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Oral Answers to Questions
(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Kelly Tolhurst)
First, I would like to update the House: unfortunately, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Energy and Clean Growth will be unable to join us this morning due to a family illness.
Our young people provide an invaluable contribution to the UK economy—they are more than twice as likely to be entrepreneurs as their peers in France and Germany—and we are supporting them. The start-up loans programme has provided over £60 million in loans to 18 to 24-year-olds since 2012. To further realise young entrepreneurs’ potential, I have asked the Prince’s Trust to lead a review to identify the barriers that they face.
Sir David Amess
In 2017-18, recent graduates from the University of East Anglia set up 247 start-ups employing 1,015 people. Will my hon. Friend reassure me that the Government will continue to fund these schemes, as they mean so much to young people and help to create a vibrant economy?
Kelly Tolhurst
I thank my hon. Friend for that question. Through our industrial strategy, we recognise the valuable contribution from the creation of spin-outs and start-ups by businesses from university. That is why we have committed to increasing higher education innovation funding from £160 million to £250 million per year by 2020-21. This will help to increase universities’ capacity to engage in commercialisation and work with business.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Is the Minister aware that recent research from Sheffield University and King’s College London shows that young entrepreneurs face a very bleak future? In particular, the impact of leaving the EU on many of the very constituents who voted leave is a drop of between 17% and 20% in GDP. That is ruinous for so many of our industrial towns. What is she going to do about it?
Kelly Tolhurst
The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point, but it is true that young people in the UK are twice as likely to be entrepreneurs as those in France and Germany. Our percentages for young entrepreneurs are significantly higher. We are committed to our industrial strategy. I have asked the Prince’s Trust to undertake the review so that we understand specifically what the barriers are for young people and come up with a package to be able to help them.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
I congratulate the Minister on her inspired decision to appoint the Prince’s Trust, which is a wonderful organisation that does magnificent work. Will it concentrate on 18 to 30-year-olds, and when is she expecting it to report?
Kelly Tolhurst
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for allowing me to highlight some of the details of the youth entrepreneurship review. It has started and the board will be announced shortly. It will be looking at 18 to 30-year-olds, and we are hoping that it will report in the autumn. He is absolutely correct: the Prince’s Trust does amazing work with young people from all types of background. In fact, there is already a programme with the Prince’s Trust and Innovate UK that provides mentoring to young people and makes available loans of up to £5,000.
David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)
The Scottish Government’s 2018-19 Budget means that 90% of firms in Scotland pay lower rates than they would if they were based elsewhere in the UK. Given that 55% of individuals will pay less tax than they would in the rest of the UK, what lessons do the Government plan to take in terms of supporting Scotland’s young entrepreneurs and those elsewhere in the UK?
Kelly Tolhurst
The hon. Gentleman highlights specific differences within Scotland, but we are interested in making sure that young people are able to follow their dreams and aspirations whichever part of the country they happen to be in. We are announcing the young entrepreneurs review so that we can look at all the different barriers, including access to finance—something that the Government and I, as the small business Minister, take very seriously—and make sure that we create the right environment for our small businesses to start up, thrive and grow.
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
Sir Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Kelly Tolhurst)
Small businesses are the backbone of our economy, employing over 16 million people, and they make a collective contribution of over £2 trillion. We have provided nearly £5.9 billion of finance to over 82,000 small businesses across the UK. We have also just announced an additional £200 million for innovation for British business.
Theresa Villiers
What discussions has the Minister had with landlords running small businesses about the proposed abolition of section 21 notices? We all want to help renters, but we need to take care that we do not pass new laws that might actually make it harder for vulnerable people to get rented accommodation.
Kelly Tolhurst
I thank my right hon. Friend for her question. We want both to encourage good landlords to stay in the sector and to make sure that proposals do not impact on supply. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government will be consulting landlords and looking at similar changes in Scotland. However, I reassure her that we recognise that small landlords, or incidental landlords, may have different requirements and they will therefore be very much part of the consultation.
Sir Henry Bellingham
Will the Minister join me in paying tribute to Snap-on UK Holdings in King’s Lynn in my constituency? It now employs 141 people and has recently won two Queen’s awards for enterprise and international trade. It is currently exporting to France, Poland, Italy and Spain, and it is trying to open up markets in Asia and Africa. What can she do to encourage other businesses in the country to follow Snap-on’s example and boost their exports, boost our economy and create jobs?
Kelly Tolhurst
I thank my hon. Friend for highlighting the excellent work of Snap-on UK Holdings, which has won a Queen’s award for enterprise. Businesses in North West Norfolk have benefited from 60 start-up loans, totalling nearly £500,000. They also have the growing business fund, which provides grants of up to £500,000 per business, where there is an opportunity to innovate and grow and create jobs.
Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)
Small businesses often rely on each other for mutual support; that is certainly the case in my constituency. Will the Minister please explain to her colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions how detrimental it would be for small businesses and the town centre economy if they relocate 250 jobs out of Merthyr Tydfil town centre as part of their push to centralise jobs and services?
Kelly Tolhurst
The hon. Gentleman raises an important point about our high streets. Obviously, the Government play an important part in that respect in making decisions that affect our regions. I would like to reassure him about what we are doing for high streets and the retail sector. With the Retail Sector Council, we are looking at business costs and elements around skills and employment on the high street. We remain committed to making sure that our high streets remain the heart of our communities. I will make sure that I do everything in my capacity as Minister to achieve that.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Can the Minister outline any initiatives that are being considered to offset high street rates to encourage businesses to not only trade online but have a presence in local high streets? Some of my constituents have done that, and they have been quite successful.
Kelly Tolhurst
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point with regard to traditional retail and online sales. I have spoken with the likes of Amazon and eBay, and one thing I have been extremely surprised at is that they have worked with small businesses that have started online but then invested in bricks-and-mortar retail outlets. We need to work to make sure we have a mixed economy, and I have outlined the work we are doing with the Retail Sector Council, particularly looking at business rates and other issues.
Andrew Griffiths (Burton) (Con)
I congratulate the Minister on the work she does for small businesses. She will know that one of the major challenges small businesses face is not just with late payments but with getting prompt payments and reasonable terms from bigger businesses. Will she ensure that the Government do all they can to end the scourge of late payment? Will she also ensure that the prompt payment code has some teeth so that it actually does the job it is supposed to?
Kelly Tolhurst
I thank my hon. Friend for highlighting prompt payment. It is a particular focus within the Department to tackle late payments, which can be very damaging to small businesses. This week, the Chartered Institute of Credit Management has announced that there are 17 businesses that I have removed or suspended from the prompt payment code to make sure that we highlight where bad practice is occurring. We want to bring business with us. We do know that late payments can have a major impact on small businesses, and I therefore stand committed to ensuring that we do all we can as a Government to end this poor practice.
Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)
This morning I met Matt Dowling of the Freelancer Club, who adumbrated to me some of the terrible situations that freelancers have faced when trying to be paid, often being coaxed into working for nothing for things like experience. Will the Minister meet me and Mr Dowling to discuss how we might crack down on that?
Kelly Tolhurst
Absolutely. I reiterate that this Government do not support the culture of poor payments and late payments. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to raise the concerns of those in a particular sector who might face trouble getting paid for legitimate work. I would be very happy to meet him and that organisation.
Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)
The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Greg Clark)
As the hon. Gentleman will know, there are huge opportunities for advanced manufacturers, especially in his region, and the sector benefits from a minimum of frictions in trade, so it is very important that we conclude a deal with the European Union.
Mr Bailey
I thank the Secretary of State for that reply and commend him for his approach. Boosting productivity is the declared objective of the industrial strategy, but it is plummeting at the moment due to Brexit uncertainty. Does he agree that it is absolutely essential that we get an early Brexit deal that delivers both a customs union and frictionless market access to the EU, because otherwise it is doomed to failure?
Greg Clark
I am a bit more optimistic than the hon. Gentleman in that respect, not least because of the announcement just yesterday from the Advanced Propulsion Centre, which he knows very well, about the opportunity of nearly £5 billion for manufacturers, including in the west midlands, to participate in the growing market for electric vehicle batteries. It is therefore crucial that we drive productivity forward. He will also know of the work that Jürgen Maier is leading, as part of the Made Smarter Review, to capitalise on the opportunities. However, as I have always been clear with the House, we can best advantage those manufacturers if they are able to continue to trade freely and without frictions with the European Union.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Can the Secretary of State confirm that the Government have held discussions with a range of businesses, including those with complex customs requirements and those that export and trade mainly with the European Union, in formulating all their plans?
Greg Clark
I and my colleagues meet very regularly—every day—with businesses in all sectors and in all parts of the country. I think that there is a strong feeling in the business community that we need to bring to a resolution the question of our future relationship with the European Union. The longer this situation goes on, the more attractive investment decisions are put on hold, and they could be creating jobs now.
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
The most recent quarterly economic survey from the North East England chamber of commerce shows a reported mark-down in sales and exports from the north-east. It states:
“We frequently hear from members that uncertainty over Brexit is delaying investment and hiring decisions for their businesses and their customers.”
What specific north-east-focused steps are the Government taking to ensure that the north-east business community and local jobs will not be affected by that, given that the Government’s own analysis shows that any Brexit outcome will affect the north-east the hardest?
Greg Clark
One specific north-east-focused step is to invite the hon. Lady to vote for the deal that has been put before the House.
Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)
The steel industry is, rightly, a key part of the industrial strategy. In that context, what early discussions has the Secretary of State had on the steel charter and the key asks contained within it?
Greg Clark
The discussions that we have had are intended to ensure that the steel sector, which is of fundamental importance to this country, can benefit from some of the manufacturing opportunities that we have talked about. As we expand our production of vehicles, as I hope we will do, there will be a strong requirement for steel, and through the proposed strategy we will ensure that that is British steel.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
The Secretary of State’s industrial strategy states that manufacturing is crucial to the economy and promises to support businesses to access international markets and drive up exports. However, according to Make UK, stockpiling in the UK is now the highest of any G7 nation ever, as manufacturers try to protect themselves from Brexit uncertainty. Chambers of commerce across the country report falls in cash flow because money tied up in stock is not available to drive exports or pay wages. Cash flow is the lifeblood of manufacturing and the cause of up to 90% of business failures. Whatever the eventual outcome of the Government’s Brexit shambles, British manufacturers must be in business to meet its challenges, so will he now commit to providing financial support?
Greg Clark
The hon. Lady quotes Make UK. The chief executive of Make UK, with whom I meet almost every week, has said:
“Make UK has consistently supported the Government’s withdrawal agreement as it removes the risk of no deal and delivers a sensible transition period which is vital for the needs of manufacturers.”
I think the hon. Lady and I have a joint view on the importance of manufacturing, not least in the north-east. I hope that she will have the flexibility and pragmatism to come together—I am talking to her colleague the shadow Secretary of State—and agree a way forward in line with what Make UK recommends.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
The Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation (Chris Skidmore)
The smart export guarantee will pave the way to a smarter, more flexible energy system and ensure small-scale low-carbon generators are paid for the electricity they export to the grid. Yesterday, we published a consultation on the SEG draft licence conditions. We intend to start the legislative process for the smart export guarantee before the summer recess. There are already encouraging signals from the market and suppliers are beginning to voluntarily offer smart export tariffs.
Kerry McCarthy
I think a lot of people in the sector will feel that the delay is not acceptable. Does the Minister agree that the Government must mandate a fair minimum floor price to prevent suppliers from taking advantage of solar households and other small-scale solar generators? The energy price cap is there to ensure suppliers sell power at a fair price. We need a similar mechanism to ensure they purchase at a fair price, too.
Chris Skidmore
That will be part of the consultation. We will set out our final proposals for the guarantee as soon as possible—as I said, before the summer recess. In the meantime, the right signals are already emerging. Energy suppliers are voluntarily bringing forward smart export tariffs.
Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)
As we have heard, rather than publish a smart export guarantee that actually works, the Tories plan to further stifle the industry by hiking VAT on solar. Is it not time that the Minister’s Government stopped the Tory war on renewables and started taking climate change seriously by following the leadership of Scotland’s First Minister and declaring a climate emergency?
Chris Skidmore
The hon. Gentleman fails to mention the success story that is solar photovoltaic. Over the past eight years since May 2010, under the coalition Government and this Government, 99% of capacity has been deployed. That is 49% of the total investment in the EU. We have installed more than twice as much solar capacity as any other European country—more than Germany, France and Australia combined. That is something he should welcome rather than talk down.
Drew Hendry
The Minister has his head in the sand over climate change. Last week, the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee concluded that the UK could not credibly adopt a net zero emissions target without greater investment in new technologies. If the Tories will not act, when will they devolve the powers to Scotland, so the Scottish Government can show them how to do it?
Chris Skidmore
On the net zero target, we will obviously wait on the Committee on Climate Change report, which will be published on Thursday 2 May. I am sure the hon. Gentleman welcomes the Government’s success story on solar capacity and renewables. In comparison with the early 1990s, emissions have come down by 40% while the economy grew by 72%. There is more to do—there will always be more to do—but we are on the right track and doing the right thing. Solar capacity has reached 30 GW, compared with an estimate of 10 GW to 12 GW. We continue to ensure we exceed our targets.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Andrew Stephenson)
The Government are committed to building a globally competitive and sustainable packaging industry through research and innovation. As we announced in the UK’s first bioeconomy strategy at the end of last year, we are providing up to £60 million to transform the plastics economy through the industrial strategy challenge fund, so that we can establish the UK as the world’s leading innovator in smart, sustainable packaging.
Rachael Maskell
The Government’s response to plastic use has been woeful, with a 4% increase in plastic use just last year. There is now more plastic in our oceans than fish. In the light of this environmental calamity, will the Government make a new commitment to ensure that only organic-based packaging material is in place, with no more plastics by 2025?
Andrew Stephenson
The UK has committed to being a global leader on this topic. We have already taken more than 15 billion plastic carrier bags out of the economy, we are consulting on a deposit return scheme and we have introduced proposals for a world-leading new tax on plastic packaging that does not meet minimum thresholds. There is always more that we can do, but there is an awful lot that we have already done.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
Does the Minister recognise the contribution of the UK packaging manufacturing industry, which has annual sales of £12 billion, employs 85,000 people and makes up 3% of the UK manufacturing base, in working closely to increase the percentage of recycled material by using innovative new technologies and materials?
Andrew Stephenson
I thank my hon. Friend for that question. The UK plastics industry is vital to our economy, employing more than 170,000 people. This new challenge for the sector allows it to create new jobs as it embraces our challenging targets and ambitions in this area.
Jo Swinson (East Dunbartonshire) (LD)
Andrew Stephenson
Most major supermarkets are signatories to that pact, and we have certainly seen some go further than others. A lot of lessons can be learned. It is a mixed picture at the moment, so I am certainly keen to keep this area under review. I particularly praise Morrisons, which has come out with a range of things on this, but there are many other supermarkets available that are working hard on this topic. We all have to work together on this—consumers, business and the Government.
Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)
Andrew Stephenson
To encourage the next generation of innovative entrepreneurs, our modern industrial strategy announced the biggest increase in public research and development funding on record—an extra £7 billion by 2021-22. We have also launched an independent review of the barriers facing young entrepreneurs, and we have published a review of the barriers facing female entrepreneurs.
Adam Afriyie
I very much welcome that answer, and I very much welcome the Minister on his debut appearance at the Dispatch Box. I would also very much like to welcome him to Windsor, where residents of the royal borough have the lowest council tax in the country and residents of Bracknell Forest have low council tax but also high-quality services. That is why so many talented people come to Windsor to live and work. Will the Minister join me in recognising the good work of the Thames Valley Berkshire local enterprise partnership and the two key local authorities in making the Windsor constituency a great place to live, work and, above all, to start and run a business?
Andrew Stephenson
I agree with my hon. Friend and welcome his support for the good work of the Thames Valley Berkshire LEP and his local councils. My officials will work with his LEP and its local authority partners to produce a local industrial strategy for Berkshire that will boost productivity and support business start-ups. That is in addition to the £142 million local growth fund investment that we have already made in the county.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
Similarly, in my constituency, young entrepreneurs trying to set up businesses, particularly in the digital sector, face a real shortage in the availability of electricity through the district grid—an issue identified by my local LEP. Will the Minister agree to meet me and the LEP to see what can be done to improve the situation?
Andrew Stephenson
We are working closely with LEPs on this issue, but I will be more than happy to meet the hon. Gentleman.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
To be the best place to grow and start a business means having consistent rules and regulations. My brilliant local Medway Licensed Taxi Drivers Association has raised a real concern about Uber operating in Medway without having the same rules and regulations as association members. Will the Minister meet me and that brilliant association to look at those rules and regulations, to ensure that they are fair? I declare an interest: I have relatives in that trade.
Andrew Stephenson
My hon. Friend is a huge champion of his constituency, and particularly its small businesses. That meeting would probably be more appropriate with the small business Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood (Kelly Tolhurst), and I am sure that she will be happy to take such a meeting.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
Does the Minister agree that after our eventual departure from the EU the growth of more small businesses and the expansion of existing small businesses, freed from bureaucracy, will be central to the economy of the entire United Kingdom, including Northern Ireland?
Andrew Stephenson
Small businesses are the backbone of our economy. I was proud to be a small businessman myself, employing eight people, in my life before politics. We are ranked in the top 10 globally as a place to do business, and this Government will continue to do everything they can to support small business.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation (Chris Skidmore)
The UK has many years of experience regulating the onshore oil and gas industry, and measures are in place to minimise methane emissions. The Environment Agency issues and robustly enforces legally binding environmental permits regulating methane emissions. Under these permits, operators must have an agreed gas management plan to detect leaks and make repairs over the lifetime of site operations. They must also monitor emissions before and during shale gas operations.
Geraint Davies
The Minister will know that NASA and satellite data show that 5% of the methane from fracking is leaked through fugitive emissions and that methane is 85 times worse than carbon dioxide for global warming, which makes fracking worse than coal for climate change. Will he meet me to discuss my fracking Bill, instead of listening to Jim Ratcliffe, the richest man in Britain, from Ineos, who is hellbent on Brexit to avoid the environmental controls on fracking currently imposed by the European Union?
Chris Skidmore
I would be happy to meet the hon. Gentleman and I would emphasise his comment about feeding in space data research. It highlights the importance of the UK space industry in looking at environmental issues. The Government also have a grant funding and environmental monitoring programme led by the British Geological Survey in respect of shale gas sites. All the information for that is publicly available. I also note that the MacKay-Stone 2013 report concluded that the carbon footprint of UK shale gas would be much less than that of coal and comparable to that of imported liquefied natural gas.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
There is no fracking in Scotland, there has been no fracking in Scotland and, under the SNP, there will be no fracking in Scotland. If we going to be serious about the climate emergency, there should not be fracking anywhere in the United Kingdom, so will the UK finally follow Scotland’s lead and rule out fracking on these islands?
Chris Skidmore
Unfortunately, residents and households in Scotland still need to use gas, given that 85% of UK households use gas for heating, and it is right that we look at opportunities to meet our energy demand. Some 47% of gas was imported in 2017, but if we do not take action, this could rise to 72%. We want to increase our opportunities for generating electricity through renewables. In quarter 3 of 2018, just 2.5% of electricity was generated by coal, compared with 40% in 2010, so we are going in the right direction, but we cannot forget that people will be using gas in Scotland.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
The Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation (Chris Skidmore)
As announced in the spring statement, I have invited Professor Sir Adrian Smith to provide independent advice on potential future funding schemes in the context of the UK’s future ambitions for European and international collaboration on science and innovation. I also look forward to welcoming delegations from over 50 countries to the EUREKA global innovation summit in Manchester this May.
Bob Blackman
Our world-class scientists collaborate across the world, with the EU and beyond, and that collaboration is vital for further research and innovation in this country. Horizon 2020 is a ready-made platform for that collaboration. Will my hon. Friend commit to joining the Horizon 2020 programme as we leave the EU?
Chris Skidmore
The Government have committed to guaranteeing all existing Horizon 2020 projects before Brexit. That was issued in August 2016 and demonstrated the Government’s commitment early on to protecting our scientific partnerships. We then had the underwrite extension in July 2018 which said that even once we had left the European Union—for two years up until December 2020—we would commit to funding those projects for the lifetime of them. We are now moving into negotiations on Horizon Europe, which is the successor scheme to Horizon 2020. I took part in the EU Competitiveness Council in February—I hope also to attend on 28 May—and it is our ambition to associate into Horizon Europe. On investment, my hon. Friend will be well aware that through our world-class universities we put in £4 billion and got back £5.7 billion in investment.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
Even at the height of the cold war, there was a surprising level of collaboration between Russian and UK nuclear physicists. Will the Minister assure me that there will be similar collaboration when it comes to the skills that we have in the UK—particularly at Dounreay, in my constituency—in nuclear decommissioning, which is an industry that we could export and which could make a lot of money for the UK?
Chris Skidmore
I entirely agree, and I pay tribute to the UK nuclear decommissioning sector. As science Minister, I have seen the innovation that is being developed. I recently announced £93 million for a robotics for hazardous environments programme involving about seven universities across the UK, which are looking into how we can use robotics more effectively to help nuclear decommissioning. I am delighted that that is now being transferred to Fukushima in Japan. The Government are ensuring that scientific collaboration is international. We will publish an international research and innovation strategy shortly, and I shall welcome any opportunities, involving any countries, to continue that work.
Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Kelly Tolhurst)
I regularly meet representatives of the supermarket sector, both individually and through the Retail Sector Council, to discuss a range of issues. One issue that the council has identified as a priority is employment. The Government have committed themselves to upgrading workers’ rights and protecting the most vulnerable workers in all sectors through the good work plan. That represents the biggest upgrade of workers’ rights for over 20 years.
Siobhain McDonagh
I apologise for arriving late, Mr Speaker. I am delighted to have the opportunity to ask the Minister to support Mrs A, who has worked for Asda for 30 years. Her take-home pay, and that of 3,000 other members of staff, will be cut because of changes in the pay structure masquerading as an hourly increase. Paid breaks will be reduced, the night shift will be changed, and bonuses will be slashed. Will the Minister join me in supporting Mrs A and ensuring that she keeps what she is earning now?
Mr Speaker
The hon. Lady was not late for her own question. Her principal responsibility is to be in her place to ask her question, and we are delighted to see her. She does not need to be too apologetic; in fact, she does not need to be apologetic at all.
Kelly Tolhurst
The hon. Lady is absolutely right to raise those questions. She is a strong campaigner for workers in her constituency, and we have met on a number of occasions to discuss some of the issues involved. Obviously we want Asda employees to receive the remuneration to which they are entitled. It is true that a consultation is taking place on changes that may be introduced towards the end of the year, but, in general, terms and conditions are subject to negotiation between the employer and the employee. While it is always open to either party to enter into negotiations on the terms of contracts, if employees are subject to changes in terms to which they have not agreed, they can take legal action.
Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)
The Minister is right to champion workers’ rights, because ours is the party of the workers. However, there are still too many examples of employers not paying the national living wage. What further steps will the Government take to ensure that the national living wage is enforced and workers receive a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work?
Kelly Tolhurst
I thank my hon. Friend for raising that issue. He is right: we are the party of the workers, which is why we introduced the good work plan, the biggest reform of workers’ rights for 20 years. We are committed to enforcing the national minimum wage and ensuring that people receive the remuneration that they deserve. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs has identified £24.4 million of arrears that affected more than 200,000 workers last year, which was an increase on the previous year. We have almost doubled the budget for enforcement since 2015, and we remain committed to ensuring that people receive the national minimum wage when they are entitled to it.
Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation (Chris Skidmore)
Tackling climate change is a cross-Government priority. Just last week my right hon. Friend the Minister for Energy and Clean Growth made an oral statement outlining the Government’s climate change priorities. Ministers in the Departments for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs meet regularly to discuss matters including waste management, agriculture, forestry, resource efficiency and the environment Bill. We will host the upcoming Inter-Ministerial Group on Clean Growth to discuss the report from the Committee on Climate Change and the UK’s offer to host the United Nations Conference of the Parties in 2020.
Luke Pollard
After the Government’s refusal to declare a climate emergency, may I ask the Minister what he has personally taken away from the visit of 16-year-old Greta Thunberg and her most powerful advocacy on the need for urgent action?
Chris Skidmore
I think we will be having a thorough debate on this issue of climate change emergency in the Opposition day debate tomorrow. When it comes to my personal role as the Minister with responsibility for science, innovation and research, I entirely agree that we need to be making more investment in climate change technology in order to reach our target of 2.4% of GDP on research and development. We have already announced our missions in relation to clean growth. I absolutely believe we should be listening to the experts—that includes the scientists—and learning from climate science, wherever that may be, to make sure we can reduce our emissions.
Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)
Since the Rio summit in 1992, the UK has actually decarbonised more than any other G7 economy, while growing our economy the most at the same time. However, we need to do more, which is why I am looking forward to the Committee on Climate Change report on Thursday. If it does indeed recommend a net zero target, will the Minister commit to ensuring that that is something the Government will very seriously consider bringing into law at the first opportunity?
Chris Skidmore
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight the achievements that have been made in recent years, but it is important that we redouble our efforts. The Committee on Climate Change report, which will be published on Thursday, was commissioned by the Government, and the Government will be taking actions on the back of its recommendations. It is important that we look to continue our actions, but it is also important that we do so with our international partners. We have the UN summit taking place in September and future COPs, including the one we would like to host in 2020.
Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)
Chris Skidmore
I would not call listening to local communities and reflecting on the need to create sustainable communities locally “ideological opposition”. We need to work with everybody—all citizens. There has been talk of citizens’ committees, so why not ensure that local communities are able to reflect on the benefits of renewable energy in their communities, and begin such dialogues with them, rather than call them ideological opponents of renewables? I do not think that is very fair on those communities.
Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)
I would like to send the thoughts of Opposition Members to the Minister for Energy and Clean Growth. I welcome this Minister to his place and look forward to our exchanges over the Dispatch Box.
In 2016, the UK’s carbon emissions fell at 6% a year, and in 2017, emissions fell at 3% a year, but in 2018, the figure was 2%—just a 2% fall—so at a time when action should be ramping up to tackle the climate emergency, can the Minister explain why the UK’s progress is slowing down?
Chris Skidmore
I do not recognise that. The fact is that we have met our first and second carbon budgets over the 2008 to 2012 and 2013 to 2017 periods. We have managed to reach those targets. Turnover for clean business was up 7% in 2017, contributing £44.5 billion to the economy. When it comes to ensuring that we look at our clean growth strategy, we have set out quite clearly opportunities to halve the energy use of new buildings by 2030 and to establish the world’s first net zero carbon industrial cluster by 2040. By comparison with our European neighbours, we are racing ahead—we are leaders in this field—and we want to make sure that we can continue to do so.
Rebecca Long Bailey
With respect, the Minister is alluding to the UK’s emissions cuts since 2010, when the UK still benefited from policies put in place by the previous Labour Government—policies that the Conservatives have now scrapped. Secondly, it is irrelevant, quite frankly, to climate physics whether the UK is doing slightly better or worse than other countries that are also failing to take the necessary action.
I ask this in good faith and in all seriousness: does the Minister accept that the UK’s stalling progress is related to banning—in effect—onshore wind, reducing almost all support for solar power, scrapping the zero-carbon homes standard and selling off the Green Investment Bank? Will he be honest about the challenge, and work with Labour and Members right across this House on turning this around, so that we can truly tackle climate change and properly seize the economic opportunities within the green economy?
Chris Skidmore
It is important to recognise that 56% of electricity power generation is now based around low-carbon economy generation and that 33% of that is from renewables, up from 7% in 2010. Coal represents 2.5% of our electricity generation, and last weekend the UK went 90 hours without any coal electricity generation for the first time since the industrial revolution. As we are now involved in the fourth industrial revolution, we want to ensure that we continue to power through and that we can adopt more renewables for the future.
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)
Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)
Kirstene Hair (Angus) (Con)
The Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation (Chris Skidmore)
Last year, renewable generation provided a third of our electricity and, as I have stated, over the Easter weekend we went 90 hours without any coal generation. Both were new records. Our next contracts for difference allocation round will open next month. We are driving down the cost of clean technologies and investing £2.5 billion in low-carbon innovation.
Anna McMorrin
Far from leading the way, the UK has plummeted to the bottom of SolarPower Europe’s league table of 20 world markets in solar, and we are one of the few EU countries not providing any support at all to solar power. Not only has solar had all support removed prematurely but it is being hit by wave after wave of fresh damage, making it harder to meet our climate targets. Will the Secretary of State or the Minister meet me to discuss the damaging net effect of the Government’s policies on solar and on the transition to clean energy?
Chris Skidmore
I am sure that the Minister for Energy and Climate Change will be happy to meet the hon. Lady, but as I have stated, photovoltaics is a UK success story. We have seen 830,000 installations, and I have mentioned the smart export guarantee tariff that is being designed. We want to ensure that this will be able to generate profit for those companies, and that we continue to be able to lead Europe on this.
Mike Wood
Eliminating net carbon emissions by 2050 is both ambitious and achievable. Does my hon. Friend agree that the progress made over the past decade demonstrates that, where there is the political will, it is possible to reduce emissions while supporting economic prosperity?
Chris Skidmore
Absolutely. We need to deliver ambitious reductions in emissions, considering our long-term targets in the light of the latest science. That is why we have asked the Committee on Climate Change for advice on our long-term targets, including that net zero target. The committee’s advice will be published this Thursday, and we will consider it carefully.
Kirstene Hair
Of course we have a record to be proud of when it comes to renewable energy, but we should always continue to be as ambitious as we have been. How significant has the UK’s contribution been to ensuring that Scotland meets its renewable targets?
Chris Skidmore
The Government are firmly committed to the renewables industry, and Scotland has benefited proportionately more than the rest of the United Kingdom under existing policies. It will continue to benefit from future investment. Fifteen Scottish projects have been awarded contracts for difference with a total capacity of 2.57 GW, and the Government and numerous other public sector organisations have provided £15 million to fund the European Marine Energy Centre in Orkney, which is one of the world’s leading wave and tidal demonstration centres.
Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)
The truth of the matter right now is that, far from expanding the source of renewables, the Government have narrowed the use of renewable energy in recent years. Of course we should strongly support the development of offshore wind, but the Minister must acknowledge that marine and tidal power has been almost strangled at birth by the Government’s indifference and even active hostility, and that onshore wind and solar PV have been severely hampered by adverse Government decisions on support and planning. On lack of support, will the Minister answer a specific question? Why is he sanctioning a VAT rate rise to 20% on solar power while at the same time maintaining a rate of just 5% on coal and fuel oil?
Chris Skidmore
The industry has invested more than £92 billion in clean energy since 2010. As I have stated, renewables now generate 33% of our electricity, and 52.8% comes from low-carbon sources. As for the VAT issue, we are working with organisations and companies to ensure that we can get the best possible deal when it comes to renewables. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Energy and Clean Growth will be happy to discuss the matter with the hon. Gentleman in further detail, but we are committed to ensuring that we have a wide range of renewables, including marine energy and offshore and onshore wind, to make sure that we can continue to drive up our renewable capacity.
Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)
Chris Skidmore
The hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) also reflected on that, and it is vital that renewables remain an important part of our energy generation mix. Our clean growth and industrial strategies set out how we will build progress in all such areas, but I am sure that the Minister for Energy and Clean Growth will be happy to meet my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) to discuss the issue.
Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Andrew Stephenson)
The Heart of the South West local enterprise partnership, which covers both Somerset and Devon, is receiving £239 million through the local growth fund to drive regional economic development. That includes an investment of over £24 million in projects in Taunton Deane, such as the redevelopment of Taunton station and improvements to junction 25, which is one of the largest investments that we have made in the south-west through the local growth fund to date.
Rebecca Pow
I welcome the Minister to his new role. Will he join me in congratulating all those involved in the development of the new headquarters for the UK Hydrographic Office, the opening of which I attended in Taunton last week? Will he also join me in supporting the endeavour to use its expertise in marine data to open a marine geospatial innovation centre at Firepool in Taunton to open up opportunities in the blue economy?
Andrew Stephenson
I will of course join my hon. Friend in congratulating those involved in the opening of the new UK Hydrographic Office headquarters in her constituency. It is a world-class natural asset. The UKHO is working with local partners to scope the feasibility of developing a marine geospatial innovation centre in Taunton, and it plays a key role in the south-west’s local industrial strategy.
Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)
The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Greg Clark)
Informed by my regular discussions with trade unions, we have extended worker rights, and both Houses agreed last month to close the Swedish derogation loophole to protect agency workers. On 1 April, we celebrated with union representatives the 20th anniversary of the national minimum wage. The day was marked by the rise in the national living wage, which has delivered the fastest pay rise for the lowest paid in at least 20 years, benefiting nearly 1.8 million workers.
Martyn Day
The Scottish Trades Union Congress general secretary, Grahame Smith, has said that the Scottish Government’s
“Fair Work Action Plan demonstrates a commitment to using the powers the Government has at its disposal to deliver Fair Work, which is good for workers and good for business.”
Will the Secretary of State do his bit by introducing a real living wage? If not, will he devolve the policy so that the Scottish Government can?
Greg Clark
What the hon. Gentleman did not mention is that this Government introduced the national living wage, and we have just increased it to its highest-ever level, benefiting millions of people around the country. I would have thought that he would welcome that.
Laura Pidcock (North West Durham) (Lab)
There are many warm words from the Government on workers’ rights, but to say that the Conservatives are the party of workers is a joke, because their actions in government tell a different story. Strong economies are almost always underpinned by strong trade union rights. Germany, Sweden, Norway and Denmark all have extensive sectoral collective bargaining coverage, which has been used to reduce income inequality and drive up wages. The hostility towards trade unions and the dismissal of collective bargaining here is not just bad for workers but bad for the economy, creating a vicious cycle of lower wages, reducing tax revenues and lowering spending. The obsession with undermining union rights is self-defeating. What is the Secretary of State doing to break the cycle?
Greg Clark
If you want to be the party of workers, you need to be the party that creates work. There are 1.5 million more people employed in work as a result of this Government’s policies, and of course we want to make sure they are in good jobs. The effort of our industrial strategy is to drive up productivity, which is necessary if pay rates are to increase over time. The hon. Lady should acknowledge the reforms, brought in partly as a result of the Matthew Taylor report, that have closed the Swedish derogation, which her party failed to close over 13 years in office.
Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Greg Clark)
Nearly 30 years ago Margaret Thatcher made a speech at the UN General Assembly in which she described
“what may be early signs of man-induced climatic change.”
Ever since then, the UK has continued to lead the world on this issue. The UK, yet again, broke its coal-free power generation record, which now amounts to more than three and a half days without any electricity being generated from coal, over the weekend—the longest period since the industrial revolution in which coal has not been burned for power in this country.
Later this week we have another seminal moment in which the independent Committee on Climate Change will report back, at the Government’s request, on how we can set a date to achieve net zero emissions—once again, this country is leading the world on climate change.
Stephen Kinnock
I am sure the House will wish to join me in paying tribute to the management, the workforce and the emergency services who dealt so effectively with the explosion at the steelworks in my constituency on Friday. We wish the two men who received minor injuries all the best.
The predecessor of the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the hon. Member for Pendle (Andrew Stephenson) promised the last meeting of the all-party parliamentary group on steel and metal-related industries that he would host a meeting of steel sector stakeholders, supply chains and steel MPs to discuss the failure to develop a steel sector deal. Will the Minister now commit to honouring that commitment and to meeting us as soon as possible?
Greg Clark
First, I join the hon. Gentleman in paying tribute to the workers at Port Talbot and to the emergency services, which responded with characteristic bravery and dispatch to deal with that very worrying incident. The Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle (Andrew Stephenson), and I spoke to the company and the trade unions the next morning, and we are all relieved that the situation was not worse. Of course, we send our sympathies to the workers affected.
As the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) knows from an earlier answer, we are clear on the importance of the steel sector for the future of manufacturing generally, and I take a personal interest. These are early days for the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle, but I know he shares my enthusiasm, and perhaps we can both come to that meeting.
Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
Greg Clark
My hon. Friend, who chairs the Select Committee on Justice, makes an excellent point on one of our principal sources of export earnings. More than that, the pre-eminence of law in the UK brings firms from jurisdictions around the world to do business here. We are determined that we should maintain our good relations across the continent and that we should keep up to date in our practices. He will know that, through the industrial strategy, we are investing in the regulators’ pioneer fund to make sure that legal services take their place at the cutting edge of innovation.
Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)
On 4 April, the Office for Product Safety and Standards published its investigation into Whirlpool and the ongoing issue of its product safety. The report was lambasted by consumer organisations, including Which?, as weak. Just days later it was revealed in the media that Whirlpool allegedly paid one consumer to stay silent after she was forced to flee with two young children as a blaze engulfed her home after her dryer had been modified. Can the Minister tell us whether the OPSS was aware of those allegations and, if not, whether it will now reopen its investigation in light of the accusations?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Kelly Tolhurst)
I thank the hon. Lady for raising this issue, and I commit to making sure that I speak to the OPSS about the allegations she has highlighted and what further information we can ascertain. She is right, in that I laid a written ministerial statement before the House on 4 April. I have to let the House know that the OPSS has written to Whirlpool asking it to take action, and it has 28 days to reply to that. I stand ready, as the Minister, to make sure that consumer safety and protection is at the heart of what we are doing and that we take further action where necessary.
Scott Mann (North Cornwall) (Con)
Greg Clark
I recognise the situation my hon. Friend describes; in his rural constituency, this is a big problem. In the spring statement, we announced that the future homes standard would ensure that all new buildings, including those in rural areas, are equipped with low-carbon sources of heat and power by 2025. We also recognise the importance of households that are off the gas grid and have them in mind as we deal with the energy companies in terms of their tariffs.
Douglas Chapman (Dunfermline and West Fife) (SNP)
Greg Clark
It is a sad reflection that the job creation that has taken place in Scotland lags behind that in the rest of the UK. I fancy that one reason for that is that Scotland has acquired a reputation for being the highest- tax part of the UK. So I hope the hon. Gentleman would reflect on these causes and advise his colleagues in Holyrood to take a different course.
Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)
Greg Clark
I am aware of the advice from the committee, which we will consider carefully. My hon. Friend will know that the energy company obligation has been reformed to concentrate on fuel poverty, but we are grateful for the committee’s advice and we will respond shortly.
Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)
Greg Clark
Across the country, it is crucial that we invest in infrastructure. If we want to compete with other nations across the world, we need to make sure that our businesses and our people can count on fast connections, and that includes between our great cities.
Richard Harrington (Watford) (Con)
Now that I am not bound by the ministerial code, or indeed collective responsibility, I feel that I can speak my mind about sector deals. I think they are absolutely brilliant, and I ask my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to point out some of the achievements made on delivering the commitments made between the Government and industry.
Mr Speaker
I cannot say that I had noticed that the hon. Gentleman was previously all that closely bound.
Greg Clark
That was my experience, too, Mr Speaker. Goodness knows what my hon. Friend will be like now that he is on the Back Benches. May I pay tribute to the fantastic work he did in securing so many of the sector deals? He got to know very well the needs of particular industries and sectors. Let me pay tribute to the creative industries sector deal, for example, which this very weekend launched a new immersive technology version of “Peaky Blinders”. I do not know whether he is a fan of that series. If he is—
Greg Clark
“Peaky Blinders” is an award-winning programme, which my hon. Friend will be able to experience in virtual reality as a result of the sector deal done with our creative industries, particularly the gaming industry.
Laura Smith (Crewe and Nantwich) (Lab)
Greg Clark
The hon. Lady will know that the investment that is being made through the industrial strategy in testbed facilities and data centres for connected and autonomous vehicles is geared towards making Britain the go-to place in the world for the development, deployment and manufacture of such vehicles. As the hon. Lady takes an interest in the sector, I would be delighted to invite her to see and meet some of the companies involved in what is a great set of possibilities for this country.
Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)
Shared parental leave is a good option for new parents, but the Secretary of State will know that take-up remains low. Will he consider introducing a stand-alone period of parental leave just for partners, to help families to balance work and childcare?
Kelly Tolhurst
I thank my hon. Friend for raising this issue. She is a keen champion of rights for parents. I agree that fathers and partners have a key role to play in caring for their children. The shared parental leave and pay scheme gives parents more choice and flexibility and challenges the assumption that the mother will always be the primary carer. Last year, the Government ran a £1.5 million campaign to promote shared parental leave and to increase its take-up, and we are preparing a further campaign for later in the year. I assure my hon. Friend that we always keep these things under review. I am keen to meet her in the near future to discuss her particular concerns.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Andrew Stephenson)
I look forward to working with the UK steel sector and have already had several engagements. Steel overcapacity remains a significant global issue that requires international solutions, but here in the UK we have already done a range of things, including identifying more than £3.8 billion a year of UK domestic requirement for steel.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Order. We are running out of time—indeed, we have run out of time—but I know that the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton), who is a practitioner of caring and sharing, will want to be pithy to accommodate colleagues.
Sarah Newton
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
Yesterday, the Princess Royal helped to mark a significant milestone in the exploration of deep geothermal energy in Cornwall, as the deepest and hottest hole on the UK mainland has been successfully drilled. Will my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State meet me to discuss what more the Government can do to support this potentially scalable new source of renewable energy?
The Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation (Chris Skidmore)
I congratulate my hon. Friend’s constituents on the work they have done on geothermal energy, which is an exciting form of renewable energy. I am going to Cornwall on 24 May, so I will see whether I can meet my hon. Friend. I know that the University of Exeter is involved in the project, and I would be keen to pursue the matter further.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Greg Clark
The hon. Gentleman should celebrate the fact that, when it comes to renewable energy, we are the leading nation in the world for the deployment of offshore wind. We are creating jobs right throughout the country, and many constituencies have people in good jobs because of the leadership in renewable energy that we have displayed. We will go further in the years ahead.
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
Solar plus battery storage will soon be commercially viable without any subsidy. Is now the right time to plan for a huge deployment of solar on every public building, school, hospital and prison?
Greg Clark
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. If there is the possibility of more renewable energy than was previously contemplated and we can store it, we will solve our energy needs for the future, thereby helping business and consumers. I shall take up my hon. Friend’s suggestion.
Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)
My constituent was made redundant from Carillion last April after 11 years’ service as a cleaner. She has been passed from pillar to post, from PwC to the insolvency services. Will the Minister please look into this case as a matter of urgency?
Kelly Tolhurst
I would welcome it if the hon. Lady passed me the details of her constituent, so that I can follow up that matter.
Peter Heaton-Jones (North Devon) (Con)
In North Devon, we are proudly playing our role in clean energy generation with two major wind farms. Does the Minister agree that, to ensure our security of supply and to get the best climate change outcomes, we need a mix of clean energy generation?
Chris Skidmore
Absolutely. It is important that we put that mix in place. We have already heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) about looking at other forms of renewables. There is also carbon capture and storage. We need to ensure that we look at new technologies to be able to deliver a low-carbon future.
David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
The enterprise finance guarantee scheme and its continued use by the Royal Bank of Scotland is still causing controversy. Even this week, we have seen discussions from the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) around the use of debt. Will the Minister, or the Department, discuss with the Treasury how this scheme and its legacy are now operating?
Kelly Tolhurst
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for raising that matter at BEIS questions today. I will happily take on that challenge.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
Small businesses in Cleethorpes are suffering because of yet another two high street bank closures. Individuals and businesses need both the counter services and expert financial advice from banks. Indeed, banks are important to the vitality and viability of our high streets. Will Ministers assist local authorities in establishing financial hubs, where financial institutions can come together and provide that service?
Kelly Tolhurst
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise concerns about banks pulling out of our high streets. Those concerns have also been raised by many other MPs across the country. High street banks do offer a valuable service for consumers, and that is why I am grateful to the Post Office for renegotiating the banking framework, which will offer better payments to postmasters providing banking services in those high streets. However, he is quite right: we do need to work closely with local authorities at a regional level to make sure that the services being offered on the high street are those that people wish to see.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
Will the Minister confirm that the Secretary of State for Scotland put in writing his objection to onshore wind finding a route to market in Scotland? Why will the Government not release that correspondence in the interests of transparency?
Greg Clark
I am not aware of the inquiry that the hon. Gentleman mentioned. I will follow it up with the Scottish Secretary.
Several hon. Members rose—
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
My hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) anticipated my question.
Mr Speaker
Well, that is a novel phenomenon—a Member who takes the attitude that someone else has asked the question and therefore says that he will desist. That is a most admirable trait, if an uncommon one.
Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)
The Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee and the Competition and Markets Authority have both published reports calling for change in the UK audit industry. Will the Secretary of State undertake at the Dispatch Box that the power of the big four audit firms in the UK will not stop this agenda for change?
Greg Clark
I will give that commitment. I am very pleased that the Competition and Markets Authority has launched that report and made some interim recommendations. We will be looking at them during the weeks ahead. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that this is a sector that is fundamental to the confidence that we have in businesses right across the country.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Everybody wants to do their bit by recycling, but it is absolutely infuriating when we get to the supermarket and all the fruit and veg is wrapped in plastic. Then there is the exciting moment when we get home to the kitchen and see that there is a little sign, which looks like the packaging is recyclable, but then we read the words, “Not yet recyclable”. What on earth do they mean by that? Are we meant to keep it all until, suddenly, somebody announces that it is now recyclable? Are we meant to put it in the attic or store it in a cupboard? What are we meant to do? Surely, we should ban those words. The packaging is not recyclable and it should not be available.
Chris Skidmore
I entirely sympathise with the hon. Gentleman’s frustration on this point. I hope that he also noticed when it came to the London marathon this weekend—congratulations to all hon. Members from all parts of the House who took part in that marathon—that the water was in bottles made not of plastic, but of compostable seaweed. As a science Minister, I can say that a key issue is looking at what we can do to develop alternative forms of plastic, but we have to work with local authorities and supermarkets to make that happen.
Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)
I know—from chairing the all-party parliamentary group for small and micro-business, and from talking with west Oxfordshire businesses—that one of the major challenges that small organisations face is finding sufficient people of the right skills to grow their businesses. What are Ministers doing to provide a national strategy to ensure that our young people have the skills they need for the future?
Kelly Tolhurst
I congratulate my hon. Friend on his work as chair of the all-party parliamentary group; he is extremely passionate about this subject and does a lot to champion small businesses in his constituency. We have outlined a £1.3 billion investment in UK talent and skills to attract the best. We are also keen to work with businesses—particularly small ones—to ensure that we are delivering on our apprenticeship targets. We have seen some fantastic results when young people have been brought into organisations and been given the training and workplace experience to grow and thrive. I very much hope to champion such schemes as we go forward.
Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)
The other week, I was shocked to meet a constituent who had worked in care for nine months solidly without being given a single day off, while on a zero-hours contract. Such workers, who are vulnerable, need protection for their rights at work. Will the Secretary of State look at bringing in group claims for industrial tribunals and representative cases so that workers do not have to stick their head above the parapet?
Greg Clark
I was pleased to meet the hon. Lady yesterday to discuss this matter. I share her concerns about the case that she mentioned and take her suggestion very seriously. As I have committed to her, we will take this forward together.
Petition
(5 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate
Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
The petition asks the House to hold a debate of no confidence in the Prime Minister at the earliest opportunity. It is from residents of the United Kingdom. The lead signatory is Leonard Harris from Accrington in Lancashire. Other signatories include many from Dorset constituencies, including Christchurch, and from representatives of Leavers of Dorset. The lead signatory wanted to submit a parliamentary e-petition on the subject, but it was ruled inadmissible because it is not possible to submit an e-petition calling for someone to lose their job. It was deemed that the consequence of the petition was that the Prime Minister could lose her job, so it was ruled out. Hence this old-fashioned public petition.
The petition states:
The petition of Residents of the United Kingdom,
Declares that the Prime Minister repeatedly promised that the UK would leave the European Union on 29 March 2019 and that the only way to prevent that happening without a deal was for our Prime Minister’s Withdrawal Agreement to be approved by Parliament; further notes that despite her Withdrawal Agreement having been rejected by the House of Commons on three separate occasions, the Prime Minister intervened personally to prevent the UK leaving the EU on 29 March 2019, further intervened to prevent the UK leaving the EU on 12 April 2019, and has now agreed with the EU, without the prior approval of her Cabinet or Parliament, that the UK cannot leave the EU before 31 October 2019 without a deal, notwithstanding having incurred expenditure in excess of £4 billion for that purpose, and the Prime Minister having repeatedly stated to UK citizens that in her view no deal is better than a bad deal; further expresses its dismay that the Prime Minister has also conceded that the UK is not allowed to renegotiate the Withdrawal Agreement or open negotiations on a future relationship with the EU prior to 31 October 2019, thereby going back on her guarantee that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed; and further as a result that they have no confidence in the Prime Minister.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons hold a debate and make a decision on a motion of no confidence in the Prime Minister at the earliest opportunity.
And the petitioners remain, etc.
[P002451]
Overseas Students: English Language Tests
(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on his review of the cases of overseas students falsely accused of cheating in Test of English for International Communication English language tests.
The Minister for Immigration (Caroline Nokes)
Test centres operated on behalf of the Educational Testing Service were the subject of a BBC “Panorama” programme in February 2014 that aired footage of the systematic cheating in English language tests at a number of its UK test centres. Further investigation demonstrated just how widespread this was, and the scale is shown by the fact that 25 people involved in organising and facilitating language test fraud have received criminal convictions. They have been sentenced to a total of over 70 years’ imprisonment, and further criminal investigations are ongoing.
There was also a strong link to wider abuse of the student visa route. A National Audit Office report in 2012 made it clear that abuse of that route was rife and estimated that in 2009—its first year of operation—up to 50,000 people used the tier 4 student route to work, not study. Most students who were linked to this fraud were sponsored by private colleges, many of which the Home Office had significant concerns about before the BBC investigation. Indeed, 400 colleges that had sponsored students linked to the ETS had already had their licences revoked before 2014.
Over the course of 2014, the ETS systematically analysed all tests taken in the UK dating back to 2011—more than 58,000 tests. Analysis of the test results identified 33,725 invalid results and 22,694 questionable results. Those with questionable results were given the chance to re-sit a test or attend an interview before any action was taken. People who used invalid ETS certificates to obtain immigration leave have had action taken against them.
The courts have consistently found that the evidence for invalid cases created a reasonable suspicion of fraud and was enough for the Home Office to act upon. It is then up to individuals to refute this, either through appeals or judicial reviews. Despite this, concerns have been expressed about whether innocent people could have been caught up in this. The Home Secretary has listened to the apprehensions of some Members, including the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), and has asked officials for further advice. The National Audit Office is also currently in the process of concluding an investigation into the handling of these issues, and this is expected to be published next month. Obviously, the Home Secretary has taken a close interest in the issue and will be reviewing the conclusions of the National Audit Office, and he will make a statement to the House once he has had time to consider the matter in full.
Stephen Timms
I thank the Minister for her answer, and I am pleased to see the Home Secretary in his place. I congratulate him on achieving one year in his role today. On his first day in the post, I asked him to take a careful look at this issue, and he said that he would. On 1 April this year, I asked him for an update. He said:
“We had a further meeting to make some final decisions just last week, and I will be in touch with him shortly.”—[Official Report, 1 April 2019; Vol. 657, c. 799.]
But in the month since, nothing has been announced. Many students face desperate hardship and need urgently to know the decision, because their future depends on it.
As the Minister said, the Home Office cancelled the visas of those who ETS claimed, from its analysis, had definitely cheated. The claim by ETS that almost 97% of those who sat their test had cheated seems completely implausible, but we will let that pass. Colleges had to expel those who had their visas cancelled. By the end of 2016, there had been more than 35,870 refusal, curtailment and removal decisions in ETS cases and more than 4,600 removals and departures. One estimate is that at least 2,000 of those denied visas are still in the UK.
In-country appeals were not allowed, but some have got cases to court. A growing number have convinced the courts that they did not cheat. One showed that he never actually took a TOEIC test, yet he had his visa cancelled because it was alleged that he had cheated in one. It has proved extraordinarily hard for students to obtain from ETS the recordings said to be of them taking the test. One computer expert told the Appeal Court that ETS’s evidence is worthless. The Appeal Court has criticised the Home Office’s evidence and said in 2017 that it was unlawful to force students to leave the country in order to appeal. Many of those affected speak excellent English so had no motive at all to pay someone else to take the test for them.
Thrown off their courses and denied any refund of their fees, the students cannot study or work. Some invested their families’ life savings to obtain a British degree. The savings have gone. They have no qualification and no income. They depend on kindly friends but say they could not endure the shame of going home with nothing, having apparently been convicted of cheating in the UK. Understandably, mental health problems are rife. Does the Minister agree that those who lost their visas on TOEIC grounds but remain in the UK should have the opportunity to sit a new test and, if they pass, obtain a visa in order to complete their studies and clear their names?
Caroline Nokes
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question. I will return at the outset to the comments I made about the National Audit Office report, which is expected to be published next month. The Home Office has been working closely with the NAO to provide information and evidence, and it is right that the Home Secretary has the opportunity to reflect on the report, consider its findings and come back to the House with a statement.
The right hon. Gentleman spoke about the court cases that have happened. Under the appeals framework, which is set by Parliament, and the Immigration Act 2014, there are no in-country appeals in the student route, through which these visas were issued, but the Home Office is taking a pragmatic approach. It is important to reflect that we are talking about fraud perpetrated back in 2014, and many people who have ongoing ETS litigation will potentially now have the right to bring a human rights claim. If they are refused under the human rights route, they will then generally have an in-country right of appeal.
There were an enormous number of cases where fraud was found, and matching showed that a number of individuals had taken repeat tests on behalf of thousands of people. There was a criminal trial at the start of this month, which saw a further five convictions. While I appreciate the strongly held beliefs of the right hon. Gentleman, it is important that we reflect that this was fraud on an industrial scale, and we should react responsibly.
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
I declare an interest, as chair of the all-party parliamentary BBC group, because it was the BBC’s “Panorama” exposé that showed shocking examples of people reading out answers to those sitting the exams. As the Minister said, people have been convicted of fraud. While I have every sympathy with the individual cases, can the Minister ensure that we take very seriously the fact that our international standing as a centre for students will be harmed if we do not root out those who do wrong?
Caroline Nokes
My hon. Friend will be reassured to learn that 400 colleges that had sponsored students linked to ETS already had their licences revoked before the BBC “Panorama” programme. I am conscious that the student route was linked to widescale abuse, and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister acted swiftly when she was Home Secretary to remove the licences of a number of bogus colleges. As I said, it is important that we work with the NAO, reflect on its findings and find a way to move forward and assist those who might have been wrongly affected.
Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
The Government’s treatment of innocent students has been unacceptable. Driven by the hostile environment and the net migration target, about 34,000 students’ visas have been cancelled. Can the Minister tell us how many of those cases are ongoing? Are any of these students currently in immigration detention? What steps is she taking to identify and compensate students who were wrongfully removed?
The TOEIC visa scandal has been rumbling for years. The Government have lost case after case in the courts. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) has been raising the issue in Parliament for over a year, and students have been protesting outside Parliament. The Home Secretary told Parliament a year ago that he would look carefully at the issue, but no concrete action has been taken. Does the Minister appreciate the urgency of this issue? Thousands of students are living in limbo, unable to work or study while they attempt to clear their names.
The Windrush scandal exposed a culture of disbelief in the Home Office, motivated by removal targets rather than careful consideration of cases. We were promised a culture change, yet the Home Office is again being investigated by the National Audit Office for its cruel and ineffective handling of immigration cases. Does the Minister accept that the years of suffering these students have endured is a result of the coalition Government’s decision to remove legal aid and appeal rights?
We need a swift resolution to all outstanding TOEIC visa cases. The students have asked to be allowed to re-sit the English language tests, and that is a sensible suggestion. The UK’s reputation as a welcoming place for international students is suffering tremendously. International students are vital to our universities. They enhance the experience of UK students and further our soft power abroad, not to mention subsidising the fees of home students, but reports over the weekend suggested that EU students will be required to pay international fees, which the Minister could not confirm or deny yesterday. We now have the TOEIC visa scandal. What will be next?
Caroline Nokes
The hon. Gentleman has chosen to focus on a very small number of students who may have had incorrect results. What we know, and what the evidence shows, is that our response back in 2014 was driven by systematic fraud that was perpetrated in colleges and has seen significant criminal convictions and sentences of 70 years. We are working with the NAO and through the courts. As I said, the Home Office has taken a pragmatic approach to the judicial reviews and appeals coming through the courts, recognising that many of these individuals have been in the country for a significant period. Of course, the ability to speak English in 2019 does not necessarily mean that an individual did not cheat in 2014 or could speak English to the required level then.
I would like to comment more on what we are doing for international students. The UK has a proud track record of attracting an increasing number of students to this country. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will welcome the commitment in the White Paper to continue to have no cap on the number of foreign students coming here and to make a more generous offer for post-study work arrangements for students who choose to come here. It is important that we support our world-class institutions and celebrate the fact that we have five British universities in the top 20 universities globally, and that we saw over the course of the past year a 10% increase in the number of tier 4 visas being applied for.
Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)
I was pleased recently to go on a visit to China with the all-party China group, and we met many students there. The dream of many of those students was to come to the UK to go to university. It is therefore absolutely right that we tackle any fraud, and I am pleased by and thank the Minister for the way that she is dealing with this. We have to give clear signals that our world-leading education remains world-leading and that we have an open door for international students to come here to take advantage of that supreme education.
Caroline Nokes
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to point out the brilliance of UK universities. I would like to point to the increasing numbers of Chinese and Indian students at the university in my constituency, Southampton, which has done a brilliant job of attracting students from overseas, as indeed have many other institutions countrywide. We do ourselves a disservice if we turn a blind eye to abuse and fraud within the student route. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, when she was Home Secretary, took strong action in 2014 to close down bogus colleges, and she was absolutely right to do so.
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
First, I give my sincere congratulations to the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) not only on securing this urgent question but on the manner in which he has relentlessly pursued this issue, which is finally getting the attention it has long deserved. For far, far too many people, this episode represents an absolute travesty of justice. When the Home Office discovered that ETS had completely failed to prevent widespread cheating—indeed, that some ETS staff were actively involved in facilitating it—it should have sacked the company and sought compensation from it. Instead, unbelievably, the Home Office asked ETS to mark its own dodgy homework and re-check the tests. How can that possibly be justified? The Minister referred to evidence, but in fact we are talking about the totally opaque say-so of ETS, on which basis the Home Office decided that thousands of students were guilty, and their lives were subsequently ruined. There is an abundance of evidence that a large number were totally innocent. They deserve an apology, and much more than that. Will she, at the very least, reverse the draconian repeal of in-country appeal rights that deprived many of justice? Will she agree to all that cross-party MPs have been demanding, including, as the right hon. Gentleman said, new tests and restored visas for those who pass, because that is the bare minimum that needs to be done to right this wrong?
Caroline Nokes
The hon. Gentleman will of course be aware of the expert report by Professor Peter French that concluded that false matches were likely to be very small—in the region of 1%—and more likely to give people the benefit of the doubt than to falsely flag people as having cheated. The courts have always said, even when finding against the Home Office on individual facts of a case, that the evidence was sufficient to make accusations of fraud. Of course he will recall from our exchanges during the passage through Committee of the Immigration Bill that this company was suspended from the immigration rules in July of that year and that the Home Office did take legal action against ETS in a case that was settled last year.
Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)
The National Audit Office said that up to 50,000 apparent students came to the UK to work, not study, under the Labour Government back in 2009-10, so obviously action needed to be taken to stamp out abuse. I appreciate the Minister’s tone in being willing to listen to the current concerns. Can she assure me that the UK will continue to be open to genuine international students and that we will not put a cap on the numbers who can come here? [Interruption.]
Caroline Nokes
As my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary just said from a sedentary position, “More open”. Those words are included in the immigration White Paper that was published in December last year. We indicated that there would be no cap on international students and that we wished to make the post-study work regime more generous. However, it is important to reflect that this was about systematic fraud being perpetrated. We took action to stop it then. We must continue to be robust in making sure that we have high standards and requirements for English language testing—that is very important. I absolutely agree that we must celebrate the success of our universities and continue to work hard to attract international students.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
I welcome the NAO investigation into this issue. I sense from the Minister’s tone that, while she obviously cannot anticipate the NAO’s report, she is expecting it to raise questions about decision making in individual cases. In that light, may I ask whether she and the Home Office are now looking much more widely at some of the issues that have been persistently raised about the inaccuracy of Home Office decision making in very important immigration cases? What is being done to address some of the cultural problems that have been raised time and again about these decisions, which have such a huge impact on people’s lives and have to be got right?
Caroline Nokes
It would be wrong to prejudge the NAO report, but I would like to reassure the right hon. Lady that Home Office officials have worked closely with the NAO, providing it with information and evidence where requested. As she will know, we are conducting a number of reviews in the Home Office, including, following Windrush, the Wendy Williams lessons learned review, and the forward-looking borders, immigration and citizenship services review. Every day in the job as Immigration Minister, one sees individual cases of people who are impacted by our policies and our rules. It is important that we reflect very closely on that and make sure that we have a review of our BICS system that provides the human face of the Home Office that both the Home Secretary and I are very keen to ensure is seen.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
International students coming to this country are a vital source of our soft power because they are friendlily disposed to the United Kingdom after they have studied here and returned home. However, it is clearly important that those people can speak English before they arrive. What message is my right hon. Friend taking to the British Council and other institutions that work abroad to encourage young people to learn English before they come to this country so that they can satisfy the tests and fulfil their destiny?
Caroline Nokes
It is really important that this is a matter not simply for the Home Office but for the Foreign Office and for Government Departments across the whole piece. We want to encourage foreign students to come here to study at our world-class institutions because we know that when they return home after a period of study they take fond memories with them and have a relationship with the UK that lasts throughout the rest of their lives. It is therefore important that we continue to work to promote our great universities. As part of that, there are a number of campaigns, including the GREAT campaign, which does fantastic work promoting the benefits of study in the UK. It is important that that should be a joint piece of work with the Home Office, the Foreign Office and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to make sure that we continue to promote the UK as a brilliant place to study.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
I echo the very decent sentiments that have been expressed by Members in all parts of the House regarding our horror for the innocent students who are caught up in this trap. I have been here for two years and I am not an expert in home affairs, but there does seem to be a bit of a case history with the Home Office. We have had misfortunes and carelessness, and now we have this. Is now not the time for the Government to seriously consider taking responsibility for immigration, and all we are talking about today, and putting it into a separate Government Department where Ministers can concentrate solely on that?
Caroline Nokes
It is important to reflect that this was a fraud perpetrated in 2014. It is not new. The Government responded then to a systematic fraud, took action and we have seen criminal convictions as a result. However, the hon. Gentleman has made an interesting suggestion about the future of the immigration directorate within the Home Office. Unfortunately, the Home Secretary left moments before he made that point, but I am certain that it will not be lost on him.
Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)
What happened to some members of the Windrush generation, through no fault of their own, was simply inexcusable, but at the root of these cases is a fraud that was conducted on a quite industrial scale. Is it not hugely insulting to members of the Windrush generation to try to draw a parallel between the two cases?
Caroline Nokes
I certainly would not draw a parallel. This was criminal behaviour and there have been significant sentences imposed on those who were perpetrating the fraud. Indeed, there are ongoing criminal investigations whereby we may yet see more convictions. It is important that we take stock of this and that we reflect on the NAO report when it is published and made available to us. As I have said, the Home Secretary will come to the House and make a full statement when we have the NAO findings. He continues, and indeed I continue, to review this situation and work out what is the best way forward.
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
There is no doubt that we are concerned not about those who have committed crimes but about the innocent people who have been caught up in this. If the Government were so confident in ETS, they would not have stopped using ETS. In that context, what financial settlement was reached between the Home Office and ETS after its licence was revoked?
Caroline Nokes
As I mentioned earlier, the licence was revoked in July 2014, and the Home Office moved swiftly to revoke that licence. Action was taken against ETS but, because of the commercial sensitivities, I am afraid I cannot divulge details. However, I will ascertain from Home Office lawyers whether I can write to the hon. Lady and let her have that information.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
No one doubts that there was criminal behaviour and cheating, but it has been weeks since we were promised a decision by Ministers, months since we met the Home Secretary to outline concerns about people who had been wrongly implicated, and years during which these students have had their lives left in complete limbo, with them suffering mental ill health, financial hardship, family breakdown and a whole range of other detrimental consequences as a result of being accused of cheating—wrongly—by the British state. When will the Government finally get their act together? The longer this rolls on, and the longer people are caught up in expensive judicial action or lengthy, bureaucratic immigration appeals, the longer that is wasting their time, wasting their lives and wasting taxpayers’ money. Enough is enough.
Caroline Nokes
I gently remind the hon. Gentleman that those who were found to have a questionable result following the ETS investigations were given the opportunity to take a second test to establish their ability to speak English, so they could have taken that option. He was quite aggressive in his questioning, but I must reiterate that I think it is right, and the Home Secretary thinks it is right, to wait for the outcome of the NAO report, which we expect next month.
Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
Nobody is claiming that everybody is innocent. The Minister has quoted legal cases, and those who are guilty deserve everything that they get. However, the Home Office has also lost judgments in the courts. ETS evidence is quoted by the Minister, but that evidence has been challenged and undermined, and now we have a National Audit Office inquiry. Will the Minister confirm that she believes and accepts that there are some innocent students caught up in this mess?
Caroline Nokes
It is important to note that there have been a number of legal cases where students have challenged the decision through judicial review and subsequent immigration appeals. Some of those cases have been upheld by the courts, but not in all instances was that because those people were not thought to have cheated in the test; it was actually because they had been in the UK for such a long time that they had an established article 8 human rights claim to be here, and the Home Office is taking a pragmatic approach to those cases. However, I am very conscious that we have legislation that requires there to be no in-country right of appeal under the student route, and these people were here under the student route. It is right that we wait for the NAO findings, that we reflect on those and that we find a way forward.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
One of my constituents, who had been in the UK since 2005, was detained in Dungavel for 10 days because the Home Office claimed she had overstayed and had used deception in her TOEIC test. Neither of those things was true. The first tier tribunal found in her favour; the Home Office appealed, and the appeal was thrown out. It appealed to the upper tier tribunal, but the appeal was then withdrawn. My constituent has been fighting the Home Office for five years. Will the Minister apologise to her and let her and her three-year-old daughter get on with their lives?
Caroline Nokes
Unfortunately, the hon. Lady has not provided any information, and I cannot comment on an individual case on the Floor of the House, but if she cares to write to me about the case, I will look at it.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) on raising this issue and pursuing it so strongly. People’s lives have been put in limbo. Since 2014, my constituent Mr Muhammad Arsalan has not been able to work, study or get access to the NHS. That is not because he has been found guilty based on any evidence, but because he has been found guilty by association. If people have cheated, they should face the full force of the law. However, my constituent has not been able to appeal, because he is in country. Yes, he can now challenge on human rights grounds, but that takes time and money. Will the Minister therefore look at the suggestion from my right hon. Friend that, dependent on the outcome of the current investigation, she consider the idea of these people being allowed to sit another test to prove that they are competent in English?
Caroline Nokes
As I have said, we are going to wait for the findings of the NAO. However, it is important to confirm that the Home Office is looking at a range of options as to how we can find a way forward from this situation. The Home Secretary has been pleased to meet a number of Members on this subject. It is a recurring subject of parliamentary questions and Westminster Hall debates. We are looking at it closely, and I hope we will find a way forward when we have had a chance to reflect on the NAO findings.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
The Minister rightly talks about the importance of international students, but she will know that our market share fell from 12% in 2010 to 8% in 2016. We are falling behind competitor countries because of reputational damage, and that reputational damage has been added to by people being treated wrongly in this case. Will the Minister therefore tell the House what she will do to restore our reputation and to address some of the concerns about policy issues that have led international students to choose other countries over Britain?
Caroline Nokes
It is important to reflect that overall numbers are up—indeed, they are up 10% in higher education institutions in the last year alone. Of course we want to make sure that the UK can still provide a good and attractive offer to students. I commend to the hon. Gentleman the White Paper published in December, which sets out some of the ways we plan to make that possible.
Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)
Yesterday, we had an urgent question about tuition fees for EU nationals post Brexit. Can the Minister confirm whether EU nationals will be required to sit the TOEIC test post Brexit?
Caroline Nokes
I thank the hon. Lady for that question. At the current time, there have not been any policy decisions that I am aware of with regard to the English language test. However, it is important—and we have said very clearly in our White Paper—that we will have a single, global system for immigration, where people from all countries will be treated equally.
Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)
I am grateful to the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) for securing this question, and I welcome the NAO’s investigation into this issue. I have no doubt that there was systematic cheating, but I seriously doubt the scale—the ETS figures show that only 3.5% of the people who sat the test did not cheat, which seems incredible. What assessment has been made of the number of people whose visas were revoked who are still in the UK, and what would the cost be of allowing them to sit a new English test?
Caroline Nokes
I made the point earlier that evidence of ability to speak English now does not provide evidence of ability to speak English back in 2014. What the courts have consistently found is that the evidence we had in 2014 was sufficient to make accusations of fraud. This was wide-scale, and we saw enormous numbers of proxy tests being taken on behalf of individuals for a wide variety of reasons. The Government acted swiftly to clamp down on bogus colleges and to revoke the licence of ETS. However, it is important that we reflect on the situation of those who remain in this country and, as I have said, the Home Office has taken a pragmatic approach when looking at the article 8 claims of individuals who have been caught up in the TOEIC issue.
Social Media and Health
(5 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Matt Hancock)
I would like to update the House on yesterday's social media summit and the progress we have made on tackling online harms to health. We called this summit to bring together the principal social media companies, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Google and others, as well as the Samaritans and the eating disorder charity Beat. It was the second such meeting I have held, along with the Education Secretary and the Minister for suicide prevention, on how we can protect people—particularly children—from online content that promotes eating disorders and self-harm and suicide, as well as on how we address the growing problem of anti-vaccination misinformation.
Social media companies have a duty of care to people on their sites. Just because they are global, it does not mean that they can be irresponsible. We have been resolute that we will act to keep the internet safe, especially for children, and I am grateful to the companies for their engagement.
We have all seen and heard about tragic cases of vulnerable children turning to self-harm and even taking their own lives after accessing graphic images online that promote and even encourage suicide and self-harm. In the same way, we know that online content on eating disorders can be extremely harmful to vulnerable children and young adults. I have met the parents of children, brought up in loving homes, who had no idea of the dangers that their child was being exposed to on their smartphone or tablet while they were supposed to be safe at home. We all know of parents whose children have been affected, and for all of us this is very close to home.
We must do everything we can to keep our children safe online, so I am pleased to inform the House that, as a result of yesterday’s summit, the leading global social media companies have agreed to work with experts from the Samaritans to speed up the identification and removal of suicide and self-harm content, and to create greater protections online. They will not only financially support the Samaritans to do the work; crucially, suicide prevention experts from the Samaritans will determine what content is harmful and dangerous, and the social media platforms committed to either removing it or preventing others from seeing it, and to helping vulnerable people get the positive support they need.
The mainstream media already have well-established codes of practice and training for removing material that promotes suicide and self-harm. In my experience, the British media act with great responsibility on the matter, and it is time that social media companies did the same. This partnership marks, for the first time globally, a collective commitment to act, to build knowledge through research and insights, and to implement real changes that ultimately will save lives.
The social media companies also gave us an update on the actions they have already taken. Following the first summit in February, Instagram now has a policy globally of removing all graphic self-harm imagery, and other sites have also taken action, but there is much more to do and more content to remove. Importantly, the commitments that the companies made at yesterday’s summit are what the Samaritans asked for, and they are a positive step forward. The progress that we have made so far shows that we can effect positive change, but I know that the House feels strongly that just because these companies are global does not mean that we as a House cannot determine society’s rules and expectations. On this we are prepared to act too.
