girls with whom I have had extraordinary opportunities for conversation and development. I will come back to that in a moment.
Thinking back over the past 18 months or so and the debates in which I have taken part, I note that those debates were about obesity, mental health, children’s use of the internet and safeguarding them from its worst aspects, gambling and children, and bullying, knife crime and the criminal justice system. I think of those five subjects and wonder why we cannot see that, instead of separate debates that compartmentalise them, a gravitas and critical mass is beginning to be built up that might lead us—as in the 1980s with the Children Act 1989—to look at the place of children generically, from all angles, to see whether we should not find a more creative way forward. I think too of the headline topics in the briefing from the Library: unemployment, poverty, homelessness, crime and prison, and suicide and mental health. Again, we have five different tags.
I am interested in the number of subjects being five. At the moment, I am doing a bit of work on the Beveridge report. When it went through this very Parliament there was a Division in that war-time debate—a time when nobody wanted to divide the House. It was initiated from this side of the House by my own hero, Jim Griffiths, the Member of Parliament for Llanelli. In the end, it led to a commitment on the part of the Labour Party to implement the Beveridge report instantly as soon as it got into office. I believe that that was a major factor in the election victory of July 1945. Beveridge identified five evils: squalor, illness, ignorance, disease and want. Instead of looking at those in a compartmentalised way, through his report he looked at creating a welfare state that would stretch into areas of need in a more generic way.
I spoke to an 18 year-old black man whose mother was worried that, with his splendid A-levels, he did not want to go to university. I sat him down and asked him to tell me why. He said, “I know you’re going to tell me that I could be the Prime Minister, a journalist, a barrister, a teacher or a social worker. But on the street, we all know that those things take too long and we have too many obstacles as black people to get into the professions where we might scintillate and develop a career”. I said, “Well, if you are not going to go into those, what are you going to go into?” “Five things”, he said—there you are, five again. He said, “Quick money is to be made in one of these: crime, drugs, fame, music and football”. Each one of them, of course, is a lottery, with about the same chances as you have in the National Lottery to make it and the kind of money that they fantasise about. At the same time, it made me aware of what extra obstacles young black people are faced by in a world that is inimical to them.
I have two or three minutes left. The following is for illustrative purposes, and my experiences are necessarily anecdotal. I do not have a command of statistics and I am not a professor of sociology, but I have worked with kids.
A 16 year-old Muslim boy was expelled from school for carrying a knife. His parents were worried. I found a room for him to sit his GCSEs and he did rather well. However, he went on carrying a knife and selling drugs and was imprisoned. We had a great fear that he might be radicalised while in prison.
In a girls’ school for which I have responsibility in east London—it is just half a mile from another girls’ school from which three girls went off to Syria—we worry about how to implement a Prevent programme that balances compassion, care and vigilance without it being a police-state type of authoritarian programme.
Louis, a young man they tried to kill on the streets not far from where I was living, is now rehabilitating young black offenders himself in an institution to do that. He is a wonderful young man who has learned from experience and wants to do better for his contemporaries and younger people.
Another young man had an opportunity to go to Oxford. Boy oh boy, getting black people into Oxford and Cambridge is still the worst thing in the world. However, when he became the first black president of the junior common room and got his splendid degree in PPE, he went on to serve in public life. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and I have taken an interest in this young man and we believe that he could become Prime Minister—and why not?
I was arguing with the vice-chancellor of Cambridge University and asking why a young black woman could not get into Cambridge even though she had all the necessary qualifications. There were admissions tutors in colleges who swore that they were egalitarian but whose entry procedures seemed to prohibit a fair way of looking at people like her. She was not admitted but she achieved a first-class honours degree. We got her into a commercial law firm and the next barrier will be whether she can become a partner when the time is right. Getting women partners is one thing; black women partners is another. Young black people have problems beyond other people’s problems. However, I must not dilate.
The note I have made from what I have heard today is that listening to young people is a primordial responsibility which lies upon us all—not in a patronising or paternalistic way, but from wanting to hear the wisdom they have, the ordinary things that would make them happier than they are, and to see and welcome the great things that some of them are doing despite all the obstacles. I am pleased to have taken part in this debate and, once more, I thank noble Lords for making it possible.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, on securing this important debate. Many questions have been raised by noble Lords and I shall endeavour to answer as many as I can. It always seems to fall to me to cover questions for 10 different government departments.
I can reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, that we are adamant that all young people deserve and have the right to world-class education regardless of their background or where they live. We have shown that giving high-performance school leaders and teachers freedom and autonomy can deliver this through free schools and academies. Eighty-six per cent of schools inspected in England are rated good or outstanding and 1.9 million more children are now in those schools. This represents 84%, compared to 66% in 2010. Multi-academy trusts illustrate how good practice is no longer limited to individual schools. Regardless of geography or the level of diversity in their intake, many consistently achieve exceptional results. To answer the question asked by my noble friend Lady Bottomley, more than 500,000 children who were previously in failing local authority schools are now in good or outstanding schools.
To address the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, about careers guidance, our careers strategy commits investment of more than £70 million each year until 2020. It ensures that all schools and colleges will have a dedicated careers adviser to support and encourage young people to find the right path for them, be that into work, continuing academic study or a vocational qualification. I agree completely with him that this is an extremely important priority.
The noble Lord, Lord Haskel, asked about youth employment. We recognise that the academic path is not suitable for everyone. We will be investing more than £0.5 billion per year to deliver a world-leading technical education system. The new T-levels will have real labour market value, credibility with employers and help young people to achieve their potential. We have recently announced that T-levels will contribute to UCAS points to underline their value. The number of 16 and 17 year-olds in education or work-based learning is at the highest level since consistent records began, at 90.5%. For those aged 16 to 24, only 10.9% are not in education or employment, the lowest figure on record.
I take on board the comments of several noble Lords. Some of this work may not be initially of the highest quality, but my first job was a zero-hours contract at 20 pence an hour and I was laid off when it rained. However, it was a start.
Lord Griffiths of Burry Port
Does the noble Lord not still have the same job?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
That would need a longer answer.
Research has shown that children with higher levels of emotional, behavioural and social well-being have, on average, higher levels of academic achievement. We are prioritising resources in 12 opportunity areas. We are bringing together local and national partners to improve outcomes for the most disadvantaged. Through the work of this Government, 18 year-olds from disadvantaged backgrounds are over 50% more likely to enter full-time higher education in 2018 than they were in 2009.
I share the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, about the opportunities for young black people. We have succeeded in narrowing the attainment gap by 10% through the pupil premium, spending more than £13 billion since 2011. It is now in the interests of good and outstanding schools actively to recruit pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds.
We also recognise the specific challenges for children with special educational needs and disabilities. We have transformed the support available for young people and their families. We have invested £390 million since 2014 to support local areas in implementing reforms and we continue to fund parent-carer forums.
The noble Lords, Lord Adonis and Lord Haskel, asked about apprenticeships. We have reformed the system in the most fundamental way since the war but we accept that it is still evolving. We are working closely with employers and have already made changes in response to feedback. I am not sure that the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, is listening to these specific points. He indicates that he is and I thank him. We will increase the amount of funds that levy-paying employers can transfer to other employers from 10% to 25% from April next year and will reduce the amount that smaller employers pay for training from 10% to 5% next year. By 2020, we will be investing nearly £2.5 billion in apprenticeships per year to increase the number of high-quality opportunities.