My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport recently published the online harms White Paper, which sets out the proposed regulatory framework for addressing online harms. It sets out a new statutory duty of care to require companies to take more responsibility for the safety of their users and tackle harm caused by content or activity on their services. Compliance with this duty of care will be overseen and enforced by an independent regulator, which will be responsible for producing codes of practice that will explain what companies need to do to fulfil their duty, and the robust action they need to take to remove illegal or harmful content. The White Paper also proposes the sharing of information, research and best practice to improve the understanding of harmful content across the industry.
The summit also allowed us to discuss how we can work together to tackle another online danger: the spread of anti-vaccination misinformation. Since Edward Jenner’s discovery, vaccination has saved hundreds of millions of lives around the world. Few innovations have reduced human misery so much. After clean water, vaccination has prevented more deaths and disease than anything else in human history. The science is settled: vaccination saved lives. It protects not only our children but other vulnerable people who cannot do anything about it themselves. Failure to vaccinate puts their lives at risk. The rise of social media now makes it easier to spread lies about vaccination, so there is a special responsibility on social media companies to act.
Coverage for the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine in England decreased for the fourth year in a row last year, to 91%. There was a steep rise in confirmed measles cases last year, from 259 to 966. We forget that measles is a horrible disease. We have one of the most comprehensive vaccination programmes in Europe. The well-documented problems in America and on the continent are worse than here, but we are determined to get ahead of the problem, because failure to vaccinate has real and devastating consequences. Our action to promote vaccines is not limited to removing anti-vaccination misinformation online; we are promoting the objective facts about the importance of vaccination and increasing funding to primary care to improve access, and our prevention Green Paper will set out further actions.
Social media can be a great force for good and can help us promote positive messages, but it is the responsibility of us all to ensure that this new technology, with all its great potential and power, is moulded to the benefit of society. We will not duck this challenge. I commend this statement to the House.
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. These social media platforms must be made to take responsibility for the harm caused by the dangerous fake news they host, because they are helping to fuel a public health crisis. He talks about the actions that platforms such as Instagram have taken since February, but I have just searched on Instagram and found images and videos of graphic self-harm; there are 8 million posts with the hashtag #suicide—from a quick glance, many are distressing—226,000 posts with the hashtag #killmyself, and 249,000 posts with the hashtag #selfinjury. I found similar pro-anorexia posts and the normalisation of eating disorders. I am sorry to have to share those examples with the House, but I think that we have to understand the scale of the challenge we face. As the father of two beautiful daughters, aged seven and five, I would be devastated if they saw such posts as they grow up.
Dangerous content should be blocked and taken down. I look forward to the Samaritans’ recommendations, so can the Secretary of State update us on the timescale? He talked about the online harms White Paper, but we need action immediately, so can he tell us when the proposed legislation will come before the House? When will the new regulator and duty of care be enforced? Can he guarantee that there will be criminal sentences for executives for serious breaches? In what circumstances would the maximum fine of 4% of global turnover be applied? If, God forbid, something similar to what happened to Molly Russell—I am sure that the whole House will want to praise her father for his brave campaigning—should happen to another child, what action would be taken against the social media companies?
I have also been able to find dangerous anti-vaccination propaganda on platforms such as Facebook, at a time when measles outbreaks are on the increase across Europe and the United States and in parts of the United Kingdom. Unvaccinated children are being turned away from schools in parts of Italy and banned from public areas in parts of New York. I would hate to see that happen here. UNICEF has warned that more than half a million children have missed their measles vaccination, which means the UK now has the third-worst ranking of all high-income countries. As the Secretary of State said, take-up of the MMR vaccine has now declined for the fourth year in a row, making coverage for the vaccine the lowest it has been since 2011-12.
I know that the Secretary of State said on the radio last week that he was considering banning unvaccinated children from schools in England, but we urgently need a clear vaccination action plan from the Government. This cannot be about penalising families. Yes, we need intervention with social media platforms when the legislation is in place, but while we wait for the legislation will he consider instructing Public Health England to launch an online social media campaign, on the platforms that are currently sharing anti-vaccination propaganda, to challenge those dangerous myths?
Will the Secretary of State also accept that our falling vaccination rates are not just about online activity? Public health services have been cut by £800 million. Our health visitors have been cut by 8% in recent years, and our school nurses by 24%. General practice has faced a funding squeeze, and GP numbers are down by 1,000 since 2015. At the same time, 2018-19 marks the first year that we have seen a reversal in the percentage of children receiving vital health check-ups on time since the measurement of these figures began: 14.5% of children are not receiving a six to eight-week review on time; 24% are not receiving a 12-month review on time; and the number of mothers over 28 weeks pregnant receiving their first face-to-face antenatal contact with a health visitor has fallen for the second year in a row. Will he therefore commit today to reversing public health cuts and restoring health visitor numbers, and will he invest in general practice so that we can meet the 95% national vaccination coverage rate, as recommended by the World Health Organisation? When does he expect us to meet that 95% rate?
Children are 20% of our population but 100% of our future. We must always put their health and wellbeing first. Yes, there has been some progress, but we need further action from the Government today.
Matt Hancock
I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman, who has provided leadership on this agenda from his position as shadow Secretary of State. I am glad, listening to his response, that we agree very broadly on the direction we need to take. The agreement across the House is valuable in demonstrating to social media companies the clear consensus on the need for them to act, and to every parent in the land the importance of vaccination. That cross-party support is very, very valuable.
I join the hon. Gentleman in paying tribute to Ian Russell, the father of Molly Russell, whom the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price), the Minister for suicide prevention, met this morning. He has been brave and eloquent in bringing these issues to light. I pay tribute to him and thank him for how he has spoken about what needs to be done. I know he is as determined as we are to ensure that action translates into saving more lives.
We agreed, after the meeting yesterday, to reconvene in two months’ time, by which time I expect further action from the social media companies. As I said in my statement, we have already seen some progress. I am glad that some of the global algorithms and global terms and conditions have been changed as a result of action taken by the UK Government. It is very important that we keep the pace up. In two months’ time, we expect to see further action from the social media companies and progress by the Samaritans on being able to define more clearly the boundary between harmful and non-harmful content. In each area of removing harms online, the challenge is to create the right boundary in the appropriate place. It is the challenge when tackling terrorist and child abuse material online, so that social media companies do not have to define what is and is not socially acceptable, but we as society do. I am delighted that the Samaritans will formally play that role on material relating to suicide prevention and self-harm, and that Beat will do so on material relating to eating disorders.
The hon. Gentleman asked about the online harms White Paper. We are currently in the middle of a 12-week consultation. I hope he and everybody listening to this who has an interest will respond to it. We are clear that we will have a regulator, but we also genuinely want to consult widely. This is not really an issue of party politics, but of getting it right so that society decides on how we should govern the internet, rather than the big internet companies making those decisions for themselves. I have to say that the tone from the social media companies has changed in recent months and years, but they still need to do an awful lot. I look forward to working with him and others across the House to ensure we can deliver on this agenda.
Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s work on this issue. Will he comment on stand-alone posts, tweets or messages which on their own do not seem that intimidating or threatening, but which have a cumulative effect that is nothing short of bullying, harassment and intimidation that can cause mental health problems for many of our young people? Will he ask social media companies to not just look at single posts, but at the cumulative effect of people trying to intimidate others?
Matt Hancock
Yes, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. In fact, the cumulative effect of posts on mental health, in particular eating disorders, came up in the discussion yesterday. We have to look at what the social media companies call the density of content—I think my hon. Friend put it rather better as the cumulative impact of lots of different posts. Social media companies’ algorithms are powerful enough to understand that and pick up on it. We need rules in place so that action can be taken when it is spotted by those algorithms.
Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)
I too welcome the statement, the two summits that have already been held and, in particular, the announcement of funding to Samaritans. However, the scale of the task is absolutely huge. The scale of the donation to Samaritans is actually quite small by comparison both with that and with the profits the companies make. They are expected to make profits of £50 billion just this year. It is important to talk about preventing the promotion of eating disorders, self-harm and suicide, and I welcome that approach.
As chair of the all-party group on vaccinations for all, I particularly welcome, in World Immunisation Week, the Secretary of State talking about anti-vaccination. As the shadow Secretary of State said, the drop in uptake is caused not just by online, but by complacency. People have forgotten that measles is a killer. It used to kill 2.5 million people a year across the world. We have seen an outbreak in Europe, where 82,000 cases have led to over 70 deaths. It is important that we tackle misinformation. It is also important that we make it easy for busy mothers to get their children vaccinated by having health visitors and district nurses who try to help. It is partly that that has allowed Scotland to keep the rate above 95%, but we, like everywhere else, are still seeing that rate drip down and fall by 0.5% or 1%.
On the online harms White Paper, I welcome the talk about a regulator. I hope it will actually be a regulator and that there will not be voluntary or self-regulation. I would like to know when it is actually going to happen. Like many other pieces of proposed legislation, it is still in the long grass and the situation is urgent.
Matt Hancock
The regulation of online harms will indeed be statutory. As I said, we are in the middle of a consultation on how, rather than whether, to put that in place. I am sure the hon. Lady will want to feed back, although I know her SNP colleagues in the Scottish Government in Edinburgh have been kept abreast of developments.
The hon. Lady raises complacency and financial resources. I will address both points. She is absolutely right that part of the problem is a complacency about some killer diseases, partly because we have hardly known them in this country for generations. As I said in my statement, measles is a horrible disease and a killer; it is deeply unpleasant. So, too, is rubella. Rubella might be hardly noticed by a pregnant woman. There might be a rash for three or four days which comes and goes, but the impact on the baby is permanent and very, very serious. On measles, rubella and other diseases, we have to be absolutely clear with the public about the consequences not only for their children but, even worse, for vulnerable children and adults who, maybe because they are immunosuppressed or very young, cannot have the vaccination. Their lives are directly threatened by a parent who chooses not to vaccinate. We need to be very clear and stark about that.
The hon. Lady mentions that the social media companies have contributed to Samaritans. That was Samaritans’ ask for this stage of putting together the organisation and experts it needs to provide clarity on the boundary of what is and is not acceptable in this space. I would, of course, be perfectly prepared to go and ask for more if more is needed. What is more, we are bringing forward a digital services tax. Historically, the global tax system has not worked well in taxing such companies fairly, because of the nature of how they make their money. We have worked for years to try to get a global consensus on how to tax them. We are now clear that we will bring forward the tax next year in the UK, regardless of whether we can get global consensus.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
I applaud the Secretary of State for taking this initiative, and I certainly endorse the comments about the good of vaccination. However, I hope that the warm words of the social media companies that he recounted are matched by actions, because I am afraid that that is not the experience of the Home Affairs Committee, which again saw a woeful performance from the Facebook, Twitter and YouTube representatives who appeared before us last week.
Is the Secretary of State aware that it is not only a question of taking down or not allowing content on which those companies are not doing their job properly, but of the algorithms that they use actively promoting more extreme versions of what people may be searching for, whether that is material on the extreme right wing, terrorism, radicalisation or self-harm? Is he convinced that those companies will actually put their considerable money where he thinks their mouths are and make sure that serious interventions are made to stop this stuff being promoted to some of our most vulnerable citizens?
Matt Hancock
My hon. Friend is a man after my own heart on this. Am I convinced? I am convinced that social media companies have committed to it, and it is our job to keep them to those commitments. That is why I have pushed for a long time for a statutory regulator in this space, and I am delighted that the Government are bringing one forward.
For years, we in the House asked social media companies to do something, and there was an argument that, because they are global, we cannot really impact how their algorithms work. That is just rubbish. We are the legislator for this country—we set the rules, and we have a big role in setting the norms and expectations of what happens here. Just because a platform is global does not mean that it can be outside the rule of law of this country, so we will legislate in this space, and there will be a regulator that will be able precisely to keep track of those commitments and make sure that they are followed up. Having said that, the last two meetings have been positive, and we have seen changes as a result. What we have not yet seen is all this content being removed, so there is clearly a long way to go.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
I welcome the work that the Secretary of State is doing. However, following the question of the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), a fellow member of the Home Affairs Committee, surely it is time to do much more on these algorithms, which push people into more and more extreme behaviour? I heard from a mum whose daughter had suffered from an eating disorder who was still being targeted with dieting videos on Instagram. That material was not too extreme to remove, but it certainly should not have been targeted at her daughter. The mum could get nothing done about it.
Our Select Committee staff set up a new YouTube account and were searching for news or politics, but they were increasingly targeted by extreme far-right material promoted by YouTube. Those algorithms push people to extremes—for profit. Surely it is time for much greater transparency and accountability on the entire business model and the way that it promotes all sorts of problems?
Matt Hancock
The short answer is yes. My responsibilities as Health Secretary are to do with the impact on health, especially mental health, and eating disorders and self-harm are part of that. A separate but connected matter is anti-vaccination messages, which are a type of misinformation, or in some cases disinformation —actively pushed false information.
The social media companies say that they are removing this material from being promoted. For instance, graphic self-harm imagery will be taken down from Instagram. Our challenge is to make sure that that is done properly, because ultimately only if social media companies change their algorithms can we make this happen. That is why the new regulator is so important.
Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s initiative in this area and what he has told the House today. Through my work on the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, I have been utterly horrified looking at online content relating to bulimia and eating disorders, and to what I describe as extreme online misogyny. That relates to the algorithms that Members have mentioned. Does the Secretary of State agree that we need to see inside those companies’ black boxes? Unlike areas such as taxation, in which companies go to the easiest regime, if we set the bar high on online content, they have to comply and put their house in order.
Matt Hancock
I pay tribute to the work that the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee has done in this area, both when I was Culture Secretary and since. Its work and the approach it has taken are groundbreaking, and that has played a part in the change in attitudes that we have seen from the social companies, which at least now accept that it is their responsibility, as well as the principle that they have a duty of care to people on their sites.
As my hon. Friend says, there is clearly an awful lot to do to get to where we need to be. If we step back from this whole question, the technology that has brought about social media companies is still relatively new; it is only 15 or 20 years old. Around the world, the way in which society has responded to it has not yet matured. The good social media companies now get the fact that they have such an impact on society that a regulatory framework is necessary, and in fact have welcomed the White Paper that we introduced as an approach that could be replicated around the world. My hon. Friend is quite right that, once one country or jurisdiction gets this right, it will be taken as a model elsewhere, so that, ultimately, the power of this amazing new way in which we communicate—by God, Mr Speaker, in this House we all use it—can be for the good, and we can mitigate all the downsides that come with it.
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
I, too, welcome the Secretary of State’s statement, but for too long internet companies have been too slow to protect children from the risks of suicide and other harms such as online hate and the threat of far-right and religious extremists and terrorists. He will be aware that, internationally, companies such as Facebook have fallen very short and were accused by the United Nations of playing a “determining role” in the genocide in Burma. This is a massive problem, and it is right that Britain should lead the way. Is he speaking to his counterparts in other Departments? Will he make sure that the legislation actually ensures that companies are responsible for content, as well as ensuring that there are strong, large fines if they continue to fail?
Matt Hancock
We have proposed fines as called for by the hon. Lady, and of course this is a cross-Government effort. My responsibilities are the health impacts, but technology has an impact right across the board, including on the quality of debate in our democracy, which is a Cabinet Office issue, and with regard to terrorism content, which is a Home Office issue. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport leads across the board and the Prime Minister herself has led global debates on this. The hon. Lady is quite right to point out that there is a broad range of impacts, and we work together to tackle them.
Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)
The shadow Secretary of State referred to the proliferation of pro-anorexia content online. Is the Secretary of State aware that tech giant, Amazon, sells books under the category of “pro-ana”, which purports to show anorexia as a healthy lifestyle? Does he share my revulsion that those books are available online, and will he call on Amazon to take this content down immediately? Will he look at whether tech giants such as Amazon can be brought into the remit of the online harms White Paper?
Matt Hancock
I will absolutely look at the matter raised by my hon. Friend, as it is alarming and distressing to hear about it. Amazon sells physical goods for the most part and surely has a duty of care to those who buy them, in the same way that a shop has a responsibility for what it sells. My hon. Friend makes an important point, which I will follow up. I will write to her with more details.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
I, too, welcome the statement by the Secretary of State, not least because I survived measles as a very small child and my family talked for a long time about how worrying and scary it was. On the other issue, as well as taking action against the social media companies, the long-term NHS plan talks about an increase in proportionate spending on child and adult mental health services. What will he do about that? What will the proportion be? I ask because it is crucial to fighting this problem.
Matt Hancock
The hon. Lady is absolutely right that there will be an increased spend on mental health services across England—a £2.3 billion increase. It is the fastest-growing area of spend in the long-term plan. We are investing £33.9 billion in the NHS in cash terms, and the fastest proportionate rise in spend is in mental health services. That is an important part of this, although there is an awful lot that the social media companies can do to reduce the demands on those services by reducing the negative impact on mental health. The whole House can agree that the hon. Lady being alive and here, having survived measles, is another reason why it is important to get this right. It would have been the House’s loss had the measles won.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
The drop in vaccination rates is not only an annual problem but a cumulative problem, as more and more young people in society are not immunised against these childhood diseases. Can I urge my right hon. Friend not only to undertake a social media campaign to encourage parents and children to take up the vaccinations, but to target the messages so that people know where they can go to get them, how they can do it and the importance medically of doing so?
Matt Hancock
My hon. Friend is exactly right; in fact, that work is under way. I should have mentioned in response to the shadow Secretary of State that Public Health England has a targeted programme of positive information. We can use data and social media better to target messages at those who need them in exactly the way that he proposes. That work is in hand.
Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement and the consultation. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and the suicide prevention Minister for taking part in the launch of my all-party parliamentary group report on new filters and the impact of social media on young people’s mental health. I am also grateful to the Secretary of State for agreeing to have a meeting with me next week to discuss the content of the report. One thing that is not in the consultation and which has not been mentioned today is the idea of a social media-health alliance bringing together social media companies and other groups—not just groups such as the Samaritans but young people’s groups and social work groups—that can formulate, collate and undertake more research into the impact of social media on young people. Would he consider this idea and even take a lead in forming it, as his Department does with gambling and other compulsive disorders?
Matt Hancock
I will certainly consider it and I look forward to talking to the hon. Gentleman about the idea more next week. Dialogue in this area is critical, but we should not only have dialogue; we also need concrete legislative action, but I am grateful for what he has said about the work that has been done. I am glad that he is also working in this area, and I look forward to discussing it with him more.
Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)
Three million of the four million videos taken down by YouTube in the last six months were identified and removed by artificial intelligence. What greater role does the Secretary of State see for technological development in helping to reduce online harm and keep people safe online?
Matt Hancock
Artificial intelligence clearly has a role in identifying material that needs to be removed in the same way that it is now being used to remove terrorist content. We are talking to companies that may be able to do this, but we also need to identify what material should be taken down and what should be left up. Defining that boundary is critical to training artificial intelligence to do its job, hence the importance of the decision to ask the Samaritans to do the work of identifying the boundary so that we can train artificial intelligence to identify what needs to be taken down.
Alison Thewliss
Thank you, Mr Speaker. My tactic of wearing a dress so big I can hide a colleague behind it is working.
Will the Secretary of State look at the harm that celebrity endorsements on social media can do to young people? The Empowered Woman project in Scotland highlighted how Marnie Simpson of “Geordie Shore” had been plugging Thermosyn diet pills, which are marketed as “skinny caffeine”. When I asked the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport about that, he said that the UK Government were looking at
“user-generated content, not necessarily commercial activities”—[Official Report, 8 April 2019; Vol. 658, c. 73.]
Celebrity endorsement veers into the commercial area, however, and has a very significant effect on young people in terms of body image and eating disorders.
Matt Hancock
My colleague the suicide prevention Minister is looking at this area, particularly endorsements of cosmetics, and I am sure she would be very happy to talk to the hon. Lady.
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
My generation growing up might have feared bullying in the playground, but largely home was a refuge and place of safety. The problem for the current generation is that they can find themselves being bullied 24/7 because of social media. It is little wonder that when I contacted Twitter after seeing some rather libellous material it told me that in its view it was not abusive, even though it was against the law in this country. Does the Secretary of State agree that until social media companies understand that they have to operate under the norms and laws of this country, and not just abide by Californian norms, they will never reform?
Matt Hancock
My hon. Friend puts it exactly right. That is what the duty of care is all about. The argument—we hear it less and less, to be honest—that these are international companies and so will abide by somebody else’s laws, thanks very much, is wrong and out of date, as the online harms White Paper makes clear. We must establish a proper enforcement mechanism to ensure that it is the rules that this House sets—occasionally amended by the other place—that define the law of the land and that we do not have a wild west. This action to protect people’s health is just one part of the response needed to make the internet safe, especially for children.
Carol Monaghan
Thank you for calling me so early, Mr Speaker. [Interruption.] It couldn’t be any worse.
My son contracted measles one month before he was due to receive his MMR vaccine because of a dip in numbers being vaccinated, so I very much welcome the Secretary of State’s statement about tackling anti-vaccination posts on social media. Last year, the Select Committee on Science and Technology carried out an inquiry into the impact of social media on young people’s health, and one of the statistics presented to us was quite disturbing: 50% of young people between the ages of 11 and 16 had seen pornographic images, and many of them had stumbled across them. When I spoke to my 11-year-old daughter, she confirmed that she had seen images that upset her but had been too scared to speak to me about it. What is the Secretary of State doing to alert parents to the dangers of social media and to give them guidance on how to speak to their children and identify when they might have seen things online that have upset them?
Matt Hancock
Mr Speaker, that question was so good it is only a pity it was not asked earlier in our exchanges.
I want to address two important points. First, the hon. Lady’s son is a case in point of how, if parents do not vaccinate, they endanger not only their own children but other people’s. It is because of a failure to vaccinate that these diseases still exist, and it is children who are too young to be vaccinated who are at risk. She has made the case more powerfully than anybody for the importance of vaccinating and keeping vaccination rates up, and I am grateful to her for sharing that personal experience. On the second point, she is quite right that we all have a responsibility to act, and act we will.
Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)
It is a privilege to have the last word.
The whole House is concerned about the effect that the internet can have on young people’s mental health, and I welcome the action that the Secretary of State is taking. Is there truth and accuracy in the reports that Wikipedia did not attend yesterday’s summit? If so, does he share my disappointment, and does he feel that Wikipedia must take this issue seriously and engage with it?
Matt Hancock
Unfortunately, those reports are true. I share my hon. Friend’s disappointment that Wikipedia did not attend either of the two summits, despite having been invited. At yesterday’s summit, we agreed that we would get in touch with Wikipedia in robust terms, because it is not acceptable for it to shirk its social responsibilities either.
If I may say so, I think that the statement and the responses to it have shown that there is unanimity in the House. Every speaker has mentioned the need to tackle anti-vaccination misinformation and the social media organisations’ responsibility and duty of care in relation to the health—mental and otherwise—of people on their platforms. The House speaks with one voice, and the social media companies, and the internet companies that have not yet engaged should listen.
Point of Order
Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. In 2017, the Department for Work and Pensions changed the wording of the ESA65B letters to GPs, wrongly informing them that they no longer needed to provide fit notes for ill and disabled patients who had been found to be “fit for work”. On 18 March this year, in response to an oral question from me, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions said that the letter had been
“cleared by both the British Medical Association and the Royal College of General Practitioners.”—[Official Report, 18 March 2019; Vol. 656, c. 769.]
However, letters published yesterday by the BMA and the RCGP state that they do not have the authority to clear, approve or otherwise sign off DWP policies.
The “Ministerial Code” clearly states:
“It is of paramount importance that Ministers give accurate and truthful information to Parliament, correcting any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity.”
I have written to the Secretary of State urging her to come to the House and correct the record. I seek your advice and guidance, Mr Speaker, on how to ensure that that is done promptly.
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her point of order, and for her courtesy in giving me notice of her intention to raise it.
I have received no indication from the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions of an intention to come to the House to say anything about this matter. It is, of course, incumbent on each and every Member to take responsibility for words spoken in the Chamber—that is to say, for their accuracy. In the event that the Secretary of State feels that it is necessary to correct the record, I expect that will happen. Meanwhile, because I cannot be the arbiter of whether such a correction is required, all I can say is that the hon. Lady has made her point with force and alacrity, and it will have been heard by those on the Treasury Bench.
Climate Change (Net Zero UK Carbon Account)
Tuesday 30th April 2019
(5 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Climate Change (Net Zero UK Carbon Account) Bill 2017-19 View all Climate Change (Net Zero UK Carbon Account) Bill 2017-19 Debates Read Hansard Text
A Ten Minute Rule Bill is a First Reading of a Private Members Bill, but with the sponsor permitted to make a ten minute speech outlining the reasons for the proposed legislation.
There is little chance of the Bill proceeding further unless there is unanimous consent for the Bill or the Government elects to support the Bill directly.
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Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require that the net UK carbon account by the year 2050 is zero.
This Bill would create a legal obligation, the first in any G20 country, for the UK to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Let me be clear: the Bill is radical, and necessarily and unapologetically so. The circumstances of climate change are so serious that nothing less will do. Importantly, however, its central target is achievable.
Climate change is not some future, theoretical possibility; it is a present, practical reality. The five warmest years in recorded history have been since 2010. Here in the UK, Easter Monday was the hottest on record. In January, Australia experienced its warmest month ever, causing power outages after fuses overheated. Glaciers are retreating almost everywhere in the world, from the Alps to the Himalayas. The Ross ice shelf in Antarctica, which covers an area about the size of France, is melting 10 times faster than expected, according to Cambridge University scientists. Last year, wildfires broke out as far north as the Arctic circle. Some Members have seen changes with their own eyes. During a debate earlier this year, the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith) spoke powerfully of going back to the great barrier reef after 25 years to find magnificent corals bleached and dead.
We can choose to dismiss these events as a coincidence, ignoring the fact that they have taken place alongside soaring levels of greenhouse gases. We can choose the comforting observation that the Earth’s climate has shifted in the past, ignoring the fact that those shifts have tended to happen slowly, over hundreds of thousands of years. Alternatively, we can listen to the overwhelming majority of climate science—to all intents and purposes, a scientific consensus. The conclusions are clear: evidence of humankind’s influence on the climate is compelling and established beyond all reasonable doubt. We therefore need to act.
Although the Bill seeks a new radicalism in the way in which this issue is tackled, it is only right to recognise that it would not be proceeding from a standing start. The United Kingdom has a strong record of global leadership in this regard. That includes the moment when a British Prime Minister and trained scientist, Margaret Thatcher, went to the United Nations and, unequivocally, made a link between human behaviour and environmental harm. She said:
“It is mankind and his activities which are changing the environment of our planet in damaging and dangerous ways.”
She did not retreat behind the convenient excuse that the UK is responsible for only a small fraction of world emissions—about 1%. That would be weak and evasive, and it is not the British way; nor, in fairness, was it the British way under a Labour Government. In 2008, the then Government introduced the Bill that became the world-leading Climate Change Act, which enshrined in law a commitment to reduce carbon emissions by 80% from 1990 levels. That Bill was passed by a huge cross-party majority, with only a handful of objections.
Indeed, since 1990, we have cut our emissions by a full 42% while our economy has grown by two thirds, which means that, on a per capita basis, we have reduced emissions faster while also growing our economy more than any other G7 nation. That is not my verdict, but the verdict of PricewaterhouseCoopers. Last year, a record amount of UK power was generated from renewable sources, with more than 30% coming from renewables and more than 50% from low carbon sources overall. As the sun shone over the Easter weekend, the UK went for 90 hours and 45 minutes without generating any electricity from coal, smashing the previous record of 76 hours. Meanwhile, our country is making huge strides in protecting biodiversity through, for instance, marine conservation zones.
However, despite that strong track record, we know that we have to do so much more if we are to keep control of our climate. Although our current trajectory sets us on course for an 80% reduction in our emissions from 1990 levels by 2050, the science is now clear: if we continue to pump even that remaining 20% of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, it is very likely that climate change will accelerate, and with it global temperatures. Indeed, if we stay on the same path, our children can expect to grow up in a world of surging sea levels, more insecure food supplies, degraded wildlife and destroyed coral reefs. We also risk the deeply alarming prospect of hitting climate tipping points—such as the melting of arctic permafrost and the subsequent release of huge stores of frozen greenhouse gases—which could cause us to lose control of our climate for good.
All this presents a heightened risk of conflict over scarce resources. My right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) has made the point that one of the biggest future risks to international security is the climate fence around Bangladesh and the possibility of rising waters forcing tens of millions of people up towards the border with Kolkata.
So why 2050? To answer that question, we must recall the Paris climate accord, under which Governments across the world committed themselves to keeping global warming
“well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels”,
and making efforts to limit it to 1.5°. However, the special report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, published in October 2018, states that if there is to be a realistic chance of meeting the 1.5° target, global carbon dioxide emissions will need to reach net zero by about 2050, with net zero for all greenhouse gases reached in future years. The report warns that there are only a dozen years in which to take action. It also states that the impact of 2° warming versus 1.5° is profound. At 2°, more than twice as much wildlife faces a major shrinkage in range. At 2°, sea levels will be 10 cm higher. At 2°, the number of people exposed to water stress would be 50% higher than it would be if we kept to 1.5°.
If we are to apply the brakes on what could easily become the runaway train of climate change, we have to reduce emissions drastically, and do so as soon as feasibly possible. Our young people realise that, as I know from speaking to them in Cheltenham and beyond. Only last week, I met Balcarras students who have set up Sustain, a Young Enterprise team promoting environmental education. Their energy and sense of mission is inspiring and uplifting.
Although this Bill was conceived before the Extinction Rebellion protests, those demonstrations were a timely reminder of the growing democratic drumbeat across the generations for the new radicalism about which I have spoken. That has been reflected in this place, too. My hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke) compiled a letter calling for net zero, which was signed by 191 right hon. and hon. Members.
Importantly, this Bill would create a framework for a project of national economic renewal that is credible and realistic, and one that can generate opportunities for future generations. Unrealistic targets create false hope. The Energy Transitions Commission is a coalition of business, finance and civil society leaders, chaired by the former financial regulator Lord Adair Turner, and its members are drawn from across the spectrum of energy-producing and using industries. In its impressive report, entitled “Mission Possible”, it indicates that it “strongly believes” that the objective of limiting global warming—ideally to 1.5°, and at the very least below 2°, by 2050—is achievable in developed economies, so it can be done, and I look forward to reading the conclusions from the Committee on Climate Change report on Thursday.
There is growing enthusiasm from business, too. Tesco and Unilever back the move to net zero. The National Farmers Union is advocating net zero for agriculture by 2040. Vattenfall and ArcelorMittal are building facilities to make emissions-free steel. In cement—a notoriously energy-hungry sector—experts believe that improved building design can reduce total demand by 34%. Hydrogen could potentially be used as a heat source in steel and chemicals production.
British ingenuity from Brunel to Dorothy Hodgkin has placed the UK at the cutting edge of technological advances in science and engineering. We have the talent and the vision, and we need the political will. There are those who say that not all the technology is there yet, and up to a point that is true, but it does not mean we should not start the project.
It is time for what some have referred to as “cathedral thinking”. When Sir Christopher Wren started St Paul’s, he did not have a definitive design for every last aspect, and the dome ended up being radically revised as improved building technology made a more ambitious design possible. We need to start the project, and then row in behind the target with an ambitious programme of policies on issues ranging from house building standards to transport, agriculture and planting more broad-leaved trees. In due course, the rest of the world will need this technology. Ours can be the country to develop it, perfect it and sell it. This shows the real power of net zero—not just a project of moral necessity, but one of economic renewal, too.
Of course, we cannot do this alone—that is why the UK is bidding to host the vital UN climate change conference in 2020, so that we can leverage our climate leadership—nor will this be easy, but there is the great prize of a healthy planet, teeming with life and echoing to the sounds of rich and vibrant biodiversity; the prize of a society united in a common purpose of preserving our environment and holding back climate change; and the prize of an economy at the cutting edge of scientific and manufacturing technology. Let us go for net zero.
Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
I think it is important that an alternative point of view should be expressed in this short debate, and that is what I intend to do.
I was one of the Members of this House who voted against the 2008 Climate Change Bill on Third Reading, and I have no regrets whatsoever about having done so. Indeed, the line that those of us who voted against that Bill took has been endorsed in a very important report, issued last year to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the Climate Change Act 2008, in which it was described by Rupert Darwall as
“History’s most expensive virtue signal”.
That was obviously an expensive virtue signal, but what my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) is proposing would be an even more expensive and extravagant virtue signal. [Interruption.] It would be well to remind my hon. Friends—some of them are right honourable—of somebody whom I think they held in high esteem. In 2011, the former Member for Tatton the right hon. George Osborne told the Conservative party conference:
“We’re not going to save the planet by putting our country out of business. So let’s at the very least resolve that we’re going to cut our carbon emissions no slower but also no faster than our fellow countries in Europe.”
At the 2017 election, many of my right hon. and hon. Friends were elected, as I was, on the basis of a Conservative party manifesto that promised there would be an inquiry into energy costs. Soon after the election, that inquiry was set up under the auspices of the Government, and the inquiry—the cost of energy review—was carried out by the distinguished Oxford energy economist Dieter Helm. I find it extraordinary that my hon. Friend made no reference whatsoever in his introductory remarks to the contents of the Helm report, let alone to its conclusions.
Dieter Helm supports, as I do, the objective of cutting greenhouse gas emissions, but his overall verdict is one of the most damning to be found in any official report on any Government policy in any field. He concluded that continuing with current policy would perpetuate the crisis mentality of energy sector crises, which, he says, are likely to worsen. The report states that this is
“challenging the security of supply, undermining the transition to electric transport, and weakening the delivery of the carbon budgets. It will continue the unnecessary high costs of the British energy system, and as a result perpetuate fuel poverty, weaken industrial competitiveness, and undermine public support for decarbonisation.”
It is extraordinary that although the Government commissioned that report, they have in effect never responded to Professor Helm’s conclusions. It is almost as though there is a collective state of denial about all this. That is why I think it important, before we engage in any more expenditure on virtue signalling, to pause for a moment and think about the need to carry out proper cost-benefit analyses before we implement changes in legislation.
Nothing my hon. Friend said in his opening remarks spelled out the specific benefits that will accrue to people in the United Kingdom, as against elsewhere, as a result of this extraordinary act of self-indulgence, whereby we will unilaterally condemn our economy to problems that no other economy is prepared to suffer. He has not set out at all where the benefits will come from, so we have had neither the costs nor the benefits set out. That is exactly one of the problems there was with the climate change legislation in 2008.
I recognise that I may be in a minority in this House in articulating this view, as indeed I was in 2008, when a number of us voted against the primary legislation, but however emotionally charged this issue is, I do not believe we should ignore our responsibility as legislators to look in a hard-headed way at the costs and benefits that will accrue to our country. I am not going to seek to divide the House on this issue today, because—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. It is very discourteous for Members to witter away from a sedentary position when another point of view is being expressed. The hon. Gentleman might not wish to test the will of the House, but if he wished to do so he would be at liberty so to do. He is entitled to make his speech and to be treated with courtesy by everybody, so those who are not behaving with courtesy ought to reconsider their behaviour.
Sir Christopher Chope
I am grateful to you for that intervention, Mr Speaker. I am sure that none of my colleagues needs to be given lessons in how to conduct themselves in this Chamber, because I know that at heart they are all very polite people, but sometimes their emotions get the better of them. I fear that that is what has been happening today.
The reason why I will not seek to divide the House today is that, as a matter of principle, I believe that anybody who wishes to bring in a private Member’s Bill should be free so to do. They should not expect that Bill to go through on the nod when presented to the House, but I see no reason why we should not allow people to bring in private Members’ Bills, and that is what the motion seeks to do. My hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham seeks the leave of the House to bring in his Bill, and I certainly do not wish to deny him that right.
While I am speaking, I should like to remind the Government of something. Perhaps this is going to be a Parliament of only one Session, which could go on for two, three, four or five years, but let us remember that during each Session of Parliament, a proportionate number of days should be given over to private Members’ Bills. By extending this Session, seemingly indefinitely, the Government should be under a duty to provide more days on which we can debate the sort of measures that my hon. Friend has brought before the House today. As things stand, his Bill will not be able to be debated in this Session because no other days have been set down for private Members’ business.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Alex Chalk, supported by Zac Goldsmith, Rebecca Pow, Mr Simon Clarke, Richard Benyon, Vicky Ford, Kevin Hollinrake, Sarah Newton, Paul Masterton, Jenny Chapman, Helen Goodman and Tonia Antoniazzi present the Bill.
Alex Chalk accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed (Bill 384).
National Insurance Contributions (Termination Awards and Sporting Testimonials) Bill
Tuesday 30th April 2019
(5 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate National Insurance Contributions (Termination Awards and Sporting Testimonials) Act 2019 View all National Insurance Contributions (Termination Awards and Sporting Testimonials) Act 2019 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Robert Jenrick)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
This is a small and narrowly drawn, but nonetheless important, Bill. It aims to provide a welcome simplification of the tax treatment of termination awards and sporting testimonials. The corresponding rules determining the income tax treatment of termination awards and sporting testimonials were legislated for in the Finance Acts of 2016 and 2017. At that time, it was made clear that we would return and replicate those rules in national insurance legislation in due course, to ensure that there was not a persistent misalignment. Implementation of the measures in this Bill will replicate those rules in national insurance legislation. By the nature of national insurance, it is required to have a separate piece of legislation from the Finance Bill.
These measures were first announced at Budget 2015. They were then consulted on and published in draft in December 2016. They were subsequently reconfirmed at Budget 2018, so it is reasonable to say that they are expected by those affected and have been subject to much scrutiny. Together, they mean that a 13.8% class 1A employer national insurance charge will be applied to income derived from termination awards and sporting testimonials that are already subject to income tax.
Let me first set out the measure that covers termination awards. Between 2013 and 2014, the Office of Tax Simplification reviewed the tax treatment of employee benefits and expenses. The OTS published an interim report in August 2013 identifying termination awards as one of a number of priority areas. It found that relatively few employers and employees properly understood the regime. There was confusion, and the regime was therefore ripe for reform and simplification.
The OTS specifically identified three areas of misunderstanding on which it recommended we take action. First, certain forms of termination awards are exempt from employee and employer national insurance contributions and the first £30,000 is free from income tax. However, there is a common misconception that the first £30,000 of any termination payment is automatically tax free. Secondly, many employers believe that this exemption applies where in fact it does not, and thirdly, employers are unaware of the different income tax and national insurance treatment of termination payments.
Following the OTS recommendations, the Government announced at Budget 2016 that they would be reforming the tax and national insurance treatment of termination awards. As I said, the reforms to the income tax treatment of termination awards were legislated for in the Finance (No. 2) Act 2017 and took effect from April 2018. The Government confirmed at Budget 2018 that the associated reforms to national insurance legislation would be in place for April 2020. However, the fact that termination awards are currently subject to different income tax and national insurance treatment has created confusion, and that is what we are attempting to deal with today. Moreover, the current misalignment incentivises an admittedly small number of well-advised employers to disguise final payments as compensatory termination awards that benefit from a national insurance charge exemption. These reforms will close that loophole.
The Bill will place a 13.8% class 1A employer national insurance charge on income derived from termination awards on amounts over £30,000. However, I want to assure hon. Members that, when it comes to employee national insurance, these payments will remain entirely exempt. We have chosen to continue to ensure that employees will not face any additional liability as a result of these changes in terms of employee national insurance. This measure will raise around £200 million per annum for the Exchequer, which will make an important contribution to our public services. As this is a Budget measure, this sum has already been reflected by the Office for Budget Responsibility in its projection for the public finances.
Let me turn to the second measure in the Bill, which deals with aligning the employer class 1A national insurance treatment of income from sporting testimonials with the income tax treatment. As many hon. Members will be aware, a sporting testimonial is a one-off event—or series of related events—held on behalf of sportspeople who have played for a certain club for a long time. This often takes the form of an exhibition match involving famous players from the past and present. The testimonial can be used to raise money for the sportsperson before retirement, or sometimes to raise money for charity. The relevant income tax changes were debated and came into force from April 2017. As stated at the time of the Finance Bill—later the Finance Act 2016—the rules governing sporting testimonials are now changing to give clarity to the national insurance treatment as well.
Currently, when a sporting testimonial is non-contractual or non-customary, it can be organised by a third party, rather than the club or employer, to raise money without it being subject to NICs. Where the employer arranges the testimonial, or if it is part of the contract, or if there was an expectation that the sportsperson would be entitled to one, the testimonial is already subject to income tax and NICs.
James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)
Is there a sense of how common it is for a testimonial to be contractual? We all know that it is commonplace in cricket and football for players to have testimonials or similar events, so one assumes that most of them are contractual.
Robert Jenrick
My hon. Friend makes a good point, and our analysis is the same. Last year, only around 220 sporting testimonials of any kind took place in the United Kingdom, and a large number will have been contractual. Certainly, the highest-profile ones, such as those of premiership footballers or leading cricketers for significant county clubs, are usually contractual. As I will go on to say, because the measure has a one-off £100,000 threshold during the career of the sportsperson, a large number of those 220 testimonials will fall below the threshold. Less high-profile sportspeople, who will perhaps have lower earnings, are likely to be within the threshold. We are talking about a small number of relevant testimonials and, as hon. Members will see in the Bill’s accompanying documents, the measure will raise a negligible sum. Our motivation is primarily the simplification of the tax system and the avoidance of doubt for sportspeople and those advising them, rather than to increase revenue materially.
Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)
The Minister is making a clear point. I want to speak mainly for the cricketers of Somerset county cricket club, and I declare an interest here, because my husband, who is an auctioneer, has helped to raise money at many of their testimonials. A testimonial can make an important contribution to a player’s salary, especially those who have played for a long time. Will the Minister clarify that the legislation will clear up the situation, which does seem somewhat confusing? We do not want players to feel hard done by, but we have to take the right amount of tax and we must be fair. Will he also clarify that the proposals are fair and that players who may earn less will not be jeopardised?
Robert Jenrick
Yes, and I must also declare an interest as a member of Nottinghamshire county cricket club. We have given the matter a great deal of thought. The proposal was raised several years ago, as I said, and we consulted at that time with the sporting bodies, including the England and Wales Cricket Board. It was my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Gauke), then the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, who discussed the matter with the cricketing bodies. When the proposal was first brought forward, the threshold was £50,000 but, having spoken with the sporting bodies, we made the decision to increase it to £100,000, making it significantly more generous and allaying some of the concerns that my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) sets out.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)
Let us hear from Essex county cricket club.
Vicky Ford
I just wanted to declare an interest as a member of Essex county cricket club. I thank the Minister for supporting cricket.
Mr Deputy Speaker
That is not a problem as long as we do not forget the great county of Lancashire. [Laughter.]
Robert Jenrick
Very good. I re-emphasise not only that there is a £100,000 threshold, but that this is about fairness. All sportspeople who have a contractual right to a testimonial, which is commonplace, will have been paying income tax and national insurance on the benefit from that for some time, so this measure merely provides a greater degree of certainty and fairness. Of course, some of the clubs organising such testimonials will be smaller, or they may involve testimonial committees, so providing them with the clearest possible advice will be helpful. It will also ensure that there is no doubt in their minds when doing a good thing that is in the interests of players who may be at the end of their careers or may have been injured prematurely.
From April 2020, non-contractual and non-customary testimonials arranged by third parties will now be subject to NICs above a £100,000 threshold. A third-party testimonial committee will be liable to pay the class 1A employer NICs charge on the amount raised above £100,000. These types of testimonials will not be subject to employee NICs, to ensure that the sportsperson is not adversely affected. Again, as with the termination awards measure, we have chosen to act in relation to employer national insurance contributions, not employee contributions, so there remains a benefit to individuals in that respect.
I reassure hon. Members that the vast majority of sportspeople will be unaffected by the Bill because they will not exceed the £100,000 threshold. As I have said, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs estimates that only around 220 testimonials occur each year, most of which will remain unaffected as they either fall below the £100,000 level or are part of a previous contractual arrangement, which is commonplace in most sports.
Although the measure will bring in negligible revenue—we estimate less than £3 million a year—its value comes in the alignment and simplification of the tax and NICs treatment of sporting testimonials and clarity for those taking part in testimonials or those on sporting testimonial committees. Sporting bodies and other relevant stakeholders are expecting the changes, because our intention to make them has been known since at least 2015. As the changes required an NICs Bill, there has been a short delay, but that is what we are attempting to do today.
In conclusion, it may be a small and narrowly drawn Bill, but it is none the less important and includes two measures that simplify our tax code. Like many right hon. and hon. Members, I would like greater simplification of the tax system, but that journey must begin with single steps, and we are taking one of those today in simplifying the tax code in two significant respects that will have real-world consequences for individuals, who will benefit from a simpler system. The Bill will also raise a significant sum for public services and support our continued efforts to improve the public finances. It brings the national insurance and tax treatment of termination awards and sporting testimonials into closer alignment, and I commend it to the House.
Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)
The condensed national insurance Bill before us is a shadow of its former self. I would have liked to be able to say that I was bowled over or knocked for six by the Minister’s speech, but there were more own goals than anything else. It is far from the extensive Bill that was promised by the Chancellor’s predecessor at the 2016 Budget, which included the Conservatives’ 2015 manifesto pledge to abolish class 2 national insurance contributions. Instead, that manifesto pledge, like many of the Government’s promises, has quietly been sent to the landfill, barely even being recycled in this five-clause Bill. As for scrutiny, we have not even been able to amend the last three or four Finance Bills, but I am pleased that we will have an evidence session in Committee. I will be grateful for small mercies because we may be able to tease matters out a little more.
The cannibalisation of the national insurance Bill, which has been driven by the Chancellor’s volte-face on a tax cut for 3 million self-employed workers, reflects once again why the Conservative party has long ceased to be the party of the self-employed in particular and business in general. To many observers this will be viewed as another missed opportunity—one of the many opportunities that this Government have missed—to seriously address the relationship between the growing levels of self-employment in the UK and the levels of taxation and national insurance contributions that are paid.
The rushed timetable of this Bill has shown, once again, the Government’s complete lack of respect for parliamentary convention and the procedures of this House. The Opposition were notified only last Wednesday of the Government’s intention to timetable the Bill’s Second Reading, with an updated version of the Bill published last Thursday. The Government do not know one day from the next, although they do try to live from one day to the next. They gave parliamentary colleagues just one sitting day to examine the content of the Bill before today’s debate. The Government might not take their legislative responsibilities seriously, but the Opposition do.
Of course this is nothing new. Members have become accustomed to the Government’s handling, or mishandling, of legislation. The Government are engulfed in chaos and infighting on Brexit, and The Times reported yesterday that their rushed introduction of this hollow, some may say vacant, Bill is a further desperate attempt by the Prime Minister to keep this zombie Parliament in session.
Unwilling to face the electorate and unable to bring her dead-in-the-water Brexit deal back to Parliament for the fourth time, the Prime Minister is attempting to pack parliamentary business in the hope of avoiding an early Queen’s Speech that would no doubt be opposed by the Democratic Unionist Party and her own Back Benchers. This is a new embarrassing low for a Government who are all at sea. It is high time that the Prime Minister did the honourable thing and set a date for a general election and her departure. We have a kakistocracy dressed up as a Government.
The Bill is comprised of two key measures: the introduction of a new national insurance contributions charge for employers on the taxable element of termination payments above £30,000, as the Minister set out; and the introduction of a national insurance contributions charge on income from non-contractual sporting testimonials over £100,000.
The new class 1A employer NICs charge will be levied at 13.8%, if I understand it, and its introduction will align the NICs treatment of termination awards and income from non-contractual sporting testimonials. On the face of it, the Minister would have us believe that these changes are technical and benign. However, there is nothing technical about fundamental changes to the treatment of termination payments either for the employer paying them or for workers facing redundancy, who regard this final payment as an evaluation of the work they have done for their employer.
Termination payments, therefore, have both an emotional and a financial significance, and the amount awarded is often determined by painstaking and careful negotiations between managers and trade union representatives. A good employer might offer a generous termination payment to an employee as a sign that, even though they have had to make them redundant, it is not a judgment on the intrinsic worth of staff who are leaving.
However, a likely by-product of the Government’s proposed employer NICs charge is that it will incentivise employers to reduce the level of non-statutory termination payments to employees so that the overall level of non-statutory payments declines. This will diminish the level of termination payments available to workers who lose their job, while increasing the amount that the Government receive in NICs receipts.
The tax information and impact note for this measure goes to great lengths to clarify that this new charge will be limited to employers, and the Minister asserts that the Government have no plans to make further changes to the £30,000 statutory threshold, yet the Government’s own policy note states that this additional cost for employers will be reflected in lower wages.
The Office of Tax Simplification, which the Minister mentioned, noted in 2015 that imposing tax and national insurance contributions on all termination payments is
“likely to have a significant cost impact for some people, particularly those lower paid employees who may…often be the ones receiving smaller termination payments”.
Despite the clear impact that this measure will have on workers and employers alike, the original consultation noted that the Treasury had failed to undertake a distributional analysis of the impact of this new charge. With that in mind, will the Minister confirm whether, a few years on, that remains the case?
Similarly, the Chartered Institute of Taxation has raised concerns that the Bill does not set out how the new class 1A charge will be collected by HMRC, stating that it will instead be left to secondary legislation—more secondary legislation, the Government’s default position. The Treasury says it anticipates that the charges will arise and be paid in “real time,” rather than after the end of the tax year. However, tax experts note that this is a break from normal practice and will prove extremely cumbersome, requiring additional resources at a time when the Government are continuing their disastrous reorganisation of HMRC.
James Cartlidge
It is always a great pleasure and highlight to hear the hon. Gentleman talking about distributional analysis, but does he agree that, where we have what are effectively exceptional one-off payments that are hard to predict, it can be difficult to undertake such analysis? Sometimes we just have to be honest and accept that a measure is relatively minor. Although the money it raises is significant, we are unlikely to have the sort of data he is asking for.
Peter Dowd
It might be a minor measure, but the actual impact on individuals is potentially significant. I am interested in the impact it might have on individuals who lose their job, and not necessarily the capacity or otherwise of the Government to make an assessment of that. I focus my attention on those who may not get another job for a considerable period.
I now turn briefly to the second measure in the Bill, which seeks to introduce a similar NICs charge on non-contractual sporting testimonials for employed sportspersons. I look forward to leading the Government’s testimonial sooner rather than later.
Sporting testimonials have become a key part of our nation’s rich sporting history, presenting an opportunity for fans to pay tribute to sportspersons who are coming to the end of their playing career. I come from Liverpool, a city with a fantastic football team, Everton, and another football team, Tranmere Rovers. There is another team whose name I cannot remember; it has slipped my mind.
Under the Government’s proposal, the new class 1A employer NICs charge will apply after the first £100,000 and will make the controller of the sporting testimonial, usually an independent committee, liable to account for the charge where the employer is not organising the testimonial.
Although the Opposition recognise the logic of applying employer NICs to non-contractual sporting testimonials, where the money is going not directly to a sportsperson but, rather, to a testimonial committee, we are concerned that the majority of income from such testimonials comes from fans who make voluntary payments. If this measure is passed, there will be a clear inconsistency in the NICs treatment of voluntary donations or tips at sporting testimonials compared with the treatment of cash tips in the service sector, where the employer is not involved. That is something we will seek to address in Committee.
This condensed national insurance Bill is further evidence of the Government’s perpetual desire to shift the tax burden from the well-off to workers. Rather than tackling tax avoidance and raising taxes to ensure that the wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share, the Government are yet again introducing measures designed to raise additional revenue for the Exchequer from the termination payments of workers.
The introduction of a new employer NICs charge will inevitably lead to employers reducing non-statutory termination pay, leaving workers worse off when they have just faced the trauma of losing their job. To put it simply, this measure is unfair, cynical and disproportionate considering the scarring effect it will have on workers compared with the limited amount of revenue it will raise. We cannot support this, but we will look at it in more detail in Committee.
James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)
Before I start discussing the Bill, Mr Deputy Speaker, I hope you will not mind my saying that it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd), as always, but it is a particular pleasure to follow the brilliant speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) about climate change and his Bill about the net zero UK carbon account. It was one of the finest speeches I have heard since entering this place. It was an inspiring speech on an incredibly important subject.
Having said that, although I intervened on the hon. Gentleman to say that this was a minor matter, that does not mean it is unimportant. I meant that it was minor in terms of the revenue, albeit that its revenue is important and welcome. We should add that it has been baked into the Government’s accounts, so if anyone were to oppose it, they would have to suggest where £200 million a year of revenue was going to come from, as we would be spending this money on public services, from which we will all benefit.
Given the context of politics today, I would understand it if someone sitting in the Public Gallery or watching this debate elsewhere were to look at the title of this debate, “National Insurance Contributions (Termination Awards and Sporting Testimonials) Bill”, and think to themselves, “With all that is going on in the country—with these Union Jack and European Union flags outside, and all the talk about European elections, local elections, Nigel Farage back out on the stump and so on—is this really what we should be debating?” I would say that this Bill is important because, in its own way, it is the future of taxation in this country. Members may think that that is an odd thing to say, but we are going to be seeing a lot more of this type of Bill on taxation: measures that deal with specifics. I would not necessarily say that it deals with avoidance, but it is certainly a tidying-up measure that brings in welcome revenue.
Contrary to what the hon. Gentleman said, the Bill has little noticeable impact. Why do I say that? Ever since the early 1990s—since the 1992 general election and the 1997 one—and for the time being perhaps, the days when one of the main parties would go into a general election promising to change one of the main rates of taxation have gone. When I was elected in 2015, the Government we served in had specific legislation saying that we would not increase the main rate of national insurance. I think it also said we would not raise the main rates of income tax and VAT. There was legislation about the aid budget. We then found out that we would not increase tax on the self-employed and we would not increase the main tax on the employed. In fact, we changed inheritance tax. You soon run out of anywhere left where you can change any substantive tax, which must have been a concern in the Treasury; you are left with those yet to come and the good, old-fashioned national credit card. Our party has tried to avoid using that as much as possible. If Labour were successful at the next election, I am not sure it would be quite so successful on that—I think the card would take something of a hit.
The reason we support these types of measures is not because we welcome tax increases per se. In the context where the Government have pledged not to increase main rates of tax—I am sure Labour would be the same, although perhaps not on corporation tax—and in a political climate of no parliamentary majority, it is difficult to pass those “more radical” tax changes. So we will see more and more of these types of changes. We may call them tidying-up exercises or tax simplification measures—we have had many similar measures called “anti-avoidance”—but the point is that in total they bring in a lot of revenue. We are talking about significant revenue—£200 million a year is significant. If we put that in the context of the police budget, we see that it is a significant sum, so it is important. I will certainly be supporting this measure. I do not know whether the Labour party will, because I was confused by the hon. Gentleman’s speech. Perhaps we will get some clarity later.
One thing we should be wary of is that the specific area of taxation we are changing and increasing here is employers’ national insurance. I declare an interest, as an employer. I am a controlling director of a small business and have been for many years. It is fair to say that there are pluses and minuses with using employers’ NI as a method of obtaining revenue for Her Majesty’s Treasury. On the upside—this is why I have sympathy with this measure—it is saying, “Here are a lot of similar activities and it just so happens that in some of them employers’ NI is not paid. It is in the other ones, so we are harmonising the situation.” That is perfectly fair and reasonable. We have seen this in other contexts, with the classic one being IR35; people, often knowingly and perhaps sometimes unknowingly—it is hard to say—have constructed their tax affairs in such a way that, in effect, they are not having to pay either some employees’ taxes or the costs that there would be for a traditional company paying employees of paying employers’ NI. It is important always to consider the application of employers’ NI because, if it is not applied fairly, it can offer a perverse incentive in the tax system and create strange behaviours.
My right hon. Friend the Chancellor has talked about people who became self-employed and were not genuinely self-employed—I cannot recall the precise phrase he used, but we all know what that means. It means that someone is setting up their tax affairs in such a way as to reduce the amount of taxation they pay, rather than doing so because they are a plumber who, by their very nature, is going to be self-employed.
Peter Dowd
These testimonials are very important. A former Liverpool football player, Jamie Carragher, a Bootle lad, also had a testimonial and he put the best part of £1 million into his Jamie Carragher 23 Foundation. That is worth a mention.
James Cartlidge
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for mentioning the other Liverpool team, as it were. They seem to be doing quite well this season. It is a good and important point to make, because it sounds to me as though a relatively small number of sportspeople will have to pay a bit more tax in the coming years as a result of the Bill—there are a small number who do not have testimonials agreed contractually—but it is fair to have fairness.
Let me conclude on fairness. The hon. Member for Bootle and I have had one or two exchanges on Treasury matters over the years. He finished with quite a stirring wind-up, saying that with this Bill we were somehow supporting the rich—that classic old storyline that we were the party of failing to crack down on tax avoidance by the rich and were instead hitting the poorest. Well, what is the threshold in the Bill? It is £100,000.
James Cartlidge
The hon. Gentleman can correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the limit for testimonials is £100,000. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman mentions redundancy payments from a sedentary position; he can correct me if I am wrong again, but I do not think the Bill affects redundancy payments. It is about other, voluntary termination payments. On the subject of terminations, Mr Deputy Speaker, you will be delighted to hear that I shall now terminate my speech, but I will support this very good Bill.
Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)
Let me start by saying that I agree with almost everything that the Labour shadow Minister said. I will not make any cricket puns because I do not know anything about cricket—I will just stay out of that one—but I will make a point of mentioning that Aberdeen is obviously the greatest football team and should be mentioned first in any discussion of sporting prowess.
First, on the issues raised by the Labour shadow Minister about the Bill process, I share his concerns about the fact that we were told we would be getting the Bill before it had been introduced to this place. That is a real concern. Perhaps the Treasury drew the short straw again, and when the Government announced that they would have a Second Reading of a Bill but panicked because they could not work out which Second Reading it should be, they scrambled around and said to the Treasury, “You guys must have something”, and the poor Treasury Ministers were dragged here to present this Bill.
The serious point is that this is a highly technical Bill and we have had a very short time to look through it. I looked through the explanatory notes, as I am wont to do in these circumstances, but they do not talk about the amount of consultation that was done or the number of people who contributed to that consultation. I am aware that perhaps there are tax information and impact notes that do talk about the amount of consultation that was done, but it would have been useful to have that information in the explanatory notes so that we could be clear about how many individuals and organisations had come to the Treasury and said, “These are the good things and the bad things about the Bill.” That would have put us in a much more informed position, although I am sure we will get into the meat of that discussion in Committee.
On the intention behind the Bill, it was announced some time ago that there would be changes in this policy area and it has taken a while for the Bill to come through. Why has it come through now? If it has been intended for some time, why has it taken so long for the Bill to come before the House? Was it just that the Treasury drew the short straw, as I said, and had to bring a Bill to the House today and just had to find something? It would be useful to know something about the timing for the Bill, why it has come along now and what the logic behind that is.
I have a couple of questions on some of the specific things mentioned in the Bill. In introducing it, the Minister said that if there is a contractual obligation that there will be a testimonial, that will be treated differently, but also talked about cases in which there is an expectation that there will be a testimonial, which to me does not mean the same thing as a contractual obligation. I am not clear what the Treasury means by an expectation of a testimonial. Somebody could score a goal in every single club game they have ever played, but that does not mean they have a contractual testimonial obligation. I would expect, though, that that person would probably get a testimonial for being such a big part of their football club. Is that what is meant by “expectation”? If not, will the Treasury confirm exactly what is meant by that word in the Bill?
On the amounts for testimonials, the explanatory notes say:
“The new Class 1A liability does not affect individuals as it is to be paid by the controller of the sporting testimonial.”
That seems a bit disingenuous to me, because although it does not affect the individual’s liability, it does affect the amount of money they will get. Has the Treasury done any maths on how much less sporting individuals will get from their testimonials because this liability might have to be taken off before the money is handed over to them? It seems to me that, rather than being something quite removed, it will have a direct impact on individuals.
The Chartered Institute of Taxation got in touch with me with queries about some things in the Bill. On the £100,000 limit, the institute said:
“The intention is that the NICs rules will replicate this and only impose Class 1A NICs on the amount chargeable to income tax. We have reviewed the NICs Bill and it charges to Class 1A the amount that is ‘general earnings’. We assume this means the amount above £100,000…but it is not clear. The termination payments legislation refers specifically to the amount chargeable under the Income Tax (Earnings & Pensions) Act 2003. It is surprising that the same approach has not been adopted here.”
Why has the Treasury taken a different approach to the drafting of this legislation to that taken to the drafting of the termination payments legislation that was passed previously?
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
There is another question, about the definition of who is an employee and who is an employer. There have been various examples in the courts of people being treated as employers when they were actually employees. There is still a bit of obscurity about that when it comes to tax, which creates a lot of difficulty for people.
Kirsty Blackman
I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman’s point. When in a moment I talk about the termination awards for individuals, I will discuss that specific issue.
On termination awards for employees, the explanatory notes say:
“The new Class 1A liability does not affect individuals as it is paid by the employer.”
The reality is that, again, it does affect individuals, because they will receive less money. If the employer is going to give out a pot of £40,000, they will be giving some of that to the Exchequer, instead of to the individual as they currently would. The details show that the Exchequer expects to receive £210 million for 2023-24 as a result of the change; do Ministers expect individuals to receive £210 million less and that that money will go to the Exchequer instead, or do they expect employers magically to find some more money and to continue to pay employees who are leaving their organisation the same amount as before, while paying a slice to the Treasury as well? It would be useful to know how much less the Treasury expects individuals to receive as a result of the change, not just how much the Treasury expects to receive.
The NICs change is the only example of a class 1A charge on cash earnings that the Chartered Institute of Taxation could find. Why has the Treasury decided to take the route it has chosen? Class 1A contributions are normally paid in respect of things such as benefits in kind, rather than on cash earnings. The Bill seems to me to make a fairly fundamental change to how NICs are treated and to the different classes of NICs. It would be useful to know why the Treasury has decided to make this change. Is it part of some sort of long-term plan to use class 1A charges on cash in other circumstances? Or will they continue to be used mainly on benefits in kind?
It seems to me that it is a bit of an ad hoc change. Perhaps the Treasury is putting forward some grand plan, or perhaps it is just a small change. I have asked similar questions about the recent changes to the Financial Conduct Authority and the Bank of England. It seems that a lot of small ad hoc changes have been coming through with no blueprint for where the Treasury expects to be at the end of the process and what it expects the system to look like at that point. It would be useful to know more about that.
I would like to know about a few main things. On the £100,000 for sporting testimonials, is the Bill intended to operate in the way things operated under the previous legislation on sporting testimonials, but the language in the Bill is just unintentionally a bit woollier? On employees, we have that issue with the class 1A charge; does the Treasury intend to make further changes to class 1A contributions, or is this the last change it expects to make? We expect secondary legislation to come through as a result of the Bill, to tighten things up and make further changes in future, but when is that expected to come—in this Session, or quite close to the Bill’s implementation in 2020? If it is the latter and the secondary legislation does not come through in enough time, it might be difficult for employers to make sensible decisions.
Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)
It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman). The two of us often seem to be in the Chamber at a similar time discussing tax issues.
These measures have been a long time in process. Back in the Budget of 2016, there was talk of a consultation on trying to align more closely national insurance with tax treatment. I note that, today, the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury said that this is a form of simplification of the tax system. I might disabuse him of those thoughts by telling him to look more closely at the new rules regarding post-employment notice pay within payments in lieu of notice as part of termination payments. Far from being simple, it is actually rather complex.
As I said at the very start, these proposals have been making their way through this House in various forms. There were some delays because of the unexpected election in 2017, but they did find their way into a draft Bill in December 2016—the National Insurance Contributions Bill. Some proposed changes came through in the 2017 Budget, which included the scrapping of class 2 national insurance for the self-employed—currently £3 a week—and a corresponding increase in class 4 national insurance contributions for the self-employed. They were highlighted as fairly controversial at the time, but I did not share that view. I was quite supportive of the increase in class 4 national insurance because of the generosity, as I saw it, of the new state pension that came into play. That slight increase in the class 4 national insurance rate was, I felt, a fair quid pro quo for the quite substantial increase in the new state pension, but, for whatever reason, that measure was not taken through. I had some serious concerns about scrapping class 2 national insurance, and I will explain why.
The lowly paid self-employed person may not hit the threshold for class 4 national insurance contributions, which is, I believe, something above £8,500, but is more likely to have paid class 2 national insurance contributions and so would be ticking up a national insurance record into the future. Given that WASPI women have concerns about where they find themselves today, I was worried that this House and future Members of this House—I will probably be long, long gone—would face a raft of new people saying, “Where’s my pension. I have been self-employed all these years.” They would then be told, “Ah, but you didn’t pay any national insurance; you didn’t pay class 2, and you certainly weren’t earning class 4.” I was pleased to see that that idea disappeared and that we are back to what was the old system.
We have had this £30,000 threshold for tax-free redundancy payments—let me put it in easy terms—for quite some time. It could be argued that we have been at that level of £30,000 for too long. I did a bit of research before today and found that the last time that the £30,000 threshold was raised was with effect from 6 April 1988. It must have been considered to be the right rate at the time—it was an increase in rate from £25,000 to £30,000. I did not manage to find out when the £25,000 rate was first implemented, but it must have been deemed at the time to have been the right rate for what was a tax-free settlement, or payment, for years of service within a company. It was obviously deemed to be the right amount for people to adjust to a new work situation, or to act as a bridge towards retirement for people who were getting towards the end of their normal working life, which was perhaps more traditional in those days of the ’80s. I know the hon. Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) raised some of those points in his speech.
Having consulted the Office for National Statistics for inflation increases since 6 April 1988, I found that £100 then is now worth £266 today. Applying that inflationary increase from 1988—no more, no less—that £30,000 would inflate to £79,800, or in broad terms £80,000. However, I do understand—for the record I am a member of the Chartered Institute of Taxation and a chartered accountant—that there is probably a perception that the £30,000 settlement payment has been a target to hit rather than a proper target for any other reasons. Hence we now have this fairly complicated formula for payments in lieu of notice. Changes came in on 6 April 2018, including this whole concept of post-employment notice pay. It was really to recognise the difference between contractual payments in lieu of notice and non-contractual payments in lieu of notice. I will not bore the House for too long with the formula that applies, but it is a fairly beefy one: it is basic pay multiplied by the number of days from the last day of employment, divided by the number of days in the last pay period, minus the amounts paid on termination—a formula given the letter T. Therefore, far from it being a tax simplification measure, the PILON rules have added quite a layer of complication to a figure of £30,000 that, in due course, should have been given adjustment for inflation in any effect.
We are now left with PILONs—the new PILONs assessment of what they are actually worth—holiday pay, and any restrictive covenants being included within that £30,000 limit that is tax free and national insurance free. Above that, we have the normal rules of tax and— in complex speak—employers’ class 1A national insurance coming into play. What we are likely to see in terms of adjustment, in answer to the hon. Member for Aberdeen North, is an increase in employer contributions to pension schemes as part of a settlement on the way out, which is not any bad thing. There is nothing wrong with that.
We have a very powerful and strong message to tell about auto-enrolment. It must be the right thing for all employees now. We are now running into millions, and there will be a fund approaching tens, if not hundreds, of billions in due course, and that must be to the good, as people accumulate their own pension funds. We will look back at auto-enrolment and see it as one of the most successful and vital measures that any Government could have implemented. It is like any other measure. It sounds expensive—it means a percentage off salaries, which will always be unwelcome particularly in times of low inflation, and it means that people might see their take-home salary go down—but there will be a lot of thanks from many employees in due course that these funds have been accumulated. If, in trying to circumvent, in an entirely legitimate way, paying the class 1A national insurance on these amounts—for normal employees over £30,000—employers provide more funding to a pension scheme, then that is something as a quid pro quo that the Treasury should actually support.
These measures should have come into play in April 2019. They were deferred last year for a further year, which is mentioned on page 42 of the official Red Book. Therefore, far from saying that these things have come out of the blue and have not been considered, they have been consulted upon since 2016. They nearly got somewhere, but were deferred for another year. Therefore, in terms of planning and getting that together, there is plenty of time for employers to make any due adjustment. I have really concentrated on part 1 of the Bill.
Let me turn to the sporting side of things and the £100,000 limit. There have been a lot of discussions on this subject, because we are talking about huge figures, especially when the very well-known sports stars have their testimonials. When there are millions of pounds involved, these people—who are already very wealthy—often decide to give all the money to charity, which is a laudable ambition. I suppose that the one downside of this type of legislation is that it is possible for the employer in such cases to suffer the national insurance on an amount that the recipient has never actually received because he or she has decided to put it through their tax return as a very generous donation to charity.
This subject brings out the debate about certain limits in our tax regime that have not been touched for a very long time. What was the purpose of the £30,000 threshold? There was a reason for it in 1988, but does it still apply in the modern employment market? Perhaps people do not work as long for the same employer now; that feature is probably slightly different today from how it might have been in 1988. What should the figure be? Does it deserve flexing up? We could have a similar debate across other bits of the tax code—perhaps including inheritance tax.
Lots of parts of the tax code have fallen behind inflation. They were originally there for a reason. Some were introduced when the Labour party was in government, but now that we are in government perhaps there is a debate to be had about what these things were for in the first place, as part of the tax simplification process. But if there is any fear or threat that there has been manipulation of the tax and NI system, it is right that these payments should be part of the normal weft and weave of what we are doing with national insurance. I therefore have no difficulty supporting the Bill, and I wish the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury every success in its progress through the House.
Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay), who always talks about these issues from a professional perspective, related to his work before he first entered this place. It was very interesting to hear his comments, and I will return to some of them as I set out the Opposition’s summary of our concerns about the Bill.
When the Minister was introducing these measures, he said that they were expected. As many Members have said, they most certainly were expected. In fact, they were introduced a lot later than we had anticipated, as the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) pointed out. In fact, the Government’s paperwork associated with the measures indicated that some revenue has been loss as a result of that late presentation. The hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) noted that the figures here were “baked in” to the Government’s accounts. Well, if he looks at the accompanying paperwork to these measures, he will see that it actually appears that those expectations have had to change given the late presentation of the Bill to the House. Of course, Labour would take very different decisions on taxation. We believe that the rates for the very best-off should be increased for the top 5%, that a different approach should be taken to corporation tax and, in particular, that we should not be focusing on trying to increase tax on those people who have, above all, lost their jobs—of course, that is part of the focus of this legislation.
I will, however, start by discussing the sporting testimonials element of the Bill. These measures would see NICs treatment of sporting testimonials charged to class 1A NICs, mirroring the tax liability. As has been mentioned, this would only apply to testimonial payments exceeding £100,000. Many members have already noted that the situation—I hesitate to say “playing field” because we have definitely had enough puns in this debate—has changed since these testimonials were introduced, when many players were not earning enough money adequately to save for their retirement. Particularly in football, which is the sport that I know best in this regard, players at the very top levels are earning more than enough throughout their lifetime not to have to rely on these testimonial payments for future revenue. It is therefore appropriate that clubs as employers, or the testimonial committees that would be providing the payments, look to make these national insurance contributions.