The noble Lords, Lord Adonis and Lord Storey, asked about exclusions. I share their concern about this issue. When I ran my own academy trust, I required any head teacher to ring me personally when a permanent exclusion was under consideration and I always told them that I regarded it as a professional failure on their part. We are working with Edward Timpson, and I am meeting him next week as a prelude, we hope, to his report going out early next year. Last week I met a director of children’s services in Leeds who told me about an innovative idea of providing funding to a mainstream school where a child is at risk of exclusion to enable that child to spend some time in specialist provision, while leaving accountability for that child’s educational outcome with the school at which he or she is registered. I believe that such innovations can better align the interests of the system, which does not happen sufficiently at the moment. We are delivering a manifesto commitment to review why children identified as in need of help and protection have such poor outcomes and make an assessment to improve them.
A child’s home learning environment is one of the biggest influences on their vocabulary, but socioeconomic factors can affect the quality of those environments. We are committed to supporting parents to improve the quality and quantity of adult-child interactions, unlocking the power of learning in the home. Some 92% of three year-olds and 95% of four year-olds now access 15 hours of free early education per week. The early years pupil premium provides more than £300 per eligible child to support better outcomes for disadvantaged three and four year-olds. The Secretary of State has set out his ambition to halve by 2028 the number of children finishing their reception year without the communication and reading skills they need.
One in four adults and one in 10 children will experience mental illness, which is why we are working with colleagues across government to improve mental health and well-being in young people. Our Green Paper, Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health Provision, sets out ambitious proposals and confirms our commitment to providing support to schools. That includes the implementation of a trained designated senior lead in all schools and funding for new mental health support teams. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, mentioned looked-after children specifically. We recently revised our statutory guidance to place greater emphasis on children’s mental health needs. Virtual mental health leads were among a number of recommendations made by the DfE and DHSC working group on the mental health of children in care.
Every child’s experience at school should be a happy one. However, at times, young people face the challenges of bullying and harassment, which is never acceptable. My department remains committed to keeping all children safe, which is why we further strengthened the statutory guidance, Keeping Children Safe in Education. We have also produced guidance for schools and teachers on how to prevent bullying and support those who experience it. My noble friends Lady Bottomley and Lord Chadlington and the noble Lord, Lord Storey, are right about the huge changes and pressures faced by children in today’s society, particularly through electronic and social media.
Today, bullying can come in many forms, not just in a classroom or social atmosphere but from a much wider group of peers. We have seen a rise in young people reaching out for help with their mental health, but we must ask ourselves why we are seeing such a rise in those asking for help. I for one do not believe that it is down to just exam stress, a troubled home life or “regular” peer pressure. In many cases, the potential dangers of social media become realities. We need to encourage our young people to take time away from screens. The noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, referred to happiness levels in children—an area that deserves much more focus.
The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and my noble friend Lord Norton stressed the importance of citizenship. I agree entirely. Findings have shown that participation in extra-curricular activities promotes positive well-being among young people. For example, schools with cadet forces see improvements in attendance, behaviour and attainment. We are on track to achieve our target of 500 cadet units in schools by April 2020, developing qualities such as respect, self-confidence, teamwork and resilience in young people. Since the National Citizen Service was launched in 2011, nearly 500,000 young people have taken part in this life-changing opportunity. We continue to support the NCS and are investing £80 million through the Youth Investment Fund to increase opportunities for young people to develop skills and participate in their communities. My noble friend Lord Norton asked whether I agreed with his prognosis on the teaching of citizenship. I do not agree entirely. Of course an A-level in citizenship or history is helpful, but other qualifications could equally suffice.
A child’s early emotional and social development, educational attainment and, later, employability can all be put at risk by problems such as homelessness, referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, and the noble Lord, Lord Russell. In particular, the Homelessness Reduction Act is the most ambitious legislative reform in this area in decades. We have allocated £1.2 billion through to 2020 to reduce homelessness. I will have to write to the noble Lord on the progress of H-CLIC.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London and the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, asked about child poverty and workless households. We repealed the income-based measures set out in the Child Poverty Act 2010 and replaced them with new statutory measures of parental worklessness and educational attainment—the two areas that we know can make the biggest difference. Children living in workless households are five times more likely to be in poverty than those where all adults work. Our welfare reforms are making good progress to prevent this happening. There are now 630,000 fewer children living in workless households than in 2010. There are also 300,000 fewer children living in absolute poverty on a before housing cost basis than in 2010.
Children in care deserve a stable home environment. Some 61% of children enter care as a result of abuse or neglect. That is why the Children and Social Work Act 2017 sets out corporate parenting principles. Local authorities need to take this into account as they take on the role of parent to looked-after children, extending to those leaving care. The Autumn Budget announced an additional £410 million in 2019-20 for local authorities to invest in adult and children’s social services. This is on top of the £200 billion going forward to 2020 made available in the 2015 spending review.
I share the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, over mental health. We recognise that mental health needs can have a significant impact on young people, in particular looked-after and previously looked-after children. This is why we have recently revised statutory guidance for designated teachers, placing greater emphasis on children’s mental health needs. The Government have made £1.4 billion available to transform and improve access to children and young people’s mental health services from 2015-16 to 2020-21. We have set an ambition for at least 70,000 additional children and young people each year to access high-quality NHS mental health care by 2021.
The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, raised the issue of youth offenders. We know that children who offend are some of the most vulnerable in society and we are committed to preventing children entering the youth justice system. Education should be at the heart of youth custody. We are investing more than £2 million over the next two years to increase the range of educational, vocational and enrichment activities, including sports and physical activity. As part of the agreed funding of the youth justice reform programme, we are making £0.8 million available in 2018-19 and £1.8 million in 2019-20 to increase the range of educational and enrichment activities in the youth custody system.
The Government have also announced a £200 million youth endowment fund to build the evidence base for action. This fund will support young people most at risk of serious violence, underpinning our commitment to address the recent increase in knife and gun crime. We will be launching a consultation later this month on new school security guidance. This will include references to knife crime.
Some young people are at risk from extremism and radicalisation, be this through online channels or grooming by members of terrorist or extremist groups. We are working with schools to tackle extremism and radicalisation through our Prevent initiative and a strengthening of the Ofsted inspection framework. We want all young people to understand the shared values that underpin our society, and in particular the values of respect for and tolerance of those from different backgrounds.
The noble Lords, Lord Griffiths and Lord Brooke, raised obesity. We are making progress on this since the publication of our childhood obesity plan in 2016, including the reformulation of products that our children eat and drink, for example through the soft drinks levy. The next stage will include restricting promotion deals on fatty and sugary products and ending the sale of energy drinks to children.
The noble Lords, Lord Haskel and Lord Sawyer, asked about zero-hours contracts. There are 780,000 people on zero-hours contracts. This is down from 883,000 in the same period of 2017. This is a small proportion of the workforce—about 2.4%—because this is the kind of contract that suits that small proportion, giving them the flexibility they desire so that they can, for instance, study alongside working. Noble Lords will also be aware that we have very much tightened up on such things as unpaid internships, which are absolute exploitation.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and my noble friend Lord Chadlington raised the important issue of youth gambling. There are strict controls to prevent underage gambling in licensed premises or online. GambleAware is working to provide resources for teachers and to support parents to have conversations. The Government published a review of gambling machines and social responsibility in May of this year. Key measures included reducing the maximum stake on fixed odds betting terminals from £20 to £2, a major responsible gambling advertising campaign and a plan of action by the Gambling Commission to strengthen player protections online.
I am running out of time so I shall finish by saying that the Motion asks that we take note of the challenges facing young people. I firmly believe that a good education is vital to help them meet these challenges, and we are steadily improving the education system to ensure that this happens. Children represent the future of our country: few endeavours are more important.
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top
My Lords, I thank everyone enormously. It was a very rich and wide-ranging debate from which I think we have all learned a little. Challenges can be things that we learn from and learn to move forward from. For too many children and young people they are limiting, and stop them being able to live full and contributing lives in the way they want to. I look forward to working with noble Lords across the Floor on just that.
Police Funding Settlement
(6 years ago)
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The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, with the leave of the House I shall repeat a Statement made in the other place by my right honourable friend the Policing Minister. The Statement is as follows:
“Mr Speaker, I would like to propose to the House a provisional police funding settlement for 2019-20. I do so at a time of real pressure on our police system, with demand rising and becoming increasingly complex and response-intensive. Across the country, police officers and staff are working exceptionally hard in very demanding and often risky conditions. They have, I know, the respect and thanks of this House, but they need more than that: they need additional support to help them do the job.
Last year, Parliament approved a funding settlement that resulted in £460 million of additional public investment in policing. That included £50 million more for counterterrorism and £280 million more for local forces from the precept. This meant that every force’s funding was protected in real terms this year, and overall public investment in policing this year is more than £1 billion higher than three years ago.
As a result of last year’s settlement, most police and crime commissioners set out plans to either protect or enhance front-line policing. I also indicated last year that our intention was to provide a similar settlement in 2019-20, subject to improved efficiency, productivity and financial transparency. I am very pleased to confirm that the police have met those conditions. There is an agreed plan to deliver £120 million in commercial and back-office savings by 2020-21. Forces are developing digital plans, including deploying mobile technology more ambitiously to use police time more productively, and every PCC has published a financial reserves strategy. However, the Government recognise that two things have changed since I stood at the Dispatch Box a year ago.
First, cost pressures have risen. Public sector inflation has increased and the police are facing challenges in meeting new costs, such as forensics and increased employer contributions to safeguard public pensions. More significantly, demand pressures have risen. There has been a major increase in the reporting of high-harm, previously hidden crimes such as child sexual exploitation. The challenge from serious and organised crime networks is growing. Through the serious violence strategy, we are bearing down on the worst spike in serious violence and knife crime that we have seen in this country in a decade. Digitally enabled and online crime is a major challenge for our police. Meanwhile, as we are all aware, the threat from terrorism has escalated and evolved.
The first role of government is to protect the public. As crime changes, so must the police. We are determined to make sure that the police have the powers and resources they need to respond to changing demand. So the Home Secretary and I would like to go further than I indicated last year. As the Home Secretary has signalled over the course of the year, police funding is his number one priority, so he and I have been working closely with our colleagues across government to agree a comprehensive settlement. We are proposing today a settlement that could see public investment in policing rise by up to £970 million in 2019-20, depending on the actions of police and crime commissioners.
Let me break down that very large number for the House. First, instead of the flat cash grant that I indicated last year, we want to increase government grants to police and crime commissioners by £161 million. Every police and crime commissioner will see their government grant funding protected in real terms. This package includes £14 million to recognise the specific extra costs and financial challenges of policing London. On top of this, we will allocate additional grant funding of more than £150 million specifically to help the police to manage unexpected increases in their contributions to public pensions costs since the 2016 Budget.
We have also listened to requests from PCCs for more flexibility around the levels of police precept. So this settlement empowers PCCs to raise council tax contributions for local policing by £2 a month—£24 a year—for a typical household. If this flexibility is fully utilised, the result will be just over £500 million of additional local investment in local policing. We do not take that decision lightly because we know that money is tight for many people. The decision to raise local tax will be up to locally elected PCCs, and they will have to make a case to their electorate and be accountable for the delivery of a return on that public investment.
On top of the proposed increase in the core grant and a doubling of local precept flexibility, we propose investing more in the fight to protect our constituents against terrorism and serious organised crime. As my right honourable friend the Chancellor announced at the Budget, funding for counterterrorism policing will increase by £59 million next year to £816 million— £160 million more than we planned at the last spending review. We also intend to match the new serious and organised crime strategy with £90 million of much-needed resources to tackle threats including economic crime, child sexual exploitation, fraud and cybercrime.
This settlement combines increased central funding with increased local contributions to local policing. It enables the biggest investment in front-line policing since 2010 and the start of the journey to get this country back to living within our means. It will allow PCCs to manage their costs while maintaining their plans to recruit and fill capability gaps, not least with regard to detectives. It will strengthen our capabilities in the fight against serious organised crime and terrorism.
Alongside this increased investment in the front line against crime, we will also maintain our existing level of public investment in building national police capabilities and upgrading police technology for the benefit of local forces. We will invest £175 million in the Police Transformation Fund next year, supporting the police to make the most of the digital opportunity to improve contact with the public and use police time more effectively. We are also developing the first national programme to support stretched front-line officers. We will also support Police Now, which is recruiting fresh talent into policing and detective roles.
Alongside the Police Transformation Fund, we will invest £495 million in technology programmes that will upgrade critical infrastructure such as police databases and the emergency service communications network.
Taking everything together, this settlement means that, as a country, we will invest next year up to almost £14 billion in our police system if all PCCs use full precept flexibility. That would represent increased public investment of about £2 billion compared to 2015-16. With increased public investment comes an increased responsibility to improve efficiency and effectiveness and show the public what difference their investment is making in greater deterrence to criminals, better outcomes for victims and safer communities.
To make the most of the new investment we are announcing today, we will work with the police on four key areas next year to drive efficiency and effectiveness: delivering on the police’s ambition to procure efficiently and share back-office services; working more productively, including through digital mobile working; filling the major capability gaps that the independent inspectorate has identified in detectives and investigations; and making sure there is greater co-operation in the work to tackle serious and organised crime. Of course, support for our police is not all about spending taxpayers’ money. We are also supporting the police through new powers and working on a cross-party basis to strengthen legislation on offensive weapons, just as we worked on that basis to strengthen protections for emergency services workers.
Let me be clear: our commitment to supporting the police to deliver for the public is for the long term. Come the forthcoming comprehensive spending review, the Government will be prepared to invest appropriately in police capacity, capability and professional confidence, but this must come with greater local accountability of directly elected PCCs and a commitment to accelerate the pace of change that is needed to make sure that British policing remains the best in the world. As we have indicated, this settlement is the last before the next spending review, which will set long-term police budgets and address the issue of how resources are allocated fairly across police forces—I know that is of great interest to many Members across the House.
This Government’s priority is the safety of the public. We understand that our police are facing increased demands. We are determined to respond to the threats from terrorism, organised crime and serious violence. We are today announcing a major investment in the capabilities that the police need to respond, and rightly challenging the police to spend that money well and continue on the path of reform and modernisation. I wish to end by expressing my gratitude to our police forces around the country for their exceptional attitude, hard work and bravery. I commend this Statement to the House”.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement to the House this afternoon. Despite the recognition of the real pressure on our police service in the Statement—it was good to see that—it is disappointing that we have no recognition from the Minister of the Government’s part in creating that demand and pressure on our police and the crisis in public safety. At this stage, I place on record my thanks to the police throughout the United Kingdom for the work that they do 24 hours a day, with great skill, to keep us safe. We are all grateful for that and we very much appreciate it.
No Government in post-war history have ever slashed resources by the amount that this Government have done—by 30%. They have cut officers in each and every year. I recall a debate a few weeks ago when the noble Lord, Lord Blair, who is not in his place, was not challenged by the Minister when he made it absolutely clear to the House that when he was commissioner—we now have Cressida Dick as commissioner—he had many hundreds of millions of pounds more to spend. He could not say how the commissioner today could deliver, given that real cut in resources, compared to what he used to enjoy when he was the commissioner. That was not disputed by the Government.
We have a record level of violent crime. Knife crime has never been as high as it is today. The number of arrests has halved in a decade. Unsolved crimes stand at more than 2 million cases and 93% of domestic violence offences go unprosecuted. It is important that noble Lords see this funding settlement in that context.