The public are rightly angry about the amount of tax avoidance that the wealthiest in this country engage in, but I am concerned that these measures do not come close to addressing systemic issues within football, particularly around taxation. As I understand it, as of January, HMRC was looking into the financial affairs of 173 players, 40 clubs and 38 agents. Now, I have little doubt that the Minister is itching to mention the case of Rangers football club when he responds to the debate—I am well aware of the case that was taken against Rangers—but I think we need to contrast what has occurred in our country with developments in Spain, for example, where firm action has been taken against the extremely well-paid players who sought to artificially avoid tax. We have not seen similar action taken here. For example, the problem around image rights companies was known about for quite a long time before action was firmly taken. It is an insult to the thousands of volunteers at clubs across the UK—who scrimp and save to ensure that the players are paid, the grounds and stands are properly maintained, and records are properly kept—to see some of those at the very top get away with sharp practices.
Ministers must be aware that testimonials are actually becoming less common as a means of ensuring financial security for players and that the funds from testimonials are very often donated to charity, as many hon. Members have mentioned. I would like some more detail from the Minister about the perceived impact of this legislation on funds being donated to charity. Yes, in some cases funds may pass straight to a charity, but in other situations they go to charity eventually—via a player. In fact, if one looks at the charities that have benefited from the most recent testimonials, many have been foundations associated with particular players. The Minister said that, of the previous 220 testimonials that have been examined in relation to coverage by such measures, most would not have been covered because the testimonial was contractual or because its value was less than £100,000, but he did not talk about testimonials where charitable donations were concerned. I am a little bit worried that this quite important source of funds for charities might not be getting the consideration it requires as part of the Bill. I hope that the Minister will reflect on that in his closing remarks or provide more detail in Committee.
I turn to the impact of the Bill on termination awards. The Bill would introduce a new 13.8% class 1A employer NICs charge to any part of a termination award that is already income tax liable. The Minister has stated his contention that abuse exists in this field, with the claim that some employers might be disguising final payments as termination payments. Again, we really need to see concrete evidence. We have probed on this issue in previous discussions on Finance Bills, but we have not been provided with evidence of abuse. Actually, from memory, consultations carried out in this area did not suggest that there was widespread evidence of abuse. Surely, we need that evidence before considering these measures in detail.
In fact, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) explained very clearly, this measure on employers’ national insurance contributions on termination awards is likely to lead to employers being much less generous with non-statutory termination awards and to leave people worse off at a time when many of them are most vulnerable. That could have severe implications for the individuals concerned, but it could also have wider economic implications. I was interested to learn that around 30% of all small businesses founded in the UK in recent times have been started in response to redundancy, with many people only having the resources to pursue their entrepreneurial ambitions because of their termination award. It is necessary to think about those wider impacts.
The Government maintain—indeed, we heard it again this afternoon—that this measure does not affect individuals, as it is paid by the employer, but that surely is not the case. In fact, the Government themselves predict in the material presented alongside the Bill that the measure would reduce wages overall by 0.1% over the year 2020-21. It is crucial that the Government undertake more detailed consideration of the likely impact of this measure.
As has been discussed, this is not the first time that this Government have sought to narrow the scope of tax relief on redundancy and termination payments. In the 2017 Finance Bill, they removed any exemption for payments in lieu of notice from the tax-free scope of payments for injuries. As Members will remember, that was very concerning with regard to workers’ rights, which are one of the main aspects of compensation in discrimination cases. The Opposition rightly contested that change.
Again in the 2017 Finance Bill, the Treasury provided itself with the power to vary the tax-free amount for other termination payments. Trade unions raised their concerns about that measure, as they believed that if the Treasury further lowered the tax-free threshold, it would incentivise employers to lower non-statutory termination awards even further. Indeed, the TUC has suggested that the tax-free element should be increased rather than decreased. I was interested by the comments made by the hon. Member for South Thanet, who noted that the value of the £30,000 threshold has been eroded significantly over time and would be worth more than double the amount if it had kept pace with current prices.
The Opposition remain concerned that the Bill still includes the power to potentially vary the NICs threshold upwards or downwards without proper scrutiny in this place, and I hope the Minister will be able to rule that out today. I also hope he will return to this in legislative form, to make it crystal clear that the Government do not intend to reduce the threshold.
I note that the guidance published alongside the legislation emphasises that
“no statutory redundancy pay on its own will be affected”.
That implies that non-statutory redundancy pay could find itself affected, exactly as the Opposition have warned. Can we have a clear statement that we will not see, via secondary legislation, tax and NICs being applied to voluntary redundancy payments for individuals with two years, or more or less than two years, of continuous service?
The Minister will be aware that this kind of application of class 1A NICs to cash earnings is highly unusual, to put it mildly. That point has been underlined by the Chartered Institute of Taxation and was made eloquently by the hon. Member for Aberdeen North. This appears to be a set of rather ad hoc changes. The hon. Member for South Suffolk, in a wide-ranging and interesting speech, suggested that the Bill is part of a general push to simplify the tax landscape, particularly when it comes to the relationship between payment as an employee and other forms of payment. In reality, we have seen an increasing complication of that landscape. We have not seen an alignment between the tax treatment of individuals and their employment treatment. Instead, we see an increasing bricolage of measures to try to deal with the disjuncture, with what is happening around IR35 being a good example. One would hope that the Government will start to try to get a grip of this issue in a more determined and less ad hoc fashion in months to come—if, indeed, they have months to come.
There is one last administrative issue that I want to mention. We have had referred to us by experts in this area the fact that HMRC has suggested that the charge will arise and be paid in real time, rather than at the end of the tax year, as is the case with other class 1A charges. That seems to require a new process—again, additional complication—for submitting information through the pay-as-you-earn real-time information submission and for HMRC to have to adopt a different process for allocating the different elements of that payment. There are already many issues with it allocating real-time information payments into the wrong pots. This seems to suggest additional complication, and we need the Government to rethink this and consider an annual payment, rather than a real-time one. This change potentially comes at the same time as other significant forms of upheaval within the tax system, from making tax digital to preparations for Brexit.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle stated very clearly at the end of his remarks, we will not oppose the Bill at this stage, but we hope that it will be possible to make some substantial changes in Committee, because they are very much needed, as has been reflected by the tenor of this debate.
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mel Stride)
I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions to this important debate, which is narrow in scope, as the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury pointed out, but none the less important. There were a limited number of contributions, made up for, however, by their quality.
Let me bring us back to the essential element of what this Bill is all about, which is aligning the employer national insurance treatment in respect of termination awards and sporting testimonials with that of income tax. As a number of hon. Members pointed out, the rationale behind these measures is to bring in alignment and, with it, some elements of simplification. We should remind ourselves that, as we have heard, the genesis of this journey was back in 2013-14, with the report by the Office of Tax Simplification. Another rationale for these measures is to disincentivise any tendency towards the manipulation of payments as between earnings and termination payments on the tax side of things. There is, of course, additional revenue to the Exchequer of some £200 million per year as a consequence of these measures.
I turn now to some of the specific points that have been raised—first and foremost, by the hon. Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd). He told us some jokes about cricket that were not bad—well, by his standards, at least, they were passable. He managed to remember two of the three great football teams up in the Liverpool part of the country, proving conclusively, I have to say, that he knows far more about football than he does about economics and taxation. [Interruption.] Yes, cruel but fair. That was exemplified by his lamenting the fact that we did not abolish class 2 NICs. I was surprised to hear him say that, because he was at great pains, as he always is, to be the champion of the lower paid—as indeed are Conservative Members. The rationale for stepping back from that abolition, as he will know, is that it would have imposed a very significant burden on the very people he seeks to protect—the lower paid—by putting up the cost of the contributions that they would have to make in order to qualify for their state pension.
Curiously, the hon. Gentleman accused us, contrary to the assertions of the hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), of having rushed the timetable for this legislation, despite the fact that its genesis was about five years ago. That is probably indicative of the speed at which a future Labour Government would get things done—five years is rushing it, in those terms. He also accused us of not taking the legislation seriously, but as he spoke there were precisely none of his hon. or right hon. Friends sitting on the Benches behind him.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) gave a masterful performance in which he not only showed great in-depth knowledge of the issues at hand but understood the mentality and the challenges that we have as Ministers in the Treasury. It is indeed a restrictive environment where we do not want to put people’s taxes up, we make commitments not to do so, and we fight day in, day out to ensure that we stick to those pledges. But at the same time, we do of course have to raise revenue, as he described. He also cantered around the tax terrain, touching on IR35, auto-enrolment and various other aspects of tax. It was a very thoughtful contribution to the debate.
The hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) specifically referenced the amount of consultation—or the lack of it, as she saw it—around the Bill. I should remind her that we have consulted on it twice. It was issued in draft in December 2016, and it was prefigured when we handled the income tax aspects of these issues in the 2016 and 2017 Finance Acts. Of course, the measures themselves were first mooted back in 2015, so we have been round the block with them.
Kirsty Blackman
The point I was making was not that there was necessarily a lack of consultation, but that we did not know how much consultation there had been, because the details are not in the explanatory notes, where they would often be. Normally, the explanatory notes will say a bit about the amount of consultation there has been, but they do not say anything at all. If that had been written down for us, and we had known how many consultation responses there had been, I would not have asked the question.
Mel Stride
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury has just reminded me that there has been a lot of information out there—we have, not least, written to Members to explain the background to these measures.
As to the hon. Lady’s specific point, she has raised the quality of information memorandums with me before in a different context. I said on that occasion, and I will restate now, that I am happy to look at the point she has raised. While we may have disagreements over policy across the House, I think we all accept that it is important that the relevant information is clearly provided and in the right place, and I will certainly be happy to look at that issue.
The hon. Lady raised the issue of tax treatment where there is an expectation that a testimonial payment will be made. She understandably asked how we know whether such a payment should be seen as having an expectation attached to it. The answer is if that payment is customary. If someone is involved in a sports club of some sort, and there is a testimonial every year for a particular player or group of players, and that had been going on for some time, that would be a customary testimonial situation. In those circumstances, the tax treatment would follow accordingly.
The hon. Lady also raised a point about employer NICS at 13.8% being applied above the £30,000 threshold. She raised the prospect that some of that may be borne by the employee, because the employer would have a certain amount that they were looking at. She raised the question of what the balance was between who bears that cost and the £200 million per year received by the Exchequer. I very much doubt that that information is available, but if it is, I will certainly make sure that we provide it to her. That may be an issue she wishes to come back to in Committee.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay) specifically majored on the threshold—the £30,000—and pointed out that it first came into effect in 1988. What I would say to him is that, in the case of Germany and the United States—certainly in the case of income tax—the threshold is effectively zero, so in terms of international comparisons, the figure of £30,000, while it is true that it has not increased by inflation since 1988, is none the less set at a reasonable and proportionate level. As a number of speakers have also pointed out, 80% of termination payments are below the £30,000 threshold in any event and would therefore not fall under this employers’ national insurance.
The hon. Member for Oxford East, as well as helpfully pointing out that Labour’s mission is to increase corporation tax, came on to the issue of avoidance and evasion, particularly in the area of football. She thought I would mention the Rangers case, and it is important to do that, because it does indicate that we will take cases right the way to the Supreme Court when we believe that issues such as disguised remuneration are in play. Whether it is in football or other areas of commerce and economic life, we will make sure that the right amount of tax is paid. I will not rehearse the arguments that the hon. Lady has heard from me on many occasions about the tax gap and how successful the Government have been in that respect compared with Governments of the past.
The second issue the hon. Lady raised was charitable giving. She set up the prospect of a testimonial being held and the money going through the committee and then on to a charity. She asked what the tax treatment would be in those circumstances. It is open to a committee in that situation to route some of the money via payroll giving to the charity—that is without limit—to make sure that that is done in the most tax-efficient manner possible. However, she may wish to return to that matter in Committee, where we can perhaps have a more detailed debate about it.
The hon. Lady asked about seeking evidence of the abuse of termination payments—in other words, disguising what are essentially earnings by transferring them into a termination payment, thereby reducing taxation. HMRC is clear that there has been evidence of that in the past. I am sure that she will wish to revisit the matter in more detail in Committee.
The hon. Lady mentioned the impact of these measures on wages, citing the correct figure of 0.1% for the reduction by 2020-21. However, I point out that we have now had 10 months of increased real wages, due to our success in keeping inflation down and generating nominal wage growth. Of course, with regard to employment, which is part of the issue we are addressing, we now have among the highest levels of employment in our history, and the lowest unemployment since the mid-1970s.
The hon. Lady asked what guarantees there are that we will not reduce the threshold in either case. Of course, it is up to this Government, or any future Government, to take a view on these matters, but I can assure her that we have no expectation or intention at the present time to lower the thresholds. If we did, that would of course be by way of an affirmative statutory instrument, which means the measure would have appropriate scrutiny.
In conclusion, I thank the Opposition and all Members for their contributions, and for not opposing Second Reading.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time.
National Insurance Contributions (Termination Awards and Sporting Testimonials) Bill (Programme)
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),
That the following provisions shall apply to the National Insurance Contributions (Termination Awards and Sporting Testimonials) Bill:
Committal
(1) The Bill shall be committed to a Public Bill Committee.
Proceedings in Public Bill Committee
(2) Proceedings in the Public Bill Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Thursday 16 May 2019.
(3) The Public Bill Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.
Proceedings on Consideration and up to and including Third Reading
(4) Proceedings on Consideration and any proceedings in legislative grand committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion two hours after the commencement of proceedings on Consideration.
(5) Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption that day.
(6) Standing Order No. 83B (programming sub-committees) shall not apply to proceedings on Consideration and Third Reading.
Other proceedings
(7) Any other proceedings on the Bill may be programmed.—(Mel Stride.)
Question agreed to.
National Insurance Contributions (Termination Awards and Sporting Testimonials) Bill (Ways and Means)
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 52(1)(a)),
That, for the purpose of any Act resulting from the National Insurance Contributions (Termination Awards and Sporting Testimonials) Bill, it is expedient to authorise provision adding termination awards chargeable to income tax to the amount by reference to which, in the case of Class 1A National Insurance Contributions, the appropriate national health service allocation (for England, Wales and Scotland) and the appropriate health service allocation (for Northern Ireland) are to be calculated.—(Mel Stride.)
Question agreed to.
Public confidence in the Prime Minister
Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
The petition asks the House to hold a debate of no confidence in the Prime Minister at the earliest opportunity. It is from residents of the United Kingdom. The lead signatory is Leonard Harris from Accrington in Lancashire. Other signatories include many from Dorset constituencies, including Christchurch, and from representatives of Leavers of Dorset. The lead signatory wanted to submit a parliamentary e-petition on the subject, but it was ruled inadmissible because it is not possible to submit an e-petition calling for someone to lose their job. It was deemed that the consequence of the petition was that the Prime Minister could lose her job, so it was ruled out. Hence this old-fashioned public petition.
The petition states:
The petition of Residents of the United Kingdom,
Declares that the Prime Minister repeatedly promised that the UK would leave the European Union on 29 March 2019 and that the only way to prevent that happening without a deal was for our Prime Minister’s Withdrawal Agreement to be approved by Parliament; further notes that despite her Withdrawal Agreement having been rejected by the House of Commons on three separate occasions, the Prime Minister intervened personally to prevent the UK leaving the EU on 29 March 2019, further intervened to prevent the UK leaving the EU on 12 April 2019, and has now agreed with the EU, without the prior approval of her Cabinet or Parliament, that the UK cannot leave the EU before 31 October 2019 without a deal, notwithstanding having incurred expenditure in excess of £4 billion for that purpose, and the Prime Minister having repeatedly stated to UK citizens that in her view no deal is better than a bad deal; further expresses its dismay that the Prime Minister has also conceded that the UK is not allowed to renegotiate the Withdrawal Agreement or open negotiations on a future relationship with the EU prior to 31 October 2019, thereby going back on her guarantee that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed; and further as a result that they have no confidence in the Prime Minister.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons hold a debate and make a decision on a motion of no confidence in the Prime Minister at the earliest opportunity.
And the petitioners remain, etc.
[P002451]
Welbeck Defence Sixth Form College
(5 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)
I am very grateful for this opportunity to raise the important matter of the future of Welbeck Defence Sixth Form College in Leicestershire. The college is in the constituency of my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), by a few hundred yards, but I have been delighted to visit the college on a number of occasions, both before and since my election in 2010 to represent Loughborough. This is clearly a matter of national importance. It is good to see my hon. Friend in his place on the Treasury Front Bench. I think I can confidently say that at least on this subject he and I are going to be firmly of the same mind. In particular, we would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the fantastic staff, pupils and governors, both past and present, for their unwavering commitment to our armed forces, as well as their contribution to the local area and the college over many years; and also to Councillor David Snartt, who has always been a strong voice for the college.
Welbeck is a full boarding co-educational college, funded by the Ministry of Defence. It offers an A-level education to young people who go on to study a degree at a partner university and receive an annual bursary before starting their careers as technical officers within the Royal Navy, Army, Royal Air Force or the MOD civil service. The college now has over 300 boarding pupils, and students come from all over the UK and from a wide variety of backgrounds. This positive impact on social mobility is something I will return to.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I congratulate the right hon. Lady on securing the debate. I declare an interest as a former member of the Army for 14 and a half years as a part-time soldier. Does she not agree that the college is a way of sowing into the future those whose career choice is the armed forces and that to close it down sends a contradictory message to the official one, which is that we want young people to make a career out of the armed forces? Money spent on sowing it into the lives of young people can never be wasted. In other words, money spent now will increase our forces, making soldiers who are special. The British Army is the best in the world.
Nicky Morgan
I thank the hon. Gentleman very much indeed for that intervention. I agree with him. From testimonials sent to me by former students and their families, I know how strongly they agree, too. In many cases, Welbeck has transformed their life chances. As he also says, this is about building fantastic armed forces, particularly with a science, engineering and technology background, for the United Kingdom. I am sure the Minister will want to cover how he thinks the changes proposed will enhance that and not detract from it. There is some convincing to do on that score.
Welbeck aims to prepare students for life at university and beyond by giving them a well-rounded curriculum that will—as a champion of character education, I particularly endorse this—
“challenge and develop them academically, physically and socially.”
The college also aims to develop students on a personal level by challenging them through a diverse range of co-curricular activities, which include many different sports, combined cadet force activities, and working within the community through volunteering and charity work.
On 6 April 2018, the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), who is the Minister for Defence People and Veterans, wrote to me and my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood:
“I am writing to inform you that the Ministry of Defence will be undertaking a review of the Defence Sixth Form College at Welbeck as part of an ongoing initiative to understand how to improve the supply of STEM graduates into Defence and the Armed Services…Welbeck is part of our wider scheme for recruiting STEM graduates. Its role is to educate pupils in relevant A-level subjects prior to moving to the next phase of the scheme where they are supported through STEM courses at university. If successful they then go into Initial Officer Training with one of the Armed Services or enter the Civil Service within the MOD. Like many other organisations, we”—
the MOD—
“have found it consistently difficult over recent years to attract sufficient, good quality, STEM candidates. Whilst the education and wider experience provided by Welbeck is of a high standard, and despite measures to mitigate shortfalls, intake targets are not being achieved. Equally, over the 5-6 years they are in the pipeline the numbers seeing it through to Initial Officer Training has consistently only been about 55%.
The review will look at the breadth of the operation of Welbeck, which is a private Finance Initiative establishment run by a contractor, Minerva. It will explore re-setting the current PFI, extracting better value from the current PFI, and also whether a different STEM graduate recruiting scheme would better meet Defence’s needs. We will be instructing PwC to work with Minerva to explore the viability of these options.
Whilst the review will be internal to MOD only, I understand that such a review can create uncertainty and potentially some concern among your constituents. I want to reassure you, however, that no decisions will be made until the review is complete, at which point I will write to you again. One of the assumptions of the review is that, whatever happens, students who are currently on the scheme will be able to see it through to graduation and joining the Services or Civil Service.”
I know that, as the local MP, my hon. Friend raised a question with the Prime Minister on this in the House last year and has had regular engagement on it with Ministers. But as far as I can establish, the review’s conclusions have not been released to the public, nor is it clear who was formally consulted, so it was deeply disappointing to read last month, in a written statement by the Minister here today, of the decision by the Ministry of Defence to
“put in place a new, targeted scheme to recruit undergraduates in related subjects; the STEM graduate inflow scheme…This scheme has been designed to significantly increase the number of STEM graduates brought into defence and the variety of STEM disciplines they are from…The new scheme will replace the current defence technical officer and engineer entry scheme…which has produced some excellent young graduates but is not meeting defence’s requirements or providing sufficient value for money. Ending the current scheme will also mean that the Defence Sixth Form College…at Welbeck will close, with a final intake in September 2019.”
We, and those watching this closely, note the Minister’s final comment in the statement:
“Full transition to the new scheme will take place incrementally over the next five years, during which the current intake of students will be fully supported. For the final two years Welbeck remains a going concern. That time will be used productively to work with local authorities and stakeholders to seek the best possible future use of this impressive school, including within the education sector or an alternative use within defence.”
I will return to the issue about the future in a moment but, first, for the sake of those affected, we must be absolutely sure that the Ministry of Defence is making the right decision. As the local MP, my hon. Friend has written:
“A number of constituents have written to me, following the announcement, to express their concern about the forthcoming closure of the College, particularly in light of the excellent opportunity Welbeck offers young people across the UK, since 1953 and on its current site since 2005, to get a first-class STEM and technical education in preparation for a career in our Armed Forces, and for the values and discipline it instils in its students. While I can understand the Ministry of Defence’s approach to ensuring that it has access to talented engineering and technical graduates needs to be updated from time to time to reflect changing needs and approaches to training and education, I do share the view that Welbeck's closure will be a real loss in that context.”
As local MPs, we note, and are grateful, that my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), the Chair of the Defence Committee—I am delighted to see him here—has written to the Ministry of Defence to ask if it is wise to
“shut down a means of creating graduates who have been working towards a service career from their mid-teens.”
He goes on to say
“we are very concerned that closure of Welbeck College risks sacrificing an existing—and productive—source of STEM graduates in the hope that a new and untried system will be more successful.”
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Like my right hon. Friend, I, on behalf of the Defence Committee, received a number of representations from people involved with Welbeck who stressed the high quality of the service it provides. I cannot help wondering if part of the problem is that not all Welbeck graduates go into the armed services. Perhaps part of the solution is that part of the budget should be funded by some other Department to recognise the fact that there is an educational benefit that goes wider than just recruitment into the armed forces.
Nicky Morgan
I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention. He speaks with great expertise as Chair of the Defence Committee and makes an interesting point. If I were still Secretary of State for Education, I would be thinking about the impact on my budget, but he made two broader points. The first is about the positive impact of having more young people studying science, technology, engineering and maths in this country. Of course, if they are going to be part of our armed forces or the MOD civil service, that is a great thing for the country, but there are many other fantastic STEM-based jobs that will benefit this country too, and I suspect that many of those future employees have started life at Welbeck and been inspired there.
The second point is about how the decision was made, what alternatives were looked at and who was consulted. In his letter to the MOD, the Chair went on to say:
“Our understanding is that the staff and governors were not consulted on the College’s future and it does not seem obvious to us that the creation of SGIS requires the closure of the College”.
He asked why the decision must lead to the closure of Welbeck, whether the change between the two schemes offers value for money, how closing the college will help UK defence
“in an increasingly competitive market for STEM graduates in the UK and globally”,
and whether the staff and governors of the college were consulted before the written statement, or whether they were informed of the decision without being able to influence the review. We look forward to reading the Government’s response to that letter, which I suspect, like all other Select Committee correspondence, will be published and made available to the public in due course.
The decision is clearly very unsettling for staff, families, current students and those who had hoped to study there in future. We note the current 847 signatures on the petition on the Parliament website and the current 1,076 signatures on the 38 Degrees petition site. The latter petition calls for a consultation to be held to include parents, staff, students and other relevant stakeholders over the proposed closure of Welbeck. As I have said, it is clear from the comments received just how strongly parents and families feel. I have selected two of those I have received. The first reads:
“It is incredibly disappointing to read that Welbeck Defence Sixth Form College is to shut...Our 15 year old daughter...has visited Welbeck twice as she has her heart set on joining the Navy and training to be an air engineer. Welbeck provides a place where young women can be encouraged and supported into engineering careers. It offers a standard and type of education—and opportunities—that would otherwise be out of reach to families like us who are not affluent and cannot afford to pay for expensive boarding schools”.
The second reads:
“I strongly believe without Welbeck my son would not be achieving as well as he is doing now. Welbeck is there for intelligent children from poor backgrounds and not just for children from private schools or more affluent families. They are all given the same opportunity from an early age to reach their full all round potential academically and within many sports and other areas which my son would not have been able to achieve at sixth form collage. Welbeck is a community; a family and a collection of likeminded intelligent young adults who are training with the mind set to do as well as possible not just for themselves but for their country and their chosen entry force. My son ended up getting offers from both and chose the RAF to follow on from his years at air cadets.”
I hope that in his reply the Minister will address the questions raised by the Chair of the Defence Committee and say how he thinks the new scheme will still benefit the students whose lives and futures are being shaped and transformed by Welbeck. I hope he can also take us through how the review was conducted and who was involved.
If this decision is not to be reversed, this fantastic site could well be empty in just a couple of years. Neither my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood nor I want an empty site just sitting there, nor do we want it sold off to any old bidder. We know there is already local interest. The Minister’s written statement made it clear that an alternative use within either education or defence would be found. I hope that the PFI contract will not put future occupiers off or provide an excuse for officials not to pursue alternative uses sooner rather than later. If he can shed more light on plans for the site, we would be pleased to hear them.
I finish with another comment from a family. [Interruption.] The Minister is poised. He cannot wait. I am delighted—he is a coiled spring—but I hope he will bear with me while I read out one further comment:
“The training and preparation that the students receive is truly first class and I am fearful that we may lose something irreplaceable which, if lost, will be impossible to replicate.”
I echo that sentiment. I hope that, at a time when the UK needs all the talent that we can muster, the Minister will understand the concerns that I have set out and provide reassurance. I suspect that this will not be the last debate or set of questions on the issue that I have raised. As the local Members of Parliament, my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood and I look forward to working with the Minister and his officials on this important matter.
The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mark Lancaster)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) on securing the debate, and, indeed, on all her contributions and support for the college over many years. I also acknowledge the presence of the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), to whom my right hon. Friend referred. I should perhaps add, by way of explanation to the general public, that he is unable to speak today because of his role as a Minister. However, his very presence on the Front Bench alongside me today highlights the fact that he has been a champion for Welbeck during his tenure as the local Member of Parliament.
As I listened to my right hon. Friend, it was impossible not to recognise and appreciate the affection that is felt for the current Welbeck Defence Sixth Form College—as well as its predecessor establishment, Welbeck Abbey in Nottinghamshire—and the disappointment that some will feel at the decision to close it as part of the MOD’s move to a new scheme for recruiting science, technology, engineering and mathematics graduates to careers in defence. It is, perhaps, most important for me to acknowledge the high-quality education that Welbeck has been providing, and to pay tribute to its excellent staff and the talented young graduates who have gone on to forge successful careers in defence.
Let me say at the outset that the MOD remains firmly committed to attracting high-quality STEM graduates into the armed forces and the civil service, which, in turn, will contribute to support for the wider UK STEM agenda. In an increasingly complex and technologically driven world, we need talented individuals with a diverse range of STEM skills to ensure that we keep pace with our competitors and are fully prepared to meet the challenges and threats that we face today and, especially, in the future.
Welbeck has undoubtedly played its part in producing excellent STEM graduates. I should explain that attendance there forms the first stage of a two-part scheme, the defence technical officer and engineer entry scheme—or DTOEES, another fantastic abbreviation that only the MOD could come up with. I shall refer to it simply as “the old scheme”, if I may. Following two years at the college and successful completion of A-levels, students have gone to selected universities to study for STEM degrees and joined one of four defence technical undergraduate scheme squadrons. On graduation, they have entered initial officer training with one of the services or become defence civil servants. Under the old scheme, they could go to only 11 universities in the United Kingdom, including just one in Scotland; under the new scheme, that range will be widened. The courses available under the old scheme were traditional STEM courses, rather than—at this point I should declare my interest as the deputy commander of the 77th brigade—courses involving information advantage, cyber, and other 21st-century skill sets that are now required in the military.
Unfortunately, the fact is that the scheme as it stands has consistently failed to deliver the required number of engineers and technical officers to Defence since its establishment in 2005. Despite efforts to improve its output, on average only 53% of entrants have completed it successfully, and a proportion of those have not achieved STEM degrees. While this is not about money, it should be noted that the scheme has cost the MOD and the taxpayer some £200,000 per student who has become a STEM graduate.
My right hon. Friend touched on social mobility, which has been an important part of the scheme. She may be interested to know that just 15% of Welbeck graduates have had a general household income of up to £20,000—perhaps those at the lower end of that bracket—while 60% have had a household income of over £60,000. We are also interested in that area in trying to improve the social mobility aspect of the new scheme.
My right hon. Friend mentioned the review, and we did have a review. In effect, 11 different options were considered, which were broken down into three broad categories: do nothing—retain the current scheme as it is; do better—identify a number of sub-options that would all retain Welbeck; or do something differently—identify a number of sub-options that would involve the closure of Welbeck. There really was a genuine effort to look at a vast range of options.
My right hon. Friend also mentioned consultation with staff and governors before the decision was made. A cross-section of both Welbeck staff and governors were engaged during the course of the study by the review team. Equally, prior to the announcement, Defence Academy staff formally engaged with contractors, and the review was a standing agenda item for the board of governors. There were also two “town hall” meetings with staff in June and November last year.
The reasons why some individuals have not completed the old scheme, leaving it early at either Welbeck or university, are varied and complex, but they include medical, academic and voluntary withdrawals. Ultimately, asking young people to make life-determining decisions at age 14 or 15 has, in some cases, been one factor that may have impacted on both recruitment and retention. Another downside of the previous scheme was its relative inflexibility, which I have already touched on, principally because of the fixed costs of Welbeck. This really has meant that the Ministry of Defence could not respond effectively or quickly enough to changes in requirement, or target spending where it would be most effective.
Looking to the future, as I set out in my statement to the House on 11 March, a review of STEM officer recruiting concluded that an alternative method of recruiting STEM graduates was needed to improve the numbers entering a career in defence. The STEM graduate inflow scheme has been designed significantly to increase the number of STEM graduates brought into Defence and the variety of STEM disciplines they are from. Unlike the old scheme, it will be open to undergraduates across all UK universities, studying a wider range of STEM subjects that will include cyber and other new technologies.
The scheme will be supported by an attractive financial package, whereby undergraduates may receive a mix of bursary, tuition fee payment and other targeted payments that are significantly higher than the current bursary of up to £4,000 per annum. This will attract and support a wider range of applicants who are already academically proven, having passed A-levels or being already in the undergraduate pipeline. Importantly, this will provide a greater opportunity to improve both social mobility and diversity. The new scheme, with its focus on supporting individuals through university, will enable more students from a wider range of backgrounds to receive financial support. Indeed, we hope and anticipate that we will double the number of students who receive support.
The financial package has been benchmarked against industry offerings for their own STEM graduate schemes, and it will be competitive. Even with this financial package, however, it will be better value for money—estimated at about a third of the cost per student of the old scheme. The new scheme will also be inherently flexible, allowing the Ministry of Defence more easily to adjust its requirements should the demand for STEM graduates change—for example, due to an increase in requirement or, indeed, a need for specific skills.
Full transition to the new scheme will take place incrementally over the next five years, during which, as my right hon. Friend has said, the current intake of students will be fully supported. The MOD and the single services will develop their specific schemes over this period according to their own requirements, and that is where the flexibility will come in. These are likely to be built around their existing officer recruitment schemes. It may still include some sponsorship of those at school, depending on individual service need, but personnel and funding from the old scheme will be transferred to these schemes to enable them to undertake this work.
Dr Julian Lewis
Can the Minister tell me how long it will take to determine whether the new scheme is a success? If it is found not to be a success, will it be too late to go back to a continuation of the college-based scheme?
Mark Lancaster
As I said in my earlier remarks, this is effectively a five-year transition. The intake to Welbeck this year will be going into a two-year programme, which will be the last. That will give us two years, as we move to a more undergraduate-focused scheme, to get the new scheme right according to single service requirements. The new scheme, which will run for a period of time, will also be under review. We have not leapt to this decision—anything but—and we hope that the transfer period will allow us to get it right.
As I have said, the new scheme, like any recruitment initiative, will of course be kept under review to ensure that it is achieving the output it is designed to achieve. If it is not, we will look at it again. The final intake to Welbeck will enter in September this year, and for the final two years Welbeck remains a going concern. Over that period, we will work closely with the Welbeck contractor, Minerva, and the principal to help the contractor to support staff who are impacted and to ensure continuity of quality education to students, keeping staff, governors and pupils fully informed of any developments.
I recognise that there are concerns over the future of the Welbeck site, and I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough that it has become an important part of the local community. I can reassure her and the House that we will do all we can to secure an alternative, sustainable future use for the site. An assessment is being undertaken to determine whether Defence may itself have a use for it and, in addition, some early market testing has identified credible, prospective interest from the private education sector. It is too early to say what the outcome will be, but Defence will work with stakeholders, including the local authority and partners across Government, to seek to secure a viable future for Welbeck.
Nicky Morgan
I thank the Minister very much for his response. Some of these issues might well be commercially sensitive, so I wonder whether he would be willing to meet me and the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), at an appropriate point, to discuss some of that interest in more detail with officials. It would be helpful to have such discussions, perhaps on an ongoing basis, until the future of the site has been secured.
Mark Lancaster
That is a perfectly reasonable request, and I would of course be delighted to meet my right hon. Friend and the Minister. I want to take this opportunity to underline the Department’s determination for the site to be utilised and not to become moribund. It is a great site, and it is in the wider interest that there is a smooth transition to its future use. We are determined that that will happen.
The scheme has made a valuable contribution to Defence’s need for STEM-qualified officers, but we need to increase numbers well beyond the current ability to deliver, as I have tried to explain. We also need to have greater flexibility about the sorts of graduates that we are now attracting into our 21st century armed forces. We need to be more responsive and agile, both to succeed in an increasingly competitive market for STEM graduates in the UK and globally, and to meet the challenges that we are now likely to face. However, I do not underestimate the impact of this decision on my right hon. Friend’s local communities, and, if I may, I shall end as I started, by paying tribute to her for raising this matter and, crucially, to the staff at Welbeck, who have done such a sterling job for so many years.
Question put and agreed to.
Draft Electronic Communications (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019
(5 years, 7 months ago)
General CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for Digital and the Creative Industries (Margot James)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Electronic Communications (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. The regulations correct deficiencies in the law that would arise from the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, and they do so under powers conferred by section 8 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. Both the Government and Parliament have expressed opposition to the UK’s leaving the EU without a deal. However, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has been clear that it is appropriate to prepare for a no-deal scenario, and that remains priority work for the Government.
The regulations before us address deficiencies, arising from EU exit, in legislation relating to electronic communications. Deficiencies in domestic law have been addressed in other instruments that have already been considered by the House. Many of the provisions in this instrument simply revoke EU legislation that would be redundant after EU exit if it were converted into UK law. The regulations also make technical amendments to EU legislation relating to the notification of personal data breaches by providers of electronic communication services. These amendments include matters such as replacing references to the “competent national authority” with references to the Information Commissioner. The amendments are designed to ensure that the legislation continues to work effectively and in substantively the same way as before exit, taking into account that the UK will have left the EU.
I will now turn to the provisions concerning regulation of prices for certain intra-EU communications known as intra-EU calls, although they also apply to text messages. The European Statutory Instruments Committee recommended that these regulations be subject to the affirmative procedure, on the basis that these matters relate to consumer protection and are therefore of particular importance. New European rules regulating the price of intra-EU calls were legislated for in December 2018.
Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)
Will the Minister explain why, in the first place, the Government did not think that it was worth using the affirmative resolution procedure and went for the negative one?
Margot James
The rest of my speech will probably make clear why the Government did not think that it was worth using the affirmative procedure. That said, the Government did agree with the proposition from the ESIC. The Government felt that this particular SI was not contentious and therefore the affirmative procedure was not really necessary, but on balance, with the advice that we were given, we readily accepted the argument that it should be used, and therefore it is being used.
The rules regulate the maximum cost of mobile and landline calls and texts made from one EU member state to another. For example, a French consumer calling from their home in France to a consumer in Finland would be making an intra-EU call. These rules are different from the rules on mobile roaming, which apply when people travelling in the EU outside their home country use their mobile phones to make calls, send texts and so on. The EU exit SI relating to mobile roaming was approved by both Houses and made on 14 March.
To return to the intra-EU calls that this SI addresses, the new rules will require communications providers in the EU to charge their customers no more than 19 euro cents per minute for calls and six euro cents for texts. These rules come into force in the EU from 15 May this year.
I appreciate that the intra-EU calls rules are seen as a benefit to consumers. The rules have been introduced as a single market measure. They establish a reciprocal framework that has the purpose of strengthening the EU single market. The potential detriment to consumers as a result of this instrument can be mitigated through a range of alternatives to intra-EU calls and texts. Those include free internet-based services, and consumers can also buy calling cards and bolt-on deals. These options provide cheap calls and texts to the EU, on top of an existing phone package. Removing the provisions regulating intra-EU calls from the statute book is therefore the appropriate thing to do as we prepare to leave the EU. By so doing, it is highly likely that we will also leave the single market.
In conclusion, we are committed to ensuring that the law relating to electronic communications continues to function appropriately after exit, providing clarity and certainty to consumers and businesses. That is what these regulations will do, and I commend them to the House.
Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)
I think it is fair to say that this is a surprise outing for the whole Committee—especially me.
I have a series of questions for the Minister, and I would be very grateful if she answered them as fully as she can. The SI removes reciprocal arrangements for competent national authorities to notify each other where a breach affects subscribers or individuals in other member states. The explanatory memorandum says:
“it is anticipated that the Information Commissioner will cooperate with EEA authorities”.
Can the Minister confirm that?
The SI removes some powers that the European Commission has at the moment, rather than transferring them to the Information Commissioner’s Office. Why have the Government considered it unnecessary to recreate those powers in domestic law? For example, this SI does not recreate the Commission’s power to publish an indicative list of appropriate technical measures to demonstrate any personal data. That personal data would not have been intelligible to a person accessing it without authorisation in the case of a breach. Given that just last month, Facebook was found to have been storing 600 million users’ passwords in plain text format for years, do the Government not think the public have a right to a greater reassurance that their personal data is safe? What steps have they taken?
On that subject, the Government have avoided answering written parliamentary questions asking when they were notified about the breach, how many UK users were affected and whether the Secretary of State was told about the breach when he met Mark Zuckerberg in February. We have submitted freedom of information requests to the Department. Mark Zuckerberg seems to be ignoring Parliament by refusing to come to the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, and it seems that he may have failed to mention the huge data breach when he sat opposite the Secretary of State.
The SI takes us out of the European regulators group for audiovisual media services. Of course, if the UK leaves without a deal, we cannot stay in EU groups. What plans have the Government got in place for the desired future relationship between the UK and European audiovisual sectors? For example, if the UK ceases to be party to the AVMS directive, it could become significantly less attractive as a broadcasting hub. Given the importance of the sector to the UK’s economy and cultural reach, will the Minister provide reassurances about the future regulatory relationship between the UK and the European audiovisual sector? What consideration are the Government giving to that?
What plans are the Government putting in place to ensure UK consumers are duly informed about potential increases in the cost of using their mobile devices abroad, so British users do not get stuck with unanticipated fees? Finally, what measures do the Government plan to take to protect the consumer interest and guarantee that charges for calling or texting EU countries from within the UK do not increase?
Vernon Coaker
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. I want to make a few remarks in support of my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore). It is interesting that while we are in here, most Members are referring to their phones. We are discussing the relationship between the information we receive on our phones, how we receive it and the regulatory framework within which that operates.
I want to ask the Minister a couple of questions. As I say in every one of these Committees, delegated legislation is sometimes difficult because we cannot amend anything. We will all have been asked questions at surgeries by individuals or businesses who have been affected by some change in legislation that we have never heard of, but that turns out to have been debated in an SI Committee on a Tuesday afternoon, and we have to delve into the parliamentary records to see what happened. This is one of those SIs.
Most of the SI is impenetrable—I do not understand which regulations refer to which other regulations—but I know it must be important. My hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore, in his very good speech, tried to get the Minister to provide clarification. My first question for her is this: will there be any change to the way the regulatory framework works, the availability of data, the protection of our constituents’ data or the cost to them of their phone calls? Will there be any change at all to their existing contracts as a result of this SI? The Minister needs to answer that clearly.
I ask that because the Government initially said that things would remain exactly the same and the SI was of no consequence, so it should just sail through Parliament. The European Statutory Instruments Committee, which is made up of Members from all parties, including senior Members from different parties, pointed out that not everything would be the same, so it was important that the SI was subject to the affirmative procedure. To give the Government credit, they rethought their position and recognised that there was a need for the affirmative procedure.
When we pass this SI, as no doubt we will, and voters ask us at our surgeries, “How is it that my mobile phone charges have gone up?” the answer may be, “Because of this SI.” As the European Statutory Instruments Committee pointed out, in the event of a no-deal scenario, the instrument
“revokes rules regulating the prices charged to consumers for certain intra-EU communications”.
In other words, those prices will not be limited. Will the Minister say what that will mean in practice for our constituents in the event of a no-deal scenario?
Obviously, none of us wants no deal, but what will that mean for our constituents? Will prices be completely beyond our control? Have we no regulation we can use against the phone companies? Can Europe do what it wants and we just have to accept it? How will the pricing framework work for UK consumers—all of us—when we are outside the EU regulatory framework, given that one of the impacts is that prices will not be limited? Presumably, everyone could be charged a higher price than they are charged at the moment, and when constituents ask us, “When did that happen?” we will have to tell them that it happened here. That is my first question: what do I say to my constituents when they ask that?
My other question—I cannot find the answer to this anywhere; the Minister just needs to confirm whether I am right or wrong—is about arrangements with respect to data sharing and mobile phone communications with countries across the world. Some of those arrangements are negotiated through the EU. If we withdraw from the EU, what will happen to all the regulatory frameworks that the EU has negotiated with other countries, such as America, China and Australia? Are those irrelevant to the SI? Are they dealt with by another SI? It would be helpful if the Minister clarified that point for the Committee and the people who read Hansard.
As I said, the most important question is this: can the Minister confirm that when I receive my bill in a year’s time, if we have left with no deal, there will be no surprises on that bill as a result of this SI? In other words, will she confirm that my bill will not increase, that I will still have every data protection I currently have, and that no other aspect of my contracts will change?
Margot James
The hon. Members for Ogmore and for Gedling raised many interesting and challenging issues, most of which are beyond the scope of the SI. None the less, I will respond to those questions. I can give the hon. Member for Gedling good reassurance on much of what he asked for. However, I will start with the issue on which I cannot: data protection if we leave the EU with no deal. That is way beyond the scope of this SI, which is about intra-EU calls and has little to do with data protection. That is guaranteed under the Data Protection Act 2018, which is what protects our public.
The hon. Gentleman asked about the EU’s arrangements with other European countries that have received a decision from the EU that their data protection regime is adequate to receive data from the EU. That is another question, and we as a country will have to undergo a process that the EU will apply to us when we leave to assure it that our data protection systems are adequate. We will have our hands full with that, whether we leave with a deal or without one.
That will be much easier if we leave with a deal, and I will briefly explain why. Under the deal, we will have an implementation period, and the European Commission has given us every reason to suppose that it will commence adequacy discussions with us as soon as we sign a withdrawal agreement. During the implementation period we will remain under EU law, so there will be no disruption to our data flows. It is to be hoped that the EU will conclude adequacy discussions by the time we reach the end of that implementation period. In such a scenario, we would be able to sail forth with an adequacy decision and no disruption. There is a small risk that there might be a bit of a time delay, but we feel we can manage that. If we leave with no deal, all bets are off in that respect, and we would need another debate on that point.
I turn to the issue that is more germane to the SI: whether the hon. Gentleman’s constituents will come to him with increased phone bills. Technically speaking, some people could experience an increase in the price of their intra-EU calls. However, there are many other very cheap alternatives. If people are online, they can use Skype and WhatsApp, which are free services. Of course, I am mindful of people who are not online, and people in that scenario can use calling cards.
Vernon Coaker
Will the Minister put a figure on how many people in the UK might face an increase in their bills as a result of what she has just said?
Margot James
I could not possibly put a figure on it, but I assure the hon. Gentleman that I am talking about small numbers and very small variances in price. Ofcom has a duty to keep the market under review; at present, it is satisfied that the market for international calls is highly competitive and fair to consumers, and it does not expect any significant changes. In fact, one reason why I cannot give him any figures—nor will anyone else be able to—is that Ofcom does not differentiate between intra-EU calls and calls made outside the European Union to the rest of the world; it just evaluates prices across the board. There is no database from which we could give—
Margot James
The phone companies will make charges. Ofcom’s duty is to make sure that those charges are reasonable and fair, and that the overall market for international calls is working, whether said calls are to a member state or a third country. That is how Ofcom evaluates it. I am sure the hon. Gentleman could consult Ofcom if he was interested in going further with this line of inquiry. Its website has a lot of material. If he does, I am sure he will be satisfied that his consumers are well protected by the arrangements that are in place.
The hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Ogmore also asked about mobile phone charges. They are not the issue under discussion—we are talking about roaming charges—but they were set out in the SI that we took through on 14 March. However, to answer the questions posed by the hon. Member for Ogmore, I can say that the Government have negotiated with mobile operators that there will be at least a flat amount of money—around £40 per month—for people who are travelling across Europe. If consumers exceed that charge, mobile companies will be obliged to inform them that they have hit that amount of money, so that at least consumers will be informed.
The Government can do nothing further, because the regulations go beyond the UK and around the rest of the European Union, and it will be up to operators what they charge. The single market offers consumers the benefit of a cap on roaming charges. We will leave that behind, and it will be for operators in those EU countries to determine what they will charge operating companies in the UK. That is the position. We do not expect to see significant increases, but determining that will not be within the UK Government’s gift once we have left the European Union.
Vernon Coaker
Can the Minister confirm whether the £40 is a voluntary cap that the Government have negotiated? At the moment, if I go to France, I get a text that tells me that anything I use will come out of my normal allowance. If there is no deal, will I get a text that says, “You can spend roaming charges up to £40”? How is that going to work?
Margot James
If that comes to pass—there are a lot of ifs, buts and maybes in this—it will not be a cap on what can be charged; it will be a threshold. Once it is reached, the operating company will have to notify the consumer by text: “You are in France, and you have just incurred £40 of roaming charges.” It is a threshold, not a cap. Does that answer the hon. Gentleman’s question?
Margot James
I hope so, because that is outside the remit of this SI.
Returning to this SI, I want to answer the questions the hon. Member for Ogmore asked about the ICO and the notification of authorities around the Union. This statutory instrument omits the permissive power conferred on the EU Commission in relation to the publication of a list of measures, such as encryption, that make data unintelligible. We have omitted the part that requires co-operation between competent national authorities where there are cross-border issues, because in a UK-only context—in other words, after we have left the European Union—the provision is obsolete.
There is no change to the safety and protection of consumer data. That is guaranteed under the general data protection regulation, which we implemented in UK law last year. The hon. Gentleman asked me various questions about the inquiries into Facebook led by the Information Commissioner, and whether they came up in the half-hour discussion between Facebook and the Secretary of State. To my recollection, they did not, but the issue is certainly relevant to data protection legislation and the work of the ICO. I am not privy to that work at the moment, because the inquiry is still live.
The hon. Gentleman also asked about arrangements for our audiovisual media services industry when we leave. Again, that is well beyond the scope of this SI. If he wishes to ask questions about that or ask his colleagues to instigate a debate on that point on the Floor of the House, I will be willing and happy to respond.
Question put and agreed to.
Ministerial Correction
(5 years, 7 months ago)
Ministerial CorrectionsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
International Trade
(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Nick Smith
Some 9,000 people work in the Welsh steel industry, so can I ask the Secretary of State to think again, and support a permanent customs union and commit to a common external tariff on steel imports to support steel jobs in south Wales?
Dr Fox
No, I will not commit to that. I have set out the reasons why I believe the application of a common external tariff will be limiting on the UK’s ability to carry out an independent trade policy. What I would say is that we already have the Trade Remedies Authority up and running, and that is the best way to deal with any disputes over steel through WTO rules.
[Official Report, 25 April 2019, Vol. 658, c. 860.]
Letter of correction from the Secretary of State for International Trade:
An error has been identified in the response I gave to the hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith).
The correct response should have been:
Dr Fox
No, I will not commit to that. I have set out the reasons why I believe the application of a common external tariff will be limiting on the UK’s ability to carry out an independent trade policy. What I would say is that we have already established our trade remedies functionality, and that is the best way to deal with any disputes over steel through WTO rules.
Westminster Hall
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Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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Healthcare: East Midlands
(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Karen Lee (Lincoln) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered provision of local healthcare in the East Midlands.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I am glad to have secured this crucial debate, which gives me and my east midlands colleagues a great opportunity to highlight the healthcare crisis in our constituencies, our region and across the country. I must stress in everything I say that I do not blame the hard-working and dedicated staff for any of it; the fault lies fairly and squarely with Government cuts. Our constituents deserve better than the past decade of under- funding, which has created a postcode lottery in local healthcare. It has had particularly detrimental implications for my constituency of Lincoln: local healthcare centres have been forced to shut, more general practitioners’ services are at risk of closure in the coming months, and local hospitals are in need of considerable funding and support.
Our healthcare infrastructure in the surrounding region of Lincolnshire has also been put under considerable pressure over the past nine years. In July last year, the chief inspector of hospitals recommended that United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust, which has a deficit estimated at £80 million, should remain in special measures. The latest figures show that the trust missed its A&E waiting time target by 32% and has not met the national standard since September 2014.
The east midlands reflects the national picture of a health service in crisis. The Government have spent nine years running down the NHS by imposing the biggest funding squeeze in its history, with massive cuts to public health services. Social care has been slashed by £7 billion since 2010. Our NHS is short of 100,000 staff, including 41,000 nurses and nearly 10,000 doctors. That has had a detrimental knock-on effect on performance: waiting lists are at 4.3 million, more than 500,000 patients are waiting more than 18 weeks for treatment, and 2.5 million people are waiting for more than four hours in A&E. That is a crisis.
It is clear that the underfunding, privatisation and inadequate staffing of our health service has had a devastating effect on healthcare provision in Lincoln and the east midlands. Government decisions have had terrible consequences for people who need care in the areas that I and many of my colleagues represent. That is typified by the recent announcement that the highly relied-on Skellingthorpe surgery may close.
For those who do not know it, Skellingthorpe is a beautiful village in my constituency. Its doctors surgery provides healthcare to more than 8,000 patients, many of whom are local residents. The national patient survey found that 81.9% of the surgery’s patients felt that their overall experience was good or very good. The Glebe Practice, which runs the surgery, is in the process of proposing its closure to the clinical commissioning group, and the practice’s patients are centralised in its Saxilby surgery. I acknowledge that there are pressures on the service—there could not fail to be, given the Government’s cuts—and that the practice is struggling to recruit clinicians, so centralising its service in Saxilby allows it to maintain quality in one surgery. However, centralising the service restricts my constituents’ access to care. They have told me that it is already very difficult to book a timely GP appointment there.
As many other hon. Members will know from their own constituencies, rural areas are often inaccessible because of limited transport links. If the Glebe Practice’s plan to transfer patients to its Saxilby practice is agreed to, it will mean patients having to travel on public transport—remember, not everybody can drive or has a car—or walk for 90 minutes from the Skellingthorpe surgery. Even the closest surgery is about a 40-minute walk away. Imagine elderly people having to walk for 40 minutes!
This is a shocking downgrade of my Skellingthorpe constituents’ access to care. The proposed alternatives do not offer an acceptable journey length to patients who are in need of health services. Many patients may struggle with mobility issues because of age or illness, while others may not be able to afford to travel other than by public transport.
Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech that sets out the challenges to healthcare in rural areas such as Lincolnshire. Just this week, the wound service in one of our local clinics in High Peak has shut. Elderly patients with open wounds are having to travel for four hours each way, on three buses, to access the clinic that they are supposed to go to. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is absolutely unacceptable?
Karen Lee
Yes, I do. I hope that everybody in this Chamber would agree that that is really unacceptable.
Rather than reducing access to one-to-one healthcare, we should be outlining how we can help groups such as the Glebe Practice by implementing effective national programmes that incentivise recruitment in rural areas. There is a major workforce crisis: as a report co-authored by the Nuffield Trust, the King’s Fund and the Health Foundation has found, the NHS could be short of 7,000 GPs within five years. Rural areas will be the first to be hit. As access to GP services in the east midlands is reduced, I urge the Minister to take action to address the staffing crisis.
Before the surgery closes, Lincolnshire West CCG intends to hold a public consultation—but the people of Lincoln have been there before, very recently. Lincoln’s walk-in centre on Monks Road closed last year after an allegedly meaningful public consultation, 94% of respondents to which were opposed to the closure. Protests were held outside Lincoln County Hospital and along the high street. Both Conservative-led Lincolnshire County Council and Labour-controlled City of Lincoln Council formally objected to the closure, as did I, but not a bit of notice was taken—the centre was still closed. The justification was similar to the one being given now for the Skellingthorpe closure: we were told that there would be sufficient alternative provision to ensure the same level of care. After researching that claim, we found that no substitution would come anywhere near the accessibility of the walk-in centre, so I am afraid that my constituents’ faith in any local consultation is pretty limited.
Appointment-only slots will not meet the needs of my constituents who rely on short-notice, timely access to care. Inevitably, they will only add to the pressure on the overworked A&E department at Lincoln County Hospital and East Midlands ambulance service.
I am very concerned that a trend is emerging: the implementation of cuts to healthcare services, in direct opposition to local people’s wishes and needs. It is deeply worrying that CCGs are not listening to residents’ concerns before closing local health services. I completely acknowledge that there have been sustained budgetary pressures on the healthcare system over the past nine years, and that it is the CCGs that are expected to deliver large-scale cuts, but in a transparent health governance system we cannot allow cuts to be rubber-stamped against such clear local opposition.
I ask the Minister to consider these cases and contact me to provide substantial reasoning to explain why another closure in my constituency is considered acceptable. The information that I and my constituents have been afforded has led us to the opinion that neither the walk-in centre nor the Skellingthorpe surgery should have been considered for closure. I am sorry, Minister, but passing the buck to the CCG is not good enough for my constituents.
It is not just local GP practices and health centres that have been put under debilitating pressure over the past decade. In my constituency, Lincoln County Hospital serves the city of Lincoln and the north Lincolnshire area. Due to funding and staffing pressures, the latest Care Quality Commission inspection has found that Lincoln County Hospital is below the national standard and requires improvement. It is important to stress that, as is the case in hospitals throughout the UK, this substandard performance is in no way the fault of the dedicated and hard-working staff. I speak from experience: when I was a nurse there, we often used to stay up to an hour late. In theory we got our time back, but in practice we did not.
The staff give a lot—it is not their fault. I worked as a nurse at Lincoln County Hospital for 14 years and I know how much energy and care all the staff, from porters to doctors, put into their challenging work. That is supported by the CQC report, which concluded that the hospital requires improvement in four out of five areas: safety, effectiveness, responsiveness and management. The only area rated as good was the caring nature of the hospital. As the report states repeatedly:
“Patients were treated with compassion, dignity and respect.”
I pay credit to the hard-working staff for that, but they are being let down by a Government who have consistently neglected our health services. I have been through their cuts myself.
The inspection found that nurse staffing numbers were often insufficient to keep people protected from avoidable harm and that the hospital relied heavily on agency and locum staff. I know that at first hand: my friends who are still nurses there tell me that that is true even now. Most worrying was the fact that adequate levels of nurses were observed on only four of the 28 days that the CQC reviewed. It is hardly surprising that there are such drastic staffing shortages. Since 2010, there has been a 19% real-terms fall in weekly earnings for full-time nurses. Nursing degree applications have dropped by one third since the Government scrapped nursing bursaries, without which I would not have been able to train. I go on and on about the nursing bursary, and I will not stop. We need to bring it back; we will not have enough nurses until we do.
The Health Foundation has also found that the number of nurses quitting because of a poor work-life balance almost tripled between 2011 and 2018. Our NHS staff should be celebrated and supported. Their kindness and commitment should not be taken advantage of by a Government who strip away the security of their profession. Lincoln County Hospital demonstrates the devastating way in which avoidable staffing shortages affect vulnerable patients in our communities.
The CQC report also found that patients could not always access care and treatment in a timely way. Waiting times were worse than the England average and did not meet the national standard. Some 60% of ambulance handovers were delayed by 30 minutes or more, and 47% of patients in A&E waited longer than the recommended 15 minutes to be triaged. I went out with an ambulance crew about a year ago, and I saw that at first hand.
That shows how hard-working, committed NHS staff in Lincoln are being put under intolerable pressure by decisions made in Whitehall. That is not unique to Lincoln. In July last year, England’s chief inspector of hospitals recommended that United Hospitals Lincolnshire NHS Trust should remain in special measures after visits to Lincoln County Hospital, Pilgrim Hospital, County Hospital Louth and Grantham and District Hospital. Pilgrim Hospital in Boston, which serves my constituents, is a particularly worrying case. It received an overall rating of “inadequate” in this year’s CQC inspection. The report found that there was no allocated corridor nurse. Corridor nurse—really? Should people be in corridors on trolleys? One nurse was caring for up to 21 patients at one time. When I was a nurse, the average was about six or eight. On a bad day, if someone did not come in, it could be 10 or 12, but 21—really?
It is clear that at the local, regional and national level, healthcare provision is not working. Vulnerable people who need care in Lincoln, the east midlands and across the UK have a right to access the health provision that they need. That requires a properly funded and staffed NHS service, from local GPs to county hospitals. Although I welcome the Government’s planned funding increase for the NHS, most health experts agree that it is barely enough to keep the NHS afloat, let alone reverse nine years of severe funding cuts. Areas such as Lincoln and the east midlands need and deserve much more than a plan that will barely keep afloat a system operating on a shoestring budget.
As someone whose job used to be to provide local healthcare, I am lifted by the fact that everyone can access healthcare as a human right in this country, but that universal right is threatened by policies that do not enable an effective health service in which everyone can access care based on their need, not on the austere policy decisions of the Government of the day.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)
Order. The debate can last until 11 o’clock. We have got almost an hour of Back-Bench time, so there is no pressure, but the Chair will be particularly generous to any Member who wants to dilate at length on the need for an urgent care hub at Kettering General Hospital.
David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Hollobone, for allowing me to speak first. I think it is the first time I have heard a Chair say that there is no time constraint, but I will not detain the House for too long. At the risk of being called to order, I had planned to raise the work that you have done for Kettering General Hospital and your impassioned demands for improvements to it over the years, which no doubt the Minister has listened to many times. I was with some friends last week who said, “Ah, Northamptonshire. That’s the Bones—Peter and Philip—isn’t it?” Kettering General Hospital came up. At the risk of being called to order—I do not see you doing that—let me say what a good job you have done for that hospital. As was said in the Chamber this week, your whole identity in the House is linked to the work you have done there.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Lincoln (Karen Lee) on securing not just half an hour but an hour and a half in what used to be called the Grand Committee Room but is now Westminster Hall. She spoke passionately and with detailed knowledge, as a former nurse, about the problems in her area. I listened to her speech, and I have sympathy with what she said about some of the consolidation that has taken place, but inevitably there have to be some changes and rationalisations in the health service.
I will talk mainly about the changes in the great town of Hinckley, in my west Leicestershire constituency of Bosworth, which is some way from Lincoln. We were very fortunate that the Secretary of State himself—ipse—recently came to Hinckley to look at the changes that will be made thanks to the £8 million grant that has been secured for upgrading the facilities in Hinckley. Mayur Lakhani, the chair of the West Leicestershire clinical commissioning group, spoke warmly about the way the Secretary of State had responded to their bid, and the support of Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council, which happens to be Conservative-controlled, and which I will refer to later.
I was lucky to be elected to this House a long time ago—in fact, so long ago that I sometimes forget the date. I have been a Member for more than 30 years, and the one health issue that has bedevilled my constituency above all others in that period is what to do with the Mount Road hospital—the old hospital in the middle of Hinckley. Because of the £8 million grant that the Secretary of State awarded to the clinical commissioning group, we are now able to make some substantial changes to the health improvements in Hinckley. Given your interest in Kettering General Hospital, Mr Hollobone, you will understand my joy at seeing the improvements that are about to take place—consultations are going on at the moment.
I have a letter from the West Leicestershire clinical commissioning group setting out exactly where we are now. It says that the investment supports plans to provide modern, fit-for-purpose facilities, and more services in the local community and closer to home in Hinckley. I say to the hon. Member for Lincoln that part of that will be about shutting down old facilities. One is a portakabin and another is the old hospital. In exchange, the investment will make better use of all available existing space in Hinckley Health Centre on Hill Street, not far from the old hospital, and Hinckley and Bosworth Community Hospital, which we call Sunnyside because it is on a hill and gets the sun all day long—it is a marvellous place for a hospital.
As part of the £8 million package, the Hinckley Health Centre will be refurbished to accommodate X-ray, ultrasound and physiotherapy, and to increase the number of consulting rooms, which is extremely important. Out-of-hours primary care services will be relocated from Hinckley and Bosworth Community Hospital—Sunnyside—to the newly developed urgent care hub in the Hinckley Health Centre, which will provide out-of-hours urgent care for local patients. A combined day case surgery and endoscopy unit with day case beds will be created. That will provide an increased range of day case procedures and cancer screening services for local patients. We will be removing services from the old Hinckley and District Hospital and the physiotherapy portakabin, which are unfortunately not fit for purpose, and physiotherapy services will be relocated to Hinckley Health Centre.
As I have the luxury of time, I say to people who have campaigned for years to save the old Hinckley and District Hospital that as it is such an old building, upgrading the hospital to the highest standards would require a phenomenal amount of work at a very high cost, with a low return on investment because all the special cables now have to be run with special conduits for oxygen and monitoring. It simply cannot be done efficiently in such an old structure. Although many of my constituents will have an emotional attachment to the old hospital, the decision that has been taken by the clinical commissioning group is right: it needed to close. In exchange, we are now getting an £8 million grant, which will provide much better facilities. As I mentioned earlier, some of the facilities are coming into the town from the outskirts—from Sunnyside to the health centre. It is quite an achievement.
We were lucky to get the grant of £8 million. My father always said to me that you generate your own luck in life, which is true. In this case, one of the drivers that made it possible for the Department and Secretary of State to agree to the clinical commissioning group’s bid was the extraordinary co-operation in west Leicestershire between the different service providers, particularly in Hinckley in my constituency.
At the beginning of the 2005 Parliament, I was lucky enough to get elected to the Health Committee under the new procedures. Subsequently, I chaired it for a short time. When I was elected to the Committee, I asked the then leader of the council, “Would you like me to come and talk about health on a regular basis?” It was agreed that I would, and that developed into a health and wellbeing partnership, which meets quarterly with the clinical commissioning group; the director of public health for Leicestershire County Council, Mike Sands; and senior officers at Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council, including Bill Cullen, Simon Jones, Councillor Maureen Cook and many other excellent Conservative councillors over time. We also have doctors from the local surgeries attend.
Over a period of some years, we saw the meeting change from participants sitting with their arms folded and leaning back, to sitting up and listening attentively. We have learned to work together, and the partnership has been leakproof—there is nothing to gain from talking outside. We have had an extraordinary degree of co-operation, and I am absolutely convinced that it has improved the health services in my constituency and the county as a whole. It has reduced costs and brought up a whole a range of new ideas, some of which I shall go through today. The work of the secondary provider, Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council, has been really remarkable and hugely encouraging, and it is something that all local people in my constituency can be proud of. Leicestershire County Council has done a good job, too, but I am particularly proud of what Hinckley and Bosworth has done through its health and wellbeing partnership—its contribution to health delivered through that partnership.
It might be instructive if I run through some of the areas that Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council has worked on. I am pleased to see the Minister of State in his place rather than a Parliamentary Under-Secretary; he is the deputy of the Secretary of State. It illustrates how seriously the Government take the issue of health funding in the east midlands. I want to share with him what is going on in Hinckley. First, I reiterate that we have a local delivery of preventive services through co-operation. I mentioned the councils, but we also talk to the voluntary and community sector. We have patient participation groups, school participation groups and elderly patient participation groups.
The information pyramid is broad-based, and the lines of communication are fluid. Information can come from the bottom to the top very easily. From those ideas, the Conservative-controlled Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council has produced a comprehensive prevention strategy, which sets out the work that the authority will undertake with its partners. The first objective is to prevent issues from escalating by taking action as early as possible. The second is to reduce demand for high-cost services and dependency on statutory services, thereby making spending more efficient.
Another objective is to develop self-help approaches to enable communities to take responsibility for their own health and wellbeing, which is something that the Department of Health and Social Care worked on under the Secretary of State’s predecessor, and the Health Committee in the 2005 Parliament looked at personal budgets and how they work. It was about getting people to think about their own health. With an ageing population, that is one of the areas that really must be brought to the fore in the future. However much money we ask for the NHS, we will never have enough supply of resources to meet demand unless we encourage people to take greater care of themselves. In this respect, the initiatives that Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council has taken are hugely important in encouraging people to do that.
I will come on to what the council has done in a moment, but the overall aim of the strategy is to ensure that, together with its key partners, the council enables communities—especially people who are most at risk—to keep safe, keep well, stay independent and enjoy life. To support those aims and achieve those objectives, the council provides integrated locality teams, which identify and support people in a more co-ordinated way, focusing on two specific areas. The first is:
“Proactive identification via risk stratification of patients (18+, frail, multiple LTCs) at risk of a hospital admission and assessing the ‘whole person’ and their needs to keep them safe and well at home where it is appropriate to do so.”
I quote from this document—“whole person”—because a key thrust of health policy in the future should be holistic healthcare, which has become slightly muddled up and seen as definitely not mainstream. Actually, it should be at the core of the mainstream, treating the patient as a whole. I will come on to long-term care and conditions when I discuss the Health Committee’s report, “Managing the care of people with long-term conditions”, which I signed off as Chairman.
In Hinckley and Bosworth, we have a council that is proactively segmenting the population to treat people who are most in need as priorities, which I absolutely applaud. It also does that through the use of health ambassadors, who are
“uniformed volunteers who support and encourage people to get more active more often. They undertake this by playing to their strengths. Some give presentations, some lead activities, some encourage and support new participants on current schemes. Some are happy to have a coffee after an activity and talk to new participants. The big thing is they are positive role models who are empathetic with people and can support them to change and be more active in a way that is natural and comfortable to them.”
The programme is particularly effective when dealing with older people. In my beautiful constituency, Desford sports centre provides classes for elderly people, to keep them active. They have a chance to talk to experts—not doctors particularly, but sports therapists. They can play table tennis, sit down and do quizzes, play tennis—there is even tennis for people who are disabled. The whole idea is to get people who are a bit tired of life, or a bit sad by themselves, to meet other people and to engage in activities, thereby making them happier and healthier, and reducing the burden on the health service.
We are trying to divert away from A&E—the Leicester Royal Infirmary has one of the highest patient inputs in the country relative to its geographical footprint. I will not talk about the royal infirmary and the wonderful work of its health workers, but when the chair of the clinical commissioning group came to see what we were doing in Desford—on another visit, without the Secretary of State—we saw the Steady Steps programme. It is a 24-week free postural and stability exercise programme for older adults, aimed at those aged 65 and over who are at risk of falling, unsteady on their feet, lacking in confidence or likely to lose their balance.
One therapy that the sports centre is not employing, but to which I should like to draw the House’s attention, is the Alexander technique, which I have used in the past. Alexander was an opera singer, and he found that he could not sing. Part of the problem was that his chest was constricted all the time, so he could not project his voice—something that politicians are also quite keen to do at time when on the soapbox, if they can ever get there. Alexander discovered that breathing was connected to posture, and most people do not stand correctly with their hips as part of their back; they tend to have a break and swivel around the second and third lumbar vertebrae. He managed to get people to stand correctly to get their weight right. With their weight right, their lungs could perform properly. Those techniques, which have been developed by experts over the years, should be looked at carefully by the Department of Health and Social Care, but I will come to ways that we can take pressure off the Department generally.
Through the Steady Steps programme, it is so exciting and empowering to see elderly people who have become immobile actually get back into the community. Some of them have mental health problems, and Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council has an active mental health support programme with five main objectives. They are to create networks to co-ordinate comprehensive and integrated mental health services in the community; to implement activities and events for promotion and early intervention and prevention in mental health; to improve awareness of mental health issues among children and young people, so that they do not think it strange that an older person is perhaps not as with it as they were in their 20s; to improve mental health and the impacts in the workplace; and to improve the quality of life of people living with dementia, and of their families and carers.
That is not rocket science; it explains to people simple facts of life about health. The programme brings the community together—it is a project that speaks to cohesion—makes it less likely that people will be upset by the behaviour of other people, and enables instructors to identify core problems. In the Hinckley and Bosworth area, we have over 6,500 dementia friends and 40 dementia champions. That is a lot of people in a constituency of 100,000 with 70,000 electors, and a very serious intervention.
Suicide is another issue that we as MPs deal with regularly. Most colleagues will have had cases in their surgeries about which they have had to approach care agencies. Leicestershire and Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council have taken very decisive steps, with the Start a Conversation suicide prevention campaign for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland. The Start a Conversation website was launched on 10 September to coincide with World Suicide Prevention Day, and aims to provide information and signposting to people who are experiencing distress, to those worried about someone else, or those bereaved by suicide. The website is still in development, but will offer support and training to professionals.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Whether we are discussing healthcare in the east midlands or in Northern Ireland, the issue of suicide is prominent in my constituency. When I became its MP in 2010, the level of suicide among young people was at its highest. That was dealt with through the involvement of community groups and of people in the community who had lost loved ones. There was also interaction with church groups and those of faith. By coming together, we reduced the incidence of suicide, and by working alongside healthcare in Northern Ireland, which is a devolved matter, we found that together, we could address the issue. It took both the community and healthcare to make that happen.
Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)
Before Mr Tredinnick responds, I remind the Chamber that there is half an hour of Back-Bench time left, with two other Members seeking to contribute.
David Tredinnick
I am sensitive enough to take the hint and will not delay the Chamber for much longer, Mr Hollobone. In response to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), we have a street pastor campaign in Barwell in my constituency, which really gets people in. The point about suicide that is often missed is the tragedy that it leaves behind and the damage to family and friends.
In my wind-up—I know hearing that will excite you, Mr Hollobone—I will focus on the Secretary of State’s announcement yesterday about putting cigarette-packaging style warnings on opioid painkillers, which I absolutely welcome. Of course it affects the east midlands. A report in the Evening Standard yesterday was entitled, “Experts hail our opioids investigation as addiction warnings are announced”. To give credit where it is due, the Evening Standard promoted that campaign, which I think is incredibly important.
The weakness in saying that we must stop all that is that no one has actually come up with any alternatives. People take those painkillers because they are in pain. Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council has produced a holistic therapists directory, which may be the first of its kind in the country. When my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State visited, I took him to Burbage House Health Clinic, where he could see physiotherapists and chiropractors working together. He has declared his interest—I believe his wife is an osteopath—so I hope that under this Secretary of State, we will see some movement in this matter.
We cannot just stop people taking drugs without offering them an alternative. The three most effective ways to stop back pain are acupuncture, osteopathy and chiropractic. Acupuncturists, osteopaths and chiropractors are all properly regulated, so I implore the Minister of State to look carefully at using them. The other issue I wanted to mention is polypharmacy polymorbidity, which the Health Committee looked at. I gave the Minister as a Christmas present the report of the all-party group for integrated healthcare, which I chair. I do not know whether he put it in his stocking, but I look forward to hearing if he enjoyed it over Christmas. Perhaps he will look at the issue.