The Government have today delivered a ninth consecutive year of real-terms government cuts to the police. In September, the Government announced that changes to the police pension valuation would mean an additional £165 million cost to forces in 2019-20, increasing to £417 million in 2021. Today’s settlement will cover the cost of that pension bill for 2019-20, which is welcome, but provides no certainty for years beyond that. This was dropped on forces at the last minute. Some had started drafting emergency budgets. It was a completely inappropriate way to handle this event, of which the Government must have been well aware. I cannot see how a Government can operate on that basis. So can the Minister commit today to funding the complete pension bill for 2019-20 and 2020-21?
The Government today are once again confirming their intention to pass the entirety of the increase in this settlement on to local council tax payers to fund the police. That is fundamentally unfair. Council tax is a regressive tax, taking no account of income. Despite the fact that every band D or above household will be asked to pay the same amount in additional tax, different force areas will be able to raise different amounts of resources. The forces that have already been cut the most will be able to raise the least. How can the Minister justify that? This is a postcode lottery that means that those communities that are already seeing higher crime will receive much less funding. That cannot be right.
Finally, £160 million has been announced for counterterrorism policing. Can the Minister confirm that it actually amounts to a £59 million increase this year? If the Minister can answer those questions, that would be great but, if she cannot, I will be happy to receive a response in writing.
Lord Paddick (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. I should declare an interest as, having been a police officer for more than 30 years, I am a police pensioner.
As the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, asked, can the Minister confirm that the Treasury has increased the amount that police forces have to contribute to police pensions? According to the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners and the National Police Chiefs Council, that will amount to £165 million in 2019-20 and £417 million in 2020-21. The Government are providing £153 million to assist with increased pension costs, which is a shortfall of £12 million in the next financial year, and there is nothing in this settlement for the year after. How are police forces expected to plan ahead when they will potentially have to give back an additional £430 million to the Treasury for police pensions?
In a letter today from the Home Secretary and the Minister of State for Policing and the Fire Service, the Government say that they are increasing the government grant to PCCs, which is,
“the first real terms increase in the Government grant funding since 2010”.
Yet the Statement that the Minister has just repeated says:
“Every police and crime commissioner will see their government grant funding protected in real terms”.
Which is it: protected or increased? If it is the latter, by what percentage in real terms is it being increased? Can the Minister confirm that since 2010 central government funding for the police service has fallen by 30% in real terms, according to the National Audit Office, with overall funding down 19% in real terms, taking into account the police precept?
The Statement says that this year every force’s funding was protected in real terms. A more accurate picture can be given by looking at the picture since 2015. The number of police officers has fallen a further 4%, the number of community support officers has fallen by 18% and the number of special constables has fallen by 27%. Partly as a result of public spaces now being devoid of uniformed officers, knife crime is up 62%, firearms offences are up 30% and homicides are up 33% over the same period. Demand is rising and becoming increasingly complex, as the Government admit. There are crucial capability gaps, particularly in detectives and investigations, and the government response to this crisis is woefully inadequate.
Instead of making real progress in reversing the devastating cuts that this Government have imposed on the police service, they push responsibility for any meaningful increase in police funding on to police and crime commissioners and council tax payers. They say:
“The decision to raise local tax will be up to locally elected PCCs and they will have to make the case to their electorate and be accountable for delivery of a return on that public investment”.
In other words, the Home Office is saying, “Don’t blame us for increases in council tax and don’t blame us if you don’t notice any difference”.
Meanwhile, the Government are wasting millions of pounds propping up the existing out-of-date emergency service communications network while a new network, which relies totally on a commercial mobile phone network, is years behind its planned implementation. What would have happened to our emergency services if the new communication system had been in place by now, as planned, and had been based on the O2 network, which lost all 2G, 3G and 4G connectivity last week?
The police service and the brave officers who put their lives on the line every day to protect us are at breaking point. When will the Government realise that the police service needs a substantial real-terms increase in central government funding and a guarantee to cover all unexpected increases in pension costs in order to avert a crisis?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I thank both noble Lords for the points that they have made. The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, talked about the Government’s own part in this situation—that is, the funding position that we find ourselves in—and the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, made the very similar point that we had caused a crisis in public safety. I have to say to both noble Lords that 2010 saw the advent of the new coalition Government of the Conservatives and the Lib Dems after one of the worst economic crashes that I have known in my lifetime. Any responsible Government would have had to have taken measures to take that in hand and control it. Both noble Lords are right that funding has been tough, but I could not say that the blame should all be laid at this Government’s door. We have tried to live within our means as opposed to overspending and ultimately creating problems for the next generations through public debt and the deficit.
The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, talked about how the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe—
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I apologise, it was the noble Lord, Lord Blair, who explained how he had a lot more money. Yes, he did; 2010 saw the start of reductions in public spending to try to get our spending under control. It was the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, who eloquently explained to us how from 2011 to 2013 knife crime actually went down, as did stop and search—and as did his budget. He talked about how police forces can work together, take a much more local approach and engage with communities to understand the problems. He explained that it was not all about funding, although we had got to a point—as I, the Home Secretary and the Policing Minister acknowledged—where funding was becoming tight and demands on the police were rising, particularly in the past one to two years, with some of the unprecedented pressures arising from things such as terrorism.
The noble Lords, Lord Kennedy and Lord Paddick, asked about the pensions position. Yes, it will rise to £160 million in 2019-20. The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, asked whether the increase was £59 million in relation to counterterrorism funding. I can confirm that. It rose by £59 million to £816 million, which was £116 million more than announced at the previous spending review. It is complicated and I apologise to noble Lords for that, but that is the position.
Both noble Lords asked about certainty beyond that: the eternal question, which I was always frustrated about as a local authority leader. Of course, we cannot give any certainty beyond the next spending review, but the Home Secretary and the Policing Minister have said on a number of occasions that police funding will be an absolute priority, so I can give that certainty to noble Lords.
The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, asked the very good question: is the protected funding just protected or increasing? I can tell him that for 2019-20, government grant funding for all PCCs will be protected in real terms compared to 2018-19 but, separately, the total funding increase of up to £970 million across the policing system is the largest increase in funding since 2010.
Both noble Lords talked about local taxpayers and the impact that this will have on them. I must say that this Government—and, indeed, the coalition Government —have taken a record number of people out of tax altogether, with the basic allowance starting at a much higher level. I think that we have taken 1.74 million people out of tax altogether because of the £12,500 personal allowance, and the national living wage is now £8.21 an hour, which will benefit 2.4 million workers in total. There has been a cut in income tax for 32 million people. I appreciate that local taxpayers will have to pay this increase, but of course their local taxes will go to local services and the tax situation for so many millions of people has been much improved.
The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, asked about the pension costs in 2019, 2020 and 2021. Obviously, we are providing a comprehensive funding settlement for 2019-20, but the revised total pension pressure is £330 million, and this settlement provides up to £970 million of funding to cover pressures and provide investment. As I said, 2020-21 will be covered as part of the next comprehensive spending review, which we expect next year.
The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, asked me about the comms system. He made a very good point about when O2 was down. I cannot give a definitive answer about precisely when the new comms system will be on board, but I totally get his point—it is a much more efficient system—and, if I may, I shall write to him with any updated position about it.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on this welcome investment in policing at strategic and local level, because both are important. I very much endorse her words of gratitude at this Christmas season for brave police men and women in our country.
I have two questions. Does my noble friend agree that better use can be made of digital techniques and information sharing in the fight against crime and in improving value for money in policing? Good digital methods can help to make money go further. Secondly, can she accelerate the cross-party work that she mentioned on offensive weapons, given the appalling incidence of knife crime that we see up and down the country and in the newspapers far too often?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I thank my noble friend for those questions. Her first point was about better use of digital techniques. In all the efficiency discussions that we have had with the police, that is one of the most important things. The advent of new technology means that the police can spend more time out on the streets fighting crime. As more efficient police services engage with this type of technology, we will see that realised in more police time.