We are very myopic sometimes, thinking that our system is the only one around, but the best place to look at for solving some of the problems is India, which has a Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy. It is responsible for all the herbal medicine and the different services that are not mainstream or opiate drugs. We should look at what Prime Minister Modi has done there.
I have probably indulged myself a bit, Mr Hollobone, but it is so unusual to have any time in the House—thank you very much. I look forward to the Minister of State’s response, and again I congratulate the hon. Member for Lincoln.
Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate about the issues that specifically affect the east midlands. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln (Karen Lee) for bringing the debate to Westminster Hall and the hon. Member for Bosworth (David Tredinnick) for expounding on some of the local and national issues in his area.
High Peak in Derbyshire is on the very north-west tip of the east midlands, which brings its own pressures to a very rural area on the edge of two other regions that provide most of our acute healthcare: Greater Manchester and Sheffield in the Yorkshire region. We are highly dependent on other regions for our acute healthcare. People can find it difficult to access our local healthcare services. It is important that they are able to access the best possible healthcare locally, to prevent their problems from becoming more serious and so that they do not have to travel much longer distances to access acute care.
When I was first elected, I had an indoctrination of fire on healthcare matters. A consultation by our North Derbyshire CCG had been ongoing for two years. It was called “Better Care Closer to Home”, so its aspirations sounded marvellous: people would receive the care they sought closer to home or in their own home, rather than having to travel anywhere. In practice, it meant an announcement in July 2017, just after I was elected, that our local gold-standard dementia ward, the Spencer ward at the historic Cavendish Hospital, was to close.
The ward had 10 beds and took the most seriously ill patients with dementia, whose families were no longer coping with them at home. Often, they had got to the stage of being violent and abusive, fighting against the illness and against the people trying to care for them. It is a tragic illness and I have seen members of my own family go down with it, and at that stage families need all the support they can get.
The Spencer ward would take those patients whom no one else could cope with and, within six weeks and with no drugs whatever, manage them and their families into getting them home again. The staff claimed it was the shepherd’s pie that did it, but it was down to years of skill, expertise and kindness. The patients could be cared for at home, which everyone had thought was impossible, instead of having to go into specialist dementia care housing with high-level nursing care, which often costs six-figure sums for each patient. The ward closed in February last year, and it was an absolute tragedy for the patients and their families—even more so for the patients now coming through with dementia.
We were told that the 25 skilled staff would be transferred to a dementia rapid response team, a group who would be able to visit patients in their own homes, giving support to the families and enabling continued care at home. In practice, however, I am afraid that has not happened. The response team is located 20 miles from some of the areas in my constituency that most need it, and only one of the 25 skilled Spencer ward staff members went to work in that team. Others were left with no jobs in the health service; they went into retail and their skills were lost. That was a tragedy not just for patients but for staff and our whole community, because once those skills are lost, once those jobs have gone and people have left the NHS, it is almost impossible—without years of training and dedication—to put that service back together again.
That is why I am so committed to fighting for services in High Peak that are being let go because of years of cuts to our CCGs, which have to make very short-term decisions based on balancing the books by the year end. NHS England does not let them look at any longer-term measures or decisions that could put the investment into the preventive health measures talked about by the hon. Member for Bosworth. That cannot be the case.
In 2016-17, the formula was changed for the CCGs. Our CCG went into deficit and then special measures under NHS England. The chief executive said that he and his board were prepared to make £12 million of cuts in north Derbyshire, but NHS England said that that was not good enough. It insisted on £16 million of cuts within six months, so the chief executive left. In the year just gone, 2018-19, the cuts have come on. With a deficit of £95 million for all the Derbyshire CCGs, which are looking to band together to achieve some efficiencies of scale, they had to make £51 million of cuts. We are constantly being told about the NHS 10-year plan and the £20 billion of funding coming into the NHS. I do not know where that is going, but our CCG will not see it. The Minister may smile, but I do not find it funny that over the next four years Derbyshire, the area I represent, will experience £270 million in cuts to health services, which are already stretched almost to breaking point.
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln, I went out with the East Midlands ambulance service. I saw how stretched it was, having to travel vast distances and out of area, sometimes leaving little or even no cover, with patients perhaps having to wait five hours after a stroke, or being lost because of the cuts. The ambulance service has experienced five years of cuts, year on year.
Last year we had a Westminster Hall debate about the East Midlands ambulance service, which was attended by many of the Members present. I was delighted that another £20 million was invested in the service, but there is an issue with recruitment—once the skilled paramedics have left the service, recruiting them back again is very difficult. Meeting the targets for that extra £20 million will be extremely difficult for the service, through no fault of its own.
The issues in our local area put pressure on acute service providers as well. The hospitals in Macclesfield and Stepping Hill, which serve the north Derbyshire end of my constituency, have staffing problems and can shut their doors to High Peak patients because they are out of area—we are not in their region. The Macclesfield cardiology, gastroenterology and general surgery departments were shut to my local patients. Just before Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October, Stepping Hill shut breast services to patients from north Derbyshire, who therefore faced having to travel 30 miles for the follow-up to a mammogram. That is a huge distance for people in rural areas to travel; often, there is no transport available for them, so they are reliant on lifts. Yes, there is community transport, but that has been cut, too.
Our voluntary services have been cut because the clinical commissioning groups have to make their cuts by the end of the year, and one area they can cut is grants to external organisations. The voluntary sector has had cuts to social care, befriending services and community transport. As the hon. Member for Bosworth has said, a sustainable health service needs such services in order to provide preventive care and to enable communities to come together and support each other, particularly the most vulnerable. That needs a framework, but voluntary sector services are being cut time and again, as I said in a debate in September. Some £300 million of cuts have been made to voluntary sector services in Derbyshire.
Health service cuts are being made alongside those to social care. Derbyshire County Council has made huge cuts to services, resulting in care workers’ shifts changing from a two-shift to a three-shift system. It wanted more efficiencies and was struggling to fill some shifts, but working early, late and night shifts is almost impossible for anyone with caring responsibilities, which most social care workers have. I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln, who worked in nursing, will sympathise with that and will know the destructive effect on people’s lives. It is one thing to do that for a nurse’s salary, which is a professional salary, but it is very different to ask people to do that for the minimum wage—it was a living wage under the Labour-led Derbyshire County Council, but now it is less than the national living wage. Asking people to work a three-shift system for that sort of money is simply not worth it, so they have left in droves.
Our care home fees have been frozen while at the same time the minimum wage, pension costs and business rates are all increasing. The care homes are not prepared to take any elderly residents with any sort of additional needs. There are no nursing homes whatsoever in the High Peak area, so we have to go out of area. It is an increasingly difficult situation for families, who struggle to visit patients and keep family ties going. It is heartbreaking that, at the end of a long life, residents are taken out of their area, away from the people they know and love and their communities.
That is the impact on rural areas of years of cuts to health and social care and to the young people’s services provided by the county council. Both older and younger people are being squeezed. A couple of weeks ago I held a debate in the main Chamber on young people’s mental health, because of the low-level support being given. Derbyshire CCGs have cut the contract for counselling services with the third sector and there is no longer a service in place. The number of school nurses, who support young people through difficult times in their lives, when they have anxiety and are distressed, has been halved. There is an 18-month wait for access to child and adolescent mental health services. I hear from young people and their families who are desperate. Often, parents feel they have to stay with their child 24 hours a day, seven days a week, because they are so scared of the harm that the child may do themselves and the risk of suicide that the hon. Member for Bosworth mentioned.
Why are we letting it get to this stage? Why are we letting our young people suffer in silence? Why are we sending our older people away from their families? It comes down to the failure to look holistically at our health and care services in the long term. NHS England still has Derbyshire CCGs in special measures. They have been told to meet a target of between £50 million and £70 million of cuts over each of the next four years. They have to identify those cuts behind closed doors. There is a lack of scrutiny, as my hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln has said.
Often, so much of the impact is on patients and GPs, who have to pick up the pieces. The strain on GPs is almost intolerable. Buxton has only about half the GPs we need. There are shortages in other areas, too. At my surgery, patients have to phone two weeks in advance to even try to get an appointment with a GP. If they do not phone early enough, they cannot get an appointment in those two weeks and they have to try the next day. That leads to an increase in people going to A&E and an increase in admissions to acute care and costs to the NHS as a whole. That is not a cost-saving process.
Budgets that do not look at the whole picture, to try to help primary care and to support people’s conditions, are leading to an increase in the need for acute care. Because of the lack of social care, once people are in a hospital bed it is hard for them to get out of it. The number of beds at Fenton ward in Cavendish Hospital—the one rehabilitation ward left in my constituency—has just been reduced from 18 to 10. That was going to happen in October but I managed to persuade the hospital that it might need some rehab beds over winter. It kept them open but it is now down to 10 beds. There is a waiting list of six or seven patients, who are stuck in hospital, taking up hospital beds because the rehab beds have been cut. That is a false economy.
I hope the Minister will look at how the system has an impact on the health professionals who are trying to deliver a service, and most of all on the patients who are suffering under it. Yes, there is price for rationalisation in any service, but we also have to look at the long term. As the laudable aims of the NHS 10-year plan set out, we need to work with our communities, support our professionals and help our patients to care for themselves. Unless this financial system changes, that NHS plan will be simply hot air.
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. In case hon. Members are not aware, I am a consultant paediatrician and work in the east midlands as a doctor during times that fit around my parliamentary commitments. I have worked in a number of hospitals around the east midlands: in Lincoln County Hospital, Mansfield Community Hospital, King’s Mill Hospital, and in both of the major Nottingham hospitals, Queen’s Medical Centre and Nottingham City Hospital. I have also worked at Doncaster hospital and I am now at Peterborough. I have a fairly wide experience of the different hospitals serving the east midlands population.
I was proud to hear last week that Peterborough has received a “good” rating from the Care Quality Commission. Not just that; the CQC will shortly return because the trust is not happy with “good”—it wants to receive an “outstanding”. It was somewhat displeased that the visitors focused on the areas they thought might be a problem, rather than on the areas we might have been able to showcase. The CQC will return to see the areas that it knew were very good already, to see whether we are entitled to see the “outstanding” mark. I hope that is achieved.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Lincoln (Karen Lee), my constituency neighbour, on achieving this hour-and-a-half debate. I was pleased to hear her welcome the extra money for the NHS, but disappointed to hear that she does not think it is enough, unlike the former Labour Health Secretary. We need to bear it in mind that a 3.4% average real-terms annual increase—£20 billion more—is a lot more money. I was also disappointed to hear about problems; it is easy to identify the problems and much more difficult to identify the solutions. Money is one of the solutions, but this is about much more than money.
I want to highlight some of the really good things going on in the east midlands. The hon. Lady correctly identified morale as one of the issues with the workforce. One of the things that affects workforce morale is people focusing on problems rather than on the areas in which excellent services are being delivered, which is the focus of most of my constituents—me and my family included—who receive excellent service from the hospitals in our area. The problem with low morale in the workforce is that it causes people to leave. When people leave we have more locum staff, which increases costs. Since less money is available, there is less ability to trial new things, so staff leave—and so the cycle continues. We need to reverse that, so I welcome the new routes into nursing, such as nursing apprenticeships, and the hard work we have done to increase the number of nurses who can train.
As a doctor, I am aware of shortages in medical staff, particularly in paediatrics, which is the area I work in. The University of Lincoln is opening a medical school in the hon. Lady’s constituency. That is a really good intervention. Students commonly stay to work in the area in which they trained, and that medical school will enable that to happen. The Government also need to look at remuneration. The remuneration of my junior medical colleagues is significantly lower in real terms than the remuneration I received as a junior doctor at the same grade.
I would be grateful if the Minister looked at issues with retirement. In my constituency, some GPs and other doctors retire earlier than they might wish to, because if they continued to work they would accrue very high pension contributions that they would not benefit from. If they continued to work but withdrew from the pension scheme, they would lose other benefits, such as death in service benefits. The Government should look at that.
In my rural constituency, once I have visited the GP it takes me 15 minutes to drive to a pharmacy in the nearby towns of Grantham or Sleaford with the prescription I have been given. Some patients at my surgery, including me, are entitled to have their prescriptions dispensed to them on site. How frustrating it is, though, for constituents who do not have that entitlement but would if they moved one house further down the street, not because they live in the wrong area but because they moved practice after they moved house. A constituent recently wrote to tell me that if someone moves into the area and then changes their GP, they are not entitled to dispensing services, but if they move GP and then move home, they are entitled to those services. That seems incongruous. GPs at dispensing practices receive a revenue increase, so they have both an incentive to provide an excellent one-stop service to their patients and a financial incentive to work in a rural area that offers such a dispensing service. I should be grateful if the Minister would look at that.
When I was first elected, I was terribly worried about East Midlands ambulance service. In the preceding few months, I had attended a number of incidents—just as an individual member of the public who had been driving past—where patients waited an inordinate amount of time for an ambulance. That was completely unacceptable, and one of those patients died, although I suspect that was not related to the time the ambulance took to arrive. That is why my first Prime Minister’s question, my first meeting with the Prime Minister and my first meeting with the Health Secretary were all about East Midlands ambulance service.
I was therefore pleased to go back and visit the ambulance service recently and hear how much has been done. The extra money that has been put in has produced 67 new ambulances, of which 27 are brand-new and additional as opposed to new-for-old replacements. The service’s response time for patients in the most acute need—the most unwell patients—has fallen by more than two minutes, which is a good success; we have to bear in mind the rural geography. I was also interested to hear about the research that is going on. Not all improvements in healthcare are delivered by money; some are delivered by research and improvements in knowledge and treatment. The East Midlands ambulance service has a research and audit department, which is looking at ways that the service can deliver better care to its patients; that is excellent.
A number of hon. Members mentioned the challenges of delivering healthcare in rural areas. Hon. Members may know about the joint work between Bishop Grosseteste University in Lincoln, United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust, Public Health England, Health Education England and others on launching a national centre in Lincoln to look at how we deliver better care to people in rural areas—that is its main focus. That is another attraction for people to come and work in the beautiful county of Lincolnshire. The centre will look at data, research and technology. I would love to have time to go into all the different things it can do to improve healthcare for my constituents and others, but time is short, so I will move on.
Let me touch on orthopaedic services at Grantham. People rightly are terribly concerned about the number of people who prepare for an operation—they build themselves up, take time off work and put plans in place for the care of those who are dependent on them—that is cancelled. We understand the reasons why that might happen, but ULHT has worked really hard on delivering better care. The fantastic Grantham Hospital—it has saved my husband’s life on two occasions—has a designated ward for orthopaedic surgery, which is only for what it calls “cold” operations. That is part of the “Getting It Right First Time” approach, looking at how we ensure that we get the very best care in orthopaedic surgery.
Trauma services have been moved to Lincoln. People might say, “Oh, that’s a dreadful cut,” but it means there are more people on hand in Lincoln to deliver more operations more effectively and more efficiently; more people get their operations done—fewer are cancelled—and there is a dedicated team of people in Grantham who are knowledgeable in orthopaedics and focused on delivering joint replacements and other non-urgent care. Overall, the service has improved massively. I congratulate ULHT and Grantham Hospital on the improvements they have delivered, and I wish they were being shouted about more publicly.
I also want to mention the A&E at Grantham Hospital. My husband, whom I love very much, has had his life saved twice at Grantham Hospital, so maintaining A&E services there and ensuring that people can access them is extremely important to me and my family, not least because we live very close by. I welcome the fact that the A&E will be reopened on a 24-hour basis soon, but I want soon to be now.
I have run out of time, but I thank the hon. Member for Lincoln for securing the debate and I hope to hear some good answers from the Minister.
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln (Karen Lee) for securing this important debate. She is a passionate advocate for the NHS in her area and made a passionate speech. I also thank the other hon. Members who spoke—the hon. Members for Bosworth (David Tredinnick) and for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson), my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Ruth George) and, of course, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who has just left the Chamber—for their excellent speeches and interventions.
Although I am pleased to respond on behalf of Labour, it is with sadness that Members come here time and again to explain the impact on their constituents of the crisis in the NHS. Sadly, as we have heard, standards are slipping across the board. It was a mild winter, but despite the thankfully lower levels of flu and vomiting virus, we saw the worst performance against the four-hour A&E target since records began. [Interruption.] If the Minister cares to—
The Minister for Health (Stephen Hammond)
It was an improvement on last year, so it was not the worst.
Mrs Hodgson
Oh, right—it was the second-worst, then. Anyway, bed occupancy also rose to 95.2% this winter, well above the 85% deemed to be safe, and patients are waiting almost 4% longer in A&Es than they were two years ago. In Nottingham they are waiting 14% longer than in 2017, and in Leicester they are waiting almost 4% longer than two years ago. East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust has missed its targets for responding to patients in life-threatening situations. We have heard countless stories today that demonstrate how the crisis happening in our NHS both locally and nationally is real.
It is clear that the Tories’ plans for NHS funding fall short of what is needed. The autumn Budget announcement of a cash injection for health services excluded public health budgets, training and capital, which means an increase of just 3% for health services when we have a childhood obesity crisis, cuts to sexual health and addiction services, workforce shortages and a backlog of nearly £6 billion in repairs. It is not even enough to wipe out hospital deficits.
Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust alone predicted a deficit of more than £40 million by the end of the financial year, and it has declared 15 black alerts since December. How will the Government’s settlement help trusts like that become more sustainable? Where is the funding to guarantee sustainable health services in the face of ever-increasing demand from a complex and changing demographic? For example, in the east midlands, the number of preventable deaths from liver disease has increased by 37%. Obesity is also a growing problem, 66% of the population being overweight. People in the east midlands are more likely to have had a depressive episode than those in the rest of the country—3.9% compared with 2.2%. In 2013-15, the average life expectancy at birth across the east midlands was 79.3 years for males and 82.9 years for females, both of which are significantly below the national average. There is also considerable variation in preventable mortality from the major causes of death across the east midlands local authorities, with an urban-rural divide. The urban areas of Nottingham, Leicester and Derby have significantly lower life expectancy than the average for England.
Money is, of course, only one of the issues surrounding the crisis in the NHS. There is a staff recruitment and retention issue, too. NHS figures show that there are 100,000 vacancies across the health service, including 31,000 across the midlands and the east of England. Therefore, 9.3% of posts in the midlands and the east—about one in 11—are unfilled.
Constituents will also be worried about the integration of services in the east midlands. In recent years, councils have distanced themselves from sustainability and transformation plans and the integrated care systems in some areas, due to a lack of democratic accountability and scrutiny from stakeholders, including concerns over cuts and privatisation. Nottinghamshire’s ICS is an interesting case: the city council suspended its membership for six months last year for those very reasons, rejoining only in April 2019 after assurances were given to improve accountability and shared decision-making processes. I am sure that Members will be keen to hear from the Minister how democratic accountability and transparency is being improved in such cases.
Residents will also be concerned about the number of community hospitals that have closed or are under threat of closure. Residents of Bakewell and Bolsover have to travel to Chesterfield or Derby for their appointments, after their hospitals closed. The loss of those community hospitals impacts on rural areas of the east midlands, isolating people further because not only will they have to travel further to appointments, but so will any visitors, so patients are suffering.
The Government have spent nine years running down the NHS, imposing the biggest funding squeeze in its history, with swingeing cuts to public health services, and social care has been slashed by £7 billion since 2010. As we have heard, the NHS is clearly buckling under the pressure as a result, and standards of care continue to plummet. I would appreciate assurances from the Minister about how the Government will get a grip on the situation in the east midlands and across the country as a whole, to reverse the extremely worrying statistics and tackle the issues we have heard about.
The Minister for Health (Stephen Hammond)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. As you know, I have met the chief executive of the team from Kettering, I have visited Kettering and I have responded to you on the Floor of the House about Kettering. Kettering and its requirements for the A&E are therefore not far from the forefront of my mind.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Lincoln (Karen Lee) on securing the debate and I thank all hon. Members for their contributions. I intend to spend some time going through a number of the areas raised this morning. I am bound to say that the long-term plan, which a number of Members welcomed, is a substantial step forward, and the funding commitment—the biggest ever in peacetime—is a key to ensuring that that can be delivered. The number 100,000 has been trotted out, but clearly that does not represent posts unfilled, nor does it take any account of the actions that the Government are undertaking. More than that, the simple fact is that, compared with eight years ago, there are 14,700—over 15%—more doctors, 10,300 more nurses, midwives and health visitors and, in addition, over 15,900 more nurses on our wards.
I also point out that of those vacancies that several hon. Members mentioned, well over 80% are being filled by a combination of bank and agency nurses. Of course no one wants that situation to persist, but there has been a consistent decline in the number of agency staff, and since the transfer from the bursary to the loan system, much has been done working with nurses to ensure that courses are filled. We are seeing more applications than previously: this time around UCAS reported over 4,000 more applicants. Last year, my predecessor announced a fund to provide an increased package for postgraduate nursing students starting courses in 2018-19 in terms of employment in learning disability, mental health and district nursing roles, which are the key vacancies that need to be filled.
I will try to answer a couple of specific points raised by the hon. Member for Lincoln. She rightly voiced concerns about the closure of Skellingthorpe health centre in her constituency. As she pointed out, were there to be a closure, the CCG would be required to conduct a proper consultation. I spoke to the CCG yesterday and I understand that as yet—she may wish to correct me—there has been no formal request for closure. Equally, the CCG tells me—I hope this is right—that it will meet the hon. Lady later in May to discuss this matter, and that, were there to be a request, it would immediately inform her and offer her a meeting with it and the lead GP at Skellingthorpe to see what action could be undertaken. The CCG has also confirmed —she will understand this—that it appreciates that this is a rural community, and that there are additional challenges for local residents, so it is working not only with Skellingthorpe to understand the challenges and how they may be met, but to ensure that the rural network of GPs might work together.
The hon. Lady rightly expressed concern about CQC inspections, and I will go on to speak about those if I have time. She mentioned the recent inspection that took place on 25 February at Pilgrim Hospital, with a report published on 3 April. Although “requires improvement” remains the rating, there were marked improvements in certain areas, including in the standard of care, numbers of staff and nursing provision for children, and a real improvement in the triage time. She will appreciate that the trust is receiving substantial support from NHS England, including to help the hospital get out of special measures.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (David Tredinnick), chair of the all-party parliamentary group for integrated healthcare, spoke passionately about the health and wellbeing partnership. He is absolutely right, and the Government support the integration of healthcare services and recognise the good work being done by that partnership in Hinckley and Bosworth. The Secretary of State enjoyed his visit to Hinckley, and was particularly pleased to get a real impression on the ground of the improvement in services that will come from the £8 million investment. My hon. Friend reminded me of his Christmas present to me, and I was pleased to read some—although not all—of his report over the Christmas period. You will not be surprised to hear, Mr Hollobone, that I was also intrigued to hear his comments about India. I sometimes think that the “Ministry of Calm” in India could benefit many people in this place.
The hon. Member for High Peak (Ruth George) spoke about “Better Care Closer to Home”. That reminded me of when I was a councillor 18 years ago and a different Government wanted to do to local services in my area the things that she described. The issue was only resolved some years later, in 2015, when a new medical centre was built. She rightly mentioned the East Midlands ambulance service and—most importantly —its paramedics. I visited that service earlier this year, and spoke not only to the management but to the medics who deliver those services. There are clearly challenges regarding location, and not all the standards have been met. It is also true, however, that there are 67 new ambulances—an increase of 27—and response times have improved, which is to be welcomed. I recognise the problems with CAMHS that the hon. Lady raised. That is clearly an issue nationally as well as in the east midlands, and it is right for the long-term plan to recognise that. The commitment to mental health diagnosis and treatment times is a significant change from the previous situation.
Ruth George
Mental health services were allocated £1.2 billion, but that money was not ring-fenced. That is the problem that CAMHS has had with the cuts. Will the Minister commit that any additional funding for mental health services will be ring-fenced, so that it goes where it is needed?
Stephen Hammond
There is a commitment to treatment and the funding that backs it in the long-term plan, and that money is dedicated to that commitment. That is pretty clear.
Stephen Hammond
The hon. Lady is asking me to use the word “ring-fenced”, but if I say that the money is there and allocated for that matter, then it is specifically ring-fenced for it.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) gave us a valuable insight into the NHS, given her experience as a consultant. She is right to say that we must tackle a number of workforce issues, and morale is undoubtedly key to that. I was pleased to see that set out in the initial workforce plan; and Baroness Harding, chair of NHS Improvement, has been asked to consider a stream of work about making the NHS the best employer. That work will consider a number of issues about retention and the culture and morale of staff. I look forward to the publication of that report, and I hope my hon. Friend will join me in welcoming the new ideas it contains.
My hon. Friend was right to mention the pensions of a number of GPs and other NHS staff. She will not be surprised to hear that I am continuing to persuade Treasury colleagues to accept the Department’s proposed solution for that issue, and I hope we can make progress and make an announcement on that soon, which will be reassuring to many. I encourage my hon. Friend to write to me about the dispensing service she mentioned, and I will consider what issues we can take up. Finally, she was right to talk about the orthopaedic services at Grantham. “Getting It Right First Time”—GIRFT—is led nationally by Professor Tim Briggs, who was lead clinician at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital. That is making a huge difference, not only to the concentration, specialisation and number of operations being undertaken, but—equally importantly—the great improvement in safety and reduction in infections is leading to hugely better care for patients.
The hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) mentioned A&E performance, and she is right to say that it fails to meet the target. However, she is wrong to say that this year has seen the worst performance ever, as there has been an improvement on last year. Over the past months, United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust has seen a huge increase in attendances compared with the previous year. That reflects the wider NHS, where demand is up by 6%, yet more than 4,700 patients per day are treated within the four-hour waiting limit. The hon. Lady mentioned Public Health England and Health Education England, but funding for those bodies was designed to be dealt with in the comprehensive spending review that will take place in the autumn. It was never intended to be tackled inside the long-term plan and spending commitment.
The hon. Lady mentioned money, but this is a transitional year for funding. The funding provided is enough to work on the deficit, and given the analysis being done, the Government’s commitments, and the work on efficiency in the health service, it is surprising that Labour Members who recognise the benefits of much of the long-term plan are not prepared to welcome the financial settlement that backs it up and will deliver it.
Briefly, let me mention another east midlands MP, my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup). She was not able to speak today as she is my Parliamentary Private Secretary, but she has done great work in pointing out the benefits of Ilkestone Community Hospital, which I intend to visit in the near future. May I just say that—
Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)
Order. I do not think the Minister can just say it. He must allow time for Karen Lee to sum up the debate, so perhaps he will bring his remarks to a close.
Stephen Hammond
Thank you Mr Hollobone. I will not just say anything other than that I wanted to address a number of issues about east midlands care, so I will put them in a letter and write to Members who have participated in this debate. It is important to address the huge number of issues raised by colleagues and ensure that the context is clearly understood. This Government wish to thank all hard-working professionals in the NHS for their work. We will do everything we can to continue that support, with a plan and the money to back it up, so that, both nationally and locally, the NHS can deliver for patients.
Karen Lee
I thank all those who have contributed to this excellent debate. Some comments have reflected the fact that healthcare remains something of a postcode lottery. In some areas we hear that everything is positive and good, but that is not always the case where I live. Travelling long distances to access a GP is not positive for someone who is ill, and that is not what my Skellingthorpe constituents want. That is not about an emotional attachment; it is a practical consideration. The concern in Lincoln is that nothing is opening, it is all closing.
The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) spoke about suicide and mental health and I agree that we need ring-fenced funding for mental health care. My hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Ruth George) spoke about problems delivering healthcare in rural settings, and people travelling long distances to access care. My Skellingthorpe constituents are not looking forward to that, should they lose their GP services.
Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).
Rape and Sexual Abuse Support Services: Redcar and Cleveland
(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Anna Turley (Redcar) (Lab/Co-op)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered funding for rape and sexual abuse support services in Redcar and Cleveland.
As always, it is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I was pleased to secure this debate to once again bring to the Minister’s attention the crisis facing rape and sexual abuse victims in my constituency. I have raised this crucial issue in writing and on the Floor of the House, but the response from the Government has been disappointing. I have been given the same response about the money the Government are investing in domestic and sexual violence and abuse services, which is welcome, but it simply does not reflect the realities on the ground in my area.
In response to my question in the Chamber last week about the cuts to rape and sexual abuse funding, I was told about the Government’s work on domestic violence. While domestic violence is extremely important, and I wholeheartedly welcome the Government’s Domestic Abuse Bill, I was talking about rape and sexual assault services, not about domestic violence. So I am glad to have the debate today to specifically focus on EVA Women’s Aid, which is a fantastic charity in my constituency that does amazing work supporting vulnerable women and children who survive rape, sexual abuse and violence and childhood sexual abuse.
EVA provides services across a 94 square mile area, and last year it supported nearly 1,000 vulnerable women and many children. It goes without saying that the support provided is a lifeline to clients, with whom the charity has worked hard and carefully, often over a long period, to develop sensitive, caring and trusting relationships. That trust is vital to enable victims to get the support they need. Because of that record, EVA is a well-respected organisation in the local community, held in high esteem by local people and led brilliantly by Richinda and her fantastic team of staff. I pay tribute to them today. Women feel comfortable approaching EVA because they know its reputation, how many women the charity has cared for and the respect and esteem in which it is held in the local community. That is why the removal of EVA’s grant from the Ministry of Justice’s rape and sexual abuse support fund is a devastating decision, which I urge the Minister to reconsider.
Since 2014, EVA has received funding from the rape and sexual abuse support fund to carry out its important work. The funding accounts for 15% of EVA’s revenue and is a significant source of income for a small local charity. In March, EVA was informed, without any prior warning or expectation, that its bid to renew the funding for the 2019-2022 period had been unsuccessful. That decision means that from the end of June the Borough of Redcar and Cleveland will not have the sexual violence support services and specialist counselling that EVA currently offers to children and young people of all genders, and to adult females. That includes support services for victims of child sexual abuse, which we know to be a crucial issue, and the number of people coming forward is increasing.
EVA is now trying desperately to make up the shortfall and save these crucial services. It has exhausted all other avenues, from the local police and crime commissioner to the local authority and clinical commissioning group. In areas like mine, the reality is that the budgets and funds of those organisations are already stretched. They have already had to make cuts to services and they do not have reserves of unallocated funding with which to step in and rescue services, such as those provided by EVA. Those services will have to go by the wayside if the funding is not found.
The PCC and the NHS jointly fund independent sexual violence adviser services and a sexual assault referral centre, which are highly valued and important, but they are not responsible for funding longer-term therapeutic counselling of the type EVA provides, which is vital. We cannot continue just to respond to crisis after crisis; we have to support people in the long term, which is exactly what EVA does. That is why I am raising this issue with the Ministry of Justice once again.
Ministers simply cannot pass the issue down to police and crime commissioners. Until now, the funding has been directly provided to EVA from central Government and it is central Government who have taken the decision to withdraw it, with very little notice and with devastating consequences. The three-month extension to June to allow for “necessary adjustments”, as stated in the ministerial response I received, is welcome but inadequate. At this point in the funding cycle, when organisations already have commissioning arrangements in place, this is just a stay of execution on the closure of services. Five of EVA’s 23 staff could be affected by the decision. They are specially trained rape counsellors who provide specialist support, and they could now be lost, along with all their skills, experience and training, because of short-sighted funding decisions that have not taken into account the impact on many vulnerable women in my constituency.
EVA received notification of the cut on the same day that the Government announced a funding increase of £24 million over three years for victims of rape and sexual assault. The victims Minister celebrated, saying that the Government are
“supporting more centres than ever”.
That would be a welcome development, but it is not the truth in Redcar and Cleveland and it is not what we are seeing. In reality, we are seeing a cut to vital services. While I appreciate that Arch North East is being funded to provide support for sexual abuse victims in the Cleveland police area, I understand it is receiving a similar amount to its previous funding allocation. It will have little extra capacity to support the residents of Redcar and Cleveland, who EVA currently caters for.
I do not know how familiar the Minister is with Cleveland; it is a huge geographic area, with a lot of rural, former mining villages and accessibility issues, as our buses are very expensive. Making one grant allocation for the whole area covered by the Cleveland police and crime commissioner fails to appreciate the different communities and demographics covered, as well as the fact that many women will only come forward to organisations and charities that they know, trust and feel secure with. Asking them to travel and to face a new and unknown organisation is going to put many women off accessing services.
Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate and the powerful speech she is giving. It can be incredibly difficult for women to come forward. In south Yorkshire, where my constituency is, 3.5% of rapes result in a charge; nationally, it is only 4.1%. These figures are absolutely shocking and appallingly low. Does my hon. Friend agree that cuts to services, such as the one she is talking about and others across the country, will only make the situation worse and reduce the number of people, predominantly women, coming forward?
Anna Turley
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The levels of conviction for rape are a national scandal; more has to be done. The idea that we are seeing cuts to services and safe spaces for women coming forward is shocking. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend because not only is she here today defending her constituents and standing up for vulnerable women, but she ran the London marathon last weekend in support of a local domestic violence and rape charity. She’s talking the talk, as well as walking the walk or running the run; I congratulate her on that.
The geographic diversity of my area and the inaccessibility is a huge issue; it means many women will not access the services or be able to afford to access the services they need. The funding decision comes at a time when demand for independent specialist provision for survivors of sexual violence and abuse is at unprecedented levels. The message I hear from the workforce on the ground is that they are seeing services shrinking and provision is not meeting the level that is needed. The decision also demonstrates the risk of smaller organisations and charities, and the valuable, community-focused services they bring to the table, being squeezed out by larger organisations.
Indeed, the report by the all-party parliamentary group on sexual violence on the funding and commissioning of sexual violence and abuse services, published last year, found a huge contradiction in the way in which services are commissioned. There is supposed to be a move towards local commissioning to achieve tailored, locally appropriate solutions, which would be welcome, but that is countered by funding pressures on commissioners, who too often let large service contracts to single, generic providers in order to deliver savings through economies of scale. This approach is evidently happening with national commissioning too, and it will force small but vital, well-loved and respected providers, like EVA, out of the picture.
I will take a moment of the Minister’s time to share feedback from service users at EVA’s centre that highlights why the services matter. It is easy to talk about figures, cuts and national services in this place, but the reality is that we are talking about the lives of the most vulnerable women, who we must support and protect. These are the voices of women from my area who have reached out and sought EVA’s help after suffering horrific sexual abuse. Karen says:
“Your service gave me a lifeline when I was at rock bottom and didn’t know where else to turn, and I’ll never forget that. I don’t know what my fate would have been without you.”
Nadia says:
“The counselling service gave me back my life. I’d be stuck in a nightmare if it had not been for EVA.”
Angela says:
“I now have the strength to face my issues. You have helped me realise I haven’t done anything wrong but was vulnerable and taken advantage of”.
Finally, Jane says:
“Counselling has helped me feel sane through the weeks. I thought I was going crazy. It has helped me start figuring out what to do about my circumstances and historic abuse”.
I am sure the Minister agrees that here are real people facing terrible situations, who would have nowhere to go if not for the services EVA provided. It is vital that we support them and enable them to get the support and provision they need. It is clear from those personal accounts how much EVA’s service users value the local, individually tailored support that they trust. As I am sure the Minister recognises, and as my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock) said, it can take a huge amount of courage to come forward and seek help after the kinds of horrific ordeals these women have gone through. This funding decision risks closing the door on that option for many women and children in Redcar and Cleveland, so today I ask the Minister once again to please revisit this funding decision. I would love to invite him to visit Redcar and see EVA’s fantastic services for himself. If the Government are truly committed to supporting more centres than ever and ensuring that every victim of sexual violence receives the full package of support they need, then I urge him to look at this one more time.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Edward Argar)
It is a pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone.
I thank the hon. Member for Redcar (Anna Turley) for securing this debate. We may not always agree on everything, but one thing we can agree on is that she is a doughty champion for her constituents and speaks up for them in this House at every opportunity. I know the subject we are discussing is, rightly, enormously important to many Members of the House more broadly. Sexual violence and abuse, as the hon. Lady has alluded to, are horrendous crimes that sadly affect too many in our society. As the hon. Member for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock) said, they continue to be a huge problem for our society and our country.
I will start by saying how important it is to me, as a Minister with responsibility for supporting victims of crime, to ensure that support is available to them when and where it is needed. The right support is essential to help victims to try to cope with what has happened to them and to try to start rebuilding their lives. Ensuring that more victims and survivors of sexual violence have access to high-quality services remains a key priority. As the hon. Member for Redcar will know, I have visited a number of services providing vital support to women facing abuse and violence around the country, including in Cheshire and Brighton, and heard of the struggle many of these services face to secure long-term funding.
Those services tell me that there are three challenges: first, sustainability of funding; secondly, the need to move from a single-year, round-robin settlement to a multi-year settlement; and, thirdly, the need for the process to be made simple and clear. Often, particularly with the small local organisations mentioned by the hon. Lady, it is the same person who is the director running the organisation, delivering the service on the ground and sitting up until the early hours having to write multiple bids to try to build up the pot for a sustainable budget.
I have listened to those organisations, and in last year’s first ever cross-Government victims strategy we set out ways in which the Government planned to improve support to all victims of crime, particularly victims of sexual violence and abuse. My aims have been to ensure the provision of high-quality services, with sustainable funding and clear and simple processes that reduce the administrative burden while moving to a multi-year settlement, reflecting what those services say to me.
The national rape support fund, for which I am responsible, is one of a number of Government sources of funding for rape support services. A number of significant improvements have been made to that fund, the previous competition for which took place in 2014. The most recent competition commenced last November and, as the hon. Lady has said, the results were announced in March.
That funding will now be provided for three years, rather than annually. As the hon. Lady said, I also ensured a 10% funding boost overall for these essential services, with an extra uplift above that in London to recognise the differential demand levels there compared with other parts of the country. The rape and sexual abuse support fund now totals £24 million over three years. Far from cutting spending at the national level, we are increasing it, and I welcome the spirit in which she acknowledged that.
It is also important to note that this is not the only source of funding to which many of these organisations have access. As I mentioned, last November EVA and others were made aware that this would be a competition for the next three years. The hon. Lady would not expect me to do anything with public money other than to recompete it, at appropriate intervals and with appropriate criteria, to ensure that services continue to evolve and we continue to get the innovation and the highest quality of services that we would wish for.
I have always been clear that in the context of the support that victims receive, their needs must come first. In addition to trying to ensure geographical access for as many victims as possible, our competition ensured that stringent quality criteria were applied to all bids. As a result, 79 support centres have been awarded grants, including various small local providers, and the Ministry of Justice now funds more support centres than ever before and in all areas. For the first time, there are directly Government-funded services in all 42 of the country’s police and crime commissioner areas.
The number of PCC areas with Government-funded male support centres—we must recognise that men as well as women are victims of these horrendous crimes—has nearly quadrupled from 11 to 41 under this process. That is in addition to funding a national helpline and webchat service for male victims, following a significant rise in the number of men and boys coming forward to report crimes. Funding has also been extended to include those who suffered abuse while under the age of 13, recognising that many victims of child sexual abuse may struggle to access timely support.
We are also testing full local commissioning of sexual violence services with five PCC areas for three years, to explore the benefits for victims and service providers alike. Our aim is to better streamline services locally, including with the national health service, to reduce administrative burdens and challenges for centres so that more money be spent on frontline services.
Our final piece of the strategy was to increase spending from £31 million in 2018 to £39 million in 2020-21, to improve services for victims of sexual violence and abuse who seek support from sexual assault referral centres. We are working to ensure better service integration between statutory services such as the NHS and the third sector and charities, to provide joined-up and lifelong care and support for those who have suffered sexual assault and abuse and therefore need them. The NHS strategic direction for sexual assault and abuse services is an example of those commitments put into practice. It seeks to improve support for victims and survivors of sexual violence by joining up key agencies and ensuring we have a whole-system response to tackling sexual abuse.
That work is complemented by the investment the Government have made in supporting PCCs to commission support services locally, with £68 million of funding nationally going to PCCs. The Ministry of Justice is also funding much of the spending that PCCs do in this area. The PCC for Cleveland has been allocated more than £600,000 to provide support to victims, of which £45,000 is ring-fenced specifically to support victims of child sexual abuse. PCCs also, rightly, choose to invest some of their own funds additionally into these services.
As the hon. Lady mentioned, as a result of the recent competition in her Cleveland PCC area we will be funding Arch North East to provide support to men, women and children across the county. As with all centres receiving MOJ grant funding, the funding will be expected to support victims resident across that entire area, including her borough, irrespective of postcode. Her constituency will continue to be covered by the service.
Arch North East is approximately nine miles from Redcar town centre. This is where my geography may become a little hazy, but I think it is about a 30-minute journey by car or a journey of an hour or so on the 63 bus. I know the hon. Lady mentioned cost, and she is right to highlight the need to remove as many barriers as possible to accessing services.
In addition to usual support services, Arch North East provides independent sexual violence advisers for victims, and they make home visits across the area, including the entirety of the hon. Lady’s borough. Home visits are also offered for children. The service is primed and ready to take on any victims that require support in the area, and reassures us that it has one of the shortest waiting times for services in the country. Arch North East complements services provided by Helen Britton House, a sexual assault referral centre in North Ormesby. The SARC provides 24-hour crisis intervention and support 365 days a year with dedicated specialist staff.
Additionally, the Rape and Sexual Abuse Counselling Centre in Darlington is an hour away from Redcar on the train and is served by good local train connections with nearby towns in Durham and Cleveland. Residents in the north of the PCC area of Cleveland—for example, up towards Hartlepool—would also be able to access services in Northumbria such as SomeOne Cares, Grace Northumberland Rape Crisis and Tyneside Rape Crisis Centre. For residents in the south of the PCC area of Cleveland, Survive North Yorkshire can also be accessed.
I understand that the hon. Lady will be disappointed that one of the centres, which she has highlighted today, was not successful in its bid to secure national funding. I reiterate what I said earlier: she is nothing if not a doughty campaigner for and supporter of her constituents and constituency. However, it would be inappropriate for me to discuss in this Chamber the specific detail of our evaluation of that organisation’s bid, although I will re-emphasise that all bids were measured against clear quality criteria, as well as geographical criteria, with awards made accordingly. The decision not to fund EVA Women’s Aid was not taken lightly.
I recognise the value that providers bring to those whom they support and to the local community and the point that the hon. Lady rightly makes about the need, in this space, for familiarity and trust at the heart of conversations. However, my primary consideration must be to provide the best-quality support to victims, even if on occasion that means taking a difficult decision such as the one under discussion. I regret to say to the hon. Lady that we will not be revisiting the decision. I know that she will be disappointed by that, but I feel it is important that I am honest with her.
As the hon. Lady mentioned, EVA Women’s Aid will receive a three-month extension of its current MOJ grant, to help it to adjust during this transition period. I understand that EVA was also not successful in a recent competition for PCC funding. The hon. Lady may wish to discuss with Cleveland’s PCC his decision in that respect as well; I imagine she probably will do so.
The House should be in no doubt that the Government are determined that victims of rape and sexual violence will be supported by high-quality, accessible services throughout their journey to try to cope and recover from these hideous crimes. I look forward to continuing to work with colleagues across Government, with the specialist support organisations that have helped to shape our victims strategy and with colleagues across the House on this agenda, to ensure that all victims of crime have access to the high-quality services that they need and deserve.
Victims of these most appalling crimes rely on all of us in the House, irrespective of whether we are in government or opposition and of whether we are a Front Bencher or Back Bencher, to represent their needs and to ensure that they receive the support to which they are entitled. It is a privilege to work with colleagues across Government and across the House. In this context, although she is not here given the nature of this debate, I also pay tribute to the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Ashfield (Gloria De Piero), with whom I work closely on these issues. She, too, is a doughty champion of victims of crime. We will continue to work to ensure that victims in Cleveland and in all areas of England and Wales are heard and supported.
In conclusion, I appreciate that the hon. Member for Redcar will be disappointed by the outcome of the process, but I again reiterate my commitment to continue working with her to ensure that her constituents get the services that they need. I again pay tribute to her dedication to her constituents in bringing forward this debate and thank her for doing so.
Question put and agreed to.
Sikhs: Contribution to the UK
(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the contribution of Sikhs to the UK.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward, and to open this debate, which comes at the end of the first UK National Sikh Awareness and History Month. I am sure this debate will cover history, community, faith, economy and culture.
The Sikh community is an established community in the UK, whose members first arrived in significant numbers in the 1950s. We know that Sikhs are now well established with a significant and leading presence in almost all professions. In Hounslow, almost 10% of the population identifies as Sikh. There are almost 500,000 Sikhs across the UK—approaching 1% of the total population.
The “British Sikh Report 2019”, launched in Parliament last week as part UK National Sikh Awareness and History Month, describes the contribution of Sikhs across our economy. Sikhs have an 84% employment rate, with top sectors of employment including public service, charity work, healthcare, teaching, accountancy and finance, and IT and technology. Many businesses are run by those in the Sikh community, including many in my constituency. Dr Rami Ranger, who is Sikh, is perhaps one of the best-known Asian businessmen in the UK, having founded a company which has won the Queen’s award for enterprise more than six times.
The contribution of the Sikh community to our armed forces continues to this day. Sir Frank Messervy, quoted in “The Sikh Regiment in the Second World War” by F. T. Birdwood, said:
“In the last two world wars 83,005 turban wearing Sikh soldiers were killed and 109,045 were wounded, fighting for the British Empire. During shell fire, they had no other head protection but the turban, the symbol of their faith.”
By the beginning of the first world war, there were more than 100,000 Sikhs in the British Indian Army, making up 20% of the force. Before 1945, 14 Victoria Crosses were awarded to Sikhs, which was a per capita regimental record. In 2002, the names of all Sikh Victoria Cross and George Cross recipients were inscribed on the monument of the memorial gates on Constitution Hill, next to Buckingham Palace.
Despite that background, this shared history is far less known or understood by an increasing number of people.
John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)
Before my hon. Friend moves on from the incredible record of Sikh soldiers in service of this country and freedom, does she agree that it is appropriate that we should now have a war memorial recognising that effort? Fundamentally, the Government should get on with designating a site where that can be placed.
Seema Malhotra
My right hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. I am sure that all hon. Members present would agree with him. My hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) will talk further about that point and the campaign he has helped to lead in Parliament.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
Following on from what our right hon. Friend has just said, the Sikh contribution in the first and second world wars was very significant, particularly in places such as Burma. Sikhs played a prominent part in the battles of El Alamein, which were some of the greatest victories of the second world war, and that should not be forgotten. I reinforce what our right hon. Friend said about a memorial to the Sikh soldiers.
Seema Malhotra
My hon. Friend has a long-standing record of working with his local Sikh community. I will also make that point, as will my hon. Friend the Member for Slough.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
I am pleased to be in this debate. My hon. Friend mentioned the lack of knowledge in this country of Sikh history. Will she join me in encouraging visitors to the Manchester Museum to see the Jallianwala Bagh exhibition, which has been prepared in conjunction with the Partition Museum in Amritsar? I think visitors from across the country and different cultures will find it very informative. I visited it during the Easter recess and I can warmly recommend it.
Seema Malhotra
My hon. Friend makes an extremely important contribution. I hope to visit the museum in the near future. I am sure that hon. Members across the House and those watching will be interested to attend that exhibition, which comes at a critical time, 100 years since the awful event that took place on Vaisakhi in 1919, in Amritsar. I will comment more on that centenary later.
Despite the background of Sikhs’ contribution to the UK, it is extraordinary that our shared history is little known or understood. Understanding different communities is vital for not just community cohesion, but getting policy right, including the rights of Sikhs to wear their articles of faith—an important right that led to exemptions for the kirpan in new knife crime legislation in the recent Offensive Weapons Bill debate.
Sikhs, like other communities, have faced an increase in hate crime attacks. Last year we saw an attack on a turban-wearing Sikh visitor outside the House of Commons. This appalling attack sent shockwaves across the whole community and the Houses of Parliament. That incident triggered our idea of a National Sikh Awareness and History Month, which is also referred to as Sikh Heritage Month and takes place this month, during April, the month of Vaisakhi.
Other right hon. and hon. Members will make speeches raising the issues that are important to them, so I want to focus on two main areas. First, I want to focus on the purpose and place in our national life of National Sikh Awareness and History Month, of which this debate forms the final parliamentary event. Secondly, I want to share a perspective on the Sikh community in my local area and the range of contributions made to the wider community.
Last April I tabled an early-day motion with cross-party support, calling for the UK to recognise April as National Sikh Awareness and History Month, noting that 14 April marks Vaisakhi and the founding of the Khalsa in 1699, by the 10th Guru of the Sikhs, Guru Gobind Singh Ji. That early-day motion was supported by over 100 Members of Parliament from across the House, the all-party parliamentary group on UK Sikhs and many other groups. It recognised that the national Sikh awareness months that have been established in other western countries have successfully raised awareness of Sikhs, broken down barriers, and improved cohesion and dialogue.
To take that forward, we formed a cross-party parliamentary steering committee, and I thank all its members for their support in recent months. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden), who is here today, and the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve). I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill), who is chair of the all-party parliamentary group on UK Sikhs and is also present.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Slough, who is leading the campaign for a permanent Sikh war memorial in London. Sikh war memorials have opened in Bristol and elsewhere, but it is absolutely time that we showed leadership and had a permanent war memorial in London. I am also grateful to my hon. Friend for working with me on the campaign for direct flights from London to Amritsar, which would serve communities in London and the surrounding areas. I also thank the right hon. Member for Twickenham (Sir Vince Cable), the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), who is present, my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell).
Many across the Sikh community were part of the early establishment of the idea last year with the Sikh Council UK. I thank Jagtar Singh Gill and Gurinder Singh Josan, along with Kirat Singh, for their support in the early days when the idea was growing, which led to the launch this month.
This month is just the start. With the foundations in place, we look forward to expanding the steering group and including community members and groups from across the country, so the project will be truly community led. The programme of events in Parliament in April has been supported by a range of Sikh community organisations and community channels, all of which I thank for making it happen. I also thank Satwinder Sehmi, an artist and calligrapher who contributed to the development of the logo for Sikh Heritage Month, which respectfully and symbolically brings together faith and heritage.
Our programme of events has been extremely well attended and hugely inspiring and engaging. The Vaisakhi event in Parliament, which is organised annually by the British Sikh Consultative Forum, brought together representatives from gurdwaras across the country for the launch of the project. There were also supportive messages from all parties, including from the Deputy Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. On the same night, a launch took place in the Scottish Parliament.
Last week, we had a packed event and discussion in Parliament for the launch of the “British Sikh Report 2019”. The Sikh Channel, Everything’s 13 and the Basics of Sikhi, which are also attending the debate, helped with the incredible Turban Awareness Day, which was educational in recognising and educating people about the significance and relevance of the turban. That event in Parliament was attended by almost 50 Members of Parliament from all parties.
Two lectures were given, one by Dr Opinderjit Takhar, the director of the Centre for Sikh and Punjabi Studies, on Guru Nanak and feminism, and one by Anita Anand on her new book, “The Patient Assassin”, which is about the principal actors, the story before and the story after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, in which many Sikhs and people of all faiths were brutally murdered by the British. For her, the story is personal, as her grandfather escaped death by minutes while his close friends and colleagues were brutally murdered. She also told the story of Udham Singh, who made it his life’s mission to assassinate the lieutenant governor of the Punjab at the time, to whom she also had a strong personal link through her husband’s family, who had had contact with him in the past.
The massacre 100 years ago is a stain on our nation’s history to this day. It is time for an official apology. I am extremely disappointed that that was not forthcoming in our previous debate and during April. I hope that the Minister will reflect on that again today. It is no surprise that the “British Sikh Report 2019”, published last week, found that 79% of British Sikhs believe that the British Government should apologise for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, and that 85% believe that it should be taught and in school syllabuses. It is a huge disappointment that we continue that battle. The massacre was condemned by Winston Churchill, then Minister for War, as
“an extraordinary event, a monstrous event, an event which stands in singular and sinister isolation”.—[Official Report, 8 July 1920; Vol. 131, c. 1725.]
I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East for his work and for the way he has brought together Members of Parliament from both sides of the House to call on the Government to make sure that the official apology happens.
Through April, a range of community-organised events have also taken place around the country, with MPs and councillors involved in Visit My Gurdwara and Langar with your MP events, which often coincided with important Vaisakhi Nagar Kirtans or community processions. This month takes on greater significance this year, as Sikhs around the world mark the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev Ji. I hope that National Sikh Awareness and History Month plays its part well in raising awareness and understanding of the Sikh faith, history and community, and continues to strengthen the bridges we build with Parliament and across nations with all our communities.
I will talk briefly about the gurdwaras in my constituency, Gurdwara Sri Guru Singh Sabha on Alice Way and my gurdwara on Martindale Road, which is run by the Nishkam trust, which play a huge role in many different ways, as I am sure gurdwaras across the country do. They extend charity and welcome and they support those in need. Every week, they welcome people who may be homeless or hungry. They welcome all, irrespective of background, through their doors. They run weekend classes and Punjabi classes, and host our surgeries as Members of Parliament so that we can reach all those in our communities. They have run immigration workshops —a huge issue in many ethnic minority communities— where immigration advisers are supported in providing confidential support and advice to those who desperately need it.
The Gurdwara Sri Guru Singh Sabha on Alice Way hosts the Hounslow Disability Network, which again provides vital support to those who need it. There are wellbeing events with the NHS, the police and many others across our community that make a huge difference. They also support the arts, culture and education. My constituent, Hardyal Luther, the former vice-chairman of Guru Nanak Worldwide’s council of supporters, organises a Guru Nanak essay competition every year that brings together talent and encourages the younger generations to take part and explore their history, culture and faith.
We live in a peaceful and respectful society because we choose to make it so. The structures that we build between us as a society help to nurture those vital links that make us a safe place for all communities and a place in which we can be sure that future generations will also be safe and will understand and respect one another. The respect that we hold and the understanding that we nurture are part of a statement about how we as a nation recognise that we have more in common than that which divides us.
John Spellar
I realise that my hon. Friend is reaching the end of her excellent contribution, but she has come to a key point about the Sikh community in the United Kingdom. While enormously proud of its history, culture and tradition, it is also enormously proud to be British. Something like three quarters of the Sikh community in this country were born in the UK and are hugely proud of this country. Being proud to be Sikh and proud to be British identifies the Sikhs and is why the Sikh community makes such a great contribution to our country.
Seema Malhotra
My right hon. Friend makes an important point that goes to the heart of what this debate is about. Whatever our heritage, as we play our part in British public life, it is vital that we respect each other and show that, in a time of rising hate crime not just across our country but across the world, we take the time to value each other, respect each other, understand each other’s history, and understand our nation’s history through the context and lens of all those who make a vital contribution.
Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way, given that she is coming to the end of her speech. I thank her for an admirable and comprehensive contribution to the debate. The contribution of Sikhs to public life has gone unrecognised so far. I had the privilege of being the deputy to Lord King when he was leader of Sandwell Council. He was the first Sikh leader of a major metropolitan authority and subsequently became a Member of the House of Lords. I put on record his contribution to breaking down barriers and providing inspiration for subsequent generations of Sikhs to enter public life.
Seema Malhotra
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. We all remember Lord King and the contribution that he made.
I will also make reference to our two Sikh Members of Parliament who are here today: our first turbaned Sikh Member of Parliament, my hon. Friend the Member for Slough; and our first female Sikh Member of Parliament, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston. They do us all proud and make a huge contribution, not only to debates in this House but to making sure that, as a minority community, we play our part and are seen to play our part in Britain’s mainstream public life.
With those words, I will end my speech. I thank you, Sir Edward, for chairing this debate, and the House for allowing me to call this debate and make my contribution to it.
Several hon. Members rose—
Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)
As you can see, we have a large number of Members who wish to speak. We may need to set a time limit, because I want to try to get everybody in. In the meantime, perhaps we can have nice short speeches of no more than five minutes.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward, and to follow the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra). I thank her and other colleagues for all they have done for the National Sikh Awareness and History Month.
I will mention three things that I have really appreciated about the Sikh community in my own constituency of Stafford, having visited the gurdwara on Tithe Barn Road on more than one occasion. The first is the wonderful hospitality that visitors receive, which I have experienced during my time in Stafford and also at the Sikh temple in Moshi in Tanzania, where I lived for many years. The warm welcome I received was tremendous and a great credit to both those communities.
The second point, which has already been mentioned by the hon. Lady, is the contribution that Sikhs have made, are making and will continue to make to our country, whether that is in business, the professions, public life, which she rightly mentioned, including the very highest levels of public life, or the armed forces. She has rightly mentioned the huge contribution, and sacrifice, that Sikhs have made on behalf of the United Kingdom throughout both world wars, and indeed elsewhere.
It was my privilege on Sunday to attend the Anzac memorial service in Cannock Chase in my constituency, and to see the contribution that others from the Commonwealth have made, particularly those from New Zealand. However, it is equally right that we remember the huge contribution of Sikhs. Let us not forget that the number of people who served was absolutely tremendous, including 100,000 New Zealanders out of a population of 1 million. Well over 100,000 Sikhs served in the first world war alone. Those are tremendous figures, and those who served were all volunteers; they were not conscripts, as far as I am aware.
Thirdly, it is important to note the interest that our Sikh community in Stafford has shown in the community and public life. During elections they always invite the candidates to speak and answer questions, which I welcome because they extend the invitation not only from the Sikh community’s point of view but from that of the whole community of Stafford.
I will make two further points. First, I very much hope that there will be an official apology for the events of 100 years ago. We need to look more closely at a number of events from right across the former British empire, which is now the Commonwealth. For instance, events during the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya have not yet been sufficiently investigated, by which I mean events on both sides of the conflict, but particularly perhaps those relating the United Kingdom.
My Sikh constituents also have a real conviction—indeed, they make it really clear—about the importance of freedom of religion. The freedom to express one’s religion, and having the ability to do so across the world, matters hugely to me as a Christian. We in this place must uphold freedom of religion at a time when the situation in many countries around the world is becoming increasingly darker for those practising their faith.
Several hon. Members rose—
Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)
Order. There is nothing more frustrating than not getting in, so I am afraid that I have to impose a time limit of four and a half minutes.
Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)
Thank you, Sir Edward, for that ruling and for your chairmanship today.
I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) on securing this debate. As she said, it comes at the end of our first ever National Sikh Awareness and History Month. There have been lots of events, including the Vaisakhi celebration, Turban Awareness Day, the lecture on Guru Nanak and feminism—which I am glad to say was given by Dr Opinderjit Kaur Takhar, the director of the Centre for Sikh and Punjabi Studies at the University of Wolverhampton—and many others dedicated both to acknowledging the Sikh contribution and to teaching more about Sikhi and what it stands for.
I will mention a few things relating to that contribution. The first is the military contribution of Sikhs—the sacrifice in blood and life, with lives being laid down in two world wars, by Sikhs fighting for this country. It is estimated that some 83,000 Sikh soldiers made the ultimate sacrifice. Memorials have been erected to acknowledge that sacrifice, including, as we have just heard, in Bristol. A memorial was unveiled at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire in 2015, and another was unveiled in Smethwick last year. We await, however, a national memorial in central London dedicated to their sacrifice. I acknowledge the leadership and hard work of my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi). We want a memorial to be erected and for the bureaucracy to be cut through. The issue has cross-party support, so I hope the Minister will provide a positive response.
The second contribution by Sikhs is, of course, economic. Many Sikhs came to my constituency and others in the west midlands in the 1950s and 1960s, often to do hard, even back-breaking, work in steel mills and foundries. They often faced barriers of prejudice as they laid down the foundations for their new life. Although we quite rightly associate the Sikh community with social mobility, that mobility rests on the hard work of the first generation of Sikhs who came here. As is the case with so many immigrants, they worked hard to make sure that their children had better chances than them in life.
I also pay tribute to those who have worked to record the stories of those early Sikh migrants. For example, Anand Chhabra, founder of Black Country Visual Arts, has lovingly collated the Apna Heritage Archive’s photography collection, which records early Punjabi life in the west midlands in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, and which was exhibited at Wolverhampton Art Gallery last year.
Alongside that hard work, there was great bravery. For example, there is the story of Tarsem Singh Sandhu, who led the fight in Wolverhampton for Sikhs to be able to wear a turban while driving a bus. Unbelievably, that was banned in the past, even when half the bus drivers in the city were of Sikh heritage. Tarsem Singh Sandhu was told that he would lose his job unless he was clean shaven and abandoned his turban, but he took a stand, rightly saying that he was doing nothing wrong. He had to face down great hostility to win his battle, and his bravery and that of those who campaigned alongside him paved the way for change that today we take for granted. Even after that great progress, however, there are still struggles. Legislation still has to be amended to ensure that the simple act of observing the five Ks and wearing a turban can be done freely.
What can we draw as a broader conclusion? I see a community whose story is overwhelmingly positive. Sikhs have achieved success in business, education, public life and, increasingly, politics, with the historic election of the first turban-wearing Sikh, my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi), and the first woman Sikh MP, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill). This is a timely debate, and Sikhs should build on their success in the future.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I thank my good and hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) for securing this important debate and for her excellent speech.
Despite being only about 1% of the UK population, British Sikhs have without doubt made an immense contribution to our nation. They have among the highest numbers of graduates of any community, and huge proportions of them are in employment and in the voluntary and charitable sector. According to official statistics, they also have the highest level of home ownership—the most likely of all the faith groups to own their own home. However, despite there being such incredible achievements, I want to concentrate my remarks, in the limited time I have, on some current and future initiatives.
In particular, there is the national Sikh war memorial. Due to the hard work of the trustees, of whom I am president, a central London site has been identified. I pay tribute to Members of both the Government and the Opposition who, on a cross-party basis, have helped, and also the Mayor of London’s office. I fully hope that the Minister will today endorse all that good work and support us in the future in every possible way, so that the dream will be become a reality on that site.
I also want to touch upon direct flights to Amritsar, which is the global, spiritual and tourist hub for the Sikhs, and home to the most revered Sikh shrine, known sometimes as the Golden Temple. Since being elected, I have been pushing on this matter, and I am thankful to those hon. Members who, on a cross-party basis, attended the parliamentary event. Despite the anti-Sikh and anti-Punjab elements who successfully scuppered such efforts by the diaspora and the Punjab community over the previous decade, in 2018 we successfully reinitiated the Birmingham to Amritsar route with Air India, and this month, thanks to several meetings and sincere efforts, we were looking forward to the announcement of direct flights from London to Amritsar. However, the recent difficulties faced by Indian airlines, including the collapse of the major private operator, have unfortunately put paid to that. Furthermore, even the advances made with the Birmingham to Amritsar route have been cancelled, allegedly due to the escalating Indo-Pak tensions and the inability to use certain airspace, along with capacity issues.
Given the context, is the Minister willing to meet me, and perhaps team members from the Departments for Transport, for International Trade and for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, as well as the Foreign Office, to see how we could encourage some of our British airlines to take on what would no doubt be a lucrative route? Post-Brexit, our ability to increase such communities’ cultural, trade and tourism ties will no doubt determine our nation’s success and enhance our global links. I sincerely hope that the Government will fully support National Sikh Awareness and History Month every April, after its having been initiated this year under the leadership of my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston, with excellent events being organised by other Members and hard-working Sikh organisations.
I fully endorse the calls for a formal apology from the Government for the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar, massacre, and the need to incorporate such historic colonial events into our national curriculum, so that future generations may learn from the blunders of the past. There has been an increase in hate crime, and after the horrific attack last year on one of my turbaned guests, who was queueing outside Parliament, by a hate-filled individual who felt the need to try to remove his turban, we have turned a negative into a positive with a Turban Awareness Day for the second year in a row, attended by so many hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler). I am sure that with continued political support, the British Sikh community will go from strength to strength.
Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) on securing this important debate. In our first ever National Sikh Awareness and History Month, I pay tribute to her work, and that of hon. Friends and Members across the House, in establishing it. It is absolutely right that we have this debate today, to highlight the contribution of the Sikhs to the UK on so many different levels, whether military, economic or political. I thank my hon. Friend for calling the debate, and for organising the fantastic Turban Awareness Day last week. I know that many hon. Members present were there. It is certainly the first time I have worn a turban, and the process of having someone dress me in a turban was interesting and educational. I very much enjoyed it, and I thank everyone who was involved in organising the event.
I am proud that one of the first Sikh temples in the country outside London was the Guru Nanak Satsang gurdwara on the Cannock Road in my constituency. It is one of two Sikh gurdwaras in my constituency, the other being the Guru Nanak Sikh gurdwara on Well Lane in Wednesfield. I am always delighted to visit the gurdwaras. As the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) said, people always get a very warm welcome reception, a delicious Indian tea, samosas and all sorts of other things, because of the Sikh tradition of offering food to anyone, regardless of their background. People are always well fed and warmly welcomed at gurdwaras, not only in Wolverhampton but elsewhere across the country and the world.
I am delighted to take part in the annual Vaisakhi procession in my constituency, which last took place a couple of weeks ago between the Well Lane and Willenhall gurdwaras. There will be a very late Vaisakhi celebration in Wolverhampton—we always have the Vaisakhi Mela on the first Sunday of the month in West Park. Thousands of people flock there, obviously from the Sikh community but also from all different communities, and from all religions and none. It is a joyous affair, and I look forward to attending again this year.
I am proud that Wolverhampton has the second-highest percentage of Sikh residents in England, second only to Slough. Our Sikh community in Wolverhampton is vibrant and well integrated and makes a huge contribution to the local community and to society. It is fantastic and fitting that the University of Wolverhampton last year launched its Centre for Sikh and Panjabi Studies, which was mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden). The centre is the first of its kind in the United Kingdom, and I congratulate Dr Opinderjit Takhar not only on setting it up, but on giving the recent lecture in Speaker’s House on Guru Nanak and feminism.
I would like to reflect on what the hon. Member for Stafford said about the strong advocacy of the freedom of religion that the Sikh community brings to the UK. At election time, we always know what the Sikh priorities in my area are. We get invited to the local gurdwara; we get fed and watered, but demands are also put on us for the election. That is good and right, and I congratulate the various Sikh organisations that actually draft a manifesto for the election.
I echo those who have asked the Government for an apology for the massacre 100 years ago at Jallianwala Bagh. Although the Prime Minister has expressed deep regret, it is a shame that the Government have not gone further. On a more positive note, I would like to say how proud I am of the contribution of the Sikh community in Wolverhampton to business, education, public life and politics.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I thank the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) for securing the debate, and I thank the Minister for being here today and for his clear commitment to his role. I look forward to hearing his remarks.
As we have heard, Sikhs have made an immense contribution to British society in a wide range of areas. Whether through business, charity work or the invaluable impact of the 83,000 Sikh soldiers who gave their lives in the service of the British Army, it is no exaggeration to say that Britain would simply not be Britain without the contribution of the Sikhs. Despite their magnificent contribution, Sikhs in Britain—and across the world—often face significant discrimination because of their beliefs.
Just before the Easter break, I, along with others, spoke in this very chamber about the many Sikhs who lost their lives during the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre, roughly 100 years ago. Thankfully, things have drastically improved since then, but Sikhs still face discrimination and even violence across the world. I declare an interest, as chair of the all-party parliamentary group for international freedom of religion or belief, and I am here to speak out for the Sikhs as well. I am also pleased to have the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) as an office bearer in that APPG and I look forward to her contribution shortly.
According to UK Home Office data, 117 incidents of hate crimes against Sikhs were recorded in 2017-18. That figure is likely to be underestimated, as many victims of hate crime do not report them. Incidents of discrimination towards Sikhs have been recorded for years. For example, the “British Sikh Report 2013” estimated that three quarters of the UK’s Sikhs had experienced racism. According to the UK Sikh Survey 2016, almost one in five Sikhs had encountered discrimination in a public place over the past year, with one in seven having directly experienced workplace discrimination. The report found that Sikhs who wear religious iconography or clothing are the most likely to experience abuse. Since 9/11, both individual Sikhs and gurdwaras have regularly been on the receiving end of attacks by people who have mistaken them for Muslims and mosques respectively. There have been numerous high-profile incidents in the media, notably the attempted beheading of Sikh dentist Dr Sarandev Bhambra in a Welsh supermarket in 2015.
It is simply unacceptable that anyone should be subject to discrimination, abuse or violence because of their religious beliefs, or lack thereof. We should do everything in our power to tackle discrimination against Sikhs in Britain. It is also right that we work with our international partners to tackle discrimination towards Sikhs because, unfortunately, the problem also afflicts many other nations, as has been mentioned. For example, in the US, the Sikh Coalition estimates that Sikhs in the US have experienced an average of one hate crime per week since the start of 2018, with a 17% spike in anti-Sikh violence since the 2016 presidential election. Those figures, too, are expected to be underestimated.
In India, where there is the greatest population of Sikhs in the world, conditions for Sikhs and other religious minorities have deteriorated over the past decade owing to the rise of Hindu nationalism, and attempts to alienate non-Hindus have emerged in conjunction with that ideology. The 2017 report by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom notes:
“Hindu nationalists often harass Sikhs and pressure them to reject religious practices and beliefs that are distinct to Sikhism, such as wearing Sikh dress and unshorn hair and carrying mandatory religious items...Article 25 of the Indian constitution deems Sikhs to be Hindus. This creates an environment in which Hindu nationalists view Sikhs as having rejected Hinduism and as being enemies of India because some Sikhs support the Khalistan political movement, which seeks to create a new state in India for Sikhs”.
The growth of such views serves only to make life harder for the Indian Sikh community.
Sikhs in Britain and around the world have contributed greatly to society. Despite that fact, their community continues to suffer significant discrimination. It is our responsibility in this House today to do what we can to tackle that discrimination at home in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and abroad, and to ensure that Sikhs and all other religious or belief communities are valued and allowed to live their lives in peace and to contribute yet more to society, having very clearly contributed much in the past.
Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) for succeeding in her application for this timely debate to mark the end of Sikh heritage, history and awareness month—a month she has worked incredibly hard to champion and organise. Like many Members across the House, I too have participated in the Vaisakhi Nagar Kirtan in Birmingham over the weekend. The gathering is one of the largest in Europe, with more than 100,000 in attendance.
As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on UK Sikhs and the first female Sikh Member of Parliament, it has been a pleasure listening to Members from across the House rightly laud some of the contributions that individual Sikhs and the Sikh community as a whole have made to the UK.
When I was elected just under two years ago, I came to Parliament with a belief that it was here that we could make fundamental changes, and that we, as Members of Parliament, could lead on issues of importance for individual constituents, our community or the whole of the United Kingdom. I want us to do more than offer warm words about the contribution of Sikhs, or indeed any community, to the UK.
Despite making up 0.8% of the population, according to the 2011 census, Sikhs accounted for 2% of religious hate crimes recorded by the police in 2017-18. I want us to tackle hate crime and prejudice by taking today as a starting point for educating the whole population about the influence that Sikhs have had and how their impact has shaped the Britain of today, as well as many other parts of the world. It is in this place that we can choose to do more than discuss the contribution of diverse communities and speak solemnly about hate crimes. In this place we can put in place actions and policies to look at the link between the two.
The hate crime action plan refresh in 2018 was extremely disappointing, given the promises made to Sikh organisations that they would not be ignored or invisible to Government; but what matters now is how the Government address Sikh hate crime. I look forward to working with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to address the under-reporting of Sikh hate. The new chair of the community safety group for the Sikh Council UK is Manchandan Kaur, and I hope the Government will reach out to her and the council to work with them.