My noble friend makes a good point about a cross-party approach to the Offensive Weapons Bill, which I look forward to discussing across the House. I know that we will have a constructive discussion about that before we debate the Bill and I look forward to hearing from her at Second Reading and beyond, and to her engagement in the process.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for what she said about the rise in the policing precept. She seems to admit that, on the one hand, the Government are giving by reducing income tax levels for people, on the other, passing on the cost of policing to local residents. One is based on ability to pay, but council tax, with the policing precept, is a very regressive tax, so there is an inherent unfairness in that system. I raise the particular consequences for West Yorkshire residents and those in my own borough of Kirklees, and I draw attention to my entry in the register of interests. In Kirklees last year there was a 7.9% rise in the policing precept, and the rise this year is predicted to be 14.7%. That is a 24% rise over two years, not based on anybody’s ability to pay. Will the Minister reflect on whether that is a fair way to raise taxation to pay for policing?
Secondly, police and crime commissioners are supposedly accountable to local people, yet there is no direct way of creating that accountability. I have a suggestion. Currently, the policing precept is an add-on at the bottom of the council tax bill issued by local authorities. Local people obviously just look at the bottom line of what they have to pay. To increase accountability, can the policing precept be billed separately, albeit within the same envelope or digitised method, so that it is clear to residents how much they are paying for policing and how much the Government require them to pay in addition?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I thank the noble Baroness for that question. She mentioned giving with one hand and taking with the other. I talked about general taxation and people being taken out of tax— 32 million people are paying less tax—but there is also the government grant to PCCs, which will be £161 million. I reject her idea that costs are passed on to local people. We all pay tax. I for one am happy to pay local tax, knowing that it will go to my local police in Greater Manchester. She asked about the police precept being billed separately; I put it to her that she would then pass the cost of additional billing on to local people. Different areas can decide how to do things in their own way but an extra bill, even if put in the same envelope, will incur additional costs.
Lord Greaves (LD)
My Lords, in the Statement she repeated, the Minister made it sound as though the sunlit uplands have come into view. That is not the way we see it where I live. The Statement says:
“As a result of last year’s settlement, most police and crime commissioners set out plans to either protect or enhance front-line policing”.
In Colne, the town I come from, the people I represent on the local council ask me, “Why are we paying more for the police when we are having our local police taken away?” Lancashire was in the forefront of developing neighbourhood policing 20 or 25 years ago, and Pendle and east Lancashire generally were in the forefront in Lancashire. We were pioneers. This year, half the community beat managers—the constables who are the actual neighbourhood police officers—are being removed. There are still some PCSOs, but half the police officers on the beat, in the ward and on the street, are being removed. The Minister referred to police officers on the street getting more technological devices and being more efficient; that is no use if they have gone.
What do I say to people when they ask me, “Who is to blame if not you?” I tell them I am not to blame, so they ask me, “Is it the Government, the police commissioner, the police constable?” Who is it? There is no local accountability at all.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I thank the noble Lord for that. The investment in front-line police—whether in neighbourhood or any other kind of policing—is up to the local force. He made the point that technology is no use if the police are gone; he is not incorrect in that, but the savings made from investing in technology can be invested in front-line policing. I hope the settlement, which I think is very generous, means that the police will have more scope to invest in the areas they want to invest in while still looking at efficiencies in procurement and technology.
Lord Lexden (Con)
Since our police and crime commissioners vary so greatly in quality and efficiency, how can the Government be sure that they will use their significant additional resources effectively or provide the greater accountability for which the Statement explicitly calls? In particular, can they have confidence in Cleveland, where Mike Veale, discredited by Operation Conifer in Wiltshire, is now chief constable? Can they have confidence in the Wiltshire PCC, with whom they are at odds over an inquiry into Operation Conifer?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
Regarding accountability, particularly for efficiency and effectiveness, HMICFRS tests that across police forces and, ultimately, the public test their PCCs at the ballot box.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
Before we move on, I should of course have mentioned in my previous intervention that, like the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I normally remind the House repeatedly, but in this instance I completely forgot.
Provisional Local Government Finance Settlement
(6 years ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and Wales Office (Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth) (Con)
My Lords, with the leave of the House I will repeat a Statement made earlier today in the other place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government on the provisional local government finance settlement 2019.
“With permission, Mr Speaker, I wish to make a Statement on funding for local authorities in England next year.
Every day, these councils and the many hard-working, dedicated people who work for them do their communities proud, delivering the essential services on which we all depend and making a difference to every life they touch. It is a privilege to be working with and representing these communities. In doing so, I am determined to ensure that they get the resources and support to rise to new opportunities and challenges, to grow their economies and to ensure that there is opportunity for all, with no one left behind.
The draft local government finance settlement being published today is an important step towards this. Provisional local authority funding allocations will be subject to further review before final settlement, in line with my department’s usual processes. This provisional settlement confirms that core spending power is forecast to increase from £45.1 billion in 2018-19 to £46.4 billion in 2019-20—a cash increase of 2.8% and a real-terms increase in resources available to local authorities.
I am in no doubt about how challenging it has been for councils to drive efficiencies as they contributed to helping rebuild our economy and tackle the deficit we inherited from Labour. That is why I am delighted that the Budget committed around £1 billion of extra funding for local services, with a strong focus on supporting some of our most vulnerable groups. This includes £650 million for adults’ and children’s social care in 2019-20. Of this, £240 million will go towards easing winter pressures, with the flexibility to use the remainder —£410 million—for either adults’ or children’s services and, where necessary, to relieve demand on the NHS. This is on top of the £240 million announced in October to address winter pressures this year.
In addition, the Budget pledged an extra £84 million over the next five years to expand our children’s social care programmes to support more councils with high or rising numbers of children in care. This builds on the good work that my department is already doing through the troubled families programme to improve all services for families with complex problems.
The Budget also provided a very welcome boost for our high streets via a £1.5 billion package of support, including a business rates discount worth almost £900 million and a £675 million future high streets fund to help them adapt and thrive in changing times. In addition, there is a further £420 million to repair and improve our roads this year.
I know and recognise the pressures of social care. I have been working with the Health and Social Care Secretary to take this forward, and the Government will soon be publishing a Green Paper on the future of social care. This is a complex issue and we are working with local authorities, drawing on their front-line insight and intelligence to ensure that we get this right. We have taken this approach across the board, listening carefully to what councils of all shapes and sizes across the country are telling us, and responding.
I express thanks to my Ministers—especially the Minister for Local Government, my honourable friend the Member for Richmond—for all their work on this. As a result, I can confirm that I will increase the rural services delivery grant by £16 million in 2019-20 to maintain it at last year’s level. This recognises the extra cost of providing services in these communities. In addition, I am keen to provide continuity and stability, where this makes sense, by committing up to £20 million to maintain the new homes bonus baseline at 0.4% in 2019-20 to ensure that we continue to reward councils for delivering the homes we need.
There will also be no change to the council tax referendum limits set for local authorities in 2018-19, aside from further flexibility offered on the police precept level. Authorities will have the flexibility to increase their core council tax requirement by up to 3% and can draw, as needed, on the adult social care precept to meet demand for services. But local residents will continue to be protected and will be able to approve or veto any excessive rises in a referendum. Measures that I have agreed with the Home Secretary to allow police and crime commissioners to increase the police precept to £24 will also help them tackle the changing demands they face.
I am also conscious that so-called “negative RSG” remains an issue in certain areas. Having consulted on options for addressing this, I am pleased to announce that we intend directly to eliminate the £152.9 million of negative RSG in 2019-20, using foregone business rates. This will prevent any local authority being subject to a downward adjustment to its business rate tariffs and top-ups that could act as a disincentive for growth. We committed to finding a fair and affordable way of resolving this issue and I am confident that this approach delivers on that.
So we have been listening and acting on what we hear. Nowhere is this more true than when it comes to answering calls from councils, over many years, for more control over the money they raise. Our plans to increase business rates retention to 75% from 2020 does that and more, giving local authorities powerful incentives to grow their local economy.
Under the current scheme, councils estimate that they will receive around £2.4 billion in business rates growth in 2018-19—a significant revenue stream on top of the core settlement funding that I am unveiling today. It is therefore no wonder that councils are queuing up to get involved in the pilots that we have been running to test the new approach. I am delighted to announce that, in 2019-20, 15 new pilots will get under way in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, East Sussex, Hertfordshire, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, North and West Yorkshire, North of Tyne, Solent authorities, Somerset, Staffordshire and Stoke, West Sussex and Worcestershire. We will also be piloting 75% rates retention in London and continuing existing pilots in devolution deal areas.
I am also pleased to announce that every authority in England stands to reap the rewards of increased growth in business rates income, which has generated a surplus in the business rates levy account in 2018-19. We are proposing to distribute £180 million of levy surplus to all councils, based on need.
I am aware of a few authorities which continue to undertake significant borrowing for commercial purposes. I share the concern of CIPFA and others about the risks to which these local authorities are exposing themselves and local taxpayers. We are considering with HM Treasury what further interventions may be required.
We are also launching today two further consultations on reforms to the business rates retention system and on the new approach to distributing funding through the review of relative needs and resources. There is little doubt that the current funding formula needs fixing and replacing with a robust, straightforward approach where the link between local circumstances and resources allocated is clear. With these consultations, we are making important progress towards this and towards a stronger, more sustainable system of local government.
Mr Speaker, 2019 is shaping up to be a big moment for local government, drawing together our plans for a new approach to distributing funding and increased business rates retention, as well as the upcoming spending review. No one knows their local area like the councils that are at the heart of their communities. We are supporting them to harness that vast local knowledge and those networks not only to make the best of available resources and increase efficiency but to innovate and improve the way they deliver services.
We are working with local authorities and departments across government to gain a better understanding of how best to promote efficiency. Using this, we will develop a package of support to help councils become more efficient and get better service outcomes. We will launch a continuous improvement tool in spring 2019 and are championing authorities that put communities at the heart of service delivery. The smarter use of technology is clearly pivotal to this and has the potential to be genuinely transformative. That is why the digital declaration launched by my honourable friend the Minister for Local Government to share and spread best practice in this area is so important. It is backed by a £7.5 million local digital innovation fund. I am delighted to say that the first successful bids were announced last week to kick-start projects, led by councils, to promote service transformation.
There is so much excellent, inspiring work under way in our local communities, and it is right that we get behind it and have faith in the authorities which, day in, day out, always deliver. This settlement and the extra funding announced in the Budget reaffirm that faith, delivering a cash-terms increase of 2.8% and a real-terms increase in spending for local authorities in 2019-20; delivering extra support for the vulnerable, for quality public services, for our high streets and for local economic growth; and paving the way for a fairer, more self-sufficient, more resilient future for local government and a brighter future for the people and places it serves. As such, I commend this settlement to the House”.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, I first thank the noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, for repeating the Statement given by his right honourable friend the Secretary of State in the other place earlier today. I draw the House’s attention to the fact that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association.
This is our ninth year of austerity, and services in most areas of local government are at crisis point. We should be very grateful to all the people who work in local government, and I pay tribute to all they do—grappling to help people in crisis, and trying to deliver services while coping with unprecedented reductions in the finance available to them to deliver those services. I also pay tribute to local councillors of all political parties and none for the work they do delivering for their local communities. We thank them very much for that.
The underresourcing of local government has seen the sector lose 60p in every pound of central government funding. Those are not my figures but those of the Local Government Association. What puzzles me with this and with previous local funding settlements is that areas with the greatest deprivation and poverty, and consequently the greatest demand for services, have often seen the heaviest cuts. That is continuing with this settlement.
The Government’s approach, as we have heard from the Minister again here today, is to shift the burden on to council tax. As I said earlier, this is a regressive tax. I do not believe it is fit for purpose, and it is in desperate need of reform. Areas with the greatest need just do not have the ability to raise as much money as wealthier areas, and there is just no value in collecting the money from this most unfair and unsuitable tax. Can the Minister confirm how much of the 2.8% he has announced will actually be raised through council tax rather than from central government funding? Does he agree that this is a less than satisfactory situation, placing further burdens on residents when they can ill afford another tax rise? How will the Minister address this?
The Minister is well aware that councils deliver much more than the bare legal minimum, and any suggestion that they should deliver only statutory services is completely ludicrous. Perhaps he could help local government outline which services local authorities should stop providing, as has been suggested. Can the Minister confirm how much of what he has announced today was already announced in the Chancellor’s Budget? Could he highlight for the House what is actually new here?
On business rates, it is absolutely clear that the Minister and his department are presiding over the destruction of the high street. Nothing he said today is going to help us on that. The noble Lord, Lord Naseby, is not in his place, but I know that if he were here today he would be supportive on this, because he has said many times, as we know, that something has to be done about business rates. The Government have to address the issue; they are destroying the high street, and something must be done.
On adult social care, the Local Government Association says it needs £1.3 billion next year and £2 billion for children’s services, yet the Secretary of State has re-announced £650 million for both—not only that, but it may be shared with the NHS. Can the Minister clarify how this is going to be split between services for adults, children’s services and the NHS?
The Secretary of State says he is working with the Health and Social Care Secretary to publish a Green Paper on social care. Given the pressures that councils face and the real heartbreak and misery experienced by service users, can he tell us when this can be expected? The fact that social care is in crisis, and that the promised Green Paper has been delayed four times, is a matter of much concern. If I am right, the paper is now more than a year late.
On public health, we have seen this week that health inequalities are widening, with life expectancy going backwards in the poorest areas of our country after several million pounds of cuts to public health budgets and more cuts to come next year, all falling disproportionately on the poorest areas. Two years ago, on the steps of Downing Street, and again last night, the Prime Minister promised to build a country that works for everyone. But the reality is that food bank use has increased to the highest rate on record and child homelessness has increased to the highest levels in recent years, with 130,000 children in temporary accommodation this Christmas. The UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights warned that local authorities have been gutted by a series of government policies. This is a very disappointing Statement from the noble Lord.
I would be delighted to hear a response from the Minister from the Dispatch Box, but I am conscious that I have asked a number of questions. I would therefore be happy to receive a response in writing.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, I remind the House of my interests as a vice-chair of the Local Government Association and a councillor in Kirklees. I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement on the local government settlement. I am not, however, able to thank him for its content.
The Statement includes the phrase:
“I am determined to ensure that they get the resources and support to rise to new opportunities and challenges … with no one left behind”.
Hmm. The National Audit Office report of March this year gave these stark figures of the cuts in local government spending: a 49.1% real-terms reduction in government funding, and a 28.6% real-terms reduction in local authorities’ spending power. Can the Minister say how a 0.4% increase above inflation, which fails to include considerable rises in demand—for example, for children’s services—is in line with providing the resources needed by local government? In a report this year by the New Policy Institute, researchers estimated that:
“97% of total cuts in spending in areas like adult social care, child social care and housing have fallen on the poorest 20% of councils. This is despite those areas also having a higher number of people in need”.