Our children need to learn about the contribution of the Sikh community, and to do that, we must teach people about the honest history of Britain. We must learn about the positive and progressive parts as well as the repression and exploitation that has occurred in Britain’s name. We need to learn that, during the second world war, British soldiers were paid differently depending on their race. In their thousands Sikhs, along with others, gave up their lives for our freedom. My grandfather also fought in the second world war.
Our children must learn about the Amritsar massacre, where British troops massacred unarmed demonstrators. They must learn about the life of Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, daughter of the last Maharaja of the Sikh empire and goddaughter of Queen Victoria, who pioneered the cause of women’s rights in Britain and abroad. They must learn about the grassroots activism of many Sikhs in the 1960s to challenge unfair pay, working conditions and cultural oppression.
My father, the late Daljit Singh Shergill, who was president of the Guru Nanak gurdwara Smethwick for 18 years, set up the first food bank during the 1980s recession in Smethwick. He worked with the miners during their strikes, raising funds to support them. He championed interfaith working and worked closely with the Harborne parish and the Bangladeshi and other minority groups. Gurdwara Smethwick has recently revealed the Lions of the Great War statue, commemorating the contribution of Sikhs to world wars one and two, led by the president, Jatinder Singh Bassi; the general secretary, Humraaj Singh Shergill; and leader of Sandwell Council, Steve Eling. And we must know the truth of the role of the then Government involvement in Operation Blue Star, otherwise known as the 1984 genocide of Sikhs.
If we genuinely want to recognise the contribution of Sikhs to the UK and the way it has shaped British society, the way it has moulded what it means to be British and the way it has shaped current and future generations, it is not enough simply to discuss it; we must end the discrimination that Sikhs face because of a lack of data. The race disparity audit used 100 datasets across Government to look at how people of all ethnic groups are treated across public services, but there was no data on Sikhs. As we celebrate their contributions, let us not ignore the fact that the Government’s aim to tackle burning injustices has been a concern when it comes to Sikhs. That is why Members across the House support the Sikh ethnic tick box in the census.
We in this place are here to make fundamental change and lead on what is important. I hope that today the Minister, as a Member of the Government, will commit to genuinely following through on the issues raised. In doing so the Minister will have my full support, and the APPG will be happy to work with officials to develop a programme of work.
Colleen Fletcher (Coventry North East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) for securing this extremely important debate today. I want to start by putting on the record my sincere gratitude for all the support and good will that I have received from the Sikh community in Coventry. Their help and encouragement has been and will always be very much appreciated.
There are many gurdwaras in my constituency and across Coventry. They are not only places of worship, but important community hubs that bring people together and, as anyone who has visited a temple will know, are places of great benevolence, where everyone is welcome and food is shared with the rest of the community. The annual Vaisakhi celebration is firmly woven into our city’s cultural calendar. Thousands of people take part in the Nagar Kirtan—the parade—which starts at the Gurdwara Guru Nanak Parkash in my constituency, and is a joyous and inclusive celebration that is attended and enjoyed by Sikhs and non-Sikhs alike. The event contributes successfully to broadening our city’s cultural life.
Similarly, the Sikh community contributes tremendously to the success of the economy of both Coventry and this country. The Sikh community certainly punches above its weight in this area, with a deserved reputation for having a strong work ethic and being disproportionately successful in business. It is a similar story in our vital public services, where Sikhs make such an invaluable contribution to our armed forces, our NHS and our education sector.
As well as the cultural and economic contribution that the Sikh community makes to our city, there is a significant social contribution, not least to the health and wellbeing of our environment. Sikhs have a strong relationship with the environment, which is an integral part of their faith and identity. That connection with the natural world prompted Coventry’s Sikhs to commit to planting more than 550 trees across the city to mark the 550th anniversary of the birth of Shri Guru Nanak Dev Ji. That fantastic initiative will help to restore nature to our cities, parks and green spaces, and secure a healthy, resilient and sustainable environment that will benefit people and wildlife for generations to come.
That sense of social responsibility does not end with the natural environment. Public service is hugely important to Sikh identity, and helping others is part of their way of life. Sikhs constantly strive to do more and find new ways of contributing to their local community, whether that is through the time they give up or the money they donate to important local charities and projects. I admire and am grateful for their work throughout my city, and I thank the 16,000 Sikhs in Coventry for their social, cultural and economic contributions.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
I echo the points that my hon. Friend is making so well. In my constituency, the Sikh community has done a huge job and been at the heart of our community, both commercially and through its public leadership. I place on the record my thanks to Mota Singh, who is standing down as a councillor after 40 years of public service. What a terrific record that has been.
Colleen Fletcher
I agree with my hon. Friend. Sikhs contribute so much each and every day across all walks of life, and their culture, diversity, enterprise and values of faith, family, and community help to make our city a more unique, integrated, tolerant and vibrant place to live in, work and visit.
Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) on securing the debate and on her powerful speech. I am delighted to speak in this debate, and I welcome the launch of National Sikh Awareness and History Month. I pay tribute to the work of my colleagues, my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill), for Feltham and Heston, and for Slough (Mr Dhesi) in pursuing that important initiative. It has also been wonderful to see recent events in Parliament—my personal favourite was definitely Turban Awareness Day.
My city of Manchester contains a significant Sikh population and provides a prime example of the beauty of our diverse society. It is particularly noticeable how well the Sikh community has integrated itself into the local community, not just through business, but through charity work and the hospitable nature of the local gurdwaras. My local gurdwara is a lively, colourful and welcoming place. I recently visited it for the Vaisakhi celebrations, and was touched by the warm and very Punjabi welcome.
I have seen over the years the positive impact that Sikhs have had not just in my constituency, but across Britain and in all walks of life. Minorities such as British Sikhs exemplify all that is great about Great Britain, which is home to many of the world’s religious and ethnic minorities. It is a place where we strive to create the conditions for minorities to thrive, safe in the knowledge that there exists a robust framework of equality and non-discrimination legislation, and professional practice. Other examples of the contribution that Sikhs make to the UK are witnessed in the British Army where, as Members have said, many Sikhs have served with distinction. We still have some way to go before we fully realise our equality aspirations, but the Equality Act 2010, passed by a Labour Government, remains a significant landmark on our journey to a more equal society for all.
As for other minority communities, however, challenges remain for British Sikhs, and ignorance of the Sikh religion often lies behind prejudices. Sadly, the Sikh community continues to face discrimination. For example, a report by the all-party parliamentary group on British Muslims described the very direct and tangible impact that Islamophobia has on our Sikh communities. Whether that is gurdwaras being defaced, or Sikh men such as Dr Sarandev Bhambra being targeted by Islamophobes because of the mistaken perception that they are Muslims, we are acutely aware that more must be done by all in society to tackle the impact of rising Islamophobia that affects all our communities.
Given the escalation in bigotry after the Brexit vote and the rise in racial discrimination and hate crimes on grounds of race and religion, it is important that we reassert the Britishness of our minority groups, and integrate their history and stories in our national imagination. To challenge the racism of far right groups, we must repel the myths that are peddled about our communities, and we must celebrate the tremendous contributions made by those communities to the UK. I believe that the positive contributions made by Sikhs and other Commonwealth citizens to our British history should be included in national school curricula. The time is right to pay tribute to British Sikhs and all they have achieved, because their contribution amounts to so much more than their numbers. I am honoured to have had the opportunity to participate in this much-needed debate, which recognises and celebrates the wonderful contributions made by the Sikh community. Finally, let me conclude with the wise words of Guru Nanak, who said:
“He who regards all men as equals is religious”.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Edward. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) for her work in establishing National Sikh Awareness and History Month. It has been a wonderful month of celebration, education, learning, and sharing food, which is a great thing and definitely to be encouraged. This month the Scottish Parliament held its first Vaisakhi reception, which was so well attended that extra people had to be squeezed into the garden lobby. More and more people kept coming, which was great to see.
I thank Charandeep Singh and Ravinder Kaur Nijjar from Glasgow for their help in gathering information on the Sikh community in Scotland for my contribution to this debate, and for their tireless community work. In her interfaith role, and through the network of Scottish gurdwaras, Ravinder has been incredibly active over nearly 30 years in promoting dialogue and understanding between faiths, as well as promoting the Sikh community. After our debate on Jallianwala Bagh, she told me that her grandfather had survived that massacre because, as a young man, he lay underneath the bodies. That brings home to us all how that link is still there within human memory, including here in the UK, and it is because that link is so real for so many that the lack of an apology from the Prime Minister was so disappointing. Ravinder also told me that in 1920, Sikhs based at Glasgow University wrote to the then Glasgow Herald to voice their outrage at those events. This is not something that happened in another country far away and a long time ago; this is very real to communities today, and I urge the Minister to do all he can to secure that apology.
The established Sikh community settled in Glasgow in the early 1920s, and the first gurdwara was established in South Portland Street in the Gorbals in the 1940s. The community has grown in both numbers and institutions. Scotland’s eight gurdwaras, based in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee and Irvine, serve communities across the nation and are used by 4,000 individuals each week, including Sikhs and those from other backgrounds. During the Vaisakhi celebrations we saw the Nagar Kirtan procession through the streets of Glasgow, and it was an absolute joy to behold and be part of. The tradition of langar—providing a free meal—was begun by the first guru, Guru Nanak Dev Ji, expanded by Guru Angad and Guru Amar Das, and it remains strong to this day. I very much enjoyed sharing a meal with my colleague Sandra White MSP and the congregation at the Glasgow Central Gurdwara Singh Sabha a fortnight ago. The food was delicious, and I encourage anyone who can to go there. As other Members have reflected, visitors are very much welcomed when they go through the doors.
Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) on her role in securing this important debate. Everybody recognises the contributions of the Sikh community in the social and semi-political fields, but I am glad to say that in my constituency and my area, the Sikh community has played a major part in the mainstream politics of Britain. It was where the first Sikh—Indian-born—was elected as a local councillor, and where Piara Singh Khabra was elected as Member of Parliament. Parmjit Dhanda was elected as a Member of Parliament, as was Marsha Singh, who was the Member for Bradford West. The Sikh community is not only playing a part in social life, but playing a positive role in bringing communities together in the mainstream politics of Britain.
Alison Thewliss
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his excellent point. Sikhs have played a role in many different fields, as they should. Two Members who have spoken this afternoon, the hon. Members for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) and for Slough (Mr Dhesi), are Sikhs who have made their contributions to politics. There is a great contribution going on across the UK, and we need to see many more Sikhs taking up the role of elected Member.
Each week, the gurdwaras in Scotland serve over 3,000 meals, all prepared and distributed by volunteers. In addition, Seva Scotland prepares meals in the gurdwara and distributes them to the vulnerable in society through mobile food banks, which provide over 100 hot, fresh meals a week in Glasgow and Edinburgh to the most vulnerable, many of whom are homeless. In addition, the Sikh community regularly fundraises for Scottish charities, including the Glasgow Children’s Hospital Charity, for which it recently raised over £8,000.
The Sikh community works hard to create stronger, integrated communities. As the hon. Member for Slough and others have mentioned, there has been anti-minority hostility and hate crime about, which the Scottish Sikh community has taken on through a vibrant proactive approach to promoting diversity in Scotland. Each year, the Network of Sikh Organisations educates over 4,000 Scottish school pupils, and interacts and engages with over 40,000 non-Sikh visitors to gurdwaras. The Gurdwara Guru Granth Sahib Sikh Sabha on Albert Drive is recognised as being so welcoming that it has a four-star rating from the tourist agency VisitScotland. It also does outreach; it recently did a turban-tying event in Queen’s Park, with members of the community turning up on a beautiful sunny day to show how turbans are put together. As other elected Members have mentioned, learning how that feels was an experience, and it was good to get the opportunity to do that outside in the sunshine.
As the local elected Member for three of Glasgow’s four gurdwaras, I know that the Sikh community regularly engages with local and national Governments on issues of importance to the Sikh community, most recently the Sikh census question, but also on security issues after the scandalous attack on the Guru Nanak gurdwara in Edinburgh last year. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) asked me to pass on how strongly the community in Edinburgh felt about that. There was great solidarity, with the community coming out in support of those from the gurdwaras. The Scottish Government’s Minister for Europe, Migration and International Development, Ben Macpherson, who is also the local MSP, was out there giving his support to the community as well.
My hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes) has been active in campaigning on the Jagtar Singh Johal case. I know that there was a meeting with the Foreign Secretary last week, and that the all-party parliamentary group led by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston has also been campaigning on that issue, backed by the solidarity of the gurdwaras.
Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)
I endorse those comments. I myself met with Jagtar’s wife and brother last week after they had met the Foreign Secretary, so there is cross-party, consensual agreement that we support the “Free Jaggi Now” campaign.
Alison Thewliss
I am glad to have the hon. Gentleman’s support; it is important that we stand together on these issues as much as we can.
I have received representations from the gurdwaras in my constituency about the difficulties caused by the UK Home Office in the recruitment of Sikh celebrants. When I visited the Vaisakhi celebrations, I was pleased to see that the Sikh celebrants had been able to get into Glasgow and participate in those celebrations, which I believe involved a 48-hour reading of the Sikh holy scriptures. If that is going to be done in a shift over 48 hours, there need to be plenty of celebrants to make it possible.
The Scottish Sikh community is engaged in international activity. The Sikh Council of Scotland was founded in 2002 by Gurdeep Samra, and under President Sulakhan Singh is providing scholarships worth £700,000 to 290 young children in the poorest parts of India, covering their tuition fees, transport, food and schooling costs and removing that burden from their parents. The community also supports work to empower young women by providing training in high-skilled tailoring centres, where those women are trained in the art of tailoring, sewing and design. Hundreds of young women have enrolled, and after their training, each qualified young woman is provided with a sewing machine free of charge to open their own tailoring shop locally, to act as a source of income for those women and their families. Some 90% of young women enrolled in that scheme reach the stage of opening their own local centre, which is quite incredible. The Sikh community also funds local water projects in India and provides six eye camps in that country, which have provided eye care and operations such as cataract surgery to over 6,000 individuals, completely free of charge.
Other hon. Members have mentioned the importance of education. All the Sikh gurdwaras in Scotland provide a range of educational facilities, including Punjabi heritage classes, tuition classes, computing classes and health and wellbeing classes. Those are all free, and seek to increase and improve the life chances of people from minority ethnic communities. Combined, the gurdwaras educate over 4,000 young Scottish Sikhs through their educational services. That is a great thing for the community, particularly as it links together the older and younger generations through language.
Leith-based Sikh Sanjog, founded by Trishna Singh OBE in 1989, is particularly notable as an organisation run by women, and I wish it all the best on its 30th birthday this year. Sikh Sanjog has run the Punjabi Junction cafe for the community, and offers a range of services to inspire and empower Sikh and other minority ethnic women and young people to advance their life opportunities through the building of skills, confidence and social inclusion. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith has told me how much that means to the local community. The Sikh community is also expanding its footprint on the national stage through the advocacy charity Sikhs in Scotland, under the leadership of Charandeep Singh, which will represent the needs of that community across civic Scotland. As other hon. Members have mentioned, Sikhs have made an economic contribution. The two stunning gurdwaras in Glasgow, which I invite everybody to visit, invested £15 million in Scottish communities, which is significant in fundraising terms.
I will finish with a wee story about how the Sikh community is regarded in Glasgow. The painting club at Toryglen community hall has produced for me the most gorgeous painting of the Glasgow skyline, with landmarks from my constituency. It has recognised the contribution of the Sikh community by including the gurdwara dome in that beautiful painting. What more fitting tribute by Glaswegians to their fellow citizens could there be? The Sikh community is very much part of Scotland's vibrant tartan, and I take this opportunity to thank it for its contribution.
Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to be part of today’s debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) on having secured it. I also congratulate all the members of the all-party parliamentary group on UK Sikhs who have contributed to this very special month. It is lovely to see Parliament as diverse as it has been this month; sometimes, I think this place is at its best when Members can debate and talk about the beauty and diversity of their constituents and how much they add and contribute. It makes this a very special place.
We have heard a lot about the contribution of Sikhs in both world wars, and a recognition of the role that Sikhs played in our history. Sikh British Indian soldiers were just 2% of the population, but 20% of the British Indian Army, and I join other Members in calling for a war memorial in central London to recognise and celebrate that fact. I hope that when the Minister rises to his feet, in the spirit of today’s debate, he will agree and say that that will happen. As we have already heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi), a place for that memorial has already been identified.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston said, it is sad that this history month was born out of an attack on a turban-wearing Sikh outside Parliament, a place where we hope we break down barriers. However, as we have heard, something positive has come out of that negative. It was a pleasure to be a part of Turban Awareness Day in Parliament. I too now understand how long the process takes. It was a real education, and I thank Members, especially our Sikh Members, for allowing us to ask silly questions—I thought some of them were silly questions—and for the dignity with which they responded. That is testament to how we all need to embrace, understand and appreciate each other’s cultures.
A hundred years later seems like the right time for an apology for the Jallianwala Bagh murders. That incident should be taught in schools; it is time and it feels right. We have been talking about suffrage and the contributions that Sikh women made to suffrage movements, and we have talked about those centenary celebrations, but it is time to acknowledge the good and the bad and ensure that that incident is taught in schools.
We have heard a lot today about the “British Sikh Report 2019”. It refers not only to the many Sikhs who work in the public sector, but to those in the care sector. I found that a fascinating piece of research, and we should all reflect on the positive role that Sikhs play in public life.
The hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) spoke with pride about his Sikh community and about events in the British empire that need to be investigated. What he said is true. Often history likes to talk about what are considered to be the good bits, but for us to understand and mature as a society, we need to talk about the bad bits too, so that history does not repeat itself, as we have seen in the recent increase in hate crime.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) spoke about Sikh soldiers and the ultimate sacrifice. He talked about the cross-party support and all the firsts we have here in Parliament and, beyond that, in his constituency.
My hon. Friend the Member for Slough is a completely and utterly enthusiastic advocate for the war memorial. I congratulate him on all his campaigning since he has been in Parliament. He has hit the ground running, to say the least, and has always been so calm in doing so. He often talks about turning a negative into a positive, but I congratulate him on being elected as the first ever black, Asian and minority ethnic representative in the UK delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. I am sure he will take that delegation by force and ensure that everything is considered in the right way.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) talked about education about the turban and the gurdwaras in her constituency. She is no longer in her place, but she talked about West Park, and it sounded like the place to be. I might just have to pay a visit.
My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) talked about her constituency with such joy and grace, but I must congratulate her on being the first female Sikh Member of Parliament. I remember when she was elected, everyone was saying, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe that you are the first and there wasn’t one before.” There was almost a sense of it being a shame on the House. I congratulate her on being the first female Sikh Member and her words about being an advocate for action, not warm words. We must never forget how we can use this place to ensure that the Government make the changes they need to make. We need fewer warm words and more action.
My hon. Friend mentioned Princess Duleep Singh and the role she played in the suffrage movement. Often, women of colour are excluded from the history books and we have to dig deep to find the role they played, even when we know they played a full role and often made a bigger sacrifice to do so. She also mentioned the race disparity audit having no data on Sikhs. If the Government are going to do something, it is important that is done in its entirety, so that it is meaningful. If we are going to go through a process of auditing, it is important that we make it as meaningful as possible. The debate about having Sikh as a recognised box is not a new debate, and it could easily have been included in the Government’s race disparity audit. Will the Minister explain why that was not the case?
My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East (Colleen Fletcher) talked about how Sikhs punch above their weight and the planting of trees around Coventry. I should not forget to mention my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan). He talked about the warm Punjabi welcome and everything that is great about Great Britain, and that is the thing: Great Britain is known for its diversity. People coming from other countries often say, “I love the diversity, the unity and the acceptance.” It is not about tolerance. I do not want to be tolerated; I want to be accepted and appreciated for the contributions to society that my family and I make. My hon. Friend talked about the role we can all play in rooting out racial discrimination. Debates such as this highlight how we all have a significant role to play in ensuring that there is less hate in society, and more acceptance.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Jake Berry)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Sir Edward. Being in the House of Commons, more often than not I am really proud of our role as advocates for our communities. It is brilliant that more than 20 Members of Parliament have come to this debate to make a contribution to celebrate Sikhs and Sikhs in British society. That is extraordinarily uplifting and a brilliant way of marking the almost conclusion of UK National Sikh Awareness and History Month. That event came out of a negative attack outside Parliament, and what a fantastic way it is of turning that negative, terrible thing that we all condemn into something positive.
In this debate, we have all come together to make a positive contribution about Sikhs in our society. I love the idea of having a month that is not only about history and what happened in the past, but about today and celebrating the hugely positive contribution that Sikhs make in Great Britain and around the world, as we have heard. We have had more than 20 contributions. I will do my best to respond to as many as possible of the points raised, while leaving the customary two minutes for the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra). I congratulate her on securing this debate and pay tribute to her for the campaign she has run and all the work she has done.
My Department is in charge of communities in this country, and we work closely with communities across Great Britain to try to find ways to create that cohesion that the Opposition spokesperson just spoke about. I reiterate what has been said about the positive contribution that Sikhs have made to British society. Their vibrancy and selfless service are renowned. I have never visited a gurdwara, so I will have to do that. I do not have one in my constituency, but the huge contribution that gurdwaras are making to communities across Great Britain is absolutely fantastic.
Eddie Hughes
I have an excellent gurdwara in Willenhall in my constituency. The Minister would be welcome to come and visit it with me at any time.
Jake Berry
Fantastic—I accept that invitation. I am sure my hon. Friend will also take that opportunity to lobby me on his high street competition bid, but I happily accept his invitation.
I am delighted that our Parliament has been made richer and more diverse. Having the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) speak today was one of the highlights, as he is the first turban-wearing Sikh in Parliament. We should celebrate his historic role in the story of our Parliament and our nation.
In addition, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) is the first female Sikh, which we should also celebrate. I was surprised when the election results came in and that news came over the wires. It says something about this place that we had not until that point had a female Sikh representative. The hon. Lady is doing a fantastic job representing not just her constituents but the Sikh community more widely.
I appreciate that it is a couple of weeks late, but I place on record my good wishes to all Sikhs who celebrated Vaisakhi recently with their family and friends. I think it is fantastic. The Prime Minister will host an event in Downing Street early next month to celebrate Vaisakhi with members of the Sikh community from across the UK.
Mr McFadden
I thank the Minister for his opening remarks, and I am sure that the Sikh community will be very grateful for his Vaisakhi greetings, but the Government missed an opportunity a couple of weeks ago, on the 100th Vaisakhi since the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, to respond to cross-party calls for an official Government apology. Was that the last word on the subject, or can we expect to hear more from the Government, perhaps at the Vaisakhi celebration that he mentioned?
Jake Berry
The right hon. Gentleman would not expect me to prejudge what the Prime Minister may or may not say at that Vaisakhi celebration; I do not have any information about what is planned. All I would say is that the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 13 April 1919 is, as Members have described it repeatedly in this debate, a stain on the history of this country. It seems to me quite right that, 100 years on, people are calling on the Government to mark it, and to change what the Government have done. The Prime Minister recently made it clear that she deeply regrets what happened and the suffering caused, saying:
“The tragedy of Jallianwala Bagh in 1919 is a shameful scar on British Indian history.”—[Official Report, 10 April 2019; Vol. 658, c. 308.]
That is a direct quote from the Prime Minister, and of course the British high commissioner to India, Sir Dominic Asquith, laid a wreath on the Jallianwala Bagh centenary, expressing regret for what happened.
It is important to reflect on the past, and I do not know what will happen at the Vaisakhi celebration in Downing Street. I will pass on the comments from this debate to the Prime Minister, and more widely to those across Government. There may be an opportunity for others to raise the matter with the Prime Minister if they have the opportunity to do so in Parliament, at Prime Minister’s Question Time, on or around the time of that celebration in Downing Street.
I will move on to talk about how the Government engage with the Sikh community. We have heard about the hugely important contribution that the Sikh community makes to Britain. It is important that I put on record how the Government, particularly through my right hon. Friend Lord Bourne, the Minister for Faith, engages with the Sikh community and particularly Sikh umbrella groups. He often hosts interfaith roundtables with representatives from different faiths. Part of that has been to engage heavily with the Sikh community and its representatives.
Lord Bourne is currently seeking to refresh the groups of Sikh communities and umbrella bodies with which he meets. He is seeking particularly to expand those groups to ensure that more women have an opportunity to contribute and that more members of grassroots and community representative groups can attend them. Knowing the interest that there will be in today’s debate, I put out a call to the community more widely, particularly to women, to come forward and engage with the Government on how we can more actively support the Sikh community in the UK. We look forward to continuing our engagement with the Sikh community throughout England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and I hope that that can be part of an active engagement, with Members from across the House playing their full part.
Mr Virendra Sharma
I really appreciate the commitment that the Minister is giving to carry on working closely with the Sikh community. Will he join all of us in campaigning to put pressure on the Prime Minister of this country to apologise on behalf of British communities? The Sikh community and the Indian community in general would appreciate that support.
Jake Berry
I read out the direct quote from the Prime Minister expressing regret in relation to that. Any further change in the Government’s official position would be a matter for the Foreign Office and for the Prime Minister, although I have committed to pass on Members’ comments, and I am sure that the Prime Minister and her team will read the Hansard of our debate.
A few very specific points have been raised, to which I will respond. First, the hon. Member for Slough asked whether I would meet him to discuss flights directly. I will of course, but I wonder whether it would be more appropriate for him to meet a Transport Minister. Perhaps he and I can have a quick conversation after the debate to work out who the appropriate Minister would be. In the absence of any other Minister better qualified to deal with the matter, I will of course meet him with the greatest of pleasure.
Comments have been made about the Sikh war memorial and the cross-party campaign for proper recognition of the extraordinary contribution that Sikhs made during both world wars—14 Victoria Crosses is a number that should humble us all. The Government are correctly supporting efforts to seek a permanent war memorial in London for that contribution. My Department has facilitated meetings with Westminster City Council and we have helped to persuade it, though I am sure it did not take too much persuasion, that there is a need for this war memorial. We support the planning application and have helped to identify potential sites. My Department is the ultimate arbiter of the planning application, so I cannot be drawn more widely on its success or failure, but we would all think it a wonderful outcome were such a memorial to be seen in London.
Jake Berry
I hope I can give the hon. Gentleman that reassurance. The Government are fully behind the proposals for the war memorial. If there is more we can do to assist, we will certainly offer that help. I congratulate him for all the work he has done and the extraordinary way in which he has reinvigorated the campaign since he arrived in Parliament relatively recently. We will continue to work with Westminster City Council. There are negotiations with the Crown Estate, and if we can assist in that work or those negotiations in any way, we will do so. If, following this fantastic month of celebration and history, we can make some real progress, we can all be really proud of that. If the hon. Gentleman runs into any issues—of course, my colleague Lord Bourne would usually deal with them—he can contact me and I will personally take them up with the relevant people in my Department.
Issues relating to hate crime have been raised. In the remaining moments, it may be helpful for me to highlight the additional funding that the Home Secretary has made available for places of worship. I have visited each of the mosques in my constituency to talk about the availability of that funding. It is right that the Government support places of worship, so that religious people can meet, come together, pray together and practise their faith. I hope that colleagues will do what I have done, which is to visit diverse places of worship in their own constituencies, to ensure that worshippers are aware of that funding and of the fact that they can apply for proactive security around places of worship. I congratulate once again everyone who has taken part in this extraordinary and uplifting debate.
Seema Malhotra
I thank the Minister and all who have taken part. I am sure that the debate on the issue of a formal apology for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre will continue. I hope the Prime Minister will use her Vaisakhi event next month to move things forward.
I echo the words of my hon. Friends the Members for Slough (Mr Dhesi) and for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill): raising awareness has a purpose, which is to build relations and to tackle hate, inequality and injustice. Where that requires Parliament to act, I hope we will have the courage to do so. In this debate, we have heard that people from the Sikh community have contributed to our society in so many ways—from Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, who campaigned for suffrage in my constituency, to Fauja Singh in sport. We have not mentioned him, but this is a marathon week.
I close by thanking the Sikh community in my constituency and the leaders of our main local gurdwaras for all they do in working in an interfaith way, recognising the words of Guru Nanak Dev Ji that there is no Hindu and there is no Muslim. That we are all one together is a strong message that comes from the Sikh faith. I would like to mention Zora Singh Khangora, Gurmej Kaur, Gurmit Singh Hanzara, Premi Singh from the Afghan Sikhs, Sarup Singh Mahon, Gurmail Singh Malhi and our deputy mayor, Councillor Sumra, and all the other Sikh councillors who do a huge amount to keep the bridge strong between our community and our politics.
Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)
On a personal note, it has been a great privilege to chair this wonderful debate, in which we have all come together to celebrate the contribution of the Sikh community to our nation.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the contribution of Sikhs to the UK.
Migration Advisory Committee
(5 years, 7 months ago)
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George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the composition of the Migration Advisory Committee.
The Migration Advisory Committee has six members. The chairman, Professor Alan Manning, is from the London School of Economics; he is, of course, an economist. Professor Jackline Wahba is from the University of Southampton; she is an economist. Dr Jennifer Smith is from Warwick University; she is an economist. Madeleine Sumption is from the University of Oxford; she is an economist. Dr Brian Bell is from King’s College London; he is an economist. Finally, Professor Jo Swaffield, who is newly appointed, is from the University of York; unsurprisingly, she too is an economist.
I do not doubt that all those individuals are proficient economists. Nor do I doubt that those of them who still lecture are perfectly capable of imparting in the lecture theatre the knowledge that students need to pass their exams. However, an important question must be asked: does it make sense to have an advisory committee on migration that is made up exclusively of economists, and that excludes all other fields of knowledge and experience? If the Minister told me that there was a case for one economist on the panel, I would accept that, because there is undoubtedly an element of economics in migration policy. However, it is not the only issue that we should address, nor are economists’ skills the only skills needed.
The knowledge and experience of the individuals on the committee is inevitably quite limited and narrow, and their perspective is inevitably very theoretical rather than rooted in experience. They live in an academic bubble, which means that they do not always understand the challenges that individual businesses face. Not one of them, I think, has ever run a business; not one has created any wealth on their own through entrepreneurship; not one has created any jobs. They do not know what it is like to worry about putting together a rota to ensure that a restaurant is fully staffed. They do not know what it is like to be a strawberry farmer who has to close a gate on a field of strawberries because they do not have enough staff. Nor do they know what it is like to have to cancel a weekend away with their family because somebody has called in sick and they have to do the work themselves.
My view is that an expert committee on migration should be much broader. It should have entrepreneurs—people who have actually built wealth, created jobs and made and run their own businesses. It should have business leaders from a range of different sectors.
Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important to have a range that covers not only different sorts of people, but the whole United Kingdom? We should understand the issues that affect all parts of our United Kingdom.
George Eustice
My hon. Friend makes an important point. For instance, some of the Migration Advisory Committee’s advice has been that it does not matter if we shut down certain industries, but some of those industries are prevalent in certain regions and matter to those of us who represent them. I believe that the committee should also have a range of business leaders from a range of sectors of the economy, to represent different briefs and explain why particular sectors employ people in a particular way. Why not have a place for a trade union representative as well?
The Minister or her officials might regard all the people I have just mentioned as dreadful vested interests with an axe to grind, who could not possibly sit on an expert committee. I disagree. Does not the Minister value those people’s opinions? She might find that real entrepreneurs and people in business and trade unions could ground-truth some of the current committee’s economic theories.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
Even to economists, for whom I have a high regard, some things should be self-evident. For instance, in Stafford we grow an awful lot of salad, which replaces salad that would otherwise be imported. It is really important for the United Kingdom’s balance of payments; without the workforce to pick it, grow it and process it, we would be more reliant on imports and our balance of payments would be negative.
George Eustice
My hon. Friend is absolutely right: it is important that as a country we make, produce and grow things. Sadly, I am afraid that some economists overlook the importance of that, and some do not think that the balance of payments matters at all. They think that we can just carry on losing money, borrowing it from elsewhere and spending like no tomorrow, but we all know that that is not how the world works.
Even if the Minister felt that some of the people I have mentioned had a vested interest or an axe to grind, it would be quite possible to make allowances to take that into account. It is wrong to ignore those voices and shut them out. Even if the committee were to remain largely academic, where is the space for people who studied international relations? Do not their degrees matter? There will be many people at the Home Office who have chosen to work in immigration, and whose skillsets and qualifications are in international relations, but they are all excluded from this expert committee. What about people who studied human geography, a normal route to looking at issues such as immigration? Where is the space for them on the committee?
The Minister may say that she meets businesses and unions all the time and hears their voices. However, we cannot get away from the fact that this narrow advisory committee almost sees itself as writing policy. Ministers and officials who draft answers to parliamentary questions routinely hide behind the MAC, saying that it is not appropriate for Ministers to say anything about migration matters until the committee has reached a conclusion. They appear to have abdicated responsibility for policy making to the committee.
The level of reverence shown by the Home Office to the Migration Advisory Committee is rather akin to that shown to the Monetary Policy Committee. However, the MPC was established by statute and has statutory powers to set interest rates, whereas the MAC is simply an ad hoc advisory group and should be treated as such.
Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, highlighting deficiencies in the Migration Advisory Committee with respect to the reflection of regions, income strands or industry needs. However, the committee only advises; Ministers decide. This afternoon, the Minister has an opportunity to show how she can hear and ignore, to make sure that we have a system that is bespoke and best suited for the future of our industry and our country.
George Eustice
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I hope that the Minister will clarify that the Government have an absolute right to ignore at will any recommendations from the Migration Advisory Committee.
Until recently, I was a Minister in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs—I was one of those Ministers who used to sign off parliamentary answers that said, “We can’t say anything until we hear from the Migration Advisory Committee.” We saw this as a vital piece of work. As we leave the European Union and take back control—in some cases for the first time in half a century—of policy areas such as agriculture, fisheries and migration, we must assertively own that space. There is no space for sitting on our hands, dithering and delaying; we must wholeheartedly come up with a coherent policy.
Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)
My hon. Friend will know that people in fishing, farming, healthcare, social care and our tourism industry are acutely conscious of this challenge. They expect and want whoever is making the decisions, or at least guiding policy, to be well informed and responsive to things as they change.
George Eustice
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. Sadly, many individuals across various sectors report that they do not feel that the Migration Advisory Committee actually listens to them. They feel that the committee has a rather supercilious stance and is basically not interested in the views of people running real businesses.
David Duguid (Banff and Buchan) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this very important debate. Economists like to measure and count things. Does he agree that they need to come up with a way of counting shortages of different skills, rather than trying to put a measurement on the value of those skills? It is purely as simple as, “We have a shortage of these skills. We need those skills.”
George Eustice
My hon. Friend makes a crucial point, which I was going to come on to. The Migration Advisory Committee is trying to be too clever by half, rather than just making a straightforward assessment of the industries that have labour shortages, trying to assess what those shortages are as best it can, and setting a figure for the appropriate tier 3 or tier 2 provision, so that we can get the right people into those industries. Instead, the committee has gone off on a frolic of its own in trying to outline a plan to socially engineer a solution to what economists call the productivity puzzle.
As a Minister, I was deeply disappointed when the Migration Advisory Committee’s final report concluded in autumn 2018. I thought it was very poor and told us nothing new. Frankly, it read a bit like a student’s dissertation. It was a trot round the course of rather standard economic theories of comparative advantage and so on. I suppose that reflected the fact that it was ultimately written by economists and academics, who do not have real-world experience. At the heart of that report was undoubtedly an economist’s obsession with abstract theories of productivity—the so-called productivity puzzle to which we have to keep being subjected, because it is the current obsession of economists.
Put simply, the MAC believes that it can use immigration policy to socially engineer a solution to productivity. It recommends no provision at all for tier 3 migration—no provision for so-called lower-skilled jobs. In essence, its argument is that if we get rid of people on lower incomes and simply destroy the industries they work in, productivity will rise. It is a completely ill-conceived idea and will lead to economic contraction, which will affect particular parts of the country worse than others. Industries will be forced to close, as the committee’s report highlighted and acknowledged, but was indifferent to. Let us not forget that under Professor Manning’s world-view, the Home Secretary’s father would have been denied entry to our country. Mr Javid came here to work first in the cotton mills, and then on the buses. Had Professor Manning been in place at the time, the Home Secretary’s father would have been sent back and would not have been admitted to this country. That is a terrible indictment of the conclusions of the current MAC report.
The Migration Advisory Committee claims that its recommendations are consistent with our industrial strategy. I think that is wrong, as they violate two important principles in our industrial strategy. First, a principle of the industrial strategy is to make the UK the best place in the world to set up a business. Secondly, the strategy seeks balanced growth around the country, not growth concentrated simply in the home counties. A skills-based immigration system along the lines proposed by the Migration Advisory Committee will be bad for business and will damage and close certain industries. It will be bad for many parts of the country that depend on those industries for their wealth generation, including whole supply chains.
As I said, Brexit changes things fundamentally. We have to own this space assertively. We have to learn to value people who work on lower incomes and might have fewer formal qualifications, but who do vital work—be it in hospitality, agriculture or caring environments, and so on. First, we need to reform the Migration Advisory Committee so that we can give the Home Office better advice.
I conclude with two requests of the Minister. First, since the Migration Advisory Committee is an ad hoc committee and not established in statute, I see no reason why its current membership could not be extended to, say, 10 or 12 individuals. They are paid a day rate for attendance; it is not a salaried position. The Minister has an opportunity right now to extend the Migration Advisory Committee and broaden its skills base.
Bill Grant (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (Con)
Immigration is very important to Scotland, and I notice the absence of my colleagues from the Scottish National party. It is a very important area not just for Scotland, but for the whole of the UK. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is a very narrow field to have a team of economists dealing with such an important issue? We surely must have the voice of others—particularly business, the National Farmers Union in Scotland and in England and Wales, and, as he mentioned, trade unions. We need to have some mechanism whereby these people are heard and the real needs of these industries, including hospitality, the NHS, fishing and farming, are truly heard. I doubt whether any of those economists understands the need throughout the UK, particularly in Scotland.
George Eustice
My hon. Friend makes a vital point, which is the thrust of my argument: we cannot have a coherent policy by relying just on the opinions of economists. They will give a particular perspective—cut and pasted out of a textbook—but it will not actually be ground truth; it will not be rooted in the real economy. Up and down the country, real businesses are taking decisions not to invest, not to expand and not to create new jobs, because they cannot get people to fill the vacancies that they have in their business as it stands. The stance against so-called low-skilled immigration is actually damaging our economy already, and we need to recognise that.
I have a second request of the Minister. As I said, I note that she recently took the opportunity simply to reappoint, I think, two members of the Migration Advisory Committee at the end of last year. She has not taken the opportunity to refresh the team. I also understand that Professor Alan Manning has a three-year term, which, if my research is correct, ends in November. Can the Minister confirm that she will not reappoint Professor Alan Manning, that his term will end in November, and that he can then be replaced by someone who understands business?
The Minister for Immigration (Caroline Nokes)
It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) on securing this debate. He put his view forward with customary forthrightness, and I would expect nothing less from him. I am grateful to him for giving me the opportunity to shine a bit of light on the work of the Migration Advisory Committee. It plays a very important role in the development of immigration policy and its work is often in the spotlight, but there is far less discussion of the committee’s membership and composition.
We are lucky to have the MAC. Although there are no members of Her Majesty’s Opposition here to hear me say this, the then Labour Government’s establishment of the MAC back in 2007 was possibly one of the best things they did in the field of immigration. Creating the MAC has enabled successive Governments to have a source of informed, authoritative and impartial advice on some of the most contentious and thorny questions of immigration policy. The readiness with which successive Governments have accepted the MAC’s advice is a testament to the quality of that advice and to the value and wisdom of having such a body. It is noteworthy that a number of other countries have now sought to emulate our approach by appointing their own expert bodies to advise them on immigration policy.
As my hon. Friend said, the MAC is made up of a chair and five members, whom he described as proficient economists. I might go somewhat further and describe them as eminent labour market economists and migration experts working in universities and think-tanks, who bring considerable skills, expertise and experience to their role. Indeed, I venture to suggest that they are some of the finest minds in their discipline in the United Kingdom. The chair and the members are appointed through a process of fair and open competition, in accordance with Cabinet Office rules on public appointments. The MAC is supported by a secretariat made up mainly of Government economists drawn from across the civil service, but it remains independent of the Government.
It has been suggested—indeed, this was the main thrust of my hon. Friend’s comments—that the MAC or a successor body would benefit from having a wider range of members, and that it should include not just academics but, for example, people working in industry. I want to make three points in response.
First, advertisements for MAC members do not stipulate that they have to be academics. As I have said, fair and open competition is used, and there is nothing to prevent a person working in any field from being appointed, provided he or she is the best candidate. My hon. Friend might be interested to know that the advertisement listed experience of working in or with business as one of the desirable criteria that candidates were asked to display.
Secondly, the MAC always seeks to proceed by consensus, and all its reports are unanimously agreed. There is a danger that that approach could be damaged if it were made up people who felt the need to represent and argue for the concerns of particular sectors or vested interests.
Thirdly, I am not sure where we would draw the line in any such approach. My hon. Friend suggested that the MAC, or a body that replaces it, should have business representatives among its members, but there are millions of businesses in the UK and many representative bodies that speak for their interests, including the Confederation of British Industry, the Federation of Small Businesses, Make UK and chambers of commerce up and down the country, to name but a few. I am not sure whether my hon. Friend is suggesting that they should all have a seat. If businesses are to be represented, what about the trade union movement, charities, voluntary organisations, local government and, of course, the NHS, which is a major employer of migrant labour? Pretty soon we might have a body so large and unwieldy that it would struggle to advise the Government sensibly.
The MAC has been very busy indeed over the past few years. My hon. Friend mentioned one of the two important reports it produced last year. The first was on international students, and the second on the impact of European economic area migration. I recognise that not everybody agrees with its conclusions, particularly in the EEA migration report—my hon. Friend is among those who do not share its views—but producing a report that commands universal support would be beyond any committee or organisation, however constituted, given how contentious immigration policy is. Moreover, I do not think anyone can dispute the thoroughness and rigour of the MAC’s approach.
My hon. Friend invited me to tell him that I have travelled the country meeting businesses, trade unions and others. I certainly do that, but so has the MAC, and it will continue to do so. For its report on EEA migration, it took evidence from a wide range of organisations and individuals, and visited every nation of the United Kingdom and every part of England. As its interim report states, it met more than 130 organisations and stakeholders representing every sector of the UK economy, and it received 417 written submissions. It weighed all that evidence very carefully before it came to its conclusions. It is important that people do not let their disappointment with the recommendations translate into an attack on the effectiveness of the independent body that produced them.
My hon. Friend went as far as to say that the MAC’s report was cut and pasted from a textbook. Far from it. It was the result of a great deal of evidence taking, research and work, which took many months. It is incredibly important to recognise that the MAC’s recommendations are exactly that—recommendations. The hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) suggested that I have the ability to hear and ignore. I also have the ability to hear and listen. This year, as part of our White Paper engagement, we are taking the opportunity to listen to a wide range of views from across the country and from a variety of sectors. Immigration policy is a matter for the Government. As my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth knows, not least because he was involved in this when he was a Minister at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Government’s intentions for the UK’s future skills-based immigration system were set out in a White Paper that was published last December, which we have described repeatedly as the start, not the end, of the conversation.
Time does not permit me to cover the White Paper in detail, beyond making it very clear that our engagement has started. So far, more than 60 meetings have been held to discuss the proposals contained within it. To date, I have met representatives of several significant sectors, and I will continue to do so over the course of the next few months. We will not make a final decision on the proposals in the White Paper until that process has been completed. In parallel with that, the MAC is reviewing the composition of the shortage occupation list, and is undertaking an extensive evidence-gathering process to help its deliberations.
We have heard views this afternoon from across the country, including Northern Ireland, Scotland and the south-west. Hon. Members mentioned a variety of sectors, including social care, farming, fishing and hospitality, but there are many others that we often hear less of. I am particularly struck that the road haulage and distribution, veterinary science and retail sectors rely significantly on migrant labour. When we consider the views that are fed into the MAC, it is important that we do not cherry-pick which parts of industry and which sectors we listen to. We must listen to them all, and to every part of the country.
George Eustice
I am very grateful to the Minister for setting out her approach. Does she agree with a point that a number of hon. Members made, which is that a coherent approach to setting numbers for migrants coming here would be to look at a range of different sectors so we can make the best judgment about the number of migrants we want to come into the country for the time being—albeit perhaps on a short-term work permit? The MAC has done something very different. It has set out a plan to socially engineer a change to our economy. Its plan is to force the closure of certain industries by denying them access to the labour they need. That is what is wrong.
Caroline Nokes
My hon. Friend will be aware, from the White Paper and the Government’s proposals, that although we have listened to the MAC, we have not relied exclusively on its opinions. The MAC did not include any suggestion of a temporary workers route for skills that do not fall within the categories that it has designated—I hate to use the term “lower skilled”, and if I have a few minutes at the end, I will try to expand on why. We are very conscious that there are industries and sectors that need people with different skills. The temporary workers route, which we included in the White Paper as a point for engagement and discussion, was not included in the MAC’s report. I am very conscious that, although we have to listen to the views of expert economists, we have to come up with a coherent policy that will work for every sector of industry, every part of the economy and the whole of the United Kingdom.
My hon. Friend makes a big pitch for tier 3, and we can have a long conversation about “lower skilled”. He and I are conscious that there are many occupations that do not fall neatly into the categories of “high skilled” or “medium skilled”. When we talk about lower skill levels, I always try to find different language. There are many people working in health and social care or in farming and fishing who have skills that do not fall neatly within academic qualifications but are absolutely essential if those business are to be able to find staff, and to remain vibrant and profitable. That is part of the jigsaw puzzle that we are putting together over the course of the year.
The White Paper makes it clear—my hon. Friend may disagree with this—that we envisage an expanded role for the MAC in the future. As well as responding to specific commissions from the Government as it does now, it will have a wider role to produce an annual report on all aspects of Government immigration policy. It will have the ability to consider and make proactive recommendations on any aspect of that policy. The White Paper is clear that we want to consider the MAC’s composition, status and remit, potentially including expanding the chair’s post. I have certainly heard my hon. Friend’s pitch about appointments to posts in the MAC. I emphasise again that that is always done through fair and open competition. We want the best people—people with experience and expertise—and it is crucial that we build on our existing model, rather than create something new from scratch.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for enabling us to debate these important matters. He, like other hon. Members, has strong views about this. I remain convinced that the MAC model has served the UK and successive Governments well, and that we should enhance and strengthen it so that, in an area as important as immigration policy, the Governments can continue to make policy on the basis of the best possible independent and impartial evidence-based advice.
Question put and agreed to.
Defence Industry: Scotland
(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Ged Killen (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the diversification of the defence industry in Scotland.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Hollobone. I am glad that this debate was selected because it is an opportunity to raise the important and seldom discussed topic of the defence industry in Scotland.
We are rightly proud of our history of shipbuilding. I represent a constituency just south of the River Clyde, and I do not need to tell anyone in this chamber that the legacy of shipbuilding and the remaining cranes dotted along the Clyde are a great symbol of national identity and pride, not just for those who live near to or in Glasgow, but across Scotland. That pride is not limited to those of us north of the border, either. The industry holds significance for the entire UK. Shipbuilding rightly continues to be an important part of the defence industry in Scotland, but as the demand and requirements of national defence change and future threats emerge, we must look at areas of future growth for Scottish industry, to ensure that, alongside shipbuilding, Scotland has a diverse pool of defence industries that will be sustainable in future.
In 1981, 68% of the workers in defence-related industries worked in shipbuilding, while 26% worked in the aerospace industry and about 6% worked in the armaments industry. In 2017, the picture was similar: shipbuilding accounted for about the same proportion of 68%, while the aerospace industry in Scotland had gained a slightly greater share of 28% and the armaments industry had about 4% of the workforce. Of the £1.6 billion that the Ministry of Defence spent with industry in 2016-17, 57% was spent on shipbuilding and repair, with the nearest spending block making up just 11.8%, which was spent on computer services.
The defence sector in Scotland is significantly reliant on shipbuilding, and although shipbuilding is a major benefit to our economy, high reliance on a single sector exposes the wider industry to risk from changes in the market and the evolving nature of the threats that we face, and to the risk of mismanagement by the UK Government.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. We need a strong domestic defence industry, as well as the sovereign capability to build defence equipment in Scotland and across the UK, to ensure that we are not overly reliant on orders from overseas. Does he agree that, unfortunately, this Government have chosen to neglect our home-grown industries in favour of buying off-the-shelf from abroad?
Ged Killen
I completely agree with my hon. Friend, and later in my speech I will make the point that making short-term decisions without looking at the whole picture is inherently flawed.
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech. Does he agree that one of the UK Government’s strangest decisions is to tender internationally for fleet support ships? If it were decided that they should be built in the UK, that could benefit shipbuilding not just in Scotland, but across the UK.
Ged Killen
I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman. I will touch on that point later in my remarks.
Although we must continue to support shipbuilding, the UK and Scottish Governments must focus on diversifying and deepening the defence industry in Scotland to ensure that there will always be a base for the high-skill and high-value roles associated with the industry—that is eminently achievable. Scotland is well placed to be a home for a variety of new industries. With strong universities and a history of manufacturing and design excellence, we are ideally placed to take advantage of the large demands of the UK’s defence. This debate gives Members the opportunity to discuss future high-growth areas and draw attention to the advantages of increasing diversity in the defence industry. For my part, I will touch on two high-growth areas: space and land vehicles.
Glasgow in particular has become a pioneering centre for the deployment of microsatellites, producing more satellites than any other city outside the United States. As future defence concerns rely increasingly on the gathering and analysis of information, significant space assets will be vital to the day-to-day operations of the armed forces in both military and non-military operations.
The space sector has huge potential for future growth. Year-on-year growth in the sector has been five times greater than in the wider economy since 1999, and the sector has tripled in value since 2000. Each new job in the space sector adds £140,000 of added value per employee, and the overall sector receives 36% of turnover from exports.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
The high-quality satellites that are built in Glasgow are superb, and will be launched from my part of the world. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that Britain has a great business opportunity to build a lot of satellites for allied countries for their own defence, and that if we get going now, we can steal on a march on the world?
Ged Killen
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. As a satellite hub, companies in Glasgow have produced huge volumes of satellites. Two companies, Alba Orbital and Spire Global, have between them put around 100 satellites in orbit, and Spire Global makes one new satellite per week. The recent go-ahead for the spaceport in Sutherland, as well as Glasgow’s growing microsatellite industry, perfectly places Scotland to take advantage of new investment and infrastructure.
Investment from the MOD will be a major factor in the successful development of space and satellite technologies. Any investment will naturally lead to a build-up of skills and will spill over into the civilian sector. I would therefore be grateful if the Minister indicated the role that the upcoming strategic defence and security review will have in supporting the development and expansion of the space industry in Scotland, and what representations he will make to ensure that that vital high-growth sector is not overlooked. The industry is highly competitive and, as the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) said, it is vital that the UK takes a lead.
John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for the speech that he is making, which is very helpful. The British space industry has not only been successful here, but has played a huge part in the European project Galileo. Does he share my regret that the European Commission, in a fit of pique, has decided to kick us out of the project, to which we have made not only a financial contribution, but an enormous industrial contribution? Europe should really be holding that up as an example of competing in the world.
Ged Killen
My right hon. Friend will not be surprised to know that we have different views on Britain’s membership of the European Union. I largely consider that we are kicking ourselves out of the EU and should accept the consequences of that, although I regret the impact that it will have on projects such as Galileo.
Further to the space sector, the construction of advanced land vehicles offers an excellent opportunity for the expansion of the defence industry in Scotland. Glasgow now hosts an armoured vehicle centre of excellence, which was set up by defence company Thales. The centre aims to provide the MOD with an excellent new resource for the development of armoured vehicles.
Thales is currently bidding for the MOD’s multi role vehicle-protected programme which, if successful, would see 50 highly skilled engineering design and manufacturing jobs brought to the Glasgow site, and the possibility of 30 additional jobs created over the programme’s lifetime. Thales has said that if it is selected for the MRV-P and as the UK design authority and integrator for the Boxer and its variants, 100 new jobs could be created directly, while 180 jobs could be created through supply chains and around 200 further jobs could be supported indirectly.
Such programmes are vital for expanding the diversity of the defence industry in Scotland and introducing new skills, as well as deepening the existing skills base. A great example is my constituent Stewart Macpherson, an employee at Thales Glasgow who has been chosen as one of the top 30 electronics engineers under 30 in the UK.
Encouraging and supporting new skills and professionals is a great benefit of defence investment, so I should be grateful for an update from the Minister on the progress towards reaching a decision on the MRV-P programme. I appreciate, however, that he may only be able to reveal certain information as some might be commercially sensitive.
Chris Stephens
I again thank the hon. Gentleman for mentioning Thales, which is based in my constituency. Does he agree that if Thales is successful in obtaining the contract, the economic benefits for the whole Glasgow area—including for my constituents and his—would be considerable?
Ged Killen
I absolutely agree. Recently, when I visited the site, I was pleased to see how many of my constituents are employed there.
I am disappointed about the previous actions of both the UK Government and, to a certain extent, the Scottish Government. The recent failure by the UK Government to support the construction of the fleet solid support vessels, as mentioned in this debate and many other times in this place, shows completely misplaced priorities. Ill thought-out changes to Government tendering rules redefined the vessels, meaning that the ships will not fall under article 346 of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union. That opens UK shipyards to subsidised international competition and puts jobs and the potential investment in shipyards such as Rosyth at risk.
What is more, that situation was wholly avoidable, with the decision being made completely unilaterally, yet possibly writing off highly skilled, highly paid jobs that could return £2.3 billion in revenue to the Treasury while providing sustainable employment and an increasing skills base. I therefore urge the Government to think again about that, and to follow the Labour party’s lead by advocating that such ships are built in the UK. The case of the fleet solid support ships signals a Government who are far more interested in achieving in-year cost reductions than in looking at the whole picture.
Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech about the British defence industry. Does he agree that we built two world-class aircraft carriers in Rosyth, employing a lot of my constituents and I am sure some of his, and that the Government should offer some of our expertise and the build facility to our allies around the world who have expressed interest in aircraft carrier technology, so that we can continue to build our expertise and keep the engineering specialities developed in Rosyth and in Scotland?
Ged Killen
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point, which was well made. I am sure that the Minister will respond in his remarks.
John Spellar
Is it not the case that the solid support ships would be ideal for the Rosyth site to maintain its workforce until aircraft carrier refits are necessary? Does that not show that the Government have not learned the lesson of the gap in work at Barrow, which then required a reconstruction of the workforce at huge cost? Surely the Government are saving pennies now but costing pounds later.
Ged Killen
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. To be frank, I find it amazing that the red, white and blue Conservative party of Great Britain does not see the merit of building such ships in Britain, creating so much benefit for years to come.
In the context of this debate, we must also look at the Scottish Government’s role. Recently, the First Minister set out her plans for a new independence referendum. We must therefore consider the impact of that policy on long-term investment. Scotland’s shipyards rely on the pipeline of complex warships to be constructed for the Ministry of Defence—at least one remaining aircraft carrier, five offshore patrol vehicles and eight frigates—but if Scotland were to become independent before the next Holyrood election, as the SNP plans, the MOD has indicated that Scotland could be excluded from producing UK warships under article 346, or a similar rule if the UK has left the EU. Without those contracts, the shipyards would need to find alternative sources of demand in order to remain open, and I hope that the SNP will elaborate on that in any contribution today.
The MOD spends about £1.6 billion a year directly on Scottish industry, with £900 million spent directly on shipbuilding. The Growth Commission report stated that the entire defence budget for an independent Scotland would be £3 billion, plus £450 million to be used over five years to set up the apparatus of an entire independent state, of which a defence force is just one part. From that combined pool, therefore, the SNP proposes to find at least £900 million a year just to keep the shipyards open, while also setting up a new defence force, equipping it, and ensuring that its IT and support systems work properly. That is before we get on to the implications of importing the necessary components required for advanced manufacturing under a new currency.
That is £450 million to set up a new state in five years, including a defence force, but in less than five years it has cost the Scottish Government £200 million to set up a Scottish social security system and £178 million to set up an IT system to allocate payments to farmers. When we consider the complexity required to set up a new modern military force with all the support and complex IT architecture necessary, we realise that the figures do not add up. Scotland is being let down by both its Governments.
Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)
On top of that are the billions that it would cost to convert our currency from pounds to something else. It is just a fairy tale, is it not?
Ged Killen
There are so many different layers to this. Going into the day-to-day costs in pounds sterling is bad enough, but adding the uncertainty of trying to set up a whole new currency from scratch takes us into the realm of fantasy.
We have a good opportunity, through smart industrial policy, to build a healthy, thriving and contributory defence industry in Scotland. The Labour party has put smart industrial policy at the heart of our policy proposals for the next election, whenever it comes. However, it is disappointing that both the UK and Scottish Governments cannot do the same.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)
The debate can last until 5.30 pm. I am obliged to call the Front-Bench spokesmen no later than 5.7 pm. The guideline limits are five minutes for the SNP, five minutes for Her Majesty’s Opposition and 10 minutes for the Minister. If the Minister closes no later than 5.27 pm, that would allow the mover of the motion three minutes to sum up the debate. Until 5.7 pm, however, we have time for Back-Bench contributions, the first of which will be from Stephen Kerr. One other Member was standing, so I hope that we can split the time equally.
Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Ged Killen). He spoke very well, with passion and conviction, and thoughtfully. I was delighted with the tone that he set for the debate.
I wish to take us in a slightly different direction with public policy in the defence industry and on diversification, because I wish to refer specifically to the Scottish Trades Union Congress campaign to set up—or to encourage the SNP Scottish Government to set up—a defence diversification agency. That approach to defence diversification, rather than the one in the hon. Gentleman’s thoughtful speech, is simplistic and frankly regrettable. Not only is the point of view that the Government are best placed to tell business how to operate mistaken and misguided, but the ideologically blinkered way in which the left approaches this vital area of public policy is lacking.
I would not often choose to quote from the Morning Star—frankly, I have not often even perused a copy of it—[Interruption.] I know that Opposition Members are disappointed to hear that I am not a regular subscriber. On 15 May, it ran a story on the vote at the STUC annual congress calling on the SNP Government
“to establish a Defence Diversification Agency to promote a ‘fair and sustainable shift’ away from nuclear weapons.”
Continuing to quote the Morning Star—the first and perhaps only occasion on which I will do so—the report went on:
“But professionals’ union Prospect and general union GMB opposed the motion, saying it sent the wrong message to defence workers.
GMB Scotland delegate John Dolan, a Scotstoun shipyard convener, said: ‘This motion is not in the real world of work.
‘These people have worked in these industries for years, keeping you, your children and your grandchildren safe.
‘How many jobs have been created by defence diversification?
‘This is a con. Where is the Saudi Arabia of renewables we were promised 10 years ago by Alex Salmond and the SNP government?’”
I do not know John Dolan—perhaps other Members present do—but I want to repeat a line of his, because it is important:
“These people have worked in these industries for years, keeping you, your children and your grandchildren safe.”
I agree with the statement made by the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West in his opening speech that we should be proud of the defence sector in Scotland. As he mentioned, UK defence spends £1.6 billion with Scottish industry each year, supporting at least 10,000 high-value jobs in the Scottish economy.
Chris Stephens
The hon. Gentleman may be interested to know that if he buys the Morning Star today, he will find a column in the name of my good self on blacklisting, which I recommend to him. I suggest that if he is, as he claims, so concerned for the views of shipyard workers on the Clyde and what they are saying at the Scottish Trades Union Congress, he listen to them and support their argument that the fleet’s solid support ships should be built in the UK and not be put out to international competition.
Stephen Kerr
I am not at all surprised that the hon. Gentleman writes a column in the Morning Star. I would have been disappointed if he had said anything other than that. Of course I wish that all the defence contract work available should remain in the UK, support high-value UK jobs and advance our technical expertise in shipbuilding. I have no doubt that the Minister will address that issue when he responds.
I pay tribute to the people who work for businesses that have invested in Scotland such as Babcock, BAE Systems, Leonardo, Thales, Raytheon, Rolls-Royce and others. All those major contractors and others are operating in Scotland. I have heard Members of this House speak of those businesses in disparaging terms. I want to make it clear that if any Member of this House does not want those businesses and their workers in their constituency, I will be absolutely delighted to have them come to Stirling. Stirling has a long association with our armed forces, and a proud connection with our servicemen and women and those who support them in the supply chain that those industries represent. That connection is symbolised by Stirling castle.
I do not know John Dolan but he captured some of the pride of the people who work in those industries. I am proud of that workforce, such as those at Her Majesty’s Naval Base Clyde at Faslane, many of whom are my constituents. If I could, I would say to each of them, in the words of Mr Dolan, “Thank you for keeping me, my children and my grandchildren safe. Thank you for defending our country and our freedoms. Scotland is proud of you.” In my constituency, defence contracts support many jobs, especially at FES, which is a principal electrical contractor and works on the new Navy ships that are being built on the Clyde. Emerson also has significant defence contracts. FES has made a huge investment in its apprenticeship programmes and runs its own academy. Hundreds of skilled electricians have benefited from FES’s commitment to them and the Ministry of Defence’s commitment to Scotland.
Some on the left approach this issue from a pacifist viewpoint built on deeply held beliefs. I respect that. Others on the left, such as the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West, are more pragmatic and see the high-value jobs that are done as a vital strategic part of the Scottish economy. The position of the SNP is far more craven. It knows that the defence sector would be destroyed in the event of independence, as the hon. Gentleman outlined. SNP Members use defence diversification as a way of distracting people, because the truth is that they do not care much about jobs or about defence; they just care about independence, as was seen in their conference in Edinburgh at the weekend. According to that separatist vision, Scotland’s workers, savers and pensioners would give up the pound for a valueless currency yet to be named, and no frigates would be built on the Clyde if they ever got their way.
Chris Stephens
I find it extraordinary that the hon. Gentleman accuses me and others in the SNP of not caring about defence jobs, given that I meet the shop stewards in the Clyde shipyards on a regular basis and they know my views. Would he care to withdraw or clarify what he suggests? He was pointing at me when he made those outrageous remarks.
Stephen Kerr
I am not sure I was specifically pointing at the hon. Gentleman. Let me be absolutely clear: those who espouse separatism in Scotland know that the consequences would be the loss of those jobs and the technology, know-how and added value that goes with them. They know only too well that Scotland would not have a Royal Navy.
Luke Graham
My hon. Friend is making a valid point. It would not just be the hard power of the military’s physical ships and tanks that would be taken away; it would also be MI5, MI6 and the myriad security services that are embedded and supported by the United Kingdom. I wish the SNP could see that valid point, too.
Stephen Kerr
The SNP cynically swallows the idea of being in NATO—a nuclear defensive alliance—because it knows that Scotland will never wear pacifism. It wants Faslane and the nuclear deterrent gone.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is not just a question of defending the United Kingdom’s territorial waters and our contribution to NATO, but goes much further afield? We forget that the maintenance of a blue-water Navy is vital to trade. One only has to look at the Red sea. I used to ship coffee from the Port of Tanga through the Suez canal to Europe and around the world. Piracy around the Red sea was rife; ships were hijacked until the European Union force and others, led until recently by the United Kingdom, were there with ships built in Scotland.
Stephen Kerr
I would sign up to beating swords in ploughshares every day of the week, but the lesson of history is that we defend the peace by being strong. I am proud of the United Kingdom’s 2% defence spending commitment. We have obligations in the alliance, which we meet.
I recently had the privilege of attending the naming ceremony of HMS Taymar, the latest second-generation River-class ship, on the Clyde. It is a magnificent ship built in the best traditions of Scottish shipbuilding for the Royal Navy, by Scottish engineers, fitters, designers, programmers—a host of highly skilled professionals. The workforce spoke with such pride about their work, and they are fully justified in that pride, because they are making a massive contribution to the security of our country and our servicemen and women who sail in those ships. My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) outlined some of the other things that they do.
Scotland’s contribution to the defence sector and our Scottish servicemen and women are a matter of national pride for all of us. The men and women who serve alongside our service personnel are to be saluted. I will long remember the visit I made in my constituency to people who work for Babcock—mechanics and engineers who had gone to Afghanistan and Iraq to be there with our service people to service their armoured vehicles and to keep them on the road. They must not have their sacrifice traduced by an ideologically driven attack on a proud and vital industry.
Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)
I will call the Front-Bench speakers at seven minutes past five, and Martin Docherty-Hughes may speak until then.
Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)
It is good to serve with you in the chair, Mr Hollobone. It is always good to speak in this place about the valuable contribution made to Scotland and across the UK by the people who work in the defence industry. Their skills and diligence make their contribution to our economy invaluable—let us not forget that Scotland has record-low unemployment—and that is felt well beyond the sector in which they work. I am glad there is agreement across the Chamber on that point. I am thankful to the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Ged Killen) for giving us the opportunity to demonstrate that point of agreement.
From the perspective of the Scottish National party, as we consider the starting point for the Scottish defence industry to move towards an economically and otherwise sustainable future after Scotland’s independence, there is much cause for optimism. I am no pacifist; my brother served in Iraq and in Afghanistan twice, and my nephew is a Royal Engineer. Our Benches are not filled with pacifists, although I cast no aspersions on the voting intentions of those who are.
In my role on the Select Committee on Defence, I have been lucky to visit many defence manufacturing sites in Scotland. I am glad to say that they are all historically rooted in their local communities, but nonetheless are well integrated into the wider European and global economies, with export profiles to match. For me, an independent Scotland operating in the strong framework of the European family of nations, with the broad shoulders of a global, capable trading bloc that already has trade agreements and over half a billion people, should be well placed to build on that position.
The most important aspect of ensuring that we have a sustainable and diverse Scottish defence industry—this is where we might find some agreement—will be the establishment of multi-year defence agreements, or MYDAs. I have yet to hear a single other member of the Defence Committee mention those at that Committee. Used commonly by our allies, MYDAs create a framework agreement among political parties for a common approach to defence procurement that gives security to industry and removes complex and long-term decisions from capricious politicians wedded to short-termism.
With MYDAs of five years or longer, an independent Scotland, which of course is my preference, or indeed the UK, would no longer have to face Governments halving the size of the Type 45 destroyer programme—I will leave it to others to find out which Government did that—or chopping up maritime patrol capability. That capability was discussed at the Defence Committee this morning; we are having to try to get an even older programme from the United States to replace it. Defence Secretaries who seek to sign blank cheques for programmes in the hope of being catapulted into No. 10 would no longer be able to saddle the procurement budget with £15 billion black holes.
The consensus about the excellence and skills of our defence industry employees should be reflected in an ability to work together to ensure their long-term future. Quite simply, the MOD has been used for far too long as a political football. We already know that a steady and reliable pipeline of orders can form the basis of a diversified and sustainable industry.
Earlier this year, I was lucky enough to join my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) on a visit to Thales electronics in his constituency. I was fascinated to see the outstanding tradition of periscope manufacturing being transformed to produce a new generation of optical sensors for the Royal Navy and other customers, including the navy of Japan. Technology designed and developed in Glasgow, with a broad economic reach across the whole of central and western Scotland and with the expertise of a lot of people from West Dunbartonshire, whose shipbuilding heritage is profound—of course, we do not have any shipyards left, but we will leave that for another debate—is used on a whole range of optical sensors for use across the military and civilian fields, not only in the UK but by our allies.
Similarly, SNP Members were delighted by the welcome news that Raytheon, recognising the strength of the skill base in central Scotland, has decided to invest in a new facility in Livingston, primarily to design and manufacture power systems for military and defence radars. Building on a history of excellence in manufacturing in the military domain to provide civilian applications is precisely what this debate is about, as I am sure the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West intended.
Those are examples of multinational companies that have chosen to locate in Scotland because of the skills, quality and work ethic of those who come through our schools and universities. Very few other small states have such a plethora of world-class higher education departments, and we can only hope that the end point of the Brexit process does not dislocate them from common European funding mechanisms. That points to the fact that the common assumption that the strength of Scotland’s defence industry is mainly in the maritime sector may change in the future. These are encouraging developments, and I only hope that the potential development of cyber and electromagnetic capabilities in Scotland leads to much growth and diversification. Again, that was discussed at the Defence Committee this morning.
Let me draw my remarks to a close by reiterating my agreement with most of what was said by other Members, who spoke about the abilities of those who work in the defence sector in Scotland. We are grateful for the contribution they have made and will continue to make to the health of our economy and to our neighbours and allies. Let me reassure them that, as least from my perspective, independence continues to be the best way forward for a sustainable future away from the historical underinvestment by successive UK Governments in defence in Scotland. Finally, we hear much about the 2% of GDP that the UK spends on defence, but Scotland does not get its fair share of that. Perhaps the Minister can tell us why not.
Douglas Chapman (Dunfermline and West Fife) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Ged Killen) for bringing this important and timely debate to Westminster Hall. We on the Scottish National party Benches really appreciate his timing; only last weekend, our party decided to develop a policy of setting in stone a road map for taking nuclear weapons out of Scotland forever.
Critical to developing that road map is establishing how we can have conventional forces in places such as Faslane, Glen Douglas and Coulport. Importantly, we need to use the skills and talents of engineers, scientists, inventors and entrepreneurs to diversify into conventional deterrents, and to put those people’s undoubted abilities to more peaceable uses that help our economy.
Despite promises, troop numbers in Scotland are down and naval shipbuilding contracts have gone unannounced, with consequent job losses in the likes of Rosyth in my constituency and on the Clyde. We have long made the case that the fleet auxiliary ships should be built in Scotland, and that the north Atlantic and the High North should be the bread-and-butter areas of activity for our Navy and Air Force, yet not a single ship of any significant size is based north of the English channel, and the people of Scotland feel exposed to potential threats from the north and the east. In the air, following the demise of Nimrod, we beg and borrow any maritime aircraft we can find from the USA, Canada and Norway until the new P-8s come into service in 2021.
We would like more support for our defence industries, not just to meet the defence needs of today but to help them create the new technologies that will be at the cutting edge of our future defence posture. If we put more money and time into the technology, jobs and skills we have, perhaps we will find better solutions that we can apply as a society.
I was really taken by some of the ideas I picked up on a NATO visit to Nova Scotia earlier this year. The Canadian Space Agency is a leader in technology, and its use of satellites and different information-gathering devices would sit exceptionally well with the scientific reputation of Scotland’s space industry. Canada organised a huge competition to identify the country’s first astronaut, which involved kids in schools, with the aim of boosting their science, technology, engineering and maths activity, and allowing more children to become involved in science and technology. All the provinces involved got behind their local candidate to be the first Canadian astronaut, and that really upped the ante with respect to people’s interest in science and technology. Canada even put a picture of its first astronaut on its $20 bill; every time someone spends one, they are reminded that their country is associated with science and innovation. It is quite amazing what you can do when you have your own currency.
I thought I was going to get an intervention there. Here in the UK, we are going to lose out on £1.2 billion of investment through the Galileo programme as we drop out of the EU. That cannot be good news for anyone. That is the kind of investment we need to take us forward, to enable us to use the skillsets of our graduates and to support our defence industries to diversify into more peaceable activity.
The other area I would like to talk about is cyber-security. There was recently a meeting of cyber-experts at Edinburgh Napier University. Small nations, such as Estonia, have shown the way forward, as they have picked up prizes and accolades for the expertise and innovation they have shown in finding solutions to security problems. Again, leaving the EU puts us in quite a difficult—and weaker—position. Money must be found to retain that research and development to encourage new cyber-products and services to come to market.