Will the Minister explain, in the light of this research, how no one is being left behind?
There is universal agreement that there is a crisis in social care funding. The Local Government Association estimates a £3.5 billion gap in funding for adult social care by 2025. Just how this huge gap will be filled is yet to be decided, as the Green Paper on the funding of social care that was first promised in 2017 has yet to be published. Meanwhile, adults are not getting the care they need. What is particularly galling is the Government’s announcement of £650 million, given that the vast majority of it is destined to support NHS budgets.
The Statement makes no reference to one of the largest financial pressures on councils’ budgets: the national pressure on education, health and care plans and statements. From 2014, there has been a 45% rise in the number of young people requiring an EHC plan. As an example, in my own authority of Kirklees, in 2014 there were 1,900 EHC plans or statements. Based on current trends, this is expected to rise to 3,300 by 2022—a 70% increase—while funding for these young people will rise by an estimated 12%.
I welcome business-rate support for town-centre retailers, but I have to point out that this is a sticking-plaster approach when a more radical reform of business rates is desperately needed.
I also welcome the additional allocation of £420 million for pothole repairs. The national estimate of what is needed is £9.3 billion. However, what is really needed is a significant increase in capital funding, as a government-funded grant, so that councils cannot just fill and pack but use funding more effectively by completely resurfacing crumbling roads.
On council tax rises, we no longer hear government Ministers standing up for the “hard-pressed council tax payer”. The reason is clear: the Government have adopted a policy of pushing the costs of local spending on to the council tax payer. In the past three years this will have resulted in a 14% rise, which is obviously well above both inflation and average income rises. Council tax is regressive. It is not linked to ability to pay so the consequence of these successive, well-above-inflation rises is that those least able to pay are seeing a rapidly rising tax demand coupled with rapidly decreasing local services. Perhaps the Minister will be able to assure me that the Government recognise that this is the case and that they once again want to help the hard-pressed council tax payer.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, for their contributions from the Front Benches. I shall deal with their contributions and, in so far as I miss anything or I am unable to answer, I will certainly write to them and place a copy in the Library.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, about the challenging scenario—that is undoubtedly true—and I join him in the tribute that he paid to the local authority workers up and down the country. As he rightly said, they do a terrific job, as do the councils of all parties and no party. They are essential to the democracy and the system that we operate in the United Kingdom.
The noble Lord referred to deprivation. In the Statement that I repeated, I made the point that the surplus in the business rates levy account is going to councils based on need. It is a point worth making that it is explicit that it is based on need. We operate a system of equalisation and that is inherent to the system so, although it is a regressive system, a corrective mechanism applies, as I am sure noble Lords will in fairness note.
Both the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, made notes about the importance of the council tax contribution, which I fully recognise and acknowledge, but they should recall that there is a referendum limit and that an excessive increase has to be put to the electorate. As far as I can recall, this has not happened recently but it is open to councils if they want to do so; the effect otherwise is to keep council tax levels down.
The noble Lord referred to statutory services. Local authorities provide them par excellence, but it is worth noting that they go beyond that. We all know from our own and local authorities up and down the country what a great job they do. He also referred to the need for help for the high street within the system. Again, I mentioned that a £1.5 billion package of support for the high street has been announced and is within the system. The noble Baroness acknowledged some of the help that is going there. I recognise that it is a challenge but it has been taken up by the Budget and within this Statement on the local government settlement for the next year. I appreciate that some of this has already been announced but it is a requirement that we do this so that councils up and down the country know expressly what they have got to finance services for the next year.
Both the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, referred to the existing social care and NHS challenge and the £650 million that has been committed for the next year. It is a significant sum and, yes, some of it will go to the health service. The reason for that is that it is far more expensive to supply an NHS bed than a place in a social care residence. Therefore, it is desirable that we do that. That is why it is important that our social care review is not just about the financing but the modelling. It is important that we can see the interaction between the two. We all clearly understand it and it is not necessarily easy to deal with, but that is something with which we must grapple.
Although this point was not made expressly by either noble Lords, your Lordships should be aware that the business rate retention applies throughout London and thus in the noble Lord’s area. We have pilot schemes running at 75%, and in Kirklees—North and West Yorkshire has a pilot scheme operating as well. In North and West Yorkshire, if the pilot pool achieves the same level of growth in 2019-20 as happened last year, the area could expect to see an additional £83.2 million compared with the baseline funding level, of which £26.4 million would be as a result of the 75% pilot. It is worth acknowledging these additional factors.
Yes, there are challenges and there are areas where we wish we could do more, road repairs being one, but that is not a problem which has suddenly arisen. Successive Governments have struggled to keep up with the costs. However, in the round, this is a good settlement. It is a real-terms increase across the board, not just a cash increase, and there is much good news in the Statement.
Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register: I am the leader of South Holland District Council and chairman of the Local Government Association. I am sure that my noble friend the Minister is probably not keen on me standing up to speak, but for once I will say that this is a good settlement. I have been dealing with these settlements for eight years, and this is the first time that most of our members are complaining that the size of the increase is not enough. In the previous seven years, they all moaned about the size of the cuts. It would be churlish not to acknowledge that at least this is the start of a move in the right direction. The Government should be commended for recognising that we are at the bottom of where we can be.
It is not inefficiencies that are driving additional costs in local government, it is the extra demands being made on services. Some 1,000 extra children a day are being looked at, and there are 5,000 requests for adult social services a day. These are huge costs. However, if we do not get the social services stuff right, all of those costs then fall on the health service. The Minister has already acknowledged that a social services bed is much cheaper than a national health bed. So it makes sense from the taxpayer’s point of view to ensure that we invest as much as possible in preventive social care, rather than in acute care to fix whatever has been broken. It might be a good idea if someone figured out how much of the extra £20 billion that the health service is getting would be better directed towards adult social care, in order to prevent the health service having to take that on. Both Secretaries of State appear to be looking at this.
Will the Minister agree to go back to the department and get his colleagues to lobby every other spending department that gives small sums of money to local government? Let us not let those departments think that they can freeze those sums, and make sure that they are increased at least in line with inflation, because that will put additional funding into the hands of local government.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, I thank my noble friend and he is right to say that on occasion, my heart is in my mouth when he gets up to speak, but I always recognise the fairness with which he addresses the issues. I also understand that he speaks from the front line. I recognise, as we all do, the pressures that are on local government. As I say, we really commend the work being done by councillors up and down the country. I think he is being fair when he says that this is a good settlement. I also think he is being fair when he says that we have had some challenges in the past. Perhaps this has to be set against the background of what will be a significant year, because of the business rate retention scheme coming on line, fair funding being looked at and the spending review—outside of what the Chancellor has said is the end of austerity. Given that, we should expect things to ease.
It would be absolutely right to accede to the request of the noble Lord. It is beyond my pay grade to speak to Secretaries of State on an equal basis, but I will certainly pass on to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State his view that other spending departments should be encouraged to look at what they can do because of the demands being made on local government.
The noble Lord, Lord Porter, said that the challenges are due to increased demand rather than inefficiencies. I accept that, which is why the digital declaration in the Statement is particularly important, as is the announced £7.5 million local digital innovation fund, which provides transformation funding for the town planning system in Southwark—the area of birth of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy. Other similar announcements were made in Birmingham, to look at the way in which Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri can help with the delivery of some services. We have to think outside the box in innovative ways to make the most of digital services. That point was made in relation to the earlier Statement on police funding.
Lord McKenzie of Luton (Lab)
My Lords, despite the Minister’s warm words, is it not the case that by 2020, there will have been a reduction in core funding for local authorities of some £16 billion over the previous decade? Is it not the case that local authorities currently house 79,000 people in temporary accommodation, including 120,000—perhaps even 130,000—children, that they deal with almost 5,000 social requests every day and that 8,000 are being affected by the withdrawal or closure of care homes? Is this not austerity writ large? How would the Minister describe the life chances of young people caught up in this?
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, the noble Lord paints a gloomy picture that does not take account of the current year which, as I said, is a good settlement. I am sure that the noble Lord would acknowledge that. I spoke about the tough decisions and challenges of the past decade, which have coincided almost entirely with the period of austerity that followed the deficit we inherited. We can debate who was responsible for that, but in fairness the noble Lord must acknowledge that massive challenges had to be faced. At last we are coming out of that.
I know that there are housing challenges; in the department, we are seeking to meet them with some imaginative proposals on affordable and social housing, certainly in relation to rough sleeping. Social care is a challenge, which is why we committed the £650 million referenced in the Statement. I recognise that we have to do more for the life chances of people up and down the country who deserve a good start in life. That is why local authorities are to be commended on their massive job throughout what has been a difficult period. However, the period has come to an end and we are coming out of it with today’s Statement.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, the Statement says that a few authorities will undertake a,
“significant amount of borrowing for commercial purposes”.
It also states that there is concern from,
“CIPFA and others about the risks that these local authorities are exposing themselves and local taxpayers to”.
Could the Minister write to me, telling me which authorities those are? Could he also tell me what further interventions might be considered? I should declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that valuable point. I asked questions about that when I saw the draft Statement. First, I should reassure noble Lords that I do not think that there is any cause for concern at this stage. As I understand it, there are proposals on behalf of some local authorities and one can understand that, where this involves borrowing, it might cause concern because it would be unfair to place this on local authorities and council tax payers if it were to turn south. As the noble Lord—quite understandably—requested more clarification, I will write to him and place a copy in the Library.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, I declare my shareholdings as in the register. As it happens, they are in both retail and digital. I also welcome the overall settlement and the real-terms cash increase of 2.8% announced by my noble friend, particularly at a time of growing demands and a growing population. But, to be blunt, I am not happy with the Budget settlement on business rates and on high streets—and I suspect that my noble friend might share some of my concerns. Large companies such as Debenhams at the heart of my local town of Salisbury need help with their physical outlets, given the ever-growing vibrancy of digital sales and the digital economy.
Better transport is also important to our towns and cities, and indeed to productivity. Could my noble friend give me some examples of towns where the £420 million that the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, mentioned will make a difference—and not just to potholes?
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for the points that she makes and the general welcome she gives to the settlement, which is fair and right. I acknowledge the challenge faced by the high streets. I am sure she would acknowledge the help announced in the Statement relating to them. Part of this is because of the changing nature of the high street. We cannot, Canute-like, stand in the way of that. What we can do is look at the position relating to the taxation of digital and online sales. My right honourable friend the Chancellor has announced that he is looking at this. I will not name the companies; we all know them. This is a way to deal with that. It is not inherent to the Statement on local government because that does not relate to general taxation policy.
On money for roads, it is for local authorities to determine how they can repair and improve their roads. There will be more detail on that spending and how that money will be distributed to local authorities in an additional Statement that I hope will supply the information my noble friend needs.
Lastly, my noble friend rightly mentioned Salisbury as an important town affected by policy on the high street. It is remarkable how resilient Salisbury has been throughout the difficult period after the Novichok incidents. The Government have given support to Salisbury to help it through, and I have been in touch with the cathedral on a fairly regular basis to see how the community is faring.
Lord Greaves (LD)
My Lords, I remind the House that I am an elected district councillor. Although I am not as excited by the settlement as other noble Lords, my council benefits from a bit of Maundy money above what it thought it would get.
Does the Minister understand that when people talk about the council, look at their council tax bill and say, “What do I get for it?”, a lot of the things that impinge on them directly are provided by local district councils in two-tier areas? I have a huge list here that I will not read out, but it is basically recreation and leisure services, street-level services and community-based problem-solving—town centre problems that directly affect people. A lot of ordinary district councils up and down this country are in dire straits. I would love the statistics that were read out for the average or aggregate cuts to government funding and local authority spending to be the case for the district councils in east Lancashire. They are in a much worse position.
Does the Minister accept that, while there is a bit of sugar on the pill this year, we are in the middle of a three-year settlement where councils all had to sign on the dotted line to say that they agree to it, while it is really asking them whether they want to lose a leg or two arms? The Government have provided a little bag of sweeties this time by saying, “Okay, we’re not going to refuse them”, but unless they tackle these basic-level services that do not fit into the high priorities of social care, health and so on, vital though they are, local government as people know it will collapse in quite a few parts of the country within two or three years.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, I acknowledge the great role that the noble Lord plays in his local authority district in Pendle and I recognise the great work done by local districts up and down the country. He will appreciate, however, that there are a lot of areas that are unitary, where there is not this two-tier system. A lot of what I have talked about, in answering questions and in the Statement itself, relates to the county councils, but much of this will benefit the district councils, where they exist, such as the business rate retention system. Again, Lancashire is a beneficiary of this and it is worth recognising that as well. I recognise the challenges that exist and I know that many local authorities struggle with the financial position. That said, we need to see how costs may be contained and where some back-office costs can be shared. That need not necessarily be via unitisation; it could be done by sharing some of the costs and back-office functions.
I should also say, on the multi-year settlements that the noble Lord referred to, that many councils—perhaps most councils, most councillors and most people offering services—would recognise their importance and desirability, because it gives a guarantee of how payments and settlements will be made into the future.
Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)
My Lords, despite what the Minister said, there must be a connection between internet sales, tax raising and commercial rates. Will the Minister explain what is going on in that area? Who is involved in this work? Is it the Treasury or is it his department assessing what can be done with internet sales, because of the implications for local government finance? Are hearings planned? Are vast numbers of civil servants involved? Is a process of consultation going on? This is an extremely important area and we should be told a lot more about what is a subject of conversation all over the country. People are worried about the high street and they think that internet sales should be paying more. It would be interesting to know what is going on.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, I do not disagree with the noble Lord on the importance of the task, but I disagree with him about the forum. This is a Treasury issue. I will write to him, and copy the letter to other noble Lords, to give as much detail as I can on what is happening, but this is a broader issue. I do not disagree with him about the interaction between commercial rates in the high street and the issue about digital and online taxation, but I stress the point I made earlier: there is a movement away from the high street and noble Lords will be aware of that. I am sure we have all used digital services. Yes, there is an issue of fairness and an issue about where the taxation should lie, but I think that gives the answer to the noble Lord that it is the Treasury that is leading on that. I will certainly write to him with more details.
Lord Lexden (Con)
Both my noble friends Lady Neville-Rolfe and the Minister referred to Salisbury. Can the Minister give a little more detailed information about the extent of the assistance and support the Government are providing and, most importantly, the results flowing from it?
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, first, my role as Minister for Faith has been mostly pastoral—just to see what attendances at the cathedral and at churches in Salisbury have been like. There was quite a dip after the second Novichok incident, if I can call it that, and there has been some recovery from that. I do not have details of the precise financial assistance in front of me but I will cover those details in the letter that I will send to noble Lords.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
Can the Minister help me on a specific point not touched upon to date, which has to do with the introduction of universal credit and the managed migration? As proposed, the timing of that looks likely to mean that people will stay on legacy benefits, including housing benefit, for longer than would otherwise have been the case. To what extent, if at all, was that reflected in the Statement?
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, I confess that I did not come steeped in the issues of universal credit, but the noble Lord is right about legacy benefits and the delay in some of this, including housing benefit still being relevant. If I may, I will write to him with full details of that, because I do not have it to hand.