I have come hot foot from a meeting in Committee Room 6 at which we were talking about the costs associated with nuclear submarines. I have no doubt that we could use the range of skills and talents involved in building submarines, maintaining the warheads, and so on, to provide us with a better chance of developing economic activity rather than spending it on a weapons system that will never be used.
Stephen Kerr
The reality is that the nuclear deterrent is used every single moment of every single day. It is a deterrent—that is how it works, and it is working really well because we have had peace for a very long time.
Douglas Chapman
That is the line pointed out every time we have this discussion, but it really is time for an adult conversation. The figures in the “Trouble Ahead” report show that £3.5 billion is spent every year on the nuclear deterrent. There are conventional deterrents that we can use, and we must also look at how else we could utilise that money if we were not spending it on nuclear weapons.
Martin Docherty-Hughes
Does my hon. Friend agree that, as was said at the Defence Committee this morning, if we had that £3.5 billion to spend on hybrid warfare—a war that exists—that would be a better deterrent than nuclear weapons, which have no long-term impact?
Douglas Chapman
My hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head. There are huge pressures on the defence budget overall, but the Minister knows that if he had another £3.5 billion to spend every year on conventional weapons and the approach and posture suggested by my hon. Friend, that would put a big smile on his face. Perhaps then we could get some RAF contracts back into Scotland.
Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Ged Killen) on securing this debate on such an important topic to Scotland. He made a number of important points and spoke with great passion about the opportunity for companies such as Thales with its multi-role vehicle programme. I recently visited Thales, which, as the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) mentioned, is located in his constituency. There is the potential to create 180 new jobs in Glasgow. Of course, opportunity is centred not just on that site, because of the importance of the supply chain. For example, Allied Vehicles, which is one of the largest automotive companies in Scotland and is located in my constituency, stands to benefit from participation in that programme if we drive forward the opportunity for automotive development in the defence sector in Scotland. That is just one of the many examples of how we can grow the supply chain in Scotland.
In preparing for the debate, I could not help looking back at the previous few years both in my life and career and in politics. Having worked at BAE Systems on the Clyde and at Scottish Enterprise, where I was part of the team that developed the aerospace, defence, marine and shipbuilding strategy with the industry leadership group, I know the role that a thriving defence sector can play when it is given not only resources but political backing. The importance of that was spelled out by the work of the ADMS strategy, which identified that 38,408 people are employed across 825 companies in the sector, and that there are £5.5 billion of sales a year, generating £1.7 billion in gross value added, from which there is an annual tax revenue of £540 million to the Scottish economy. That is a huge benefit to the Scottish economy. Sadly, the resources and political backing are not fully met by the Government. Political ideology seems to have blighted the clear economic opportunities provided by the defence sector.
Hugh Gaffney (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)
I apologise for being late. Does my hon. Friend agree that the process for giving out defence contracts is fundamentally flawed?
Mr Sweeney
I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. As we are discussing the defence industry in Scotland, we must express the Opposition’s frustration that no one from the Scotland Office is present to answer for the Government. That crystallises the Opposition’s belief that the Secretary of State for Scotland is not providing the political backing that Scotland needs. I cast no aspersions on the resilient efforts of the Minister, with whom I often enjoy batting back and forth across the Dispatch Box, but it is a pity that the Secretary of State for Scotland could not be here. I will discuss that later in my contribution.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West outlined, the defence sector in Scotland takes many shapes and forms, from shipbuilding to the aerospace industry, with exceptional talents. Unfortunately, they are not being enabled to flourish as they should. There is a clear absence of an industrial strategy, and given the engineering expertise that can be found across the whole defence sector, it should be at the heart of any industrial strategy. The Government do not seem to appreciate that, and they will undermine the integrity of the defence sector in the near future if they do not rapidly get to grips with it.
If we take the obvious example of shipbuilding, which is easy for me as I worked in the industry, we see that the Government’s approach to the fleet solid support ships contract is nothing short of absurd. The decision not to factor the socioeconomic value of defence contracts into the procurement process is economically illiterate and flies in the face of common sense. The Minister and I have batted this back and forth, as I mentioned, and I am sure that in a few minutes he will tell me that it is all about value for money for the taxpayer. However, that argument falls apart because the contract’s socioeconomic value is not factored in at the procurement stage. The reported cost of the contract is £1 billion, but as studies such as those by the GMB union estimate, keeping the contract in the UK would secure up to 6,500 high-paid, high-skilled jobs, including almost 2,000 shipbuilding jobs that pay about 45% more than the average UK salary. Just think of the difference those jobs could make to the UK economy and to communities across Scotland.
The GMB has estimated that the contract would return about £285 million to the Exchequer in the form of taxes, national insurance contributions, lower social security payments and so on. If we built FSS ships in the UK, it would contribute to the nation’s prosperity. In fact, there would be a direct tax and national insurance return to the Treasury of up to £415 million—20% of the contract cost, which represents a bargain.
Data from other countries indicates that naval shipbuilding has a multiplier effect of 1.35, with £1.35 generated in long-term economic benefits for every £1 spent. Therefore, the UK benefit from a programme cost of £1 billion would be £1.35 billion. Having those ships built overseas would simply hand the benefit to someone else—that is probably why they are so eager to bid. Perhaps we should take a leaf out of their book and, at the Government’s discretion, ensure that those ships are built in the United Kingdom without competition—or, at the very least, ensure that the UK consortium wins the contract. That would secure jobs for the future.
At Rosyth, there is a gap between the completion of HMS Prince of Wales later this year and the expected refit of HMS Queen Elizabeth in 2030. The contract for the fleet solid support ships could ensure that the shipyard runs at smoother capacity during that timeframe. However, as I have said, the Government’s economic illiteracy could well prevent that from happening, leading to much greater inefficiency and costs down the line. I am sure the people of Fife will not let them get away with that. The Government are keen to celebrate the continuous at-sea deterrent, but I would much rather see continuous in-shipyard building across the country. We would far rather celebrate that.
That brings me to the fact that there is clearly no wider industrial strategy not only for the defence sector but for manufacturing as a whole. To use Fife as an example, the Government are refusing to keep the FSS contract in the UK. At the same time, not even 10 miles away, the BiFab yards in Burntisland are sitting there idle because of a lack of contracts. That is another example of the Government’s complete and utter short-sightedness.
Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)
Order. The hon. Gentleman is over his time and the Minister must respond to the debate, so he needs to bring his remarks to a close.
Mr Sweeney
I shall steer it into port forthwith, Mr Hollobone.
The Government have spent the past few months saying how wonderful it is that this offshore wind deal has been signed, but we are not seeing the benefits spin off. Other countries are clearly benefiting from that, through state aid deals. Many references have been made to opportunities in the space sector, but yet again the Government have not convinced us about what they are doing.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West again for securing the debate. I have shown what a Labour Government would do with a coherent strategy. I look forward to hearing the Minister address the key points raised, including the need for a more robust defence industrial strategy to maximise the economic opportunities.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Stuart Andrew)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Ged Killen) on securing the debate and for the tone of it. My hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Stephen Kerr) is right that it has been a considered debate about how we might diversify the defence industry in Scotland.
Before I address some of the specific points that have been raised, I want to emphasise the importance of the UK’s defence industry, both in delivering world-class military capabilities to our armed forces and in contributing to the UK economy. Last year’s report into the contribution of defence to UK prosperity by my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr Dunne) showed that defence benefits every single part of the United Kingdom. It is a sector with an annual turnover of £22 billion supporting some 115,000 jobs. Scotland shares in that national success by benefiting directly from every pound spent on our defence, which is in itself the biggest defence budget in Europe. The report highlighted the range and diversity of the defence industry across the whole of the UK, including in Scotland, and the UK Government’s support for the defence industry in Scotland.
Last year, defence spend with industry in Scotland amounted to £1.65 billion, supporting some 10,000 jobs and equivalent to £300 per capita, which is above the UK average. The hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes) said that Scotland wants its fair share, but as a Yorkshire MP I would say that £300 per head in Scotland compares very favourably with the £60 per head that we get in Yorkshire and the Humber. I think it is we who want our fair share.
Martin Docherty-Hughes
There is a difference between a nation and a region, clearly.
Stuart Andrew
There are many Yorkshire people who would argue very differently.
We invest in shipbuilding in Scotland to maintain world-class capabilities for our Royal Navy, recognising the incredible expertise of the Scottish shipbuilding sector. With a history that dates back more than 150 years, it has long been the envy of the world and today remains a global leader. As we have heard, in the past few years Scotland has played a major part in the building, assembly and successful delivery of HMS Queen Elizabeth, the most powerful surface vessel in British history. The MOD has also placed a £3.7 billion contract to build the first three state-of-the-art Type 26 global combat ships on the Clyde, where all eight will eventually built. The first of these City-class frigates has been named HMS Glasgow and the last will be HMS Edinburgh. Coupled with our order for five offshore patrol vessels, this work will sustain some 4,000 jobs in Scottish shipyards and throughout the supply chain until the 2030s. No other industry in the UK can boast such a pipeline of future work.
Many other businesses are investing in Scotland, and I have heard many people congratulate and praise them. They include Babcock, BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, Leonardo, Thales, Raytheon and QinetiQ. Denchi Power is an innovative smaller company, based in the far northern coastal town of Thurso in Caithness, which from its factory overlooking the beautiful islands of Orkney provides much of the essential advanced battery and charging technology and subsystems for the UK’s combat radio systems. These companies demonstrate the diversity of size and geography of the Scottish defence supply chain.
In the air, Leonardo manufactures state-of-the-art radar systems in Edinburgh. I had the great privilege of seeing some of the fantastic work it is doing there, and it is world beating. We want to see more of that as part of the combat air strategy. At RAF Lossiemouth, work has commenced on a new £132 million strategic facility co-funded by the MOD and Boeing. Up to 200 local jobs will be created at the peak of construction and we expect over 400 new jobs in the operation, once the P-8A fleet is based there permanently.
On land, companies across Scotland have provided and continue to logistically support high-technology subsystems on the Army’s critical warfighting platforms. These include Challenger 2 main battle tanks, Warrior infantry fighting vehicles, Foxhound patrol vehicles and the new AJAX reconnaissance fleet. The hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Sweeney) asked for an update, and I can tell him that there is an ongoing competition on package 2 between the two contenders, and we are waiting for their revised bids, which we expect to have soon. The winner will be announced later this year. As it is a live competition, there is not much more I can say at this stage, but it is ongoing.
It is right that there is more that we can do, and I am absolutely determined that we do it. Scotland also benefits from the defence innovation initiative. The Defence and Security Accelerator finds and funds exploitable innovation to support UK defence and security quickly and effectively. It brings together the private sector, academia and Government organisations to find innovative solutions to some of the challenging problems facing defence. In the last year, DASA has launched 14 new themed competitions and run five cycles to open call. It has received nearly 800 proposals from over 480 organisations; some 228 proposals have been funded, of which over half are from small and medium-sized enterprises, with over £36 million of funding allocated. DASA’s competition events and outreach work are supported by a team of regionally focused innovation partners. This year DASA has been building relationships in Scotland and liaising with Scottish Enterprise, Textiles Scotland and the Universities of Glasgow, Strathclyde and St Andrews, to name but a few.
We also heard about space; Scotland has a great opportunity in that sector. Scotland is developing innovative defence technologies in that area, which is one reason that the Government’s flagship cyber-security event was hosted by the National Cyber Security Centre in Glasgow last week. Raytheon, which I met this morning and which specialises in the development of cyber-technologies, has recently announced new investment in a hi-tech manufacturing facility in Livingston, as we heard in the debate, as part of the diversification of its portfolio and its investment in British jobs. That is exciting news that will build on the support that it already gives.
More broadly, the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West is right that space funding is an area that we need to develop carefully and take every possible opportunity from. That is why our space strategy, setting the direction for the defence space sector, will be published shortly. I regularly meet companies across the country, including many in Scotland, to talk about the space sector. I can assure hon. Members that it is something we are taking very seriously, because we know it will provide a great deal of opportunity in the future.
On 14 March this year the Defence Secretary reaffirmed his commitment to increasing defence’s contribution to UK economic growth, setting out a new package of measures to drive productivity and innovation in the sector. We held prosperity conferences and SME workshops, and we want to engage with as many people as possible. Many Members who have an interest in defence have arranged for me to meet businesses. I am happy to do that because we want to engage with as many of them as possible, so that we can take advantage of what they offer for the security of our nation, and so that every part, including Scotland, benefits from the wider prosperity that defence spending can bring.
Ged Killen
It is a pity that the Minister’s response was cut short, not least because I was on the edge of my seat waiting to hear what he had to say about the FSS issue that has been raised several times by Members in the debate.
As the Minister says, this has been a considered debate. I am not sure what progress we have made, but we have at least been able to give some of the issues an airing. I am pleased that the Minister acknowledges the need for more to be done and recognises the opportunities, particularly in the space sector. I thank hon. Members for their attendance and participation, and you, Mr Hollobone, for chairing the proceedings.
I passionately want shipbuilding to remain a mainstay of the defence industry in Scotland, but I want it to be one of many mainstays as we move towards a defence environment that is increasingly dominated by information gathering technologies and intangible assets. There is much for us to be proud of when it comes to Scotland’s defence industry, but if we are to future-proof it and realise its untapped potential, we need smart investment decisions, long-term thinking and a focused mission-oriented approach to diversifying it.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved.
That this House has considered diversification of the defence industry in Scotland.
Written Statements
(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Pubs Code
(5 years, 7 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Kelly Tolhurst)
The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) will today begin the statutory review of the pubs code (the code) and the pubs code adjudicator (PCA) through the launch of an invitation to all those with an interest to feed in their views and experiences of the operation of code and the effectiveness of the PCA.
Pubs are a vital part of communities across the country. The Government have been supporting them through freezing beer duty, cutting business rates for many pubs and supporting community pubs through changes to planning law and by funding Pub is the Hub’s pub diversification work.
The establishment of the pubs code was provided for by the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 (“the Act”) and is set out in the Pubs Code etc. Regulations 2016. The code governs the relationship between large pub owning businesses and their tied tenants, giving tenants certain rights, including the right at certain times to exercise a “market rent only” option, under which their rent is set at the market level and they are no longer required to buy products from their pub owning business.
The pubs code adjudicator (“PCA”) was established by the Act and is appointed by the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. The role of the PCA includes giving advice and guidance; the investigation of non-compliance with the code; where non-compliance is found, requiring publication of information, imposing financial penalties or making enforceable recommendations; and arbitrating disputes under the code.
Section 46 of the Act requires the Secretary of State to review periodically the operation of the pubs code and section 65 of the Act requires the Secretary of State to review periodically the adjudicator’s performance. The review will look at the period from the establishment of the code and the PCA to 31 March 2019.
The invitation to submit comments and evidence will run for 12 weeks and can be accessed through gov.uk (https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/pubs-code-and-pubs-code-adjudicator-statutory-review). Stakeholders have until 22 July 2019 to respond. Following this, BEIS will analyse the responses and other evidence as set out in the terms of reference. A report on the findings of the review will then be published as soon as practicable and laid before Parliament by the Secretary of State.
The terms of reference for the pubs code and PCA reviews will today be placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
[HCWS1529]
British Indian Ocean Territory
(5 years, 7 months ago)
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The Minister for Europe and the Americas (Sir Alan Duncan)
Further to my written statement of 26 June 2017 (HCWS10), on 25 February the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an advisory opinion on the legal consequences of the separation of the Chagos archipelago from Mauritius in 1965. We were disappointed that this matter was referred to the International Court of Justice, contrary to the principle that the Court should not consider bilateral disputes without the consent of both states concerned. Nevertheless, the United Kingdom respects the ICJ and participated fully in the ICJ process at every stage and in good faith. An advisory opinion is advice provided to the United Nations General Assembly at its request; it is not a legally binding judgment. The Government have considered the content of the opinion carefully, however we do not share the Court’s approach.
As outlined in the previous written ministerial statement, we have no doubt about our sovereignty over the Chagos archipelago, which has been under continuous British sovereignty since 1814. Mauritius has never held sovereignty over the archipelago and we do not recognise its claim. We have, however, made a long-standing commitment since 1965 to cede sovereignty of the territory to Mauritius when it is no longer required for defence purposes. We stand by that commitment.
The joint United Kingdom-United States defence facility on Diego Garcia helps to keep people in Britain and around the world safe. For nearly 40 years the facility has helped the United Kingdom, United States, other allies and our regional partners, including Mauritius, combat some of the most challenging threats to international peace and security, including those from terrorism, organised crime and piracy. The facility also remains ready for a rapid and impactful response in times of humanitarian crisis in the region. These functions are only possible under the sovereignty of the United Kingdom.
As the Foreign Secretary confirmed to PM Jugnauth on 27 April 2019, Mauritius is a valued friend, trading partner and member of the Commonwealth. We are fully committed to our bilateral relationship and also want to deepen and intensify engagement with Mauritius. With regard to the very important matter of the Chagossians we are continuing our work to design a support package worth approximately £40 million, to improve Chagossian livelihoods in the communities in Mauritius, the Seychelles and the UK where they now live.
I have placed a copy of the advisory opinion in the Libraries of both Houses.
Attachments can also be viewed online at: http://www. parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statement/written-statement/Commons/2019-04-30/HCWS1528.
[HCWS1528]
Infected Blood Support Scheme
(5 years, 7 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Jackie Doyle-Price)
Today the Government have announced their intention to increase the financial support for beneficiaries of the infected blood support scheme in England, administered by the NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA).
This follows a meeting on 21 January 2019 between myself, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, the infected blood inquiry secretariat and affected beneficiaries where I committed to looking at where further improvements might be made to the support provided by the existing infected blood scheme.
In this announcement, we have set out our plans for a major uplift in the financial support available to infected and affected beneficiaries of the infected blood support scheme in England. The current annual cost of the scheme is estimated at £46.3 million per annum and we expect this will increase to over £75 million to provide for these uplifted payments.
The level of support provided to infected beneficiaries will increase. In addition, the upper threshold level of household income currently used to means-test support provided for the bereaved will also be substantially raised allowing more bereaved beneficiaries to be eligible for additional support from the scheme.
All beneficiaries will be sent a letter by NHSBSA this week setting out the details of the changes and the impact they will have on them. This detailed payment information will also be made available on NHSBSA’s website. All new payments will be backdated to 1 April 2019.
I have also announced my intention to reach out to the devolved administrations to look at how we might provide greater parity of support across the United Kingdom. I will update hon. Members on these conversations in due course.
Today’s announcement reconfirms the Government’s commitment to providing those affected by the infected blood tragedy of the 1970s and 1980s with a fair and transparent support scheme, one which focuses on their welfare and long-term independence.
It also reaffirms the Prime Minister’s support for the infected blood inquiry, which she ordered in 2017, and which specifically asked for the support given to those affected by infected blood be looked at again. The Government will continue to listen to and co-operate fully with the inquiry.
[HCWS1527]
House of Lords
Death of a Former Member: Baroness Lockwood
The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)
My Lords, I regret to inform the House of the death of the noble Baroness, Lady Lockwood, on 29 April. On behalf of the House I extend our condolences to the noble Baroness’s family and friends.
Defence: British Steel
(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Hoyle
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure the use of more British steel in defence contracts.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Earl Howe) (Con)
My Lords, the Government are committed to supporting the British steel industry and we have policy guidance in place to address any barriers that prevent UK steel producers competing effectively in the open market. We remain engaged with our prime contractors to ensure their support in implementing this. The Government also publish their future pipeline for steel requirements on GOV.UK, which enables UK steel manufacturers to better plan and bid for government contracts.
Lord Hoyle (Lab)
I put it to the Minister that using more British steel would overcome the uncertainty in relation to Brexit. It would bring more prosperity to steel-producing areas and more job security for British steelworkers. Using only 40% British steel on defence projects is far too low. Surely we should be using 100% British steel in all our defence programmes.
Earl Howe
My Lords, looking at recent warship procurement programmes, it is generally true to say that steel has been sourced from abroad in cases where UK steel suppliers have not been able to produce steel to the required grade. If one sets that issue aside, UK producers have generally proved to be very competitive, as demonstrated by the Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier programme, for which 88% of the structural steel was sourced from UK mills.
Lord Trefgarne (Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend anticipate any difference to the defence procurement rules following Brexit?
Earl Howe
My Lords, at the moment, as my noble friend will know, it is a matter of law that all ships not classified as warships are procured through international competition. After we leave the EU, it will be open to us to decide whether to continue with that practice as a matter of policy, but we will be guided in our thinking by the need to strike the best balance between value for money and protecting national security.
Lord Brookman (Lab)
My Lords, steelworkers throughout the country will be pleased that my noble friend Lord Hoyle has tabled this Question. It has been a long time coming round, but it will do so again and again. My noble friend and I have a great deal of respect for the trade union leadership in the steel industry, which covers all the various unions involved. They continually face capacity and manpower issues, a point touched on by my noble friend a moment ago. As a past general secretary of the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation—only five foot five inches tall and I got the job of general secretary of a steelworkers’ union; just imagine that happening today—I know the problems and issues the officials face. They have been facing them for many years because this is not a new situation.
Lord Brookman
I am just coming to my question. I recall a debate held some years ago in this Chamber in which the issue was raised. There were 19 speakers all talking in the same vein as we are today: save the steel industry, look after the jobs and get the people working. Someone came up to me afterwards and said—
Lord Brookman
I am coming to it. He said, “Keith, that was all right, but you must realise that we live in a post-industrial society”. If that is the case, we have a dim future in front of us.
Earl Howe
The noble Lord is absolutely right to point out that the UK steel industry has faced major challenges over the past three to four years, in particular from international competition and high infrastructure costs. Those challenges continue. But steel is one of this country’s foundation industries, which is why we have supported the sector in a variety of ways. As it is an energy-intensive industry, we have made provision to support any additional costs incurred by carbon-reduction policies; we have the industrial strategy challenge fund; we are reviewing business rates; and we were instrumental in securing antidumping measures through the EU. Also, wherever possible, across government we attempt to buy British when it comes to steel.
Lord Sterling of Plaistow (Con)
My Lords, in 2014 I commissioned a special document from the London colleges in connection with the value of defence procurement being sovereign and not overseas. The suggestion I read on Monday—that these three ships will be designated supply ships and therefore should be open to competition—is to my mind complete nonsense. In practice, they are supply ships going into action and have to be armed. Four of the countries of Europe, including France, are building very similar ships, which are designated as warships. It is absolutely ridiculous to consider otherwise. Also, it supports the view on steel, because some 100,000 tonnes of steel is involved. Further to that, it leads to jobs and, on the education side, continues the drumbeat that we need to build up the manufacturing companies. Will the Government re-examine this issue? This is another example of the Treasury being in love with cost and not value for money.
Earl Howe
My Lords, I am afraid I cannot entirely agree with my noble friend. It is undoubtedly true that the Armed Forces benefit from the UK acquiring military capability from an open market. Competitive procurement ensures that we drive innovation and efficiency into our industrial base. UK suppliers’ drive to be competitive in their home market will ultimately secure their prosperity, not only in the UK context but in the global marketplace as well.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
My Lords, in the light of the Financial Times report that the company British Steel is pleading for carbon credit loans to tide it over Brexit, will the Minister explain what efforts are being put into defence procurement contracts to ensure that steel is being decarbonised as far as possible?
Earl Howe
My Lords, the industrial strategy challenge fund, which I mentioned earlier, is there to help industry drive innovation in its manufacturing processes. As I also mentioned, we have supported the industry with the costs associated with carbon reduction, which can in some cases be substantial. In those two ways in particular, we are doing our best to recognise the challenges that industry faces.
Children’s Rights
(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Massey of Darwen
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to develop a cross-departmental action plan to address the conclusions and recommendations of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child's assessment of the United Kingdom in 2016, in order to ensure that all public bodies act to protect and promote children’s rights.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)
My Lords, we remain strongly committed to delivering a framework of actions across government and with key organisations. We aim to continue to embed the importance of children’s rights in policy-making across Whitehall. We have successfully delivered the majority of actions, including establishing a UNCRC action group and launching a children’s rights training package and impact assessment template across the Civil Service. We are on track to deliver outstanding actions, including extending the UNCRC to Guernsey.
Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)
I thank the Minister for that optimistic response. Does he agree that children’s rights to health, education, justice, security and so on are of supreme importance? Does he further agree that although these areas do not come under one department but go across departments, only the Department for Education has a team of people working on children’s rights? Would it not make sense if every department had a team of people working on children’s rights so that they could talk to each other and develop a coherent plan? We have been criticised by the UN for not having such a plan. Is it not time for action?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, we do not agree with the substantial machinery of government changes recommended by the UNCRC but we work across government all the time. I have to draw on many government departments for most of the answers that I give to noble Lords in this House. We are well joined up and we continue to emphasise that through initiatives such as the Civil Service learning programme which we introduced last year.
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)
Perhaps I may ask my noble friend for some specifics about the actions he mentioned in his first Answer. What exactly is happening and what concrete actions are being taken?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, the civil servants’ guidance that we issued at the end of last year was specifically aimed at supporting civil servants to join up. We created a template for civil servants to enable them to understand the children’s rights impact. We have revised the statutory guidance for working together to safeguard children and we have co-chaired a new action group with the Children’s Rights Alliance for England, CRAE, which brings together all of these issues.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, the Minister will know that the committee has called on the UK to urgently review the asylum policy as the UK is the only country in the EU not to permit unaccompanied refugee children to sponsor their immediate family. Given that the Government are searching for legislation to pad out the parliamentary term, will the Minister speak to his colleagues in the other place to see whether they can make time to give the Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill—which has already been passed in this House—its long-awaited Second Reading?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
I will certainly take the noble Lord’s suggestion back to the department for consideration. Let me reassure noble Lords that the numbers of children becoming looked after from unaccompanied asylum seekers has remained stable over the past three years. Under Section 20 of the Children Act 1989, local authorities have a statutory obligation to provide accommodation for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, the UNCRC states that the best interests of the child must be paramount in all decision making and yet evidence that our Benches are collecting shows that the two-child limit policy is having a substantially negative impact on those families affected by it. In the light of the Government’s obligations under UNCRC, will the Minister undertake to commission independent research into the impact of the two-child limit policy on those families which are affected by it?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
I think the right reverend Prelate might be referring to the limits under the working tax credits. When that provision was brought through last year it was put in place simply to ensure that parents whose financial position had improved did not have a legacy benefit they no longer needed.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, why have the Government refused to introduce a statutory obligation to conduct a child rights impact assessment for every law and policy relating to children, as recommended by the UN committee?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, it is important to remember that we are making huge progress on child poverty generally in this country, and therefore that is where our focus is. We have seen some 650,000 children move out of poverty since 2010.
Lord Hylton (CB)
My Lords, if the number of asylum-seeking children in this country is stable, will the Minister explain why it has not been possible, so far, to take in the number provided for in the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, three or four years ago?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, I will have to seek advice from the Home Office and write to the noble Lord on that.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, the 2017 Conservative manifesto said:
“Britain should be the best country in the world for children”.
Yet, as other noble Lords have said, today the UNHRC’s recommendation on the child’s rights action group or strategy still remains unfulfilled. The same manifesto also said that child poverty would be reduced but, despite what the Minister has just said, it is going in the opposite direction. Adding insult to injury, last year the role of Minister for Children and Families was diminished from Minister of State to Parliamentary Under-Secretary. In the circumstances, how can the Minister come to this House and tell us that the Government are committed to the interests of children?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, I respectfully disagree with the noble Lord about child poverty. A child growing up in a home where all the adults are working is five times less likely to be in poverty than a child in a household where nobody works. In 2010, under the old Labour national minimum wage a person would have taken home £9,200 after tax and national insurance. Today, under the national living wage that person would take home £13,700. That is a dramatic increase for that family.
Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)
I note with concern the Minister’s bipartisan dissent on the UNCRC report. Does he in principle agree with my noble friend Lady Massey of Darwen that the Government should take very seriously the ability to provide the very best for children and children’s rights when they co-ordinate across departments, particularly when dealing with special needs children?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
I agree with the noble Baroness. Indeed, as I mentioned, the framework of actions that we have been taking following the observations by the UN in 2016 have been along those lines. We are working with Guernsey to bring it into the convention, and that should happen in the next few months.
Identity Cards
(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Campbell-Savours
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what further discussions they have had, and with whom, about the benefits of the introduction of identity cards.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, the Government have previously stated that the introduction of identity cards would be prohibitively expensive and would represent a substantial erosion of civil liberties. This remains our position and, as such, we have held no further discussions on the introduction of identity cards.
Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)
My Lords, do not last week’s appalling statistics on the screening out by police forces of up to 80% of crimes such as burglary, mugging, theft, fraud, dangerous driving and even sexual offences ring alarm bells in government despite what the Minister has just said, and suggest that a national review is required of the investigative tools available to the police? Could such a review not consider the benefits of ID cards and protocols for the recording of fingerprints, iris recognition and even DNA, which would greatly help the police in the fight against crime?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
Of course the things the noble Lord mentioned latterly are all tools in the police’s armoury in investigating and dealing with criminals. Incorporating that into an ID card that embraces all those things goes against civil liberties. We believe that identity should be provided for the purpose for which it is needed, not for everything but just for a single event.
Lord Marlesford (Con)
Does my noble friend recollect that I have frequently said that the priority is not so much an identity card as a secure, reliable identity number to take the place of the unreliable, insecure, deeply corrupt national insurance numbers, national health numbers and so on? When will Ministers start to challenge the stubbornness of the Home Office in refusing to consider these issues? We had a disgraceful example of that stubbornness in the debate yesterday, with the point-blank refusal even to consider taking the necessary action to restore the reputation of Sir Edward Heath, which was trashed in Wiltshire.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I am not sure how my noble friend’s two points tie together. He talks about an identity number, and of course a national insurance number is a form of identity number. Certainly it proves a person’s right to work in this country. I am not sure how a separate national identity number would add to the mix; nor am I sure how my noble friend thinks that national insurance numbers are corrupt, unless he is saying that they are used corruptly, but I am sure that the same would also potentially be true of national identity numbers.
Lord Paddick (LD)
My Lords, the police are trialling new fingerprint technology that allows police officers to use their smartphones to identify people in less than a minute if they have a criminal record. Heathrow Airport is introducing voluntary facial recognition instead of passports and boarding passes. Does the Minister agree that identity cards are a bit old hat, as is the legislation to control the use of facial recognition and other biometric recognition, which is in urgent need of attention?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Lord makes a very good point about the new technologies that the police and airports are using. I heard about the trial of facial imagery at Heathrow Airport. Now, every time you go through a gate at an airport, a machine recognises you by your face. However, he is absolutely right that the governance of the use of facial imagery, fingerprints and the new emerging technologies has to be looked at very carefully.
The Earl of Erroll (CB)
Does the noble Baroness’s department have a corporate memory of the fact that during the war we had identity cards for three purposes? Soon after the war, these were extended to around 50 purposes. As a result, we had a bonfire of ID cards in about 1952, for very good reasons. We are not a country that likes being controlled by various authoritarian people.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Earl is absolutely right, and that was at the heart of our reason, in the coalition years, for resisting the idea of ID cards. He will of course know that I do not remember the war.
Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate (Non-Afl)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that the pass I am wearing is a very useful identity card in a sense but that we rely more on the skills of the doorkeepers and the people who know us, rather than this identity card? Would it not be better to have a card that identified the holder with the card? It would then be a biometric identity card and would clearly identify, at a minute’s notice, people coming into the country and people stopped by the police. It would be far better than what we have at the moment. Passports have biometric information on them and we use them, so how do identity cards differ? Clearly, they would help in the fight against terrorism and serious crime.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I disagree with the noble Lord that it would clearly help in the fight against terrorism. As we have seen in Europe, certainly over the last few years, identity cards are widespread but this has not helped in the fight against terrorism. The noble Lord talks about his pass and he is absolutely right: this pass is a specific thing for a specific purpose and, yes, the doormen are incredibly vigilant in the work they do, for which I have the greatest respect. But he describes why identity cards would probably not be a good thing.
Sudan
(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Cox
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their response to recent developments in Sudan.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)
My Lords, since President Bashir’s removal on 11 April, the United Kingdom has engaged with the protest movement, opposition parties and the transitional military council to encourage all to agree a process for a swift and peaceful transition to civilian rule. We are also working closely with international partners and welcome the leadership of the African Union in its clear push for a political transition. Sudan’s long-suffering people expect their leaders to seize this opportunity for change.
Baroness Cox (CB)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his encouraging and sympathetic reply, but is he aware that I visited Sudan 30 times during the war waged by President al-Bashir and witnessed personally the scale of brutality and suffering inflicted on the Sudanese people, while the UK Government allowed his regime to continue its genocidal policies with impunity, to the dismay of the Sudanese people? What are Her Majesty’s Government now doing to help to redeem Britain’s reputation by giving substantive political and humanitarian support to those valiant, peaceful protestors across Sudan who have suffered a brutal response from the military Government, including at least 67 killed, many injured and hundreds arrested?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, of course I recognise the important role that the noble Baroness has played over the years in Sudan. I am sure that we are all grateful for the situation that is now emerging there. As the noble Baroness will know, the United Kingdom has supported Sudan with humanitarian aid to the tune of £30 million, and we continue to target humanitarian aid to specific regions of the country. I assure the noble Baroness that the issue of impunity for those who have committed crimes has been raised at all levels, including with the current transitional military council. We remain committed as a Government to the ICC, and we believe that any indicted criminal under the ICC should be brought to the ICC.
Lord Clarke of Hampstead (Lab)
My Lords, following the street protests—especially those that took place between December 2018 and early 2019—hundreds of people were locked up. Can the Minister tell us if there is any evidence that these people are still incarcerated after the changes that have taken place? Secondly, can he say whether there has been any evidence of maltreatment during their incarceration in custody? I would be grateful if he could answer those two points.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, the noble Lord is quite right to raise that issue. My understanding is that political prisoners have been released by the transitional military council. On the question of what or how they suffered, I am sure that in time their testimonies will be accounted for and appropriate action will be taken. The head of the transitional military council has also emphasised the importance of upholding justice systems within Sudan.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, while we should do everything possible on the humanitarian side arising from these events, as the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, urges—not just in Sudan but throughout the Maghreb, where Algeria and Tunis also spring to mind—can we be careful about the political side? The Minister mentions engagement. Can he and his colleagues bear in mind that our political engagement, involvement and intervention in Libya were not a dazzling success?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, I think we have learned the lessons of previous engagements. As far as Sudan is concerned, my noble friend will be aware that the United Kingdom is one of the troika of nations—together with the US and Norway—which have been leading the diplomatic engagement. Aside from Bashir, we have dealt with other members of the Administration, and I assure the noble Lord that we are working with, for example, the forces of the Declaration of Freedom and Change, which is made up of professionals, trade unionists and other civil society leaders. During the time of Bashir’s regime too, we dealt directly with civil society leaders who have played an important role in ensuring that all communities in Sudan, most notably the persecuted Christian communities, see their rights being restored.
Lord Chidgey (LD)
My Lords, western Governments have supported the forces of freedom and change, but Sudan’s key Gulf lenders back the military council, while African states have called for more time for the army to hand over power to civilians. There are wider issues coming into play, such as Sudan’s support for the Saudi-led coalition war in Yemen, the deepening economic crisis and the call for Sudan to join the International Criminal Court, with the repercussions of that, but surely the priority has to be the ongoing humanitarian challenge. What assistance are the Government mobilising, particularly to address the food crisis and malnutrition in Darfur and the Kordofans? What plans do the Government have to address the expected increase in returnees to South Kordofan and Blue Nile, putting pressure on already stretched resources?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
The noble Lord is right to raise the issue of humanitarian aid. The two regions he mentions are exactly where aid is currently being directed. He mentioned the broader issue of other partners. We are working very closely with the African Union and we have also engaged directly with the Emirati Foreign Minister and the Saudi Foreign Minister, Mr Jubeir, on the situation; my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary has had calls with both of them. It is my understanding that those two countries have already pledged £3 billion of humanitarian aid.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome the statement by the troika saying that the transitional military council must move as speedily as possible to civilian rule. As the Minister knows, transitions can be extended and extended and extended. What is the United Kingdom doing to ensure that this transitional military council remains transitional and that we make every effort to ensure a speedy move to civilian rule?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
I totally agree with the noble Lord: the word “transitional” is key. In our dealings with the African Union, the suggested timeline has been three months. We take encouragement from the new leader of the transitional military council and from the protests that continue to take place. There has been a reaching out: the individuals who were of deep concern to the protest movement have been removed from the military council; and there is direct engagement with the opposition forces. Having visited Sudan and seen the suppression of press freedom and of the freedom of minorities, I think we take great encouragement from the fact that those protests and that engagement continue, and the military has ceased from intervening to suppress the protests.
Baroness Afshar (CB)
My Lords, are the Government aware that everything that Sudan is doing goes directly against the teaching of Islam? As a retired teacher of Islamic law, I can tell noble Lords that Islam recognises women as independent, both financially and personally, and in terms of the decisions they make for themselves and their children. In fact, women are entitled to payment should they choose to breastfeed their children. What the Sudanese Government are doing goes against every conception that Islam has of women; it is anti-Islamic. They really ought to be discouraged and not given any funds.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
I am sure that the noble Baroness is referring to the previous regime. In view of the time, I will just say that there is a Koranic verse, “La ’ikraha fi al-din”, which means that there is no compulsion or coercion in faith. That should be understood not just by the new regime and Government in Sudan but by all Islamic Governments around the world.
Privileges and Conduct
The Senior Deputy Speaker
That the Report from the Select Committee on Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme: Changes to the Code of Conduct (4th Report, HL Paper 335) be agreed to.
The Senior Deputy Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
My Lords, the fourth report from the Committee for Privileges and Conduct, Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme: Changes to the Code of Conduct, has its genesis in the autumn of 2017 when allegations surfaced in the media about inappropriate behaviour and a culture of bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct at Westminster. A great deal of work has been done since then by politicians, officials and employee organisations on a cross-party and bicameral basis. This led to a new independent complaints and grievance scheme for Parliament, including a behaviour code which sets out the standards of behaviour expected of everyone working on the parliamentary estate.
The House of Lords Commission agreed that the independent complaints and grievance scheme, or ICGS, and the new behaviour code,
“would meet the clear need for a new approach to dealing with bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct both on the Parliamentary Estate and in the course of parliamentary duties elsewhere”.
The Lord Speaker, the chair of the commission, asked the Sub-Committee on Lords’ Conduct to consider how to integrate the ICGS with the Code of Conduct for Members of the House of Lords, the Guide to the Code of Conduct and the Code of Conduct for House of Lords Members’ Staff; and how the proposed independent reporting and investigatory service can best sit with existing procedures for investigating breaches of the codes.
That is the task we were given. The report before the House sets out proposals for amending the Code of Conduct, the guide to the code and the code of conduct for Members’ staff to incorporate the requirements of adherence to the behaviour code. These proposals are the result of extensive and detailed work by the Sub-Committee on Lords’ Conduct, supported by the noble Baronesses, Lady Anelay of St Johns and Lady Donaghy, as co-opted members, and subsequently by the Privileges and Conduct Committee. We also consulted Members in February and early March. The results of that consultation have informed our proposals.
There is a clear need for specific and appropriate processes for reporting and investigating complaints of bullying, harassment or sexual misconduct. Those processes must work fairly and effectively for Members and complainants, and provide appropriate support for both. Those processes must draw on the growing evidence base on best practice for addressing such behaviour. The package of changes set out in the report and the changes to the codes of conduct in the appendix to the report represent a significant step towards achieving that.
I am sure that noble Lords will have read the report in some detail, but it may help the House if I set out the key proposals. The Code of Conduct should incorporate the behaviour code and make it explicit that behaviour by Members or their staff which constitutes bullying, harassment or sexual misconduct is a breach of the code. The requirement to comply with the behaviour code will be retrospective to 21 June 2017—the start of the current Parliament. Complaints of bullying or harassment can be made to independent helplines, as well as to the commissioner, and complainants and Members can be signposted to sources of advice and support. This requirement will apply to Members who are on leave of absence or disqualified if they are on the Parliamentary Estate or using the facilities of Parliament.
The existing requirement that a Member should act always on their personal honour should be widened to cover a Member’s performance of their parliamentary activities, as well as their parliamentary duties. This wider scope will apply retrospectively.
A new conduct committee should be appointed to take on all conduct functions of the Privileges and Conduct Committee and the Sub-Committee on Lords’ Conduct, both those relating to bullying and harassment and those relating to other breaches of the Code of Conduct. It will have lay members with full voting rights to work alongside the Lords members to hear appeals and oversee the Code of Conduct. This will bring more independence and a valuable external perspective to the committee’s work.
The conduct committee would act as the appeal body for the Member who was the subject of a complaint and, in cases of bullying, harassment or sexual misconduct, for the complainant. Appeals would be restricted to judicial review-type grounds.
The independent House of Lords Commissioner for Standards should continue to investigate complaints to establish whether there has been a breach of the codes of conduct. In cases of bullying, harassment or sexual misconduct, she will have the option of being assisted by independent investigators appointed by Parliament for this purpose.
The role of proposing a sanction should be carried out by the commissioner, rather than the conduct committee. This is another step forward in making the process more independent of Members.
Reports from the conduct committee relating to the behaviour of individual Members, including those imposing sanctions, should be decided by the House without debate. We recommend a new Standing Order to make that clear.
There are a number of proposals intended to provide a process better suited to dealing with complaints of bullying or harassment. These include removing the expectation that a complainant should raise the complaint with the Member in the first instance, and new provisions on protecting the identity of the complainant and the Member complained against.
This report is not intended to be the final answer. There are Members who wish us to go further and faster in delivering a system more or wholly independent of the House. That is for the proposed new conduct committee to consider, particularly in light of the report of the independent inquiry into bullying and harassment in the House of Lords, led by Naomi Ellenbogen QC, expected in July. These proposals are an important step towards improving our processes and delivering appropriate independence for dealing with complaints of bullying and harassment. They will keep the House of Lords in step with the new approach taken across Parliament. I hope that the House will support them. I beg to move.
Viscount Hailsham (Con)
My Lords, as some noble Lords will know, last December I participated in the debate on the report on Lord Lester. Since then, I have submitted a very full memorandum to the committee chaired by the noble Lord who just introduced this Motion, so my views are available to anybody who wants them. Therefore, I am sure I will be forgiven if I speak very briefly and confine myself to but three issues.
First, the fourth question in the report, and the one left over, is: should we make the process for investigating and determining complaints against Members more, or entirely, independent of the House? My answer to that is an emphatic yes. Perhaps I might make a declaration and say that for the last nine years or so, I have been exclusively concerned as a legal practitioner as a legal adviser to the regulatory panels that regulate the conduct of doctors, nurses, midwives, social workers and healthcare professionals. Your Lordships might think that I am a bit set in my ways, but they certainly inform my conclusions.
I accept entirely that our procedures must not deter complainants from coming forward, but we must not put in place a process that is unfair to a respondent Peer or one that does not accord with the principles of natural justice. An adverse finding against a Peer is a very serious matter for that individual. Inevitably it will cause damage, possibly irreparable, to their reputation. The sanctions, expulsion or long suspension should be viewed in the same light as sentences imposed by criminal courts, or the suspension or strike-off orders imposed by the regulatory authorities.
Your Lordships will know that most regulatory authorities operate under procedures established by Parliament and supervised by the appellate jurisdiction of the courts. In summary, the processes are very similar to those that prevail in the courts and, in particular, require proper discovery of evidence, the entitlement to full legal representation and the hearing and cross-examination of all relevant witnesses. I believe that any process we create must be similar to the processes we require of all the regulatory regimes with which I am associated.
My conclusion is that the role of the commissioner should be confined to investigating the complaint, establishing whether there is a prima facie case and regulating the interlocutory procedure. The commissioner should be the prosecuting authority but not the ultimate judge of fact or the decider of sanction. The determination as to fact and the recommendation as to sanction should be matters for an independent tribunal presided over by an experienced legal practitioner. The respondent Peer should be entitled to legal representation, and that representative should be entitled to cross-examine the relevant witnesses. I do not agree with the rejection of the right of cross-examination, as set out in paragraph 45 of the report.
I turn secondly and briefly to the new conduct committee. It is essential that, from the initial hearing, there should be a proper right of appeal and I agree in substance with the provisions set out in paragraph 53 of the report. I accept that the powers of the committee should be essentially the same as those that arise in judicial review and should not, in the generality of cases, involve a rehearing of the facts. I would, however, give the committee an overarching power to quash a finding on the facts, where the interests of justice so require it. However, I disagree with the report’s recommendation on the composition of the committee. The lay element should be in the majority. All members should be voting members but the committee should be chaired by a senior legal figure, not necessarily one serving in this House.
Thirdly, I want to address briefly the role of this House. That is identified as the second question in the report, about whether this House should play a wider role. To that I answer an emphatic no, for two reasons. First, it is difficult to avoid a conflict of interest. It is thoroughly unseemly for Peers who know the respondent Peer to intervene on his or her behalf. Secondly, and differently, the committee or independent tribunal that first considered the matter will inevitably know a great deal more about the facts and the documents than any Member of this House could reasonably expect to.
Our stated objective, as set out in the guide on conduct and in the report itself, is to ensure that allegations made against Members are handled in a way that accords with the principles of natural justice and fairness. I do not believe our present procedures achieve that. My conclusion is that we should do away with the inquisitorial system presently in place and adopt a system similar to that which Parliament has imposed on all the regulatory regimes with which I am familiar. I do not recognise any reason of principle or procedure for according to Members of this House a different—I would say less fair— system of regulation than that which this Parliament has imposed by law on all professionals with whom I have worked, and within all the jurisdictions with which I am familiar. Accordingly, I hope we will look again at these procedures. I see that this is contemplated in the report introduced by the noble Lord, Lord McFall, and I welcome that fact.
Lord Pannick (CB)
My Lords, the reforms proposed by the committee, as helpfully outlined by the Senior Deputy Speaker, will be a distinct improvement on the current system. No one who participated in the debates in November and December on the conduct of Lord Lester, or who listened to those debates, could think it was a satisfactory way for the House to assess the conduct of one of its Members. I entirely agree with the comments of the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham.
The committee is, in my view, right to recognise that there should be a new conduct committee with lay members to hear appeals from the commissioner and to vary any sanctions. My primary concern about the report is that it does not secure a sufficiently independent determination of complaints. A new conduct committee consisting of five Members of the Lords and four lay members will simply not command public confidence because it is not independent of the House. It is easy to predict what will happen if the commissioner makes a finding of a breach of the code and the new conduct committee then overturns that decision by a narrow majority, with all or most of those members who are Lords voting in favour of the relevant Peer. It is inevitable that the House will be strongly criticised and that its reputation will suffer. It will inevitably be said that the Members of the Lords are looking after one of their own. The very fact that the Members know that there would be such criticism will make it very hard for them to assess fairly the conduct of the relevant Peer and exonerate him or her if they think it right to do so.
The only system that can command public confidence and be fair, to both the complainant and the accused Peer, is a wholly independent one with appeals from the commissioner going to a panel composed exclusively of lay members with, I suggest, a retired Court of Appeal judge as the chairperson. I entirely recognise that some Members of the House will find it very difficult to give up their power in this way, but we need to do so if our complaints system is to command confidence and respect.
Paragraph 12 of the report mentions, as did the Senior Deputy Speaker, that Naomi Ellenbogen QC has been appointed to advise on bullying and harassment and is expected to report this summer. She is a much-respected figure in this field and paragraph 21 says that it would be prudent to await her report before deciding whether there is a need for greater independence on the conduct committee. I am happy to go along with that and very much hope that Ms Ellenbogen will see the force of the case for independence and report accordingly.
I will comment briefly on two other matters. The first is the role of cross-examination, mentioned by the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham. Paragraph 45 of the report says that cross-examination is unnecessary because the commissioner,
“can undertake a highly effective and rigorous testing of the evidence in a less confrontational style”.
It is exceptionally difficult for the same person to be both inquisitor and judge. There may not be many of them, but in cases where the commissioner has to decide who is telling the truth, her difficult task—and it is difficult—would be much easier if she listened while someone else asked the penetrating questions. The committee does not appear to have considered another solution to this problem. In these cases, where the commissioner has to decide who is telling the truth, she should have power to appoint independent counsel to assist her by asking questions of both the complainant and accused Peer, not in a hostile manner but in one that tests the evidence. The process of appointing counsel to the inquiry is a familiar means of testing evidence in other contexts. It works well and some Members of this House have used it when serving as chairmen on inquiries. I hope Miss Ellenbogen will address this point.
Finally, I mention the role of lawyers, as did the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham. I declare my interest as a practising Queen’s Counsel. I find it very disappointing that paragraph 55 of the report seeks to defend the existing prohibition on counsel being appointed by the accused Peer, or the complainant, to speak on his or her behalf before the conduct committee. We are concerned here with decisions that can end a person’s career—that can damage, sometimes destroy, reputations built up over a lifetime, not just for the accused Peer but for the complainant as well. It is rare for a Peer or complainant to be able to represent themselves effectively in such circumstances, given the inevitable emotional strain on them. The task of the committee would be assisted by having the issues presented by a trained professional, rather than by the Peer or the complainant themselves. I hope that Naomi Ellenbogen will advise the committee that the fairness and efficiency of an appeal will be promoted if those involved can appoint counsel to make submissions on their behalf.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, I hope that a non-lawyer can get a word in edgeways, because there are other issues apart from all these legal issues raised incessantly by lawyers, and we have an opportunity as well as a right to raise our own issues. First, however, I commend the work done by the Senior Deputy Speaker and by the members of the committee, who have done a very difficult job very well indeed. I particularly thank the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, and my colleague and noble friend Lady Donaghy, who has discussed this matter with me, for their excellent input.
There are 101 questions arising from the report and I will raise only one—but it is an important one. It has nothing to do with the legal processes—I will leave that to the lawyers. What worries me is that we are looking at this on a bicameral basis, as if everything that applies to the House of Commons applies equally to the House of Lords—and that is not the case; it is a very different situation here. In particular, there is one important difference I want to draw the Senior Deputy Speaker’s attention to. It relates to paragraph 59, which mentions, as the Senior Deputy Speaker mentioned,
“House of Lords Members’ Staff”.
What is meant by that? I would like to have the opportunity to employ people and I certainly would not bully them, harass them or get involved in any sexual activity with them. I would like to be able to do that—
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
No, no—I would like to be able to employ them, not to do that. These Cross-Benchers are on the ball; they pick things up quickly.
I was a Member of the House of Commons for 26 years. We got a special allowance to employ staff in our constituency and in the House of Commons. There are arrangements for employing and paying staff and structures to enable MPs to do that. That is not the case in the House of Lords. So what is meant by, “House of Lords Members’ staff”? A number of Members of the House of Lords have people working for them, but they are paid for by outside bodies, whether it be a film company, an organisation to which they give professional advice or, indeed, their law firm: they are not employed by the House of Lords. Can the Senior Deputy Speaker indicate whether these staff are covered if they are employed by someone else? It is not clear in any way from this whether staff who come in to help Members of the House of Lords but are employed by some other organisation are covered. Some people employ interns. Are interns covered by this? Are they considered to be House of Lords Members’ staff? It needs to be clarified. What about volunteers? I have an excellent volunteer who comes regularly to help me. Is he to be considered under “House of Lords Members’ staff”? Is he covered by this? None of this has been dealt with.
The desire to extrapolate from what happens in the House of Commons to what happens down here has been too strong, and a number of anomalies have arisen. I have raised one of them that needs to be clarified and I hope that there will be answers to these questions—if not now from the Senior Deputy Speaker, certainly before we get the final report from the commissioner, Naomi Ellenbogen. I hope that, before we approve anything finally, these kinds of anomalies and questions will be answered—and I am grateful to the lawyers for allowing me to squeeze in between them.
Lord Thomas of Gresford (LD)
Perhaps I may squeeze in myself after the noble Lord.
The proposed new code is a considerable advance on the existing procedures. It is an excellent proposal that a complaint of bullying, harassment or sexual misconduct should be investigated by independent investigators. The role of the commissioner should be to receive their report and, in the light of that report and any material provided by the Member concerned, to determine whether there are unresolved factual issues. If there are, she may decide formally to question the parties and their witnesses orally in separate interviews or—here I very much agree with the noble Lord, Lord Pannick—to appoint counsel to the inquiry to assist her in that task. If it is a difficult or an extremely sensitive task, it would be appropriate for her to decide to do that.
I regret that the report remains tied to the concept that the offence to be investigated is a “breach of personal honour”. If ever a phrase is redolent of mothballed ermine, that is it. Paragraph 37 explains that,
“the term ‘personal honour’ is ultimately an expression of the sense of the House as a whole as to the standards of conduct expected of individual members”.
It is,
“subject to the sense and culture of the House as a whole”,
which, the report comments, “change over time”. It is somewhat curious, therefore, that the House appoints a commissioner who is by definition independent of the House and has never had the opportunity to imbibe its culture—to breathe in the mothballs—in order to determine whether a Member is in breach of his personal honour. Further, it is equally curious that an appeal should lie to a panel which contains four lay members who are in precisely the same position. If misconduct is alleged against a Member, any charge should set it out in plain language, specifying the time, the place and the date. The findings of the commissioner should establish whether that precise charge has been proved.
I welcome the introduction of four lay members with full voting rights to join the five Peers proposed for the new conduct committee. However, when the conduct committee sits as an appeal panel to hear an appeal brought by a Member, it is my view, along with that of the noble Viscount and the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, that the lay members alone should determine it. Peers will have personal knowledge of the Member and may well be thought, rightly or wrongly, to be subject to unconscious bias one way or the other because of friendship, enmity, political views or personal dislike. In any other tribunal or court, a tribunal member, magistrate or judge would undoubtedly recuse himself or herself if he or she knew the party concerned personally.
The report itself does not suggest that it is the final word on the topic. As noble Lords have said, paragraph 21 recommends that the conduct committee should consider further the question of whether the process for investigating and determining complaints should be more or entirely independent of the House, in the light of the recommendations to be made by the Ellenbogen inquiry.
There is no consideration in the report of the process and procedure of an appeal hearing. In the Lester case I pointed out that the commissioner had herself adopted the role of respondent to the appeal, and referred to herself as such in correspondence. Although she was not called before the Conduct Committee, she provided the committee with a point-by-point refutation of Lord Lester’s case, in support of her own decision. I suggested that that was pretty unique for a person to be involved in an appeal against their own decision. It was never made clear whether she stepped in as a respondent to the appeal by invitation of the committee or on her own initiative.
Some thought should be given to the nature of these appellate proceedings, and a proper process agreed. The appeal panel should also undoubtedly have discretion to permit legal representation for the Member on the appeal, having regard to the complexity of the case, and other factors such as illness. It is positive that the report states that the grounds of appeal should include that the commissioner was plainly wrong in her finding and that significant new evidence has emerged, but it is not clear at the moment whether such grounds are permissible under existing procedures.
Finally, I welcome the decision not to debate the outcome. I thought the proceedings we held were an embarrassment. In my view, the final determination of a complaint should simply be reported to the House, not formally made a decision of the House. It should not be regarded as a proceeding in Parliament, and thereby caught by the paragraph in the Bill of Rights of 1688, which carries the heading “Freedom of Speech”:
“That the Freedome of Speech and Debates or Proceedings in Parlyament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any Court or Place out of Parlyament”.
Every disciplinary process such as this in every other field of life is ultimately subject to the overriding jurisdiction of the High Court, and it would be healthy to make the disciplinary process of Parliament subject to proper judicial scrutiny.
The report is a significant advance, but it is not, as the report and the Senior Deputy Speaker recognise, the end of the story.
Lord Evans of Weardale (CB)
My Lords, I declare my interest in the register as the chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. However, I speak on my own account. I very much welcome the report from the Privileges and Conduct Committee, which seems to be a significant step forward. But, as the Senior Deputy Speaker said, it is a step forward rather than the final step in the whole process. In particular, the increased independence that will be part of the construction of the conduct committee is extremely important. I share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, that we need to continue in that direction and that a minority position for independence may not be satisfactory, particularly when difficult cases are being adjudicated, because public opinion on these issues is moving forward and we clearly need to be in step with it. The proceedings in this House before Christmas were clearly not in step with it, and I am therefore grateful that we will not be revisiting that episode, which I think was probably discreditable to us all.
On the question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, about the bicameral nature of this, we need to recognise that this is a complex series of interlocking pieces of process. Various pieces of process are happening in your Lordships’ House, and a variety of pieces of procedure are happening in the other House. We must bear in mind that this is a totality. We cannot entirely separate what happens here from what happens there, not least because the House of Commons, the other place, is considering the question of non-recent conduct, which is likely to extend back considerably further than is currently proposed in your Lordships’ House. There is a difference there, but of course there is movement between the two Houses, so we may find that procedures in the other place impact on Members here. We need to bear in mind that those are linked issues and, I believe, in the public mind, they would be seen as part of the same issue. Therefore, we need to bear in mind how they are being played at both ends. At the moment, there is of course a considerable difference between the procedures here and those in the other place, even though there is some movement in the direction of co-ordination between the two.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
I agree with what the noble Lord says about working together and agreeing a bicameral core operation. However, things are different. To illustrate the public mind, I was sitting in my office in Millbank House. The phone rang, and someone from a corporate office said, “Could I speak to Lord Foulkes’s diary secretary?”. I said, “You’re speaking to him”. They think we have a whole panoply of members of staff working for us. We need to get over the point that that is not the case.
Lord Evans of Weardale
I entirely take the noble Lord’s point and would welcome having a diary secretary myself, but I do not. It is clear that we do not have identical working procedures at both ends of the Palace. Nevertheless, the principles are the same. We also need to recognise that if there are changes in the procedures in another place, we need to consider how they might impact here and vice versa. We need to make sure that there is visibility in the procedures at both ends. It is not clear to me that there has been quite as much visibility in the recent period as one might from the outside have expected.
I welcome the fact that the new conduct committee will look at and take forward the work that has been done by the Privileges and Conduct Committee so far. I think that we are still some way from reaching a perfect system; I suspect that we will never reach one because there will always be changes both in public expectations and in procedures that need to be reviewed. However, we have been provided with a helpful step in the right direction and I look forward to the new procedures being put in place.
Lord Woolf (CB)
My Lords, I should begin by referring to my interests in the register and stating that I took part in the debates relating to Lord Lester, to which I shall refer in a moment. In that regard, I am pleased to be able to say that I consider Lord Lester a personal friend.
Today we have taken a new look, rightly, at a subject of considerable importance: how this House proposes to tackle conduct that has apparently become more prevalent recently than it was in the past; namely, instances of individuals in a position of power taking advantage of that power to bully, harass and commit sexual misconduct involving individuals in a less powerful position.
It is important that the House should act in accordance with the rule of law and is an example to other institutions—here, I pay recognition to the improvements recommended in the report which we are considering. Undoubtedly, those who had that responsibility have given careful attention to the problems and put forward what they regard as the best proposals that at this stage it is possible to make. Those proposals are certainly to be welcomed as an improvement.
I say that remembering that Lord Lester was successful in the first debate in relation to his conduct but that in the second the position was reversed. That perhaps illustrates the difficulties involved. I am not in the least surprised that those who have spoken before me have made comments which could be regarded as being critical of what is in the report but at the same time have felt it possible to welcome what is now proposed.
After the second debate, I was left with the uncomfortable feeling that Lord Lester did not receive the fair treatment to which he was entitled. In saying this, I have no insight as to his guilt or otherwise. However, irrespective of his position, he remained entitled to a procedure which was fair. Although cross-examination was not an essential requirement in the circumstances in which he was involved, the fact remains, as others have said, that without cross-examination it is very difficult and sometimes impossible to ascertain where the truth lies when two people give different accounts which are wholly unsupported in either case. I was therefore delighted that the House decided to hold an inquiry conducted by an eminent QC into the procedures which should apply in this type of case.
I was also pleased that the House thought it proper to conclude a process of consultation, although I was surprised that it was restricted to four topics, as noble Lords will see from the top of page six of the report. However, the report also makes it clear that if comments were made outside those four headings, they would be taken into account; indeed, they were. I hope that when Miss Ellenbogen’s report is made available in the summer, as expected, the House responds to it appropriately.
I turn now to the proposals contained in the committee’s report. Like other noble Lords, I wish to identify the ones I regard as particularly important, such as those amending the Code of Conduct and the guide to the code. I emphasise that paragraph 6 of the introduction to the report states that the proposed changes will include,
“a new set of processes for investigating complaints”,
of the type with which we are concerned; namely,
“bullying, harassment or sexual misconduct”.
Paragraph 29 on page 10 states:
“We recognise the clear need to implement specific and appropriate processes for reporting and investigating complaints”,
of the type with which we are concerned. These processes are intended to,
“work fairly and effectively for both members and complainants and provide appropriate support for both … and to draw on the growing evidence base on best practice for addressing such behaviour”.
The proposal I regard as of the greatest importance is that, where appropriate, the commissioner should be supported by a team of independent investigators appointed by Parliament, and that the commissioner may delegate any of her investigatory functions to them. The significance of this proposal—I believe I share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, here—is that it will produce a situation similar to that regularly adopted in public inquiries to appoint a counsel to the inquiry. A single commissioner acting alone may find it almost impossible to find the truth in this sort of case. The report does not indicate who the independent investigators will be, nor the qualifications they will have. However, I am prepared to rely on the fact that the commissioner is responsible for conducting a full investigation on behalf of the House, and that the House will ensure both that those who are appointed are fully qualified to do so and that the truth of the complaint can be assessed quickly. If I am right in making this assumption, my greatest reservation about the procedure in its unamended form is largely met because, for example, legal advisers can assist in conducting cross-examination if they wish to do so. I cannot see anyone objecting to questioning in that form.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
I wonder whether the noble and learned Lord understands that none of the investigators will be lawyers.
Lord Woolf
I am grateful to the noble and learned Baroness for drawing that to my attention but it is not stated in the report.
Lord Woolf
Perhaps the Senior Deputy Speaker can confirm that. If that is the case, I suggest that it is a mistake; I hope that the investigators will be experienced. They may not have the particular qualifications of a barrister, but they may be familiar with legal proceedings and able to play a prominent part in the informal domestic forum I hope will exist in respect of these complaints. Even if they are not lawyers and they do not have previous experience, in time they would develop it by doing the very job that a lawyer often does. The important thing is that the commissioner should have skilled assistance because she is not meant to do everything herself. She should be able to delegate, as is proposed in the report.
The other matter I will refer to is the powers of appeal. As has been said, they are similar to those on judicial review. Those who have experience of judicial review will know, as I do very well, that it can be an excellent form of appeal, especially in respect of tribunals of the sort which are involved in investigating these complaints. The powers on judicial review are attuned to the purpose of ensuring that the role of justice is properly protected and it is of significance that reference to judicial review is made on the final page of the report. It is right that that should be so.
For the reasons I have indicated, I hope that this will mark a real improvement. I am sure that what existed before this report should not be allowed to continue any longer if that can be avoided.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns (Con)
My Lords, I agree entirely with the final remarks of the noble and learned Lord. I always listen to the lawyers in this House. I have nothing against lawyers—indeed, how could I since I have been married to one for 49 years? I listen to him too. It is important that we are able to draw upon the expertise of lawyers across this House, and that has been the opportunity afforded to us today.
I was, as my noble friend on the Front Bench taking the place of the Senior Deputy Speaker for the moment has said, co-opted to the committee to support the discussions. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, I did that to the best of my ability. We were not privy to any discussions about existing cases. I pay tribute to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, for his skill in managing what was a complex, significant and very sensitive discussion. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, said, it is important that we do not continue as we are and that we take account of where the system has not worked to the best ability. That is because the best ability is a system that provides reassurance for those who wish to bring complaints against Members of this House and protection for Members of this House who do not, as I certainly would not, wish to face vexatious and unfounded claims made against us. That is a difficult challenge to face and I believe that the report before us takes a significant step forward in helping us to meet that challenge. It has already been mentioned that a report by an eminent QC is to be published this summer and that we would take account of it at that stage. We cannot predict its outcome. We can deal with what we have, and that is based upon our own experience and indeed the consultation which has taken place.
I would like to refer in a little detail to two matters, but since one of them, cross-examination, has been widely covered, I hope to be briefer than otherwise I might have been. The first matter concerns the behaviour code and what defines the behaviour that comes within it. Paragraph 35 of the report proposes a widening of the definition of activity that would fall within the code. The existing requirement says that,
“a member should act always on their personal honour”,
when it applies to a Member’s,
“performance of their parliamentary duties”.
This paragraph extends the requirement to cover the performance of “parliamentary activities”. I very much welcome it, because it would, for example, cover behaviour while parliamentarians are on visits overseas connected with these activities.
Baroness Deech (CB)
My Lords, I declare an interest, having spent 30 years either supervising or carrying out complaints-handling as an independent adjudicator for students, for the NHS, for staff at Oxford University and regulating the Bar.
I agree with every word spoken by the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, and my noble friend Lord Pannick. I am afraid that the report, although well intentioned, is going in the wrong direction. I hope the House will suspend action on it until we receive the results of the further, and perhaps final, investigation by Naomi Ellenbogen QC. I say that because there is no doubt that in modern circumstances one has to have a totally independent outside investigation of complaints made in a body such as this, in the NHS, in universities, at the Bar or anywhere else like that. Therefore the committee should have at least a majority of lay members and preferably it should be 100% non-Peer. None of us wants to go again through the excruciating embarrassment and possible miscarriage of justice that occurred last December when we were looking into the case of Lord Lester.
I wish to raise a few questions on definition. First, the report needs to define natural justice. Lawyers take it for granted that everyone knows what natural justice is but that is not the case—even lawyers disagree—and it was in part the interpretation of natural justice that come to the fore when we discussed the case of Lord Lester at the end of last year.
Secondly, we need to know what is personal honour. Is it the same as bringing the House into disrepute or is it to correspond with the seven principles of good behaviour in public office? It is important that we remember the criteria on which Peers are appointed—at least Cross-Bench Peers—by the House of Lords Appointments Commission. They have to be vetted, sign up to, understand and abide by the seven principles—selfless, honest and so on—of behaviour in public life. We need to know exactly what is included in personal honour and whether it includes, for example, bringing the House into disrepute.
We also need to know exactly what is harassment and whether it includes racism. For example, a meeting could be held in one of the committee rooms in the House, hosted and organised by a Member of the House, which is devoted to racism, the necessity of jihad or something equally unpleasant. All the Members attending will be in favour of that. They will all be signing up by their attendance to some form of discussion of racism or terrorism and yet no one will complain because everyone there is in agreement. It is only outsiders and third parties who would complain that a Member is holding a meeting of that nature. Would that be covered by the code because the report states that only someone who has been offended should be able to complain?
We need further clarification but I hope that we will swiftly move to a state, which must come about sooner or later, where such complaints are determined in the end by a wholly non-Peer committee.
Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)
My Lords, last November we had rather an unedifying debate on the conduct of Lord Lester. After that debate, more than 70 members of House of Lords staff were so strongly moved by it that they put pen to paper and a public letter protesting that their concerns were not being addressed was published in the media. They were so alarmed by what took place here. Noble Lords will recall that the sentiment was expressed that harassment, sexual harassment and bullying were commonplace. How many of us would have known that that was the case? How many of us would even be aware that the staff here felt so strongly that they would come together and publish such a letter? It was quite unprecedented.
I think it was the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, who said that this is a new phenomenon—that staff now come forward because harassment has increased. I disagree. I think staff—women and others—are now much more aware of their rights. They expect to be treated properly and fairly in their workplace. Be they employed by the House of Lords establishment or by individual Peers, they expect to be treated as they would be in any other forum in public life or when employed by any other public body. We have to respect that and rise to that challenge. That is why I support the report of the Privileges and Conduct Committee. It is a positive step from what we have already. I disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, that we cannot agree to this; we simply cannot leave the status quo as it is. It is not acceptable. We have all agreed that it is not acceptable and we need to move forward. This is going in the right direction. It is not perfect but we are waiting for the report in July. I hope that will throw up some more answers to the questions raised by noble Lords around the House this afternoon.
I am concerned that because this is about us as Peers and we sign the Code of Conduct, we are worried about how fairly we will be treated if we come up before a committee following a complaint. Of course we should be worried, but we should have confidence in the system. We are in positions of privilege and power, while the staff who work here are not. It is an unequal relationship, so we must make sure that the most junior member of staff in this place—the intern or the volunteer—has the confidence to make that complaint. As the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, said, of course we must be wary of vexatious complaints, but someone would have to be pretty unusual to want to make a vexatious complaint and go through the kind of scrutiny that a lay person would have to go through. We know that there is underreporting rather than overreporting of these matters. We know from the staff who complained that it is commonplace. How many of them did not feel empowered enough to complain because they did not feel confident that they would be listened to or believed? Whatever we put in place, we must make sure that people who do not have a voice—who do not have access to a QC colleague or the means to employ somebody to defend them—have confidence that they will be treated equally to the Peer who is the subject of that complaint.
In the debates in November and December, the issue of cross-examination kept coming up. We are not talking about a court of law or a legal body. It would be a civil case and a civil procedure. To compare it to a court of law with cross-examination is not comparing like with like. In the previous debate, the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, made a very powerful point when she asked whether we could imagine a very junior member of staff being cross-examined by a leading QC. How on earth would he or she be able to afford to employ a QC to defend him or herself to balance it out? It just would not happen. The idea of cross-examination and testing is not the way forward. Investigating properly is the way forward. That is the way to test evidence: to receive it from both sides and make a decision on it. That is the best way forward. I hope that the House will support the committee. This is an interim report. It is not the final report but, my goodness, it is a step in the right direction compared with what we had before.
I heard what my noble friend and others said about Peers being on the committee. I would have expected Peers on the committee who knew the Peer being complained about to recuse themselves from taking part in this interim report. I could not imagine a situation in which any Peer would try to vote something down when they were clearly very close friends or colleagues of the Peer being complained about, but unfortunately that is what we saw last year in this Chamber in the case of Lord Lester. That was completely improper and it reflected very badly on us. It would never happen in local authorities up and down the country, where you would have to leave the room, never mind recuse yourself. You would not be allowed to take part in any decision that involved anyone who was a member of your family or a friend and so on. I think we were stretching matters last year in doing that, and we did not cover ourselves in glory.
We are moving away from that and going in the right direction. I hope that Members will consider that we want not only a very fair and transparent system but one that is seen to be fair by the public outside, who are scrutinising us more closely than ever. We need to rise to that challenge, so I support the report and I will be very interested in what comes forward in July. I hope we can get to a position where we all have confidence in this House’s procedures.
Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)
My Lords, I always follow very closely the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Hussein-Ece, because she has shown great courage over a few years in a number of contributions, particularly the speech that she gave about the Lester case. However, I profoundly disagree with her.
I also listened to the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, who drew a distinction between the investigatory and the examinational approach to these matters. That is exactly the argument at the heart of what is going on in ICSA. People believe that ICSA will come to the wrong conclusions because of the process that it has adopted in its inquiries. However, that is another matter and it is relevant only in the sense that it deals with sexual offences.
Paragraph 122B on page 44 of the report says:
“When a member is being investigated in relation to allegations of bullying, harassment or sexual misconduct the identity of that member will not usually be made public until the publication of any report at the conclusion of proceedings (see paragraph 122)”,
which deals with it in some detail. I want to know what,
“not usually be made public until the publication”,
actually means. What criteria will govern whether the name of the Member concerned is made public? We are talking here about a person’s reputation, and in the case of Lord Lester the international reputation of a prominent lawyer. My view is simple. We need clear guidance about the circumstances in which the name of a Member will be made public when it may well be that at the end of the inquiry that Member is found to be totally innocent, yet his reputation will have been completely destroyed.
Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)
My Lords, I want to say a few words because, very unusually, I want to express a different view from that of my noble friend Lord Pannick, the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, and my noble friend Lady Deech.
Having taken part in the debates about Lord Lester, I of course recognise that when the House has the responsibility of reaching a verdict on the conduct of one of its own staff or Members and on any sanctions attaching thereto, it is vulnerable to the appearance of conflicts of interest. Quite understandably, this debate has concentrated on the subjects of bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct, which come into the code of conduct for the first time. But we have to remember that the code of conduct is hugely about other matters, not just those three; in fact, paragraphs 10 to 106 are about other matters that reflect the rules of the House.
Breaches of the code of conduct, including those in the future relating to bullying, harassment or sexual misconduct, will often be breaches of the criminal law. In those cases, it is obviously right that the inquiry should be entirely independent. It should be carried out by the police, have lawyers on each side and be subject to the courts of law.
In this case, even with our distaste for bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct, we are talking about something short of breaches of the criminal law. We are talking about the rules of the House. It seems anomalous that, in a self-regulating House, the ultimate decision on those breaches and the sanctions that attach to them should not be a matter for the House itself. I therefore agree with the report, which introduces a procedure in which there is an independent investigation and a committee with a significant element of independent members, but the discipline committee is chaired by a Member of the House and has a small majority of Members of the House on it. When we are talking about the rules of this body, like any other institution, it should ultimately be for this body to decide whether those rules have been broken and what sanctions should attach to it.
I welcome the respects in which the report makes changes. I welcome that it brings in bullying and sexual harassment, and I support the other changes, including the widening of the code of conduct to parliamentary activities, not just parliamentary duties. As I have said, I believe it is right that the discipline committee should have a small majority from the House because that seems consistent with a self-governing House. I also welcome the encouragement to the commissioner to call upon the support of teams of independent investigators to help establish the facts; in the case of Lord Lester, I felt that aspects of the way in which the commissioner carried out her investigation were defective.
One aspect of the report gives me pause—here, I follow the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford—and that is the proposed change to Standing Orders so that a report of the discipline committee is put to a vote of the House without debate. I see the dilemma here. On the one hand, like others, I am anxious to avoid the House getting involved in distasteful debates and votes, as in the case of Lord Lester. On the other hand, it seems that to vote on a question without any opportunity for debate is to go through the formality of obtaining the House’s assent without any reality in the substance; it is, to coin a phrase, “a meaningless vote”. Therefore, like the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, I would prefer that the report of the disciplinary committee be subject to a take-note decision and not to a vote without debate.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I welcome the report. I see it as an important step forward. It is right that a new committee is established and I support that committee including lay members. Whether or not there should be more lay or independent members in due course is a topic for further consideration. I am not sure I support those noble Lords who have argued for complete independence for the disciplinary regime of this House, because it is an important responsibility for us as Members to uphold the House’s reputation by being prepared to take appropriate action when one of us does something wrong. As the noble Lord, Lord Butler, said, it would be a mistake for us to completely delegate responsibility for that to an independent body.
Paragraph 24 of the report mentions a disrepute clause. My position on this does not lend itself to the debate on investigation versus inquisition but, since the report refers to disrepute, I want to take the opportunity to highlight why I think it is important for us as a House to understand that we carry a reputational risk at the moment. If a Member’s misconduct outside this House is so serious that their continuing membership would bring the House as a whole into disrepute, currently we are powerless to act. This is compounded because, being an unelected House, we are powerless to act if a Member in such a situation does not resign. I am talking about disrepute in a way which refers to something happening outside a Member’s parliamentary responsibilities and activities—in another part of their life—but which is extremely serious and becomes public. If that person continued to be a Member of this House, it would bring the whole House into disrepute.
When I was Leader of your Lordships’ House, I spent about a year working on a disrepute clause and was assisted by several noble and learned Lords. This work was presented to the Privileges and Conduct Committee and was accepted by the committee at that time, but it never made it to the Floor of the House. It has remained in abeyance ever since. When making her argument about the need to specify what might constitute disrepute, the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, indicated, as does the report, that it is too difficult to define what would be captured by such a clause—I believe this is one of the reasons why this measure has never become part of our disciplinary actions. However, that somewhat misses the point. We should never have to define what would be caught by such a power. We need to understand that if and when something so serious occurs, we would have the power to act in the way the public expect, precisely because the public do not have the power to act themselves.
I just wanted to note the fact that there is reference to disrepute in the report and that I hope very much that when the new committee is established it will consider this as part of its overall work plan, to strengthen our disciplinary regime.
Viscount Hailsham
The noble Baroness has identified a very considerable problem. It has been addressed by the regulatory authorities, which have a concept of impairment of fitness to practise. In the case of Grant, Mrs Justice Cox gave a very clear indication of what would constitute impairment of fitness to practise. That is a model that this House might care to reflect on, to address the point that the noble Baroness has just made.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
It would certainly be for the committee to consider how to approach this, but I make the point to the noble Viscount and the House more generally that the reason for not having a disrepute clause or the power to act if the conduct of one of us outside this House is so serious that for them to continue as a Member would bring the whole House into disrepute should not be because we have not been able to define specifically what would constitute such action. We should just have—and be able to show to the world outside that we have—that power to act in such circumstances that it is so obvious to us that that is what we should do.
Baroness Deech
The point I actually made was about the difficulty of defining acting on your personal honour. I also remind the noble Baroness, who once had a very senior position at the BBC, that even the BBC, one of our most independent and proud organisations, known around the world almost as much as this House, had a very incestuous complaints-handling scheme. In the end it was handed over to Ofcom, because that is the way things are going. Even the BBC had to accept that.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
The reason why organisations pass responsibility in such circumstances to another body is because they have themselves failed to meet the expectations people rightly have of them. I am arguing that it may be that what some noble Lords have argued for in the context of the specifics of sexual misconduct, bullying and harassment is what should happen. Irrespective of that, it does not remove the need for this House to have the power to act in the circumstances as I have described them.
Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)
My Lords, I think the House will know that for some years now I have had the honour of chairing the sub-committee. I promise I will not say a huge amount. I will first try to nail what I might call a loose point from the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, about Lords Members’ staff. I might have got hold of the wrong end of the stick that he was waving, but on page 57, headed “Code of Conduct for House of Lords Members’ Staff”, paragraph 1 specifically describes the staff to whom these few paragraphs are directed. It applies to,
“staff who have a parliamentary photo-pass or email account sponsored by a member of the House of Lords for the purpose of providing parliamentary secretarial or research assistance to the member, including members’ spouses with an email account”.
If I have missed the point, so be it. No doubt he will pursue that matter later.
As today’s debate as a whole has shown, and as was perfectly apparent from the responses to the consultation process we had a month or so ago, there is room for a huge diversity of views on the huge number of interlocking issues, as the noble Lord, Lord Evans, said, that this report raises. Someone said there are 101 issues—a gross exaggeration: there are many more than that. The fact is that a lot of these questions overlap. Naomi Ellenbogen, Queen’s Counsel, who is, I understand, a member of the Bar Standards Board and is very well regarded, is to report at the end of July. She is hard at work on her report and seeing a number of people; I myself have been asked to see her in a couple of weeks’ time. I hope that one value of this debate is that she will be able to see the House’s views on a number of questions that have been raised.
There are one or two absolutely fundamental questions. One is whether we shall continue to operate an inquisitorial rather than adversarial process. There is no doubt an imperfect divide between the two, but that is a pretty basic question. Those such as the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, are in effect contending for an adversarial process. He helpfully nods to show it. There it is. It is obvious from the report that I, with colleagues on that committee, strongly support an inquisitorial approach.
A second basic question is whether the whole process should be totally independent of the House; again, there are those who contend for that. Can I throw into the mix one or two considerations? As we know, the House of Commons is operating on a 50:50 basis now, and following the recommendation of our sub-committee, it now gives its lay members a vote. There was a time when it was thought that giving lay members a vote would forfeit the privilege otherwise attached to these proceedings, but surely if you have an entirely independent process, with no Member of the House involved, you certainly do not attract parliamentary privilege. Now there are those—the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, among them—who would say, “Well, good thing, too”, and we are then subject to the review processes of the courts and all the rest of it. Again, I respectfully question whether that is a good idea. Certainly, the Commons does not seem to be thinking of going down that rather unusual route.
Another consideration is that if the whole thing is outside the control of this House and wholly independent, if and when it is necessary to impose some of these new statutory sanctions—expulsion, obviously, and suspension beyond the length of a current Parliament—there will have to be primary legislation, because at the moment it is the decision of the House to deal with these things. Therefore, one has to take a longer view than the idea of removing any involvement of this House. We all recognise that it is very desirable to have lay members. They introduce their external experience, and contribute greatly to the independence of the process. That too is helped here by the commissioner making the recommendation as to sanction, which at the moment she does not.
There is also the question of personal honour—and I can see that there is room for two views on this. The noble, Lord Thomas, suggested that it is difficult to define. It was a concept introduced by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, in 2011, when the processes were last revised. It is the sense of the House, and therefore at the appellate stage you really would need some Members to be involved in overseeing it.
There are hosts of questions on the whole business of the process of investigation. I do not want to go into that. I say only that it is rather bizarre that of those who question the ability of our independently appointed commissioner and criticise her as being unable to conduct this process satisfactorily, and instance the Lester case, almost no one went to see all the factual material, including the transcripts, although there was an open invitation to do so. My noble friend Lady Deech did, after the debate, but before the debate only two people actually troubled to go and look at that material. One was the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven—who then made a speech saying that having looked at the transcripts of the commissioner’s interviews of the central witnesses, he was entirely satisfied that the procedure had been properly conducted. I do not want to go too far down this road, but he has a measure of experience as an erstwhile DPP, so I would caution those who want to begin altering what I suggest is a perfectly satisfactory inquisitorial process into something which is dangerously akin to an adversarial process.
I will make one point in respect of the specific arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. When you get to the appeals stage, I see that there may be room—I suggest that perhaps there already is, although you would need to have a Motion changing the Standing Orders before you can get there—and there may be a stronger case than was hitherto acknowledged for allowing some measure of representation, certainly in the case of any Member of the House who cannot properly conduct his own appeal. That criticism aside, I respectfully suggest that this report is a huge improvement on what has been previously accepted and I urge your Lordships to accept it.
Lord Paddick (LD)
My Lords, I cannot let this opportunity go past without saying how strongly I support what my noble friend Lady Hussein-Ece said. Particularly in cases of bullying and sexual harassment, the power imbalance has to be taken into account, and the only proper way of investigating such cases is with an inquisitorial rather than an adversarial system. I understand that lawyers in the House have lived and breathed—and lived by—the adversarial system, but there are circumstances in which it is not appropriate, and I believe that, in those particular cases, it is entirely inappropriate.
Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, I wish very briefly to add to this debate. I have sat through the entirety of this debate because I believe, on behalf of this House but also on behalf of the staff, that it is a very important matter. I often have the privilege of addressing young people through the education department, who say to me: “Describe a day in your life in the House of Lords”. Today, my day began with the hearing of the Ecclesiastical Committee, which is linked to what we are discussing. We are not the only institution struggling at this time to work out processes that enable people to come forward but that are just, so that they do not crush the people against whom the complaints are made in that very process.
As a lawyer by profession, I know that “vexatious” was often used in relation to particular litigants; it was not necessarily vexatious litigation. Vexatious litigants are those who repeatedly make claims that are malicious or unfounded. Eventually, the courts often act against them to prevent them bringing claims. I very much doubt that the HR processes and recruitment processes of this House are such that we will have vexatious litigants on staff. There may be unfounded claims or claims where it is not possible to reach a conclusion, and there may be the very, very occasional malicious complaint. But I do not think, and I would not want the staff of this House to think, that there could be vexatious litigants generally working for us here. I would be grateful if the Senior Deputy Speaker could outline what support is open to staff. I hope that many staff are members of a union. Unions do not just provide lawyers; they often provide the appropriate support to staff who are in the position of having to make such a complaint.
Having sat here, I have reflected on the complaints which I have been aware of in recent years. They have often related to Members and their engagement with people whom they meet through a common interest; so it is in the context of people from outside. When looking at trying to shield ourselves from complaints that might be unfounded, Members have a whole array of tools to do that within their professional life. One-on-one meetings should by practice be held in public and not in your office. So I really do not think that there are deep grounds for concern about complaints being ill founded or vexatious—but, as I have reflected, most of the cases have come from that one-on-one personal contact through a shared interest.
It is a great sadness. I struggle to put myself in the place of a junior member of staff here who feels that they have been treated in the manner outlined, with bullying, harassment or sexual misconduct. I hope that all Members, if they witnessed anything of this nature, would take the role of balancing out that power imbalance and taking action immediately if they saw any of this kind of behaviour. That is also part of our responsibility, as well as having a process that is just to the complainant and to the Member.
Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)
My Lords, I had not intended to speak but I will, perhaps for the same reason that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, did. The noble Baroness, Lady Hussein-Ece, does not need my support, but I offer it. I echo the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, in commending her courage, but I came to an entirely different conclusion based on the same evidence. I agreed with almost every word that she said.
My first point is on inquisitorial compared to adversarial. The people who support adversarial seem to agree that the process can potentially damage someone’s reputation, but they forget that the 99% of people in this country who are employees can suffer a similarly damaging consequence: namely, loss of employment. Their employer can make a decision to remove them from their employment, which will damage their reputation, and they may not have the benefit of a lawyer. As it happens, a police officer does, because they are not an employee; they are governed by police regulations. This is more akin to an employment issue than to a crime. The consequence is not going to prison for life but being deprived of the use of this place and of the titles and privileges that go with it.
My second point is on cross-examination, which clearly has had many benefits over time but is not infallible. Some of the most serious miscarriages of justice in this country have resulted from processes that have involved cross-examination and yet have not discovered the truth. As we have had to readdress in the last 48 hours, it has also damaged some victims, because the process can go on to destroy the victim, not necessarily always to defend the suspect. These things are changing, but we have to accept that this has happened over time.
I end where the noble Baroness, Lady Hussein-Ece, and the noble Lord, Lord Evans, did. This is not a perfect process: I would support far more—possibly total—independence going forward, because we need to prove to the outside world that, contrary to perception, we are prepared to stand the judgment of our peers outside, not our Peers inside. July is only a matter of weeks away, so we need a far better interim process in place to have succour for ourselves. I sat here in November and got increasingly angry, sad and uncomfortable. I have been in the House for only two years, but I thought it was awful. We should not go through that again. I think all noble Lords accept that, on reflection, we could have acted better. Some—including the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, who is not in her place—acted courageously. Before we go to the adversarial system, we need to think seriously about how others see us as well as how we can improve our process, which this report intends to do.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, at this late stage I shall be very brief—I confess of course that I am a lawyer—and say something about adversarial and inquisitorial, because there may be some misconceptions. I am delighted to hear that there will be a panel of investigators. I would expect most of them not to be lawyers, but to be able to do practical investigation. That seems to be entirely sensible. We need to differentiate between the different sorts of cases. There will be cases of harassment or bullying, which are nasty and will possibly require suspension from the House. There will occasionally be cases such as Lord Lester’s. It is in relation only to that type of case that something slightly different should take place. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, said, it is not a good idea to have the person who is adjudicating also being the investigator. There are problems in that. I am not criticising the current commissioner; I just think that she could have done with some help.
I have a suggestion about the best thing in the very difficult case of a stark difference of evidence, where one has to resolve who is telling the truth; because only one person can be in such a—thankfully rare—case. In such a case the investigator should, in my view, be a lawyer. However, it is appropriate only in that rare case, where the reputation of the victim is important, but so is the reputation of the Peer, who is almost certainly going to be excluded from the House for ever and whose reputation will be completely destroyed. At that point, you do not want cross-examination as such, but you need a sensible, discreet member of the Bar who can ask appropriate questions, without being disagreeable about it, to try to ascertain the truth from the parties who are being asked these questions. I put it to the House that there are rare cases where the commissioner may need the help of a lawyer rather than the ordinary investigator we are talking about.
Lord Pannick
Does my noble and learned friend agree that, in her experience, many inquisitorial processes take place throughout the country, on a wide variety of subjects, where lawyers are involved and there is a degree of cross-examination by counsel to the inquiry and lawyers representing the individuals? The fact that it is inquisitorial does not mean that those protections are removed.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
I entirely agree. I have chaired commissions, committees and so on, particularly the Cleveland child abuse inquiry, where there were a great many lawyers. I am not suggesting any of that for this, but I think we need to adjust the way in which the issue is tried according to its seriousness and the likely outcome, if it goes the wrong way, for the Member of this House who will be permanently excluded.
The Senior Deputy Speaker
My Lords, I thank the 17 Members who have contributed to the debate. I have notes to respond to every one of the 17, but I know I will be stretching the patience of the House if I start to do that, not least because the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, the chair of the sub-committee that devised these proposals for the P&C committee, has expanded on that issue.
I commend the House today for the constructive debate and the spirit in which it was held. It underlines the fact that this is a significant move forward. We have near unanimity, with 16 people telling us it is going in the right direction and one person saying that it is maybe going in the wrong direction. That near unanimity is extremely important.
I want to comment on the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Weardale, who, in his position as chairman of the independent Committee on Standards in Public Life, has met me on two occasions. He sent us a letter as part of the House of Lords consultation on the implementation of the process, among 27 others who responded. I shall read just one sentence from that letter:
“Any self-regulatory regime must include a strong, resilient and robust independent element”.
The spirit of today’s debate shows that we have done that.
I mentioned at the beginning that this process is not finished. Naomi Ellenbogen has been mentioned; I shall be meeting her next week. She has asked to meet me and others in the House and I do not see why others, if they wish, should not contact her. I believe that some 121 people have approached her and that she has spoken to more than 170. The more people she speaks to, the better, and I encourage Members to do that.
A couple of comments were made about staff and support for staff—I think by the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge. When I received the letter from the 74 members of staff, I spoke to quite a few individually; they were depending on our putting in a robust process. All I can say is that, without going back to them in detail on that, my feeling is that they feel that we are taking a step forward; so both Members and staff feel that something positive is happening here.
A point was made about what support there is. Helplines are envisaged and there is support for mediation. There is also the issue of signposted professionals. The professionals who have been engaged here have been in this field of mediation for a long time, and the information we have, in both the Commons and the Lords, is that they will support the process. This has balanced the relationship between complainant and Members; it is important that both have the support of the House. I am confident that we will get a new system, but until the new conduct committee is established, I will be happy to engage with people and pass on what is said. However, if your Lordships pass this Motion today, this will be my last time at the Dispatch Box on this issue. I thank all noble Lords for their contributions and for the spirit of the debate today.
Overseas Students: TOEIC Tests
(5 years, 7 months 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 will now repeat in the form of a Statement the Answer given by my right honourable friend the Immigration Minister to an Urgent Question in the other place. The Statement is as follows:
“Mr Speaker, test centres operated on behalf of ETS were the subject of a BBC ‘Panorama’ programme in February 2014 which aired footage of the systematic cheating in English language tests at a number of its UK test centres. Further investigation demonstrated just how widespread this was. Its scale is shown by the fact that 25 people involved in organising and facilitating language test fraud have received criminal convictions. They have been sentenced to a total of over 70 years’ imprisonment, and further criminal investigations are ongoing.
There was also a strong link to wider abuse of the student visa route. An NAO report of 2012 made it clear that abuse of that route was rife and estimated that in its first year of operation, 2009, up to 50,000 used the tier 4 student route to work, not study. Most students linked to the fraud were sponsored by private colleges, many of which the Home Office already had significant concerns about, predating the BBC investigation. Indeed, 400 colleges which had sponsored students linked to ETS had already had their licences revoked before 2014.
Over the course of 2014, ETS systematically analysed all tests taken in the UK dating back to 2011—over 58,000 of them. Analysis of the test results identified 33,725 invalid results and 22,694 questionable results. Those with questionable results were given the chance to resit a test or attend an interview before any action was taken. People who used invalid ETS test certificates to obtain immigration leave have had action taken against them.
The courts have consistently found that the evidence for invalid cases created a reasonable suspicion of fraud and was enough for the Home Office to act upon. It is then up to individuals, through either appeals or judicial reviews, to refute this. Despite this, concerns have been expressed about whether innocent people could have been caught up in this. The Home Secretary has listened to the apprehensions of some Members, including the honourable member for East Ham, and has asked officials for further advice. The National Audit Office is also currently in the process of concluding an investigation into the handling of these issues. This is expected to be published next month. Obviously, my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has taken a close interest in this issue and will be reviewing the conclusions of the NAO, and, once he has time to consider it in full, will be making a Statement to the House”.
Lord Rosser (Lab)
I thank the Minister for repeating the Answer to an Urgent Question in another place.
In his first appearance in that capacity in the Commons about a year ago, the Home Secretary gave an assurance that he would investigate the Test of English for International Communication scandal. Why are we still awaiting a decision when about 34,000 student visas have been cancelled? The delay cannot be laid at the door of the NAO, as the Answer to the UQ appears to suggest. Is the Home Secretary aware of the damage, distress and loss caused to international students wrongly accused of cheating in their English language test, some of whom have had to end their studies and some of whom have been wrongly deported?
Is the Secretary of State continuing to rely on evidence from Educational Testing Services as to the alleged scale of cheating—evidence which has been discredited by both expert opinion and, repeatedly, in the courts? What was the financial settlement reached by the Home Office and ETS after its licence was revoked? ETS thinks that just about everyone who sat the test either cheated or had questionable results, a figure that was as unbelievable as ETS itself appears to be. How many appeals have been heard against revocation, refusal or curtailment of student visas on TOEIC grounds, and how many have been won by the applicants?
Finally, what lessons has the Home Office learned from this debacle about English language tests and its hostile environment policy, which is obviously still in play? If I cannot have full answers to these questions today, I should be grateful for a written response.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I thank the noble Lord and welcome him back to his place on the Front Bench. He asked several questions, the first being “Why the delay?” This is an issue of widespread fraud—setting up and using these test centres and colleges— that took place over several years. He will know that, under this Government and indeed under the coalition Government, we have now closed more than 900 such colleges since 2011.
On those who may be wrongly accused, the noble Lord will recall the report by Professor Peter French, which concluded that the number of false matches was likely to be very small and that the system would give people the benefit of the doubt, so the number of people wrongly accused was likely to be extremely low. The courts have always said, even when finding against the Home Office on individual facts of case, that sufficient evidence should be there to make an accusation of fraud, but it is up to the individual then to rebut it. However, we recognise the concerns; we do not refute the concerns raised by a Member of the other place. That is why the Home Secretary has now asked for further advice and why the NAO is also investigating, and the Home Secretary will respond when he has sight of both that advice and the NAO’s findings.
The noble Lord asked whether a settlement was reached. It was. For reasons of commercial confidentiality, I cannot discuss that, but I will see whether I can find out more for him.
The noble Lord also talked about the hostile environment. This is not about being hostile to people who want to work or study in this country. To use a study visa in order to work is to try to game the system, which is exactly what was going on here and why we closed down so many of those colleges.
Lord Paddick (LD)
My Lords, Fatema Chowdhury came to the UK from Bangladesh in 2010 and finished her law degree in 2014 at the University of London. She was at one stage detained for a week after being accused of cheating in the English test, which she denies. I appreciate that the Minister cannot comment on individual cases, but can she say how likely it is that an individual had to cheat in an English language test but then went on to successfully complete a double degree at the University of London? Why is the hostile environment towards immigrants created by the Home Office still alive and kicking?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, the issue at the heart of this was not the questioning of people’s competence in English but the fact that a fraud was committed. I cannot say to the noble Lord how many people found themselves in detention, because we do not disaggregate those sorts of figures. Of course, as for individual cases, I am not at liberty to discuss them.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
My Lords, I am entirely prepared to await the reports now under consideration which the Minister says will be the object of Statements in both Houses when their conclusions are reached, but could we please not elide the action taken quite correctly by the coalition Government to close down a huge number of dodgy language schools—which all of us strongly supported and where we believe a good job was done—with what is going now? Let us start a little bit later than that and see what is being done now. For example—perhaps the Minister could reply to this, too—it is not sensible to create the impression that a huge number of people on education visas are overstaying. We now have statistical evidence that it is a tiny number, yet for years Home Office Ministers stood at the Dispatch Box saying that it was a huge number. The interest of our universities, which are a major national asset, was not well served by stories of the sort that we are hearing now. As I said, it is perfectly reasonable for the Minister to say, “Wait, please, till the NAO has reported; wait till the Home Secretary has had a glance at that”, but can we not rake over all these old stories when we come to the report but start from somewhere a little nearer the present time?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I am grateful to the noble Lord for making that point, because we need to start from where we are now. The system in place was a very old one and, as he said, the coalition Government did much to close down those dodgy colleges, as he called them. The same NAO found that well over 97% of students are compliant with their visas, which is very good news. We would not want to conflate our welcome for those coming to this country to study with what was a very dodgy process—fraudulent, in fact. I welcome what the noble Lord said, and I would not want to conflate what happened then with a very good news story now: a 28% increase in the number of international students since 2010 and a 10% increase in only the past 12 months.
Baroness Blackstone (Ind Lab)
My Lords, can the Minister reassure the House that, in those cases where after further investigation it is discovered that individual students have not cheated nor committed any kind of fraud, they are properly compensated for the fees that they paid, the loss of their courses and a loss of income in employment?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I thank the noble Baroness for making that point. Of course, it will be in the light of the NAO report and the additional advice of the Home Secretary that next steps will be able to be articulated to both Houses.
Lord Dholakia (LD)
My Lords, what is being done to change the culture within the Home Office in how it deals with these applications? A number of immigration investigations conducted in the past provide examples of people who were eligible to come to this country having to go through a process which is devised to keep people out. A fundamental change in the way we look at students in this country is required. What is being done to improve on that?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I know the House’s feeling on this subject. I have said many times at this Dispatch Box that there is no cap on the number of international students who can come to this country to study. Going back to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, that matter should not be conflated with the people who will use a route simply to get into this country. Those colleges were therefore rightly closed down under the previous coalition Government. On the culture of the Home Office, I think that it acted rightly in closing down bogus colleges, but we should never lose sight of the contribution made by international students to this country and its education system.
Social Media and Health
(5 years, 7 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford) (Con)
My Lords, with the leave of the House I shall now repeat a Statement made today by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Department of Health and Social Care, Matt Hancock. The Statement is as follows:
“Mr Speaker, I would like to update the House on yesterday’s social media summit and the progress we have made to tackle online harms to health. We called this summit to bring together principal social media companies, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and Google, as well as Samaritans and the eating disorder charity, BEAT. Along with the Education Secretary and the Minister for Suicide Prevention, this was the second such meeting I have held on how we can protect people, particularly children, from online content that promotes eating disorders, self-harm and suicide, as well as on how we address the growing problem of anti-vaccination misinformation.
Social media companies have a duty of care for people on their sites. Just because they are global does not mean that they can be irresponsible. We have been resolute that we will act to keep the internet safe, especially for children. I am grateful to the companies for their engagement. We have all seen and heard about tragic cases of vulnerable children turning to self-harm, even taking their own lives, after accessing graphic images online promoting, even encouraging, suicide and self-harm. In the same way, we know that online content on eating disorders can be extremely harmful to vulnerable children and young adults. I have met the parents of children brought up in loving homes who had no idea of the dangers their child was being exposed to on their smartphone or tablet while they were supposed to be safe at home. We all know parents whose children have been affected. For all of us, this is very close to home. We must do everything we can to keep our children safe online.
I am pleased to inform the House that, as a result of yesterday’s summit, leading global social media companies have agreed to work with experts from Samaritans to speed up the identification and removal of suicide and self-harm content, and create greater protections online. Not only will they financially support Samaritans in its work but, crucially, Samaritans suicide prevention experts will determine harmful and dangerous content. The social media platforms committed to either remove it or prevent others seeing it, and help vulnerable people to get the positive support they need. The mainstream media already have well-established codes of practice and training to remove material that promotes suicide and self-harm. In my experience of the British media, they act with great responsibility. It is time that social media companies do the same.
This partnership marks, for the first time globally, a collective commitment to act, build knowledge through research and insights, and implement real changes that will ultimately save lives. Social media companies also gave us an update on the actions they have already taken. Following the first summit in February, Instagram now has a global policy of removing all graphic self-harm imagery. Other sites have also taken action but there is much more to do and much more content to remove.
Importantly, the commitments that companies made at yesterday’s summit are what Samaritans asked for and are a positive step forward. The progress we have made so far shows that we can effect positive change, but I know that this House feels strongly that just because these companies are global does not mean that we cannot determine society’s rules and expectations. We are prepared to act on this. My right honourable friends the Home Secretary and the Culture Secretary recently published the online harms White Paper, which sets out the proposed regulatory framework for addressing online harms. It sets out a new statutory duty of care to require companies to take more responsibility for the safety of their users and tackle harm caused by content or activity on their services.
Compliance with this duty of care will be overseen and enforced by an independent regulator, which will be responsible for producing codes of practice that will explain what companies need to do to fulfil their duty and the robust action they need to take to remove illegal or harmful content. The White Paper also proposes sharing of information, research and best practice to improve the understanding of harmful content across the industry.
The summit also allowed us to discuss how we can work together to tackle another online danger: the spread of anti-vaccination misinformation. Since Edward Jenner’s discovery, vaccination has saved hundreds of millions of lives around the world. There are few innovations that have reduced human misery so much. After clean water, vaccination has prevented more deaths and disease than anything else in human history. The science is settled: vaccination saves lives. It not only protects your children, it protects other vulnerable people who cannot do anything about it themselves. Failure to vaccinate puts their lives at risk. The rise of social media now makes it easier to spread lies about vaccination, so there is a special responsibility on the social media companies to act.
Coverage for the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine in England decreased for the fourth year in a row last year to 91%, and there was a steep rise in confirmed measles cases from 259 to 966. We forget that measles is a horrible disease. We have one of the most comprehensive vaccination programmes in Europe. The well-documented problems in America and on the continent are worse than here, but we are determined to get ahead of this problem because there are real and devastating consequences for people from the failure to vaccinate. Our action to promote vaccines is not limited to removing anti-vaccination misinformation. We are promoting the objective facts about the importance of vaccination. We are increasing funding to primary care to improve access, and our prevention Green Paper will set out further actions.
Social media can be a great force for good and can help us to promote positive messages, but it is the responsibility of us all that this new technology, with all its great potential and power, be moulded to the benefit of society. We will not duck this challenge. I commend the Statement to the House”.
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating this important Statement. This discussion provides a good backdrop to the debate to follow, on the online harms White Paper. There are essentially two matters of concern here: online harm and false news, which includes the health impact of anti-vax material.
After the scandal that followed the death of Molly Russell, and the bravery of her father in speaking out against the online harm perpetrated by platforms such as Instagram, we were promised decisive action, and the tragedy gave serious momentum to the content of the online harms White Paper. Mr Russell tweeted a link to a Telegraph article yesterday, saying that he had challenged Instagram and the company has said that it will now act. Coming out of yesterday’s hour-long meeting with the industry, the Secretary of State announced a few hundred thousand pounds in donations to the Samaritans for research into online harm, which is of course welcome. However, these social media platforms must be made to take responsibility for the harmful content and dangerous fake news they host.
Instagram said that it would ban all graphic and non-graphic images of self-harm in February. As far as I can see, it has not done so. Like my honourable friend Jon Ashworth MP in the Commons earlier, I did a test a couple of hours ago. To be more accurate, since I am not an Instagram subscriber, I got my researcher to demonstrate for me what happens if you type into Instagram’s search engine the term “self-harm”. You get several columns of results; the first is called “Top Results” and does not produce any links. It says that no content can be found, which is good, but I am afraid the content is still there. If you click on the next column, headed “Accounts”, there are hundreds of accounts concerning self-harm that you can access. If you click on the third column, headed “Tags”, there are 725,000 posts that mention self-harm. Some may direct you to get help but most will not, and some show graphic self-harm pictures and videos. Some of them romanticise, if you can imagine such a thing, this activity. As any health expert will tell you, for those youngsters—some are very young indeed—these are the triggers to self-harm.
The noble Baroness says that Instagram now has a policy of globally removing graphic self-harm imagery. As far as I can see, it has not done so yet. The same applies to websites concerning suicide. If you search for “#killmyself”, you will find huge numbers of results; ditto if you search for “eating disorders”. Research shows that 22 % of young adults report self-harm and suicide-related internet use. This is a crisis. There may be many reasons for this figure, and many solutions, but the internet must take responsibility for the content it contributes to this. Did the Secretary of State challenge Instagram on the assertion that it had taken down content? Has he done what my honourable friend and I did and tested it himself?
Did Instagram give a timescale, or is it waiting for the Samaritans’ research? That seems to me to be not an acceptable solution right now. I welcome the involvement of the Samaritans, but not if it means a further delay to action. It does not need research to know that the content of some of these sites is totally unacceptable and needs to be got rid of. Perhaps the noble Baroness can explain what the Samaritans’ research will be used for and its timescale? These are very, very rich organisations, and a few hundred thousand pounds to the Samaritans does not mean they can offload their responsibility to deal with this content; they have billions of pounds that can be used for this purpose.
The reason I am concerned is that these companies have form. Over many years of warm words and no change, they have consistently resisted taking responsibility for the content they carry. They have had to be pulled, kicking and screaming at every turn, into behaving with responsibility. I repeat: will the Secretary of State test this by looking at it himself?
The content of these platforms is why the White Paper is so urgently needed. I want to ask only one question about it; the debate will take place in a few moments and my noble friend will certainly pose many questions. However, if a young person even accidently accesses, for example, a self-harm image, there is a likelihood that the algorithms—which look at what every one of us is accessing online—will pick this up. While noble Lords may receive unwanted information about house extensions or the cost of flights, such a youngster may find that they are being led to more sites depicting self-harm. In other words, the algorithms can reinforce harmful content. How will the Government seek to mitigate this unintended consequence?
I turn now to the use of false information in anti-vax campaigns, which has led to a massive increase in outbreaks of measles, as the noble Baroness said in her Statement. The issue here is not just the dangerous anti-vax propaganda on platforms such as Facebook, or indeed Amazon. A story in today’s Guardian says that a young person was delivered a book, and inserted in it was an anti-vax leaflet. One has to ask how on earth it got there. The wider issue is that of public health policy and resourcing.
Are the Government considering banning unvaccinated children from schools in England, as the Secretary of State suggested on the radio last week? I hope not. Do the Government have a clear vaccination action plan? Public health services have been cut by £800 million and, in recent years, health visitors have been cut by 8% and school nurses by 24%. This will not help with the vaccination drive. Will the Government commit to reversing public health cuts and cuts to health visitors, and invest in general practice to meet the recommended 95% national vaccination coverage rate, as recommended by the World Health Organization?
Baroness Jolly (LD)
My Lords, I too thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. I am sure nobody in your Lordships’ House doubts the benefits, as well as the dangers, of social media. As the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, has just stated, the tech giants really need to recognise their responsibilities by taking action now to remove material that could damage the vulnerable.
I would like to link the Statement with the NHS Long Term Plan. In it, there is a commitment to increase spending on children’s and adult mental health services. What figure will this amount to? How much of it does the department anticipate will be earmarked for technology? Where will it be directed? Who will receive the money? What does the department expect the NHS to do to support this move? What criteria will govern its use?
Vaccination uptake is clearly a current issue. How does the department anticipate that social media can help and not hinder the uptake of these life-saving shots?
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Thornton and Lady Jolly, for their questions. They are right: the Health Secretary has taken a personal interest in this issue and is determined to drive this policy forward, not only through the work of my honourable friend the Minister for Suicide Prevention but through the prevention Green Paper mentioned in the Statement. He will ensure that he keeps a personal eye on this issue.
I turn first to the question raised about the social media company Instagram saying that it has a global policy of removing graphic self-harm images—other sites also say that they have taken action—so that if you search today you cannot find such images, although on top searches you can find them through accounts in other places. It is recognised that there is much more to do and more content to remove. That was one reason why the Secretary of State convened these summits. A more coherent approach to this work is needed. While I recognise that the noble Baroness feels it is obvious what self-harm content is, the approach that has been taken as an outcome of the summit is encouraging. It has led to the strategic partnership, which will ensure that the policy that has come forward from the social media companies will now lead to effective implementation. Such companies will be held to account, not only through the strategic partnership but through the outcomes of the online harms White Paper. There will be not only a duty of care but a regulator associated with it. Those combined strategies are encouraging.
The noble Baroness asked about the unintended impact. This is where the second set of proposals to have come out of the summit is extremely important. As well as developing industry-wide standards on identifying harmful suicide and self-harm content and agreeing robust responses to it, it will lead to a clearer understanding of what is harmful content. It will also lead to better training for mediators to respond to it and to support vulnerable users, which I think is exactly the point she was after.
On the important questions about public health spending in response to anti-vax campaigners and ensuring that we have a robust vaccination programme, the noble Baroness is right that vaccination programmes rest on the basis of strong public health support. We have a £3 billion ring-fenced public health spend every year and we must ensure that that goes forward. It will be a key part of the public health bid in the spending review and part of the Green Paper that is to be published. I know she will look forward to holding me to account on the effectiveness of that Green Paper.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, raised an important question about the effectiveness and benefits of social media. We do not think that compulsory vaccination at the moment is an evidence-based policy. The Health Secretary has said that nothing is off the table and this is the right response given the serious concerns of other countries. At the moment, in the UK, we operate a system of informed consent. This is the right thing to do, given our high uptake. There is no immediate plan to change it and we strongly encourage families to take up vaccinations when offered.
One of the ways in which we spread information about the effectiveness of vaccines, and shall continue to do so, is through our online accounts at nhs.uk, which are highly trusted. In the UK the public attitude to and confidence in vaccination is monitored through a series of annual surveys, including Public Health England’s annual attitudinal survey, which show high levels of trust in health professionals and the NHS. The public trust the NHS as a source of advice and that is why our digital media output, through the NHS, our social media outlets and nhs.uk, is a crucial way of encouraging and maintaining trust in vaccinations. We shall continue to drive it forward.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, my noble friend referred to the discussion with the social media companies about vaccination, but the Statement did not refer to any specific commitments on their part or even acceptance of a responsibility in relation to disinformation about vaccination. Does my noble friend agree that it is important to understand why immunisation rates and vaccination coverage have dipped? I was Secretary of State when we reached the highest level of, I think, 94% for MMR following a period from 2007, bringing it up from 80%. It has not dipped back to those levels, but we need to understand why this has happened. If it is about disinformation on social media, what have the companies said about this up to this point?
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
The social media companies accept that they have a responsibility to deal with anti-vaccination misinformation, harmful information relating to eating disorders and general health-related misinformation that can be found online. The Health Secretary has been clear with social media companies that they are expected to address these harms. The Department of Health looks forward to working with them on it. My noble friend is right when he says that our levels of vaccination are extremely high compared to other countries’, but we must not be complacent and must ensure that we not only maintain the current vaccination rates but drive them further and do not tolerate any further permeation of the pernicious anti-vaccination messaging which is starting to leak out online.
Lord Scriven (LD)
My Lords, the approach being taken is welcome, but in itself probably will not be enough. We cannot ban and regulate everything that goes on on the internet. For example, a blogger who may have nothing to do with health may have 80,000 to 100,000 followers and may blog about a health issue, and that becomes fact. What is needed in the modern world is alternative narratives; that is what is seen on social media. Rather than just using statutory websites and web pages, what is the NHS doing to adopt a much smarter, blogging/lifestyling approach—involving those who influence young people and who use these media outlets—and to use effective alternative narratives that work, rather than just putting all its eggs in the banning approach basket?
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
I do not have access to the statistics now, but I know that a lot of research has gone into assessing the amount of peer-to-peer support young people access online from medical charities and other charities via social media routes, or other online routes such as blogs or influencers who engage very effectively with various different medical charities. There is some very encouraging evidence that social media can be used in this way to direct people to the help and support they need, if it is used effectively. As the noble Lord says, we must be very careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater and must produce alternative narratives to direct young people and vulnerable people to access the support they need in the most effective way. This is done very effectively by many organisations. It is a matter of making sure that, wherever possible, young people and vulnerable people are protected as much as possible from harms that they really should not be exposed to.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
I am grateful for the Statement. I want to address the social media aspect rather than vaccination. We have a paper from DCMS on social media—the online harms White Paper. The Minister mentioned coherence; I am finding the situation increasingly incoherent, and I will be raising this topic later. Who is giving a lead in this area? The Statement said:
“This partnership marks, for the first time globally, a collective commitment to act, build knowledge through research and insights, and implement real changes that will ultimately save lives”.
It also said that there was a second summit, but DCMS and the Home Office were not involved. The Education Secretary has been attending those meetings. Are more meetings planned? What agenda will be pursued at those meetings? Which departments will be involved? Who is going to take the lead?
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
The noble Lord asks a number of questions, but I think the nub of the issue is to ensure coherence across government in approaching an important and complex policy issue. He is right, in that the correct approach is to ensure effective implementation of our significant policy commitments in the online harms White Paper and in the outcomes from this summit. Of course, DCMS and the Home Office have been engaged in different policy proposals, development and engagement, and they will continue to be so. The Department of Health and the Department for Education have been leading on this in relation to the mental health Green Paper because of the policy specialisms around vaccinations, suicide and harm and the effect on young people. That work started some time ago so it makes sense for the department to continue, but it will be working hand in glove with the online harms White Paper. I am sure that that discussion will continue in the next debate this afternoon.
Online Harms White Paper
(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Ashton of Hyde
That this House takes note of the Online Harms White Paper (CP57).
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Ashton of Hyde) (Con)
My Lords, I repeated a Statement in the House on the online harms White Paper on the day that we published it, 8 April. There was not enough time for all noble Lords who wanted to contribute to do so, and so the Chief Whip kindly made me available for noble Lords to make their points at greater length and with the benefit of more time to think about this difficult problem. I am grateful for the opportunity to listen to noble Lords’ views.
This White Paper is an important document and a world first. For many people nowadays, the internet is an integral part of daily life. However, illegal and unacceptable content and activity remain far too prevalent online. There is currently a range of voluntary initiatives that try to address some of these problems, but while there has been some progress, the efficacy and pace of these actions have varied widely across different companies. These inconsistencies still leave too many users unsafe online, and the current regulatory landscape lacks the scope and coherence to tackle this complex set of problems. That is why we have published this White Paper, which sets out an ambitious and coherent framework for tackling harmful content and activity. This will make companies more responsible for their users’ safety online, especially that of children and other vulnerable groups, and will help build trust in digital markets. The online harms we are tackling include behaviour that threatens users, particularly children and the vulnerable, and behaviour that undermines our national security or aims to fracture the bonds of our community and our democracy.
To tackle these harms, we intend to establish in law a new duty of care on companies towards their users, overseen by an independent regulator. This regulator will set clear safety standards, backed up by mandatory reporting requirements and effective enforcement powers. Companies will be held to account for tackling a comprehensive set of online harms ranging from illegal activity and content to behaviours that might not be illegal but are none the less highly damaging to individuals and society. They will be required to take particularly robust action to tackle terrorist content and online child sexual exploitation and abuse.
We recognise that a very wide range of businesses, such as retailers, consumer brands and service providers of all kinds, currently enable some degree of user interaction or user-generated content online. Although we will minimise excessive burdens according to the size and resources of organisations, all companies will be required to take reasonable and proportionate action to tackle harms on their services.
The regulator will have sufficient enforcement powers to take effective action against companies that breach regulatory requirements and to uphold public confidence, while also being fair and proportionate. These will include the power to levy substantial fines, and we are consulting on even more stringent sanctions.
As a world leader in emerging technologies and innovative regulation, the UK is well placed to seize the opportunities presented by the measures set out in the White Paper. We want technology itself to be part of the solution, and we propose measures to boost the tech safety sector in the UK, as well as measures to help users manage their safety online. Furthermore, we believe that this approach can lead to a new, global approach to online safety that supports our democratic values and promotes a free, open and secure internet. The Government will look to work with other countries to build an international consensus behind it. We will seek to work with international partners to build agreement and identify common approaches to keep citizens safe online. Having these relationships will support the UK’s ability to put pressure on companies whose primary base is overseas.
Since the White Paper was published earlier this month, the reaction has been generally positive. Noble Lords who spoke in the earlier debate, and Members in the other place, welcomed the Government’s action in this crucial area, and much, although not all, of the media coverage has also been supportive. However, I would like to focus on a couple of areas where our proposals have come under close scrutiny.
First, there has been comment in some newspapers that the measures we have set out in the White Paper will fetter the freedom of the press. I reassure noble Lords that that is not the case. The Government strongly support press freedom and editorial independence. A vibrant, independent, plural and free press that is able to hold the powerful to account is essential to our democracy. Journalistic or editorial content will not be affected by the regulatory framework that we are putting in place. Furthermore, the regulator will have a legal duty to pay due regard to protecting users’ rights online—in particular, their privacy and freedom of expression. The regulator will not be responsible for policing truth and accuracy online.
There is a question of whether newspapers’ comment sections will fall within the scope of the online regulator. We are consulting on proposals for the statutory duty of care to apply to companies that allow users to share or discover user-generated content or interact with each other online. However, as the Secretary of State made clear in the other place, where these services are already well regulated, as is the case with IPSO and Impress regarding their members’ moderated comment sections, we will not duplicate those efforts.
The second area where concerns have been expressed since the White Paper’s launch concerns the potential burdens on small and medium-sized enterprises. Companies within scope will include SMEs and start-ups, but a key element of the regulator’s approach will be the principle of proportionality. The regulator will be required to assess companies according to their size and resources. The regulator will also take a risk-based approach, focusing initially on companies whose services pose the biggest risk of harm to users, based on factors including the scale of the service. The regulator will have a legal duty to pay due regard to innovation— indeed, the regulatory framework set out in the White Paper is pro innovation and will preserve the openness and enterprise that lie at the heart of the UK’s flourishing tech sector.
I believe that we have both a duty to act to protect UK citizens and an opportunity to lead the world on this issue. I firmly believe that this White Paper is a valuable step forward in creating a safer and stronger internet that works for the benefit of all humankind. To get this right, we will need to work with our civil society, our technology sector and, of course, Members of both Houses. We are consulting on the White Paper and have already received around 1,000 responses. As part of that, I am looking forward to hearing noble Lords’ contributions. I beg to move.
Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)
My Lords, I am very happy to contribute to the positive way in which the Minister has presented the case. I am delighted that, as promised by the Government, time has been made for adequate consideration of the issues in this debate. However, I am disappointed that more people are not here. There was such a swell of enthusiasm when this matter came before us the first time that I thought we would have a much better-peopled debate and a longer list of speakers. However, we are here and the ideas are waiting to be explored.
I am happy that this debate is taking place during the period of consultation and I hope that the record of this debate will contribute to the documentation being considered. It will make it 1,001 contributions thus far.
Bold claims have been made for what is hoped to be the result of this process. By the way, it is good to start with a White Paper and with regular rounds of conversations. The bold claims include the Government saying that they are going to create the safest place to be online and that this will be a world first, with no one having done it before. They also say that it could be part of a global response to perceived needs in this area. I feel that we are making something available for our country by way of regulation in respect of a global industry that is very difficult to contain within any framework that I can imagine. We will be hearing from various speakers about regulation, so I shall not deal with that now. The duty of care has already been mentioned. I wish that the digital charter had crept somewhere into the narrative because there are lots of ethical issues that would make it very appropriate to consider it.
There is much else in the White Paper but I want to focus on the list of harms on page 31. I shall not go through them all but I note the three columns headed “Harms with a clear definition”, “Harms with a less clear definition” and “Underage exposure to legal content”. There is a list beneath each heading. I want to compare those lists with the ones that appear in another DCMS document. I was reading it not for this debate, to be quite honest, but for the debate last week on advertising and the internet. It came out of the same stable as the White Paper. I am calling it the Plum report because that is what is on the front cover. It is called Online Advertising in the UK. It was commissioned by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and it was published in January 2019, when drafts of the White Paper must have been in DCMS. As I said, it is from the same stable. On pages 17 to 19 of this report there are three lists of potential harms to be found online. They have different names from those in the White Paper: individual harms, societal harms and economic harms. This document was produced with the debate on the Communications Committee’s report on advertising and the internet in mind, and to feed into the Cairncross report on local journalism. But the two lists—in the White Paper and the Plum report—must be looked at together. They are rather unlike each other and point to things that we dare not ignore.
After the debate on the Statement, to which the Minister referred, I had a conversation on the Floor of the House with the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, who I am sorry to say is not in her place today. She was worried about the absence in the White Paper of any reference to economic harms. I do not believe she was thinking about the responsibilities of small and medium-sized businesses, which would be the same, proportionately, as those of other institutions and bodies; she was talking about online harms to these small and medium-sized businesses. These concerns have been picked up by other commentators too.
The list of economic harms in the Plum report includes:
“Product bundling and exclusivity … ‘Walled Gardens’”,
on which stakeholders express concern that it is hard,
“to export user ID data collected during advertising campaigns”.
The list also includes:
“Lack of transparency in programmatic display … Differential treatment”—
whereby some companies are given better treatment and so on—as well as “leveraging”, “engagement with industry initiatives”, in which market players “do not always adopt” industry standardisation, and “control of web browsers”. It is quite a list, and of a different kind from the one in the White Paper. I wanted to keep these lists together.
After that same debate, I had another conversation, this time with the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill. It is always a frightening experience to talk to the noble Baroness; she is clever and I do not feel that I am. If I felt even a little clever, I would feel much less so after a conversation with her than I did when I began. She is a quite remarkable woman, whose recent publications are on the subject of trust. Her earlier work was on Immanuel Kant, whom I have barely ever understood; the right reverend Prelate will be better versed in him than I am. These books on trust, however, seem to be looking, as a philosopher should, at a very important subject. Anyway, in this conversation, the noble Baroness expressed her worries about the lack of reference in the White Paper to societal harms. She and I have been greatly impressed by—and shared our impressions of—the recent book Democracy Hacked by Martin Moore, which looks forensically at the damage done online to our democratic institutions.
On societal harms, the list revealed in the Plum report is again very revealing. It includes,
“financial support for publishers of offensive or harmful content”—
that is, providing means of monetisation for those creating harmful content on platforms—as well as discrimination, which can occur either by design or inadvertently when advertisers target data to categorise people by gender, ethnicity and race. The list also includes “non-transparent political advertising”, whereby anonymous actors may “influence elections and referendums”.
It is interesting that in tomorrow’s Oral Questions, the noble Baroness will ask a Question on this subject. I am sure she will want to quote the sympathy of the Information Commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, on this very matter. The contribution I want to make as the subject opens up today is to identify and, in some way, feel comfortable with, the range of online harms that we are referring to. They tend to be, as in the White Paper, to do with the plight of individuals. If that is the desired outcome, it ought to be said clearly that this is what we are dealing with. But online harm is a much more generic term and the economic and societal aspects deserve to be mentioned.
I conclude by saying that the Secretary of State has set himself a very difficult target. He wants a Bill that will put the UK’s house in order on a truly global matter of concern. How that will be done we wait to see. The proposals aim to get the right balance between the long-overdue regulation in this area and continuing adherence to the principles of free speech; the Minister has already given assurances on that. He is also looking to produce legislation that, while he gives it his best attention, will be overtaken by rapid development in the field of technology, even as we debate the Bill. We must look for a Bill that is light on its feet, flexible and can be put to work, rather than something static, heavy and fixed that will be out of date as soon as it becomes an Act of Parliament.
I look forward to hearing other views because, at this stage, this is a conversation. I look forward to shaping a document that, ultimately, will go beyond what we are comfortable with as a step in the right direction and needs to go much further.
Lord McNally (LD)
My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, and I certainly want to follow the spirit of his intervention. Last Thursday, we had something of a dress rehearsal for this debate when we discussed the Communications Committee report UK Advertising in a Digital Age.
In the course of that debate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham quoted his son saying:
“Dad, you haven’t a clue … I have been raised in this digital world. I am inside it, day in and day out. You just don’t get it and your generation will struggle to”.—[Official Report, 25/4/19; col. 725.]
I was particularly sensitive to those comments because I suspect that my own children, all in their 20s, have a similar view of my capabilities. I am happy that my noble friends Lady Grender, Lady Benjamin and Lord Storey, all more savvy in this area than I am, will follow.
The truth is that the gap in comprehension between legislators and practitioners was there for all to see when the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, appeared before a Senate committee. The question out there is whether the Government and Parliament—as the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, has just indicated—are flexible and nimble enough to address genuine public concerns and stay ahead of the curve as some of these technologies develop at breakneck speed. Perhaps it is a job for the Youth Parliament rather than this one. As I said last Thursday, many of our procedures and conventions have their roots in the 18th century not the 21st. In approaching this, therefore, we have to look not only at the legislation but at how we consult and involve people in introducing steps as we go forward.
As the Minister has said, there has been a general welcome for the direction of travel proposed by the White Paper. There are harms which need to be addressed, as demonstrated by the list referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, and as explained to us by the noble Baroness, Lady Blackwood, in the Statement that preceded this discussion.
It is true that the White Paper is not without its critics. Last week, in evidence to a DCMS sub-committee, the Information Commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, expressed surprise and disappointment that the White Paper had not,
“done a comprehensive examination of political advertising and oversight that’s needed in this space”,
and the Electoral Commission has called for a range of measures to strengthen its oversight and promote transparency in digital campaigning. The Alliance for Intellectual Property caught some of the points made by the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, about the effect on business. It said:
“The paper fails to address the harmful activity that affects businesses, in terms of revenue generation, investment and creative innovation”.
Another group, Defend Digital Me, warns against giving the Home Office carte blanche to regulate the internet, saying that children must not be the excuse that is talked up into a reason enabling greater control of the internet by the Home Office. It expresses particular concern about paragraph 21 of the White Paper.
There are real and present dangers out there to be addressed, but also concerns that ill thought-out measures could undermine some of the real benefits that the internet has brought us. The challenge is to produce an internet that is open and vibrant, yet also protects its users from harm. The days are long gone when public opinion was content to see the internet as a kind of Wild West beyond the rule of law. We have now reached a situation where Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook said:
“If the rules for the internet were being written from scratch today, I don’t think people would want private companies to be making … decisions around speech, elections and data privacy without a more … democratic process”.
Quite so.
Nor are we starting from an entirely blank sheet of paper. In the Information Commissioner, we have someone with authority and respect both at home and abroad. We have an Electoral Commission that will need extra resources and new powers to protect our democracy from abuse carried out using new technologies. Ofcom, a creation of the Communications Act 2003, has proved a highly successful and respected regulator. We also have good examples of international co-operation in the field. The EU general data protection regulation is now embedded in the Data Protection Act 2018 and is a good example of addressing online harms via international co-operation. I understand that the GDPR is now being looked at by a number of other jurisdictions, which are using it as a template for their own legislation. Taking up the point that the Minister made in his opening remarks, I see no reason why we should not aspire to global conventions which the whole world can adopt.
In so doing, we must be aware that elsewhere in the world, authoritarian Governments are attempting to insulate themselves from transparency and accountability by trying to curb and shackle the internet, precisely because of its ability to shine light into dark corners. Of course we want to see the freedom of the press upheld. I think the technology is taking us into difficult areas here. There is an overlap between print media organisations and their online publications, and there are questions about where the various jurisdictions apply. Before those organisations get too indignant, it is interesting to note that the worst offender following the Christchurch tragedy was Mail Online, which continued to carry a video of the tragedy, and the manifesto behind it, long after Facebook had taken them down.
The White Paper paints a very broad canvas and, as I have cited, critics call for more action and greater safeguards. I just wonder whether draft legislation would not benefit from pre-legislative scrutiny along the lines of the Puttnam committee, which examined the Communications Bill in 2002 and on which I served. I am delighted to see the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, in his place. That committee held hearings in public and on the air. As a Joint Committee, it was able to draw on strengths and experiences from both Houses.
By the end of the process, we will have a suite of powerful regulators overseeing these matters: the new super-regulator envisaged by the White Paper, the ICO, Ofcom, a better resourced and empowered Electoral Commission and a revitalised CMA. But how will they work together? Who will report to whom? Will some take responsibilities already held by other regulators? There is a lot of thinking to be done. In the Statement the noble Baroness, Lady Blackwood, spoke about a need for coherence in the way government approaches this. I wonder how interdepartmental co-operation will be achieved. Will there be a special Cabinet committee on this? How will that coherence across Whitehall be achieved?
Parliament, too, will have to give careful thought to how best it links in with this new regulatory framework, either by creating a Standing Committee of both Houses or perhaps by creating an advisory committee akin to the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, consisting of those best qualified to give advice on new developments in technology which would allow government and Parliament to future-proof as best we can, while keeping oversight of the new technologies within democratic control.
I hope this does not do too much damage to the reputation of the Secretary of State for DCMS, but I worked with him for a couple of years in the coalition Government. I have always admired his lawyerly calm. This will be much needed as we move ahead in this area. There will be great pressure on us to do something quickly. There is obviously a need to bring forward statutory regulation and there will be a need for education and training, to which some of my colleagues will refer. As well as the need to move quickly, there is also a need to get it right. Perhaps in helping to achieve that end, this House might yet prove its usefulness to my children and to the son of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham.
Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord McNally. We once appeared on “Question Time” together, although it was the Reading University version, rather than the BBC one.
John Perry Barlow, the libertarian and Grateful Dead lyricist who died last year, wrote in 1996 that the internet was,
“creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity”.
To national Governments, those,
“weary giants of flesh and steel”,
he directed a famous warning in his Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace:
“You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather”.
Those words still have the capacity to inspire, particularly in the start-up culture of Silicon Valley where First Amendment freedoms are sacred and trust in government is low. Having been lucky enough, as we all have, to live through the early stages of the communications revolution that is in the process of transforming our world, and having benefited incalculably from the connections it has brought me to people and sources of knowledge that I would never otherwise have encountered, I would go so far as to say, as Wordsworth controversially said of another revolution:
“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive”.
But as this White Paper repeatedly demonstrates, the scale and intensity with which communication is now possible have brought in their wake the potential for new and serious harms, harms for which counter-speech and alternative narratives are a necessary but insufficient answer. Even the imperative of free speech, central though it is, cuts both ways. Bullies, stalkers and foul-mouthed abusers inhibit the online freedoms of others, in much the same way as anti-social behaviour in the real world drives the most vulnerable from the public square. The risk that free speech will be chilled by overregulation is real and acute. However, underregulation too can inhibit freedom of speech, in particular, the freedom of the women and minority groups who, in Parliament—and, I suspect, elsewhere—attract a disproportionate amount of online abuse. It was saddening, even shocking, to read in the White Paper that 67% of women in the UK experience a feeling of apprehension when thinking about using the internet or social media.
Regulation, to my mind at least, should be a last resort. How sure are we that it is needed? After all, we have laws against the dissemination of terrorist materials, malicious communication, defamation, the incitement of racial and religious hatred and the intentional causing of harassment, alarm and distress. No doubt other such laws could and will be imagined, although never, I hope, the overbroad restrictions on so-called “extremist activity” that were contemplated in the Queen’s Speeches of 2015 and 2016. However, laws of this kind were developed for a world of physical interactions and legal borders. They require perpetrators to be identified and brought to justice in our own jurisdictions. Those who are abroad, or who can effectively ensure their anonymity, cannot be reached. The delicate framework of our analogue laws is not on its own sufficient to contain the turbocharged power of internet communication, let alone to discourage online behaviour that is anti-social rather than unlawful.
What, then, of self-regulation by the internet intermediaries? It already exists, of course, and will continue to be central to any regulatory scheme, but its inadequacy is illustrated by the regular evidence sessions—most recently last week—in which Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are questioned by the Home Affairs Select Committee. They speak of their high standards, terms of service and internal guidelines. They claim credit for recruiting human moderators, for their use of AI and for suspending and deleting accounts. They in turn are criticised for their lack of transparency, for the patchy and inconsistent application of their standards and for their unwillingness to volunteer information that could be of assistance to law enforcement. This is not a satisfactory state of affairs. Partly, that is a function of the sheer size of the task, with hours of video uploaded to YouTube every second, limited numbers of human monitors and algorithms that are good at spotting nipples and rather less good at spotting irony. These problems will continue whoever sets the standards.
But the status quo also reveals a democratic deficit. We in Parliament, not unaccountable executives in California, should be approving the ground rules for those who do business in our country, and an independent regulator, accountable to Parliament, should be encouraging compliance and enforcing where necessary. That is what democratic governance of the internet needs to look like, as some of the tech companies seem now to acknowledge. The concept of the statutory duty of care, proposed by Professor Lorna Woods and given effect in this White Paper, is one that I support, as is the principle that companies cannot realistically be required to check every piece of content before upload for lawfulness, irrespective of whether we remain subject to the e-commerce directive, which requires that to be the case.
Much of the criticism of the White Paper has centred on the use of nebulous terms such as “trolling”, “extremism”, “harm” and “offence”. These are far too broad to be treated as blanket prohibitions with coercive consequences. Some of them could usefully be lost altogether. But in broadcasting at least the concept of harm has proved tolerable in the context of a detailed and context-specific code of practice. My experience of Ofcom, which I should say has extended to representing it at the recent Gaunt case in the English courts and in the European Court of Human Rights, is that with really good guidance even quite broad concepts are capable of being applied with ample regard for human rights. As it explained its approach to me at the time, every case is a freedom of expression case and it starts with a presumption of freedom. It remains to be seen whether the internet platforms are as susceptible to regulation as the broadcasters with which they so often nowadays share a screen. The sheer volume of material and the fact it is not generated by the platforms themselves will ensure that and will require the regulator inevitably to prioritise.
Some platforms might react by overcensoring the content that they allow to be carried—a risk that surely must be mitigated by some mechanism for independent review. Others might display the “refusal to act responsibly” ascribed to Facebook last week by the Privacy Commissioner of Canada in his statement on his Cambridge Analytica investigation—I hope that Sir Nick Clegg was listening. There will be practical difficulties, some of them unexpected, because, as the Minister said when introducing the White Paper, no one has done it before.
Liam Byrne MP has pointed out that, for all the benefits brought by the previous Industrial Revolution, it took numerous Factories Acts over the course of more than a century before its worst excesses could be curbed. This White Paper leaves many important issues for another day—market concentration, unattributable personalised advertising, lack of algorithmic transparency—but I like it more than I expected to, and I hope to participate on its journey into law.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, this is a vast subject, and I will limit my comments to just a few areas.
I and others on these Benches welcome this White Paper, in particular the attempt to rethink the way we see this whole area. In the past we brought in individual laws to deal with particular problems. My colleague the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford has been arguing for some while that we need to see this as public space. We need to try to understand how we can regulate it from first principles in a way that guarantees the freedoms we want and the huge benefits that have come through the online world, which has made a huge and incalculable difference to our lives, but also protects the many people who are vulnerable. We have heard some account of just some of the problems some people have faced.
If the Government are to achieve the aim of making this country the safest place in the world to go online, we need to learn from other industries that are also seeking to be regulated. The whole question that I have been most closely associated with and have taken a particular interest in is regulating the gambling industry. It seems to me that there are a number of parallels that we need to take on board if we are to think about what might be the appropriate way of regulating.
It has been encouraging that the Gambling Commission has taken a stronger line on an industry that in the past performed abysmally in its duty of care to its customers. If companies such as Facebook, Snapchat or YouTube are to behave, the regulators will need to have significant powers and there will need to be real independence. Yet, if they look at some of the other regulators, why on earth are they going to fear? For example, just as the gambling industry’s gross gaming yield continues to grow far into the billions, Facebook’s revenue is now around £55 billion per annum. The substantial fines that we were being perennially promised in the battle to combat wrongful behaviour are very modest and really do not make the companies blink for one moment. Indeed, some cynics have been arguing that some of these companies simply budget in the fines as part of their ongoing business so that they can keep going as they have in the past. Similarly, the largest fine Facebook has received from a UK watchdog is around £500,000. These companies are in a totally different league. Therefore, there is a question about not only how we regulate them but how we get them to engage with the wider debate about the sort of world we want to create.
When I speak with families who have lost loved ones to gambling-related harms, they want to know why companies rarely lose their licences. It appears that the larger high street companies have little to fear that that might be the case. Putting it very bluntly, one of the questions I want to ask is: could it be envisaged, under the proposals as they emerge, that some of these companies could actually find their licences being revoked if they are not able or willing to deliver the public goods we need them to deliver?
The White Paper, I suppose not surprisingly, gives limited details on the funding and membership of the regulator and the regulatory body. I would be very concerned if a solely industry-funded organisation might lead to a culture of mistrust, especially surrounding the urgent need to have independent research and scrutiny. The regulator and any regulatory bodies need to be completely independent of the industry. We will be kidding ourselves if we do not think that the industry is already recruiting and deploying people to lobby individual Members of both Houses. I am sure that is already going on.
But all this is irrelevant if the regulators themselves are ignored. Again going back to gambling, the issue I have been closely associated with, last week I was surprised to see that the Minister for Sport and Gambling appeared to dismiss a call for a mandatory levy, just minutes after the chair of the industry regulator had precisely called for one. Can the Government pledge to this House that any similar tough calls from the regulator will be championed, not rejected?
I have one or two other concerns that I want to touch on at this early stage of the discussion we are having, as we set out various issues to be debated. For example, the White Paper clearly highlights the use of addiction by certain sorts of products online. This is about not just gambling but gaming. The evidence has been growing very consistently that many things online can be hugely addictive; indeed, they are designed to keep you online for long periods. Many people will be aware that one of the issues is that a large proportion of company profits stem from the small problem group of people who are addicted to gambling, gaming or whatever it is. Indeed, they rather rely on it for their profits. Yet we do not seem to have much in this White Paper about how to deal with these products, which are designed to be addictive. This is something that was picked up by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, in her report Disrupted Childhood.
What are we going to do to address these things taking hold of people’s time and energy, and in some cases becoming quite obsessive? For example, will future legislation require gaming companies to have a “pause” function, allowing people to stop and take a breath? What about the mechanism to regulate “dark nudges”, which I have been reading about? People with potential addictions find that, at just the moment they try to come off, some extra new thing is offered to them in an uncanny way that seems to have been designed to do so. These are particularly problematic when you talk to people who are recovering or are addicts. How are we going to address these issues? With so many online companies using addictive products, it would be good for many users if an as yet unnamed future regulator ensured we had some research on how to deal with this sort of issue.
I dread to think of the Minister thinking that a regulator is going to be a silver bullet. This is a much bigger societal issue that we have to go on debating. I am concerned that, while the White Paper portrays the experience of the gambling sector as a land illuminated by sunlit uplands, all due to an industry regulator, that is not how it appears to many of the addicts or their families who have lost loved ones. Vulnerable people and children using the internet deserve the right level of regulation. That will involve some self-regulation, though I have to say that in my experience, talking with people, self-regulation is not working very well in other industries. Just last week, Snapchat was revealed to have extraordinarily weak standards of age verification.
Lord Framlingham (Con)
I have been listening very carefully and have followed the debate from the beginning. Would the right reverend Prelate accept that, given that there is a greater urgency about this matter than just dealing with the White Paper—although that is extremely welcome and constructive—and given that even as we speak, primary school children are accessing hardcore porn, sadly it is now time for rather draconian measures?
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
I thank the noble Lord for his question. It was precisely my point, about a regulator having very significant powers. My question about whether self-regulation will work touches on a number of areas. That was why I was saying that I do not think self-regulation will work. Although it is something that we need to encourage, it does not yet have a track record that we can have much confidence in.
If I may finish—the noble Lord caught me at the very end of what I wanted to say—that is why I do not think that a light-touch approach is going to be the answer. We need to work away at how to balance these various needs, both for the freedoms and for the protection of the vulnerable.
Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)
My Lords, I am very happy to follow the right reverend Prelate, and I agree with much of what he says. I do not quite agree with him on everything, but I will come to that in a moment.
Generally I welcome this White Paper. During my time as a Member of the European Parliament, I became what is loosely termed as an Internet Watch Foundation champion. I do not think I have ever been a champion of anything, but I was very happy to support the Internet Watch Foundation, which has done enormously good work for many years detecting and trying to deal with instances of abuse on the internet. In fact, quite a long time ago, in 2011, I was the European Parliament negotiator when it was decided that child pornography and material facilitating child abuse should be removed from the internet whenever possible, and blocked when removal was not possible. Of course, at that time, there were not really the levers or tools in place to help deal with these matters. The IWF continues to do good work, and I hope it continues to be part of what it has always regarded as a partnership approach, in the new regulatory framework.
I disagree a little with the right reverend Prelate, and, it seems, with some colleagues, on this question of self-regulation. We should also be aware that in hosting websites, there has been much greater success in this country than in others in removing content. That has, until now, inevitably been part of a self-regulatory approach. I welcome the setting up of a regulator, although my experience of other regulators is a little mixed. Regulators have to have clear powers and be able to enforce the regulations that they are responsible for. I certainly welcome the suggestion of codes of conduct for the industry—the service providers—but in preparing these it is vital that we have full consultation, as I know we are currently having on the White Paper, with industry and with relevant NGOs, including the Internet Watch Foundation and the law enforcement authorities.
Also, any proposals must be adaptable. I was dealing with this matter in 2011, but even before that, we were aware of the emergence of the internet, but did not fully understand how it would develop. Therefore, we need to think of this as being part of what I would describe as smart legislation—we need to ensure that we can adapt and change when the circumstances and the technology change. I think a co-operative approach—a partnership basis—should remain in place, as well as having a regulator to deal with some of the worst offences or threats, because if you take away this partnership approach and this self-regulatory element, you will have great difficulties in maintaining the necessary good will, which is very important, particularly in dealing with something that is not just British, not just domestic, but is essentially very international in its implications.
The regulatory regime should be a last resort, if other means are not achieving the ends you need. There is an inherent risk in what is being proposed here, that it could lead to legalistic and obstructive action, with proscription replacing persuasion or agreement, sometimes with positive outcomes. The good intentions of a regulator must not stamp on or pre-empt the good will I referred to, and the voluntary rectification, but as I have said, the UK is, in many ways, in the lead. We are not the worst country. We are not a country where these abuses are particularly noted. We have the fastest removal rates for offensive material in the world. Industry has responded to concerns, and new tools such as web-crowding technology, image classifiers, image hashing and webpage blocking are regularly deployed. That is why I think it is best to mix punitive measures fairly with maximum co-operation. Child sexual abuse imagery hosted in the UK is now at a lower level than it was 15 years ago. Of 105,000 webpages found to contain such material in 2018, only 41 of them were hosted in the United Kingdom. That is nothing to be proud of in international terms, but it shows that our hosting, and the effects of what we are trying to do with host sites, are having some results.
The National Crime Agency estimates that at least 80,000 people regularly view child sexual abuse images in the UK. However, they are viewing them mostly on sites hosted outside this country. One of the White Paper’s conclusions is that the proposed regulator’s powers may not, in my opinion, have a sufficiently open-door approach to those who wish to report offensive material. There is reference to the need for redress and to have a very effective redress system. However, it needs more than that. We need to make sure that the regulator is working not just in isolation but with others, as I said before.
Regarding the funding of a possible new regulator, we would obviously look first to industry to pick up the bill. That is important, but the right reverend Prelate spoke about GambleAware. Speaking as a former Gambling Minister—I may have put that wrongly; I meant as a Minister formerly responsible for gambling in this country—comparisons with GambleAware and Drinkaware are probably not terribly helpful because this is a very different case. In those cases, the drink and gambling industries come forward with proposals to suggest limitation on activity, whereas of course we are talking about elimination rather than limitation.
Finally, I would like to refer to the current provisions mentioned in the White Paper. I think one or two noble Lords have also referred to them. First, I am sure your Lordships will be delighted if I mention that there is quite a lot of EU material here. The EU e-commerce directive of 2000 was referred to a few moments ago by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson. That directive was certainly important but it did not make service providers liable for content; it made them obliged to remove illegal content but there was no obligation under article 15 to continue the monitoring of those sites in a way that I suggest we think they should be.
Secondly, the big point is that I was a shadow rapporteur on the EU general data protection regulation. Now that is important legislation, and it will have an impact here not on everything but certainly on the activities of the regulator and the areas of redress. When my noble friend the Minister winds up this debate, perhaps he could make further reference to those EU regulations and directives. How are we going to ensure that in an international setting, with the clear pressures now on us in this area, we are able to replicate them and ensure that our colleagues elsewhere in the world, where much of the abuse of the internet is coming from, will continue to comply with standards and a quality of approach equivalent to that which we have ourselves?
Lord Puttnam (Lab)
My Lords, I too am extremely grateful to the Chief Whip for allowing time for what is already proving to be a worthwhile and timely debate, and to the Minister for introducing it in such a positive manner. I entirely sympathise with the Government’s instinct to focus on the most obvious forms of online harm, such as child sexual exploitation and abuse, the promotion of terrorism and threats of actual violence. The Government’s proposals in these areas are, on balance, carefully thought through and proportionate. They represent a bold attempt to tackle some of the more damaging features of the digital age and are based on a duty of care—a principle I have long advocated in relation, for example, to what I believe to be the responsibilities of the media to ensure informed democratic debate. I hope it will not be self-promoting to mention that in 2012, I did a TED talk under the auspices of this House on this subject. It has to date been seen by almost 1 million people, so there is no doubt that there is interest in this area.
In the time available this evening, I would like to touch on other forms of harm which in my view are insufficiently addressed in the White Paper. The harms I refer to were identified by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill—sadly, she is not in her place—in response to the Statement on 8 April as being,
“harms to public goods, democracy, culture and the standards of the media”.
She made the point that the White Paper,
“deals with only part of the problem”.—[Official Report, 8/4/19; col. 433.]
As your Lordships have already heard from the noble Lord, Lord McNally, during her recent appearance before the DCMS Select Committee on this White Paper, Elizabeth Denham, the Information Commissioner, said—I will quote her a little more fully—that she was,
“surprised and disappointed that there was not more focus on a huge societal harm, which is electoral interference, and on the need for more transparency in political advertising”.
Like others, I entirely share the commissioner’s disappointment.
We are only too familiar with the pernicious and corrosive effects of online propaganda in the form of disinformation, which has already had a distorting effect on almost every area of our domestic and democratic lives. Much of that distorting effect has been caused by a worrying lack of understanding of how easily we can all be manipulated. Anyone doubting the impact of that manipulation has only to turn to the recent DCMS Select Committee report on Disinformation and Fake News. As that report accurately states:
“In a democracy, we need to experience a plurality of voices and, critically, to have the skills, experience and knowledge to gauge the veracity of those voices”.
Many people have rightly commended the Government’s White Paper for being a global trailblazer in its strategy for tackling online harms. However, I doubt whether I will be the only Member of your Lordships’ House to seek a far greater level of clarity, energy and, crucially, investment in what the White Paper describes as digital literacy. In their White Paper, the Government rightly argue that the promotion of digital literacy has a wide range of benefits,
“including for the functioning of democracy by giving users a better understanding of online content and enabling them to distinguish between facts and opinions online”.
This is an entirely laudable objective, but we have been here before. In fact, it was 15 years ago, in relation to the media literacy responsibilities of Ofcom, as set out in what became the Communications Act 2003, which the noble Lord, Lord McNally, has already referred to today. I am sorry to report that successive Governments, including those of my own party, never seriously grasped—let alone ensured—the delivery of Ofcom’s obligations regarding what the White Paper has now accurately rechristened digital literacy. It is true that for a decade, Ofcom made efforts to address this issue but the specific grant used for that purpose was phased out by DCMS several years ago.
It will be argued that some technical research has been published, but surely that is a woefully inadequate response to the real task at hand: to equip present and future generations with the ability to assess the vast swathes of misinformation, even outright lies, which now proliferate across the internet—whether on social media, blogs or what can at first glance appear to be credible news websites. Had we seriously risen to that task, we might have avoided at least some of the deeply troubling outcomes we now face. We could have made a better job of preparing ourselves for the worst impacts of the environmental crisis that millions of young people now rightly warn us against. Even the result of the referendum might have been different if those aged between 18 and 23 had fully understood the importance of an informed vote for their own futures, and the degree to which they were capable of being marginalised and manipulated in the new digital world.
Any 10 year-old at the time of the Communications Act 2003 will now be aged 26. We are talking about literally millions of voters who, with a better understanding of the power of misinformation, could have demanded a more honest debate on the ramifications and potential outcomes of what for many of them may well have been a life-defining moment. It is estimated that 64% of young people aged 18-24, or 3.6 million out of a total of 5.7 million, turned out to vote in the referendum. Of that 64%, it is further estimated that almost three quarters—2.6 million—voted to remain. Surely it is now imperative that as legislators, we develop a laser-like focus on ensuring that people, especially the young, are equipped with the best means to ensure that never again can our democratic processes be subject to the kinds of distortions we all suffered in the months and weeks leading up to 23 June 2016. Consider this hypothesis, if your Lordships will: had all that age group voted in the same proportion as those who did engage, the result would have been a remain victory by over half a million votes. That is how important a truly informed and fully participatory democracy is to our and their futures.
The sad truth is that in a digital age, we cannot regulate misinformation out of existence. Those days, if they ever existed, have long since passed. Instead, we need to take unambiguous responsibility for putting tools in the hands of users to enable them to distinguish between fact and fiction. This is far from being a new problem but its scale has increased exponentially and its new forms are extremely challenging for any Government to combat. When he replies, will the Minister give the House some assurance that DCMS, the Home Office and the Department for Education are actively working together and prepared to invest time, effort and energy into correcting a lamentable decade of inaction?
I close by quoting from a speech made to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1925 by the then President of the United States, Calvin Coolidge:
“Wherever despotism abounds, the sources of public information are the first to be brought under its control … It has always been realized, sometimes instinctively, oftentimes expressly, that truth and freedom are inseparable …The public press”—
he was speaking at a time when newspapers were pretty well the only form of information—
“under an autocracy is necessarily a true agency of propaganda. Under a free government it must be the very reverse. Propaganda seeks to present a part of the facts, to distort their relations, and to force conclusions which could not be drawn from a complete and candid survey of all the facts … propaganda seeks to close the mind while education seeks to open it. This has become one of the dangers of the present day”.
As this Bill moves through the House, I will be arguing that digital misinformation has become the greatest single danger to our democracy and that to pretend otherwise is to risk fatally undermining it.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I have listened with great interest to the speeches made so far and also read, in some detail, the online harms White Paper. This followed the Green Paper, published in October 2017, in which there was an aspiration to make the UK,
“the safest place in the world to be online”.
This aspiration, which some might call a faint hope, appears again in the executive summary of the White Paper. I also listened to today’s Statement on yesterday’s social media summit and was interested to hear the Minister say that it was agreed,
“to work with experts … to speed up the identification and removal of suicide and self-harm content, and create greater protections online”.
What does the Minister understand “speed up the identification” to mean? Does it mean immediately, within an hour, a day, a week or what?
Lord Storey
I am talking about the earlier Oral Statement on the social media summit.
In the past 18 months, we have seen the internet become less safe and more dangerous, for everyone, but in particular for children and young people, who I have a particular interest in. I am not going to talk about the technical aspects of how we might regulate the internet: I am no expert on bandwidth, et cetera, and the only generation I am interested in is the one currently growing up. I have read about 3G, am using 4G and am reading about the opportunities and threats of 5G.
We must ensure that the next generation of computers, and those who profit massively from the industry, exercise a duty of care. Current and future generations of children and young people must be protected so that they can enjoy a fraction of the innocence that we enjoyed. We spent time and money on the thing called the watershed, in an attempt to prevent children watching adult content on terrestrial TV channels. We pay the staff at the British Board of Film Classification to watch every film for which general release is sought, giving each film an age rating. We have established the Video Standards Council to rate video games. Imagine the uproar there would be if the 10 o’clock news had shown the shootings in New Zealand or beheadings by ISIS. However, as the House has heard, when it comes to the internet the only regulation is self-regulation. Even Mr Zuckerberg, one of the worst villains of the internet piece, makes billions while crying crocodile tears about the need for external regulation.
When a gentleman called Mr Ford began to make motor cars, it was soon realised that they could do serious physical damage to people and property. To minimise the damage, a decision was taken to regulate cars; abolishing them was not an option. In England, we have stringent rules on who can drive, the speed at which cars are driven and how drivers must follow the Highway Code. Parents—most of them—teach their children how to cross the road safely. This is reinforced in schools and, as children begin to use roads as cyclists, they are taught how to keep themselves safe. Similarly, car makers are strictly regulated in terms of the safety of passengers and, increasingly, the damage to the environment.
However, the internet, the 21st-century Wild West, seems to have more than its fair share of bandits but no sheriffs to take them on. The internet is, as yet, totally unregulated and is driven by just two motives: making bigger profits or reducing costs. The reason why pornography, to take just one example, is so easily available on the internet is because the internet giants make unbelievably huge amounts of money, directly and indirectly, by hosting pornography sites.
Of course, everyone agrees that young people should not watch extreme violence or pornography and the industry shadow-boxes with parental filters and age limits. However, the research shows that parental filters are easily evaded and age limits are totally ineffective. A decade ago, in a Committee Room in this House, there was a seminar on the dangers posed to children by the internet. There was unanimity, even then, from the Department for Children, Schools and Families, Vodafone and Google that the internet genie was out of the bottle. Since then, successive Governments have talked the talk about protecting children and young people from the hell which is only three clicks away, but no serious attempt has been made to regulate the internet.
I support this White Paper and congratulate the Government on bringing it forward. We should present this not as an attack on freedom of expression but as allowing freedom of expression which does not damage the most vulnerable. I see this as the start of a process. We know that the industry is lobbying hard to protect its profits. We have all heard how it is difficult—which means expensive—to stop offensive and illegal content being readily available.
I pause to reflect on the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, about the threat to our society and democracies. We have seen how that has gone on: the presidential election in America was probably affected by bots targeting literally millions upon millions of people. As political parties, we use social media to campaign and we do it in a very effective way, but in the wrong hands these means can be used to turn against democracy. I hope that the Government and the Minister will think hard, in detail, about the points that the noble Lord made.
Internet companies say, “There is nothing we can really do about this”, but just look at what is happening in China. Xi Jinping manages to block anything that does not fit in with his socialist China, often with the agreement of the internet giants themselves, who go along with what he says to ensure their presence in the country. I am not suggesting that we have the same regime as China, but it is possible to put in place algorithms and filters which stop the most harmful effects of the internet. As a Liberal Democrat, I am in favour of individual freedoms, but we also have a duty to ensure that that freedom is constrained by the rights of others.
Children have the right to a childhood, and schools need to educate children to be responsible users of social media. Parents must be empowered to protect their children through digital literacy, advice and support. I hope that the Minister will look carefully at the area of support to schools. The Government will say that schools should be doing more and giving education. The problem is that we have a subject called PSHE—personal, social and health education—which many of us have said should be taught in all schools, but of course academies and free schools can choose not to do PSHE or choose not to talk to children about the problems of ensuring internet safety. Unless we regulate the internet to keep our children safe, we will continue to pay a very high price. Parents of children who have committed suicide know how high that price is.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)
My Lords, I am very glad to be taking part in this debate on a topic that I have raised in this House on numerous occasions. As the number of people who use the internet and the range of things they use it for expand, we all face new challenges in balancing the good with the potentially harmful. I commend the Government and the Ministers involved in this for rising to the challenge.
The well-being of our children and young people online is at the forefront of this document and is something I have worked at and with, in different ways, over a number of years. I very much welcome the Government’s reiteration of their commitment,
“to support parents in preventing and dealing with online harms”.
I am particularly pleased that, since the publication of the White Paper, the Government have announced that the age verification of pornographic websites will finally come into effect on 15 July. I and other noble Lords will be monitoring the launch and the effect of this closely. I welcome, too, the intention to bring in a duty of care for social media companies. I shall follow the detail of this debate with interest as well, especially the role of the proposed new regulator, which will issue codes of practice on preventing children accessing inappropriate content, including codes on:
“Steps companies should take to ensure children are unable to access inappropriate content, including guidance on age verification, content warnings and measures to filter and block inappropriate content”.
I have also been active in supporting family-friendly filtering by mobile phone operators and internet service providers and am concerned to read the report, Collateral Damage in the War Against Online Harms, published last week by Top10VPN and the Open Rights Group, suggesting that these filters are potentially harmful rather than advantageous. The Minister and I have had discussions about this over the years. I have never suggested that filtering is a panacea for parents; it is merely one tool in their toolbox for supporting their children as they grow up in this increasingly digital world. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to this report.
The White Paper sets out the Government’s intention for a new online media literacy strategy. I have always argued for educating the public on the options before them to manage their technology use, and especially to help equip parents to raise their children in an increasingly digital world. I welcome the inclusion within the remit of the strategy of:
“Developing media literacy approaches to tackling violence against women and girls online”.
I hope the Minister, will be able to expand on the plans in this area and how they tie in with the commitment in the Ending Violence against Women and Girls—2016 - 2020—Strategy Refresh, that the Government are,
“working to better understand whether links exist between consumption of online pornography and harmful attitudes towards women”,
and that the Government will,
“commission research in order to better understand the links between consuming pornography and attitudes to women and girls more broadly”.
I would be grateful if the Minister would give us an update on how these projects are progressing and when he expects the research to be completed.
I recognise that this White Paper cannot cover all online harms and does not intend to do so. The Minister made that clear in the Statement on 8 April. However, given the focus of the paper on social media companies and child sexual abuse, I was expecting it to cover two areas which are missing. I was hoping he would have addressed some of the issues that were raised in this House and the other place about the limitations of the extent of the Digital Economy Act 2017. When we debated the regulations that will determine which websites will be required to have age verification, on December 11 last year, there was considerable comment about the current exclusion of social media websites. The Minister said that this issue might be addressed by the White Paper: sadly, it is not. It would be helpful to understand the Government’s decision not to include social media within age verification when so much of the White Paper is about the responsibilities of social media, and children accessing pornography is one of the harms in the scope of the White Paper.
During the debate on the regulations, I also raised my concerns that the final version of the Digital Economy Act left a significant loophole with respect to non-photographic and animated child sex abuse images. This means that the age-verification regulator cannot ask internet service providers to block websites that contain these images. The same point was made in the other place, to which the Minister, Margot James MP, said:
“That strikes me as a grotesque loophole”.—[Official Report, Commons, 17/12/18; col. 612.]
I am very pleased that, since the debates at the end of last year, the Internet Watch Foundation has adopted a new non-photographic images policy and URL block list, so that websites that contain these images can be blocked by IWF members. It allows for network blocking of non-photographic images to be applied to filtering solutions, and it can prevent pages containing non-photographic images being shown in online search engine results. In 2017, 3,471 reports of alleged non-photographic images of child sexual abuse were made to the IWF; the figure for 2018 was double that, at 7,091 alleged reports. The new IWF policy was introduced only in February, so it is early days to see whether this will be a success. The IWF is unable to remove content unless that content originates in the UK, which of course is rare. The IWF offers this list on a voluntary basis, not a statutory basis as would occur under the Digital Economy Act. Can the Minister please keep the House informed about the success of the new policy and, if necessary, address the loopholes in the legislative proposal arising from this White Paper?
We are debating a document that is clearly a step in the right direction, and I am sure that all noble Lords certainly congratulate the Government on that. I also very much look forward to hearing the Minister address some of the many points raised by other Members, both before I spoke and following me.
Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, and to precede the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, both of whom have consistently campaigned on the dangers of the internet to children. I agree with what the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans said on gambling; I would support a ban on advertising at football matches.
By way of reminding your Lordships of my interests, particularly as a chief officer at TES, a digital education business, and as chair of xRapid, a health tech business, I will start by reminding the House of the upside of the online world. TES has 11.5 million registered users, and, as a platform for teachers, facilitates the global sharing of teaching resources. This saves teachers buckets of time and helps them access a torrent of quality user-generated content. It is inconceivable without the internet. My other interest trains iPhones to do the work of microscopists in diagnosing malaria, which we are now able to give away to those who need it—laboratory quality at zero marginal cost, thanks to online technology. There are many other examples of technology for good, and if we do not grasp them but instead allow our public services to stagnate, we will be left behind as other nations leapfrog our development.
However, the harm of the internet is also a reality. Many of us are working out how to manage it. I am guilty of normally overindulging on my screen time—I am digitally obese. At home, our seven year-old, Coco, asked us just this week whether we can agree as a family our own code for gaining consent if we want to post images of each other on social media. That is a job for this weekend. But there are areas where self-regulation will not apply and where we need urgent government and legislative action.
I urge your Lordships to take 15 minutes to watch Carole Cadwalladr’s brave TED talk, delivered earlier this month in Vancouver. As the journalist who uncovered the Cambridge Analytica scandal, she has credibility in her charge that our democracy has been broken by Facebook. Her argument is compelling. Communities such as Ebbw Vale, with very few immigrants, voted overwhelmingly for Brexit because of their fear of immigration. Such communities are not consumers of the mainstream, right-wing media that stir that particular pot, but they are consumers of Facebook. She describes Facebook as a “crime scene”, where the likes of Nigel Farage were able to oversee what she uncovered. Who knows how much money from who knows where was able to fund of a firehose of lies through Facebook ads. These were targeted at those who were most vulnerable to believing them, using the illegal hack of personal data from tens of millions of users.
The online harm to individuals, as other noble Lords have talked about, is profound, but there can be no greater harm to a nation state than the catastrophe of Brexit, brought about by referendum won by illegal campaigning—and we allow Nigel Farage to start another party to dupe the nation once more. We desperately need to update our electoral law to prevent this destruction of our democracy, and I hope that the legislation following this White Paper may present some opportunities for us to do so.
I must also say that I commend this White Paper. I inevitably want it to go further, but the core proposals of a duty of care and of a regulator are sound. As the manager of a TES resources platform, I welcome those regulatory burdens. I am particularly delighted to see the duty of care principle. For some time I have been keen to see this well-established legal principle from the physical world come into the virtual world. I was introduced to the notion by Will Perrin and I pay tribute to him and his collaborators at the Carnegie Trust, and to the Government for listening to them. My assumption has been that, when applied, this will generate civil action in the courts by victims against technology operators for the damage caused by their algorithms and other relevant actions. Can the Minister say whether this will be available under the government plans, or will redress be available only through the regulator?
Speaking of victims of algorithms, I am also interested in whether the measures here will apply to the Government themselves and other public bodies. Can the Minister please help me? I have spoken before about the worrying case of the sentencing algorithm used in Wisconsin courts that defence attorneys were prevented from examining. We have had another example closer to home. Last year it came to light that our Home Office had deported potentially thousands of students, using a contractor analysing voice recordings with a machine. They asked the Educational Testing Service to analyse voice files to work out if students were using proxies to sit the English tests for them, and an immigration appeal tribunal in 2016 heard that when ETS’s voice analysis was checked with a human follow-up, the computer had been correct in only 80% of cases—meaning that some 7,000 students had their visas revoked in error.
Given what we know about algorithmic bias, and the growing use of algorithms for public service delivery, it is critical that public bodies are also subject to the measures set out in the White Paper. I would also say that, since the Government are increasingly building technology platforms to compete with the private sector, it would be unfair not to impose the same regulatory burdens upon them as there are on those of us working in the commercial world.
My final point relates to the valid point made in the document that technology can be part of the solution. I agree. But there is a danger that the demands placed on technology companies will assume that they are all of the size and wealth of Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple. This would be a mistake. They can afford to develop solutions and gain a competitive advantage over smaller businesses as a result. We need to ensure that these measures result in a more, not less, competitive landscape. If there are technology solutions to solve difficult problems such as the copyright infringements that I grapple with or other thefts of intellectual property, those tools should be openly available to platform providers of all sizes.
When Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the web he had a great vision that it should be for everyone. Earlier this month he said that the internet,
“seemed like a good idea at the time”,
that the world was certainly better for it, but that,
“in the last few years, a different mindset has emerged”.
At the 30-year point, people have become worried about their personal data, but they,
“didn’t think about it very much until Cambridge Analytica”.
The privacy risk, however, “is subtle”, he argued:
“It’s realising that all this user generated data is being used to build profiles of me and everyone like me—for targeted ads and more importantly, voting manipulation. It’s not about the privacy of photographs, but where my data is abused”.
We need new duties on technology companies and we need a regulator with teeth. I wish the Government well and I hope that we will see legislation on this very soon.
Baroness Benjamin (LD)
My Lords, it is an honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Knight, and I too congratulate the Government on bringing forward this important online harms White Paper.
I have been speaking out about finding ways to protect the vulnerable and impressionable online for almost two decades now. When I was on the Ofcom Content Board 16 years ago, I continually raised my concerns and pleaded for online regulation. But at the time such ideas were considered by many to be an assault on freedom of expression, and it was thought that the internet was an open space where regulation had no place. How things have changed. Today, through this White Paper, we are now about to change the world and bring morality, integrity and trust to the forefront of the online world for the betterment of humanity.
There is no doubt that the internet is a place not only where the best of human spirit blossoms but where the worst and most sordid elements of the human condition can be expressed, shared and amplified on a global scale. Without doubt, the internet and the digital revolution are changing the world. The Pandora’s box of limitless access to information has been opened and the progress of technology seems unstoppable.
But not all progress take us forward. Emerging evidence shows that children are being exposed to a vast range of online harms: pornography, inappropriate content, online gambling, body shaming, suicide, bullying, eating disorders, online grooming. The list goes on and on. It is not just children who are targeted, but adults, too—especially vulnerable groups and those in public life. They are having to deal with fake news and extreme political, racial and religious ideology, as well as hate crime, fraud and blackmail. The impacts can be life-changing: they can have serious psychological and emotional effects on those who have to endure relentless abuse, which is taking its toll on society’s well-being.
I have dedicated my life to the well-being of children, and it is children who are predominantly at risk from online harms. It is accepted that the internet offers children a range of wonderful opportunities to have fun, create, learn, explore and socialise. But tech firms are failing our children, and it seems that they will not take action until they are forced to. They must establish a duty of care for their customers, who want to be empowered to keep themselves and their children as safe online as they are offline. Currently, insufficient support is in place, so many feel vulnerable online.
Last week, I hosted the launch of the Internet Watch Foundation’s annual report. I declare an interest as one of its champions. For the past 23 years, the IWF has taken on what you might call “the toughest job in the world”: removing thousands of child sexual abuse images from the web. Worryingly, it has told me that the extreme content is getting worse and worse. I wept when I heard harrowing stories of how children, including newborn babies, are being sexually abused and then re-victimised by having their image shared across the world online, again and again.
The IWF welcomes the online harms White Paper and its focus on making the UK the safest place in the world online. The paper fits with the IWF’s charitable objectives and vision of an internet free from child sexual abuse. It calls on the Government to recognise the efficiency and success of its work and to ensure the security of the IWF’s partnership approach in the new regulatory framework proposed in the White Paper. But it is concerned that its partnership model could be swept away accidentally and its ability to remove images of child sexual abuse hindered.
When the IWF was founded in 1996, the internet was a vastly different environment. The tech giants of today, including Google, Facebook and Amazon, did not exist. More and more people are now using the internet. The Government, courts and legislative processes are no longer able to keep pace with that change or predict where the future will take us. Therefore, the IWF is calling on the Government to ensure that any legislative proposals and definitions are nimble enough to be adaptable in future, with as wide an application as possible to keep up with the rate of change and innovation in the tech sector. We know that the size, nature and processes of companies within the internet industry are wide and varied, so the Government must work in tandem with the industry to develop a code of practice to effectively address regulation of the internet in a realistic and enforceable manner and recognise that one size does not fit all.
I sit on the House of Lords Communications Committee, and in our latest report, The Internet: to Regulate or Not to Regulate?, we recommended that a new body, which we call the digital authority, should be established to co-ordinate regulators in the digital world and that this body should continually access regulation in the digital world and make recommendations on where additional powers are necessary. We should also establish an internal centre of expertise on digital trends which will help to scan the horizon for emerging risks and gaps in regulation, to help regulators to implement the law effectively and in the public interest. We foresee the digital authority co-ordinating regulators across different sectors and multiple government departments, so we recommend that it should report to the Cabinet Office and be overseen at the highest level.
I always say that childhood lasts a lifetime. As my noble friend Lord Storey said, schools need to educate children about how to use social media responsibly and be safe online, as supported by the PSHE Association. Parents must be empowered to protect their children through digital literacy advice and support because, for most children today, their childhood is being brutally snatched away from them.
This is a pivotal moment, and the rest of the world is watching to see what measures are put in place to regulate the internet. But we must be wise and learn from experience. For example, if the Digital Economy Act were in front of us today, there is no doubt that social media would not be excluded. It is a glaring omission. Will the Minister confirm that the Government will address the exclusion of social media from age verification for commercial pornography at the earliest opportunity? The BBFC should have the power to ensure that an AV wall is in front of all commercial pornography. It makes no sense not to include social media. I believe that the speed of change in this space is such that we will move to a situation where AV is routinely used for a range of content for different ages, and that this is a good thing.
I welcome the recognition in the White Paper of the BBFC’s age ratings online. However, it is vital that age ratings can be linked to parental controls and filters. I also heard from the BBFC that its classification tool for crowd-rating user-generated content, You Rate It, would be perfect for YouTube where, according to Ofcom’s research, many children now view content. It would mean that parents and children could report abuse. Will the Government be prepared to endorse and encourage crowd rating?
Age verification, which I and many other noble Lords across the House have fought for over many years, will finally become operational in July. The legislation and technical innovations to carry out rigorous and secure age verification will soon, I hope, be taken up by other countries across the world. I believe that this will be the same for the measures proposed in the online harms White Paper.
It is wonderful that the DCMS and the Home Office are working together on this important issue, as we need a holistic approach in which other departments, such as Health, Education and the Treasury, are involved. We all have our part to play if we are to counteract the onslaught of online harm.
I urge the Government to concentrate on bringing in a new regulatory framework that can genuinely make the internet a safer place as soon as possible, because every day we hear more horrific stories of online harm. I look forward to working with the Government to progress this important White Paper. Once again, I congratulate them on producing it, because it shows that we intend to be the leading force in the world when it comes to online protection and safety. My Lords, there ain’t no stopping us now!
Baroness Hollins (CB)
My Lords, most of the focus in the media and in Parliament about online harms has rightly been on children and young people. However, I suggest that government, social media companies and the new regulator also think about people with learning disabilities and other vulnerable adults. I remind noble Lords that Article 9 of the UNCRPD requires states to enable disabled people to participate fully and to have access on an equal basis; for example, to information and communication technologies.
According to research published by Ofcom this year, about 70% of the 1.5 million people with learning disabilities in the United Kingdom have a smartphone and a laptop or computer. While this is significantly lower than the proportion of the general population, it still indicates that a majority are active online. For those who go online, there will be clear benefits.
Having a learning disability often means that people have fewer friends and fewer opportunities to socialise than the general population. Social media could be an effective way to connect with others and to build friendships and relationships with like-minded people. However, many have not enjoyed these good outcomes but instead have had distressing experiences.
Many have been financially exploited by people who prey on the fact they have an intellectual disability and are less able to spot a scam. Scammers might pose as a business offering a product or service, as a health professional or as an individual offering friendship or a romantic relationship. This type of “befriending” is often referred to as “mate crime” in the disability sector—there is a tragic history of this occurring both online and offline—and is intended to exploit them financially, physically and sexually. This type of online grooming might begin with the inappropriate sharing of images. Some people with a learning disability, particularly those with limited support, find it difficult to recognise that it is inappropriate and dangerous; nor do they know where to seek help.
Such negative experiences may lead people simply to retreat from social media platforms. As part of the online harms White Paper consultation, I suggest that government need to engage directly with people with learning disabilities as well as with the organisations that represent them, such as the Royal Mencap Society, Dimensions and the Foundation for People with Learning Disabilities.
The 2018 digital charter had several principles, one of which was that people should understand the rules that apply to them when they are online. This raises questions about whether some people with learning disabilities do not have the mental capacity to use the internet safely and what measures social media providers may need to take to make the internet safe and inclusive.
In a recent judgment in February, the honourable Mr Justice Cobb in the case Re A (Capacity: Social Media and Internet Use: Best Interests) commented:
“Online abuse of disabled people has become, and is, an issue of considerable and increasing national and international concern”.
He concluded that A, a man with learning disability, must be able to understand that information and images he shared on the internet might be shared more widely, including with people he did not know; that privacy settings might enable him to limit what is shared; that other people might be upset or offended by offensive material that he had shared; that some people he met online might not be who they said they were; and that someone who called themselves a “friend” on social media might not be friendly. He also suggested that some people whom he did not otherwise know might pose a risk to him.
It was a very thoughtful judgment, which concluded that A did not have capacity to use the internet safely. Mr Justice Cobb also made the point:
“The use of the internet and the use of social media are inextricably linked; the internet is the communication platform on which social media operates … It would, in my judgment, be impractical and unnecessary to assess capacity separately in relation to using the internet for social communications as to using it for entertainment, education, relaxation, and/or for gathering information”.
I would add that access to the internet is also needed for, for example, telecare, which is important for many disabled people.
I, too, welcome the proposed “duty of care” for social media companies. This must include reference to vulnerable adults, including those with learning disabilities. Social media companies have powerful algorithms working to clamp down on copyright and other infringements and it makes sense that these should also protect people from abuse, scams and grooming.
The consultation states:
“The regulator will also have broader responsibilities to promote education and awareness-raising about online safety”.
I strongly suggest that central to this is ensuring that people with learning disabilities are also provided with the skills, tools and knowledge to keep themselves safe online as well as to know where to go to report incidents and get the right guidance and support. Only with this education will people be able to understand online safety and be included in this new technology.
I look to the Minister for an assurance that, in creating this new framework, government will include the needs of vulnerable adults in its scope so that social media companies and others will work together to protect people with learning disabilities from abuse, scams and grooming.
Lord Haskel (Lab)
As my noble friend Lord Knight mentioned, earlier this year we celebrated 30 years of the internet and the BBC made a series of programmes about its development. One was about how content that spreads knowledge and information has been used to undermine many of the values of our society, so doing the harm that we are debating. This meant that the internet platforms had seriously to think about monitoring content. They could not rely on people reporting harmful content because many had sought out the material on purpose.
We were then shown how the monitoring takes place. There are algorithms looking for harmful phrases, words or images, but apparently these can be easily fooled. Therefore, a major part is human monitoring, and we saw how one of the major platforms does this. It employs hundreds of people in Malaysia and the Philippines to scan posts for things such as decency, child abuse and threats—things that are already illegal on the internet. It was interesting to see the monitors at work. Decisions are instantaneous. Where perhaps the Minister or I would want to give a matter more consideration, there is no time, because monitors have to fulfil their quotas or their pay is docked.
This is the practicality of monitoring the internet. When the duty of care required by the White Paper becomes law, companies and regulators will have to do a lot more of it. The paper suggests that the regulator will be funded by a levy on the companies—they will need it. The Minister assured us that regulations will be reasonable and proportionate. Yes, there will be a code of conduct. I think that the internet companies will welcome this, because it firmly puts the responsibility on government to decide what is and is not acceptable, and where lines should be drawn. The lines may be drawn in different places in different countries, but I agree that we have to make a start.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, and hope that the Government will make an important part of this code of conduct requiring internet platforms to provide information voluntarily to help the authorities find the authors of harmful material. Their identity is often covered by many layers of encryption or by using off-grid servers. Indeed, I presume these regulations will apply only to the open internet. Do the Government also hope to regulate the dark web and private servers?
Of course, there are other ways to achieve the same objective. Like the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, I ask the Minister whether we will keep the GDPR rules of the EU. These seem to rely on swingeing fines acting, we hope, as a deterrent, but the size and resources of the European Union are presumably needed to collect such fines from companies 5,000 miles away; however, I am sure they act as a deterrent.
The alternative is to deal with this through some good, old-fashioned anti-monopoly legislation, making sure that customers and users are not being exploited. As we are all locked into using these platforms, are we being exploited by lack of choice, lack of transparency or lack of content? I put it to the Minister that there is a case for this. He will be aware of the growing unease about the concentration of power and control over the internet in a few companies; we all know who they are. Much of this power and control lies in the fact that the same company that provides the platform also provides the content and the goods. Doing both enables a company to dominate trading online, causing harm to many small and medium-sized companies that trade on or off the internet. This is harmful to society too, as explained by my noble friend Lord Griffiths and the noble Lord, Lord McNally, because it causes economic harm.
So, there is a case for commercial harm. Internet platforms recognise this and have recently produced data ethics guides or appointed prestigious advisory councils to look at not only harm but the impact of artificial intelligence. Part of their task also seems to be helping to argue that breaking up the dominant companies will be bad for innovation and progress. I suspect that reducing the harm of these companies by treating them as monopolies is some way off but, in the end, it may become the only effective way of dealing with the harm that concerns us, making the internet a safer place without having to create trusted institutions to handle the data. The promised media literacy strategy can play an important role. Like my noble friend Lord Puttnam, I think it should be high on the agenda to assist us in helping ourselves and our families.
The Government are right to act. As I said, it will require a lot of people and money, but let us not forget old-fashioned monopoly legislation because it may come down to that. The Minister spoke about international co-operation. What steps will the Government take to get others to work with us? I agree that we cannot isolate ourselves from the rest of the online world.
Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)
I declare an interest as a series producer at Raw TV making content for CNN. I support many of the suggestions in the White Paper, particularly the need to give a duty of care to tech companies to prevent the harms that appear on their platforms. The Communications Committee’s recent report on regulating the internet stated:
“Given the urgency of the need to address online harms, we believe that in the first instance the remit of Ofcom should be expanded to include responsibility for enforcing the duty of care. Ofcom has experience of surveying digital literacy and … experience in assessing inappropriate content”,
and balancing it against free speech. The new regulator recommended in the White Paper is an exciting idea I fully support, but it will take some time to create and action needs to be taken now.
I was reassured by the Minister’s assurances on free speech at the beginning of the debate but I would still like to draw his attention to the wide range of organisations covered by the regulator under the White Paper. Paragraph 4.2 looks at types of online activity, including “hosting”, “sharing” and “discovery of user-generated content”. My concern is that this definition is so widely drawn that it will cover much user-generated content on the websites of broadcasters and newspapers. As the Minister pointed out, these are already regulated by Ofcom, IMPRESS or IPSO. Some of the UGC is also regulated on these publishers’ websites, particularly those that have gone through a process of editorial control. However, a lot of the other comments and UGC on these websites is not covered and is not being looked at under the regime suggested by the White Paper. I suggest that it should be dealt with by extending the remit of the existing regulators, rather than being duplicated by a new regulator.
I am also concerned by some of the definitions of online harms set out in table one in paragraph 2.2—the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, talked about them—particularly those under the column entitled “harms with a less clear definition”. I am worried that unless their definition is carefully focused, they will have a chilling effect on free speech by leaving media companies vulnerable to allegations of breaching their duty of care. One such harm is “disinformation”, which we are all against when it covers the dissemination of lies. I fear that, despite the Government’s laudable intention, a wide definition would allow interest groups and individuals being investigated by reporters to disrupt research and undermine the credibility of news organisations with allegations of fake news. For example, we have seen super-complaints against media outlets reporting on the pharmaceutical industry and exposing the side-effects or addictive qualities of certain drugs. The threat of a digital regulator questioning the original journalism and comments from users, who report the side-effects of these drugs, could stop these investigations taking place.
Another term that worries me is “violent content”, which also comes under the column entitled “less clear definition”. This definition must also be drawn very carefully so that it does not censor reports on demonstrations or terrorism. Even if these reports have been carefully edited, there could still be complaints of incitement to or encouragement of violence. For instance, reporting from the Catalan independence referendum showed many shots of the police violently tackling voters to prevent the banned vote going ahead. In this case, a wide definition of “violent content” could be interpreted to cover these images of extreme police action because they incite violence; they might therefore be taken down. I ask the Minister to draw these definitions carefully so as not to chill free speech. It would be ironic if the legislation coming from this White Paper managed to quash valid and important free speech when it should be stopping a much greater harm.
A completely different area of the White Paper, mentioned by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, worries me: the Government’s approach to internet addiction. Paragraph 1.19 of the White Paper states:
“The UK Chief Medical Officers (UK CMOs) commissioned … a systematic evidence review on the impact of social media use on children and young people’s mental health. The review covered … online gaming … and problematic internet use, which is also known as ‘internet addiction’”.
However, paragraph 1.20 states:
“Overall the research did not present evidence of a causal relationship between screen-based activities and mental health problems, but it did find some associations between screen-based activities and … increased risk of anxiety or depression”.
The White Paper concludes that the evidence does not support the need for,
“detailed guidelines for parents or requirements on companies”.
Box 15 suggests that,
“the regulator will continue to support research in this area … and, if necessary, set clear expectations for companies to prevent harm to their users”.
I suggest that the White Paper is kicking the can down the road. Millions of parents in this country will have stories of trying to limit their children’s screen time and the dreadful battles that ensue. Your Lordships only have to read a widely praised book by Shoshana Zuboff, Surveillance Capitalism, to understand that addictiveness is built into many platforms, especially social media sites such as Facebook.
Chapter 8 does look at regulators working with tech companies to enforce safe design in the digital world, but I suggest that the Government should specifically ask the regulators to look at internet addiction more thoroughly and, if necessary, force tech companies to change their algorithms and coding so that this addictiveness is reduced. Obviously, tech companies want to encourage users to spend as much time on their platforms as possible, so it is only through direct intervention by the regulator that anything will be done to combat internet addiction.
There is one area of internet addiction that I am particularly concerned about: internet gaming disorder, a condition which at the moment affects many young people, especially young men. There is great concern among addiction specialists about this problem. It has been difficult comprehensively to diagnose the condition because so many different measures have been used, but next month the World Health Organization assembly will be discussing whether gaming disorder should be included in the International Classification of Diseases. Once that happens, doctors and psychologists are convinced that the terrible extent of this problem will become only too clear.
The Minister has only to talk to players of the game “Fortnite” to understand how very clever the company designers have been in making it addictive. Even when the player stops the game it carries on, and when they join there are endless incentives to keep playing. There have been many cases of young people being severely sleep deprived, refusing to leave their rooms and, in some cases, even becoming suicidal. Policymakers in China and South Korea, where this has been a particular problem, recognise that internet game disorder needs to be dealt with. They have started to combat it by working with parents and by engaging with the gaming companies to build in design that limits the amount of time played and, in some cases, cuts off play after a certain period. The White Paper needs to bring together stakeholders and the gaming industry to draw up new regulations right now to mitigate the problem of gaming addiction, along the lines of what is going on in the Far East. I ask the Minister to ensure that any further legislation takes this problem into account. Millions of parents across the country will be grateful and, in the long term, so will their children.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
My Lords, I rarely speak on DCMS issues. I talk about them when they have been taken away from that department and pushed down the line to the Home Office or the health department. I am thinking here of how the licensing legislation for drinking started in DCMS. It ended up with the Home Office and effectively the major interest in the issue now is with health. It is the same with gambling, where again we started with DCMS. I forecast that this major document and the legislation that is to follow it will not stay primarily with DCMS but will go to the Home Office, where the security issues have to be dealt with, but much of it will end up with the health department. Here I am pleased to be following the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, because the areas he has touched on are those in which I have a particular interest. I have gone from drink, drugs, sugar, diabetes and obesity to what people are doing about obesity in children and the failure of parents to watch what their children are doing, including the time that they are spending on the internet, particularly on gaming, and the effect that this is having on family life and so on.
I picked up on the issue of opioids on page 16, while on page 20 mention is made of the report of the UK Chief Medical Officers which looks at the problems that will arise in the future. At the moment the prospective Bill will not look at them. A real challenge is the emergence of the problem of excessive screen time. Children are spending an average of 15 hours a week playing games. Pages 26 and 27 deal with addiction, which was picked up on by the noble Viscount. I am worried that we do not have enough about health in this document. If it is not in there now, it will most definitely come along further down the line.
I welcome the White Paper overall because it pulls together many areas where we have had concerns for quite some time. I welcome the statutory duty of care, but it is a pity that that has been taken from the health and safety regulation. Health has thus been denied its inclusion, and I suggest to the Minister that when we come to rewrite the title we do not just talk about online harms but add a colon and the word “safety” and a tag behind it saying “health”. I think that health will have to be looked at in that context. A new title would be better because we should try to make it look a bit more positive than it does at the moment.
We also have to look for ways in which we can engage better not with the smaller companies in the industry but with the big ones. We should differentiate between the big international monopolistic players and the smaller companies that are trying to make their way and grow. It should not quite be a blunderbuss right across the board; we should split these companies into two categories. We are dealing here with people who have big money and great power.
Referring to the appearance of the noble Baroness, Lady Blackwood, before us earlier, we can see that the Department of Health and Social Care has seized the initiative on organising meetings. The Government will need to have someone who is clearly in charge. I am not sure from which department they will come, but someone has got to be ultimately responsible for dealing with the major companies on an international basis as well as domestically within the UK.
It is good to see that we have the statutory duty of care and that we will use technology as part of the solution. It is good too that the funding for this will, it is hoped, come from the industry. I suggest that we need much more funding than just to cover the regulator. We ought to have a look at what happened when the National Lottery was introduced. By and large it has not been criticised as much as gambling in general over recent years. The National Lottery is acceptable because some of the money raised by the lottery goes back into society. We need to engage with the major players not just about harms but about how we can move them towards taking a positive approach. Perhaps we should be looking at them not just to pay for regulation but to create something like the kinds of additional funds that from the 1990s onwards have been generated and then spent on, for example, heritage projects. That money from the major players should be used to pay for research and to encourage them to explore those areas where technology can be used positively as well as negatively.
My interest in this issue is based on friends with children who are totally addicted to gaming. The problem is quite widespread and is growing, and it needs to be seriously addressed. If you can get children addicted to gaming, why are we not looking at whether gaming can be used as a means to attract the attention of children who perhaps have mental health problems or physical problems with obesity and so on? We should try to develop positive games that encourage them to care for themselves rather than simply persuading them to buy the next game, which is what so many of the gaming exercises are about at the moment: making money. There is an opportunity to engage with the major players and try to move them in that direction. They could still make money but they would be doing so on something that is worth while for the populace generally, and in particular for the welfare of our children in the future.
I am working with a group of people in a television company to try to do this. We have identified many of the games currently being played which are good, but they are in the minority. I have tabled a Question for a couple of weeks’ time asking the Government what they are doing in terms of research into gaming on the positive side rather than the negative one. I hope that the Minister, who is going to be answering that Question, is prepared to come up with some positive responses. Money needs to go into this and if the Government will not fund it, we certainly ought to be going to the private sector, perhaps in conjunction or in partnership with the Government. We could then develop a positive approach to the good elements of technology rather than spending all our time talking about the negative ones.
I am unhappy about the absence of the health elements, which I believe will come in due course, without question, as night follows day. We should be preparing for that, and perhaps the Minister might reflect on whether a little more should be included on the problems coming on the health side. They would then already be there and, even if not addressed in the Bill that comes, would at least have been laid down to be reviewed and worked on in the future.
I hope the Minister might look also at the possibility that more money is taken on a persuasive basis from the big players, so that we do not just cover the cost of the regulator but start to invest in research in those areas where games, for example, could be used positively for the benefit of children, rather than negatively.
Baroness Grender (LD)
My Lords, it is excellent to follow the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, because I have worked with him on areas of addiction. I know of his campaigning in this area, and I admire and follow with interest his constant insistence on connecting it to health. I also thank the Minister for providing us with this debate. As the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, rightly described it, it has been a good opportunity to have a fascinating conversation.
Every noble Lord has said that the White Paper is very welcome. To date, the internet, and social media in particular, have opened up huge freedoms for individuals. But this has come with too high a societal price tag, particularly for children and the vulnerable, as described by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins. There is too much illegal content and activity on social media, including abuse, hate crimes and fraud, which has mostly gone unpoliced. As my noble friends Lord McNally, Lady Benjamin and Lord Storey said, we on these Benches therefore support the placing of a statutory duty of care on social media companies, with independent regulation to enforce its delivery. My noble friend Lady Benjamin was quite right to say that she was seated at this table a long time before many of us. The independent regulator could be something like the Office for Internet Safety, or, as described by the Communications Committee, the digital authority.
The evidence has been clear from the DCMS Select Committee, the Lords Select Committee on Communications, Doteveryone, 5Rights and the Carnegie Trust: they have all identified the regulatory gap that currently exists. A statutory duty of care would protect the safety of the user and, at the same time, respect the right to free speech, allowing for a flexible but secure environment for users. We agree that the new arrangements should apply to any sites that, in the words of the White Paper,
“allow users to share or discover user-generated content or interact with each other online”.
The flow between regulated or self-regulated providers of information and providers of platforms of unfiltered content is not something that your average teenage user of “Insta”, as they call Instagram, can distinguish—by the way, it is never Twitter they use; that is for “old people”. These Insta-teens do not distinguish between a regulated, substantiated information provider and inaccurate and harmful content or links. The noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, talked about digital literacy, which is absolutely essential. One of the greatest gifts we can give a new generation of children is the ability to question the content that is coming to them. Proper enforcement of existing laws, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, is vital to protect users from harm. But the useful addition is that social media companies should have a statutory duty.
My noble friend Lord Clement-Jones so ably chaired the Select Committee report on artificial intelligence, Ready, Willing and Able?; a report that some of us talked about only last week. A year later, it is still keeping us all very busy with speaking engagements, and therefore my noble friend is very sorry that he cannot be here. He is currently in Dubai at the AI Everything conference to talk about AI and ethics. When the White Paper was published, he rightly said:
“It is good that the Government recognise the dangers that exist online and the inadequacy of current protections. However, regulation and enforcement must be based on clear evidence of well-defined harm, and must respect the rights to privacy and free expression of those who use social media legally and responsibly”.—[Official Report, 8/4/19; col. 431.]
He welcomed the Government’s stated commitment to these two aspects. The essential balance required was described by my noble friend Lord McNally, the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, and the noble Viscount, Lord Colville.
Parliament and Government have an essential role to play in defining that duty clearly. We cannot any longer leave it to the big tech firms such as Facebook and Twitter, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Haskel. We have been waiting and waiting for it to be done on a voluntary basis, and it is simply not good enough. It was therefore good to hear the Statement earlier today, on yesterday’s emergency summit, about self-harm and the commitment from some of the big tech firms to provide the Samaritans with support. However, the right reverend Prelate, my noble friend Lord Storey and the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, were right about the need to follow the money and look at the level of investment versus the level of profit. I hope that the Minister will respond on that.
I want to explore in particular the use of regulators that currently exist. Our findings on these Benches, following a series of meetings with the main regulators and after hearing evidence, is that they are keen to get started on some of these areas. While I appreciate that we are still in a period of consultation, I would like to explore this issue, because the need to deliver soon for the whole current generation is significant.
Does the Minister agree that it may well be possible for the extension of regulatory powers to Ofcom to oversee the newly created duty of care? Does he agree that Ofcom could, in principle, be given the powers and appropriate resources to become the regulator that oversees a code for harmful social media content, and the platforms which curate that content, to prevent online harms under the duty? As the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, asked, what are the possibilities for the use of current regulators? Ofcom’s paper on this very issue, published last September, was very helpful in this respect. We heard from my noble friend Lord McNally about the success of the Communications Act 2003, and the scepticism beforehand about its ability to deliver. It runs in complete parallel to what is currently being debated about how it can apply to the internet—so it has been done before.
Likewise, how does the Minister view new powers for the Information Commissioner and the Electoral Commission, particularly in respect of the use of algorithms, explainability, transparency and micro-targeting? I apologise that I cannot provide more detail—I cannot seem to get on the internet here today, which is ironic—but there was a recent fascinating TED talk about the suppression of voting. It was about not just the impact on voting but trying to suppress voter turnout, which I find horrific. What are the possibilities for the ICO and the Electoral Commission to expand and take up some of these duties?
The White Paper refers to the need for global co-operation, and my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones is pursuing the possibility of the G20 in Osaka being used as a key platform for an ethical approach to AI. Is it possible that the White Paper agenda could be included in this? In particular, it is about using the recommendations on ethical principles from the AI Select Committee, and the five principles for socially good AI from the European Commission High-Level Expert Group. What are the possibilities around that, given that we are trying to push for global agreement on responsible use of the internet?
The noble Lord, Lord Knight, mentioned transparency. There must be transparency around the reasons for decisions and any enforcement action, whether by social media companies or regulators. Users must have the ability to challenge a platform’s decision to ban them or remove their content. I very much welcome the fact that technology has been highlighted as something that is part of the solution.
For children, “not online” is simply not an option. Children at secondary school now have to use it to do their homework. It is no good me saying to my 13 year-old, “Get off your screen”, because he just might be on “Bitesize” or doing his maths. I have to get my kids’ meals paid for on this, so online is very much part of a child’s life. Screen-based activity could mean that they are doing their homework—fingers crossed.
However, I completely agree with what was said about the resistance of the gaming sector, in particular, to engage with this issue, and I support the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, on this. But my noble friend Lord McNally rightly pointed out our limitations generationally. Fair warning: I think that sitting through a popular vlogger on YouTube with 2 million subscribers describing the “Endgame” version of Fortnite to us would not enlighten us as legislators. It is therefore about us getting it right.
The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, said that we have been lucky. What I fear and worry about most of all is that today’s generation is not going to get the value of this White Paper, and that is particularly unlucky. Therefore, to get the balance right, as my noble friend Lord McNally rightly said, we should be considered in our approach. But I worry about the need to deliver quickly, and that is why I am asking whether there are regulators who can possibly trial some of this legislation in advance, rather than it going through pre-legislative scrutiny—because we know that some of them are ready to deliver on some of this.
I assume that when seat belts were originally discussed in a place like this, there were still some people who wanted children to bob about on the back seat in the name of freedom, without laws to protect them. Today that would be horrific and unheard of. We will probably look back and feel the same about children online. My noble friend Lord Storey is absolutely right: a child can find their way around the age issue. Give me a handful of 11 and 12 year-olds and I will show you the social media apps they are currently on. All of them are restricted to 13—but they are all on them. That is why the age verification issue must be tied in with younger people in particular, as was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, and my noble friend Lady Benjamin. In order to double or triple check, I ask the Minister whether it is being delivered in July. I thank him for his thumbs up; it is very well taken.
As I have said, we have a moral duty to move at quite a pace now. The White Paper is extremely welcome and I look forward to supporting its rapid progress through this House.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)
My Lords, I join others in thanking the Government for ensuring that the House has had an early opportunity to debate this White Paper. It has been long-trailed—it kept approaching and disappearing in our thoughts as the Minister came under pressure to define his timescale—but it is here, it is good and we will support it. However, it has also brought up a number of issues that have been raised today and we need to address them.
The number of speakers in the debate may be relatively low but the quality of the content has been extremely high. I have been scribbling notes all the way through, often overwriting what I was going to say as additional points came through. I will probably not be as clear as I would wish to be but that is a reflection of the quality on display today.
We also had the chance to see practical examples of the issues in play in the exchanges on the Statement that preceded this debate. Some concrete examples were quite worrisome and I hope they will be looked at carefully by DCMS, even though the Statement was from the Department for Health and Social Care.
It would be invidious to pick out particular contributions to the debate—as I have said, the standard has been high—but it would be remiss of me not to pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, for her contribution. She has been a doughty campaigner on these issues for as long as anyone can remember—she can remember a long way back; I mean no disrespect by saying that—and it must be a sweet moment for the Minister that, despite the criticisms she still has, she welcomed what has been put in front of us today.
We are not discussing a Bill and I take the Minister’s point that this is a White Paper for discussion. It has some green pages to which we are encouraged to respond, and I hope we will all respond where we can. I also hope that the Minister will take on board what has been said today because it has been a useful contribution. Many people have spoken about the wording of the paper itself, which gives a sense of where we are in this debate. I shall do so as well. I have some general points that I wish to make at the end of what I have to say, but I shall start with one or two points of detail because it is important that we pick up on issues of substance.
On the statement in the White Paper on a new regulatory framework for online safety, in paragraph 21 there is an assertion that the Bill will contain powers for the Government to direct the regulator, when appointed, in relation to codes of practice on terrorist activity or child sexual exploitation and abuse—CSEA—and that these codes must be signed off by the Home Secretary. This is an issue in which Parliament needs to be involved and I hope the Minister will reflect on that and find a way in which we can get further engagement. I do not think it appropriate for the Executive simply to commission codes, have the Home Secretary sign them off and implement them without Parliament having a much greater role.
Paragraph 22 refers to the need to make sure that the codes of practice relate to currently illegal harms, of which there are many, including violence and the sale of illegal services and goods such as weapons. The clear expectation is that the regulator will work with law enforcement to ensure that the codes keep pace with the threat. This also is a wider issue because obscenity law is also in need of updating. We have had discussions on previous Bills about how there is discontinuity in how the Government are going about this. I hope that point will also be picked up.
A number of noble Lords raised the importance of transparency for any work that might be done in this area. The most disappointing aspect is the rather coy phrasing in the White Paper in relation to algorithms. Paragraph 23 refers only to the regulator having powers to require additional information about the impact of algorithms in selecting content for users. The bulk of the argument that has been made today is that we need to know what these algorithms are doing and what they will make happen in relation to people’s data and how the information provided will be used. This issue came up in the discussion on the Statement, when it was quite clear that those who might be at risk from harms created on social media are also receiving increasingly complex and abusive approaches because of algorithms rather than general activity. This issue is important and we will need to come back to it.
Moving on to the companies in the scope of the regulatory framework, the phrasing of paragraph 29 is interesting. It states:
“The regulatory framework should apply to companies that allow users to share or discover user-generated content or interact with each other online”.
That does not cover the point that, as many others have said, a much wider set of societal and economic indicators will be affected by the work on social media. We cannot allow the opportunity to legislate here to be missed because of some constraint on looking only at user-to-user interactions. We need to consider the impact on the economy more broadly.
When the Minister responds, or perhaps in writing later, will he consider the question raised in paragraph 33, which states:
“Reflecting the importance of privacy, any requirements to scan or monitor content for tightly defined categories of illegal content will not apply to private channels”?
We need to know more about what is meant by “private channels”. There is more in the White Paper but this exclusion of private communications may be too great a risk to bear. If we are talking about WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger messages being private, we will also miss out on the problems that have been caused by harassment, bullying, aggression and other issues raised in earlier debates.
On the independent regulator, which I shall come back to later, there is a very narrow issue about the wording of paragraph 35, which says that,
“the regulator will work closely with UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)”.
Why has that body been picked? There must be many people doing research in this area and it would seem invidious that it has been selected as one of the primary partners on the evidence base. I hope there is a much broader cut through the research being done because we will need it as we move forward.
Finally on the detailed points, the enforcement of the regulatory framework is key to whether this will be a successful démarche. On all the previous occasions we have discussed this, in relation to gambling, addiction and other issues, we have come across the problem that where companies have a legal presence in the UK, there is obviously an easier route through to attaching to them. However, most companies operating in the UK are based entirely overseas, and this is true of the companies we are talking about today. It is a familiar problem. We have been through this so many times that the arguments must be so well rehearsed in the department that it has not been able to come up with anything new this time, although I regret that because we are stuck with the issue that, while it is very good to see the Government prepared to impose liability on individual members of senior management in respect of breaches of the regulations implied by the new regulator, the business activities will not be affected if the Government lack the powers to do anything about them. The Minister is well aware that in previous discussions we have come to the conclusion that the only real way in which one can get at that is to follow the money. Unless there are powers in the Bill, when it comes forward, to block non-compliant services, and particularly to stop the flow of money, it will not be effective. I hope that message will be learned and taken forward.
The noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, raised an important point about the fit with the EU e-commerce directive. I am sure the answer to this is that it cannot be answered, but the issue is clearly there. The e-commerce directive constrains the Government’s ability in this area. Unless they have a way forward on this, we will not be able to get far beyond the boundaries. I will be grateful for any thoughts that the Minister might have on that.
On general points, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans was right to pick as his analogy the parallel between the internet and open spaces, and how we are happy to regulate to make sure that open spaces are available and accessible to people. We should think hard about that helpful analogy in relation to the internet. I am also very grateful to my noble friend Lord Knight of Weymouth, one of the few people to point out that we all believe that the sunny uplands of the internet—the safe places in which we gambol and play—have always been a fantastic resource for those able to access and use them. Of course there are dangers, and it has been a bit of a Wild West, but we have undoubtedly benefited from the internet. We must be very careful that we do not lose something of value as we go forward.
I take it from what the White Paper says that it is now clear that there is sufficient evidence from authoritative sources of the harms caused by social media to justify statutory action. Indeed, the White Paper accepts that voluntary self-regulation in this area has failed. I think that is right. However, we need to bear in mind that there is a lot going on. For example, we are still waiting for the Law Commission to finalise its review of the current law on abusive and offensive online communications and of what action might be required by Parliament to rectify weaknesses in the current regime. From earlier discussions and debates, I also anticipate that more legislation will be required to eliminate overlapping offences and the ambiguity of terminology concerning what is or is not obscene. I hope we will have a clear view of what is or is not illegal in the virtual world. It is easy to say that what is illegal in the real world should be illegal in the virtual world, but we now know enough to anticipate that changes will be required to get our statute book in the right order. However, if it is clear what is illegal and can be prosecuted, am I right in thinking that the problem is about how to systematise the drafting of effective legislation for those affected by fast-moving, innovative services on the internet? The software of social media services changes every week, perhaps even more often—every day—and, as many have said, it will be very difficult to find the right balance between innovation, freedom of speech and expression, privacy and the harms that have been caused.
We come back, then, to the very basic question: how do we regulate an innovative and fast-moving sector, largely headquartered outside the UK, and what tools do we have available to do it with? It is true that the technologies in use today represent only 10% of what is likely to be introduced in the next decade or so. How do we future-proof our regulatory structures? That is why the idea of a duty of care is so attractive. Like my noble friend Lord Knight, I acknowledge the work of the Carnegie UK Trust on this, in particular that of Will Perrin and Lorna Woods. There is an earlier legal principle in play here: the precautionary principle that came out in the late 1990s. Its strength lies in requiring a joint approach to as yet unknown risks and places the companies offering such services in the forefront of efforts to limit the harms caused by products and services that threaten public health and safety, but always in partnership with the regulator, to make this public space as safe as the physical space, as the analogy would run.
We support the Government’s proposals for primary legislation to place a duty of care on the social media companies to prevent reasonably foreseeable harm befalling customers or users and to build in a degree of future-proofing that encompasses the remarkable breadth of activity that one finds on these social networks. Having said that, it is important that we think hard about the regulator. This is the point I wanted to come back to. Under a duty-of-care approach, a regulator does not merely fine or sanction but plays an active role to help companies help themselves. It would be perverse not to utilise, for example, the experience and expertise of Ofcom in these earlier stages because it already has a relationship with so many of these companies. I hope that the lessons learned by the Health and Safety Executive over the years will also be tapped because there are other examples, which we will come to.
A few detailed points raised in the debate should be at the forefront in the Minister’s summing up. One is that we do not know enough about the practicalities of physical human monitoring—a point raised by my noble friend Lord Haskel. Here, transparency must be the key. Do we really know what goes on in what we do? If it is all done by automated screenings and robotics, and there is a limit on physical human activity, we will never get to the point where we can rely on companies sufficiently. This is an important area, and of course this is before we start raising issues about the dark web, as my noble friend did.
As others mentioned, we are still not clear about what the real issues are between harmful and illegal content, particularly the contextual issues raised about questions of harm. Clearly, as raised by the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, there is the danger of a chilling effect on innovation and development, and I hope that will be borne in mind. We also have to think about the economic and social disruptions. These activities may well be social in terms of social media but their impact on the whole of society is very important and we need to make sure that the rules and regulations are in place for that.
With regard to the regulator, there is also the question of what other regulatory functions there should be. When we get to the proposed Bill, we will need to spend some time exploring the boundaries between the ICO and the new regulator, and if it is a new regulator, how that boundary will work with Ofcom. I am sure that point will come up later, so it may not need a response today.
A number of noble Lords mentioned addiction and I have a lot of sympathy with that. I do not think that we have really got to the bottom of the issues here. Addiction to gambling is pretty well known about but gaming is becoming increasingly common in discussions about addiction, and the noble Viscount was right to raise it. There is not much in the White Paper about the research, development and educational work around all this activity. Perhaps the Bill will contain more about those issues once further development and discussions have taken place.
As my noble friend Lord Puttnam said, research on its own, and support for education about the technologies, is not really what we are about here. Both he and my noble friend Lord Knight pointed out that knowledge about the technology does not get you to the point where you understand what the information that you lack is doing to your perception of the world and your views about how the world is going. We need to educate and train people and offer them support, whether they are vulnerable or not, so that they can realise when the facts have been distorted and what they think is true is in fact misinformation. That is a completely different approach and I hope the Minister will have something to say about it when he responds.
This is such an interesting and complex area that we should spend more time on it than has been available to us thus far. The idea of pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill, and certainly more discussion and debate, is attractive. I hope it finds favour with the Minister.
Lord Ashton of Hyde
My Lords, I genuinely thank all noble Lords for their contributions. I echo what the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, said about the quality of the speeches. There is much to say and I will do the best I can to be clear.
I again make the point that this is not a Second Reading debate. I am not here to defend every word in the document. We are approaching this issue in a genuinely consultative way, as I think we have done from the publication of the Green Paper onwards. However, there is one thing that we are not prepared to compromise on: we do not think that the status quo is acceptable, and we believe that the public support us in that.
We are interested in people’s views and the consultation is taking place at the moment. As I said, there have already been over 1,000 responses. There tends to be an initial barrage of responses. They then tail off a bit, and the more considered ones, with the benefit of research, come at the end. Therefore, we think that there will be a significant amount of consultation. We intend to undertake research during and after that period, based on the consultation, and I, along with my officials, will be very willing to talk to noble Lords about this issue outside the Chamber.
Regarding the potential chilling effect on SMEs of the proposed legislation, I would like to say something about the DCMS. Its responsibilities have grown enormously. We now represent sectors that produce one in every £7-worth of the goods and services produced in this country. We are absolutely concerned with and supportive of innovation and growth. Although we think that this regulation is necessary, we are very concerned that it should be proportionate and risk based so that it does not in any way stop the engine of growth that has taken place over the last few years, particularly in the digital sector, where the growth has been significantly higher than that of the economy. We are undoubtedly a world leader in that respect.
The DCMS also represents culture and the media, so we are concerned with our liberal democratic culture, freedom of expression and the press. We therefore have to achieve a difficult balance. It is interesting that both ends of the continuum have been expressed tonight—that is, noble Lords have alluded to the fact that this is a broad-ranging document but some have said that it does not cover a number of pet harms that they are interested in. Achieving the aims will be difficult but absolutely possible. I will come on to talk about how the harms relate to the duty of care, which I hope will be reassuring. I reiterate that, in replying to the individual points made by noble Lords, I guarantee to take them back to the department and think about them, and I will write to noble Lords if I do not get to the end.
Although this is an important part of the battle against internet and online harms, it is also part of a wider mission that we are undertaking. We want to develop rules and norms for the internet, including for protecting personal data, supporting competition in digital markets and promoting responsible digital design. That is why, on page 31 of the White Paper, we have specifically indicated the areas that we are excluding: areas that are either regulated elsewhere or addressed by other parts of the Government’s activities. This may or may not end up with DCMS, as the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, predicted. That these online harms are addressed is more important than where they end up residing.
I return to the list of harms on page 31 of the White Paper. The noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, contrasted it with the harms outlined in the Plum report. That was commissioned by my department as part of the evidence that will support the online advertising review announced by the Secretary of State earlier this year, as well as the Government’s response to the Cairncross review. These lists were therefore produced for slightly different purposes.
Generally speaking, we know that the list of harms in the White Paper will not incorporate every harm that every person is interested in, or that exist on the internet. We want in the duty of care to tell internet and tech companies that they can no longer say, “This is not my problem”. They will have to look at the harms and will have an active duty to educate themselves about the potential harms that their website or app, for example, produces. Even if these are not delineated, it will not be an excuse for a company to say that they are not on the list. We could have had a list of harms that we thought encompassed everything, but that would have been guaranteed to be out of date in three nanoseconds. The duty of care is there to futureproof this legislation as much as possible.
As I said, we have not included harms that have already been dealt with by other initiatives. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, for example, that we are not covering the dark web; that is dealt with under a separate programme by the Home Office. Where I do agree with him is that competition law itself will need to be looked at, just as big companies in the past have been addressed by it. We will not do it in this White Paper but, as he will know, the Furman report on digital competition outlined that there is insufficient competition in the digital economy. We will be responding to that soon. The noble Lord also asked about international co-operation and what steps we are taking. During the period between the consultation and our response to it, we will be looking at a concerted effort—a programme, as it were—on international co-operation. We agree that it is important, so we will not do it on a piecemeal basis but will try for a proper strategy. That is one piece of work that must be done.
The noble Lord, Lord Colville, talked about the need for a focused definition so as not to inhibit free speech. We are absolutely focused on that; we believe in it. The regulator will issue codes of practice setting out clearly what companies need to do. If the evidence changes and new harms are manifest, the regulator can react and issue guidance but we will have to make sure the legislation itself is very clear about free speech. We are giving the regulator a duty to have regard to privacy and people’s rights under, for example, the GDPR. That will be absolutely within the regulator’s remit.
The noble Lord, Lord Brooke, talked about health. We will take on board his suggested title for the new legislation. We are worried about health too, so my department has worked very closely with the Department of Health and Social Care. As noble Lords know, the ex-Secretary of State for DCMS is now running that department and speaks frequently on these matters—in fact, he did so today. We have cited the Chief Medical Officer’s advice on screen time and included advocacy of self-harm among the list of harms. We take these issues on board. One of the features we have incorporated in the White Paper is safety by design. [Interruption.] I apologise—the digital part of my portfolio is intruding on me. Safety by design means that all harms, including those related to health, are included, if it is reasonable to take account of them.
The noble Lord, Lord McNally, and the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, wondered if we have the flexibility and nimbleness to stay ahead of technology and regulate effectively. We will establish a regulator that will have the skills and resources needed to issue guidance on a range of harms. I take on board everything that noble Lords have said about resources and I will come to that later. We will consider the case for pre-legislative scrutiny, but I must say that at the moment—this is not a commitment or an indication of official policy—we are also very conscious of the need to act quickly. We have consulted on the Green Paper and we are consulting on the White Paper. We are thinking about pre-legislative scrutiny—I know the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, is an expert on that—but we have not made a decision on it. Whatever happens, there will be plenty of consultation with noble Lords.
We agree with the other point made by the noble Lord, Lord McNally, about coherence across Whitehall. There is a need for coherence on regulatory functions and between departments. We are consulting on who the regulator should be and I take on board noble Lords’ views on that. The departmental lead is DCMS, but it is a joint White Paper, so the Home Office is taking a keen interest in this. As I said before, at the moment there is no prospect of us changing that and I think we are well placed in terms of both knowledge and enthusiasm to drive this forward. I have been told that the Secretary of State has made a good impression so far with his advocacy of this White Paper.
The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, spoke of the need for government to declare boundaries for companies to adhere to, and said that there is currently a democratic deficit, with large, foreign companies often setting the rules. My noble friend Lord Kirkhope also mentioned this. In the White Paper, we are consulting on the role of Parliament in relation to the regulator and, in particular, to the codes of practice it will issue. As I said, we will not provide a rigid definition of all the harms in scope, but we will ask how far Parliament should be involved in the individual codes of practice and to what extent the regulator should be accountable to Parliament—in the way that Ofcom is, for example. We are very supportive of that.
On the regulator, I know that some noble Lords have suggested Ofcom. Obviously, we are consulting on whether we want a new regulator from scratch, an existing regulator or a combination of the two. Obviously, I agree that Ofcom would be a strong candidate if an existing body is chosen, and the White Paper recognises that.
The noble Baroness, Lady Grender, mentioned AI. We mention it vis-à-vis transparency. The regulator will have the power to ask what the impact is, as the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, said. I take his point about the further need to look at AI and some of the issues surrounding it. We would be interested to wait; it will certainly come in time. It is one of the first areas that the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation is looking at, so we would be interested to hear what it says about it.
My noble friend—sorry, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, who is of course a friend because for some reason we seem to see quite a lot of each other on various issues—talked about gambling, as did the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, and particularly about addiction. The right reverend Prelate mentioned that the regulator needs significant powers and independence to deal with some of the largest companies in the world. He asked if it could be envisaged that some companies could have their licences revoked. That is exactly one of the questions we have asked in the consultation, along with other significant powers of blocking sites and business interruption. So within our suggestions we are talking about pretty draconian powers, but they will be proportionate.
For example, the right reverend Prelate mentioned that the maximum fine at the moment has been £500,000. That is because that was the limit that the regulator—the ICO in this particular case—had. If we follow the GDPR’s lead, it would be 4% of global turnover. Facebook had a turnover of $55 billion, so the fine could potentially go up from £500,000 to $2.2 billion. More important than that is the other suggestion we made about possible personal liability for senior executives and some of the other things I mentioned. We are absolutely conscious that enforcement is a crucial issue in setting up an effective regulator, particularly when so many of these companies are largely based abroad. Another thing we could consider is personal representation in this country, as mentioned in the GDPR.
As far as gambling itself is concerned, we have also tried to avoid duplication, so we are talking about not gambling specifically but of course, as I mentioned before, harms generally. Internet addiction will definitely be in the White Paper’s scope.
My noble friend Lord Kirkhope talked about self-regulation, which he disagreed with. We agree that self-regulation has not worked. It is a good start, and we would expect the regulator to work closely with companies and organisations such as the Internet Watch Foundation in producing its codes of practice. The regulator will wish to learn from these organisations. As I said right at the beginning, we think self-regulation has not worked sufficiently. That is why we have decided to establish an independent regulator.
The noble Lords, Lord Puttnam and Lord Knight, both talked about the democratic issue and electoral interference. We talk about disinformation in the White Paper. That is clearly in scope. Specifically electoral matters will be left to the Cabinet Office, which will soon publish a report on what it is going to do. Indeed, I believe that my noble friend Lord Young is answering a Question for the Cabinet Office tomorrow about that exact issue. I mention that merely to give noble Lords the chance to ask him.
Briefly, because I have not got much time, I will talk about a very important point which many noble Peers have mentioned, and that is the media literacy strategy. We understand that regulation is one thing, but making people aware of what is needed in the modern world is very important. We have committed to developing a media literacy strategy, including major digital players, broadcast and news media organisations, education sector researchers and civil society, to ensure a co-ordinated and strategic approach to online media literacy, education and awareness for children, young people and adults. We want to enable users to be more resilient in dealing with misinformation and disinformation—including in relation to democratic processes—ensure people with disabilities are not excluded from digital literacy education and support, and develop media literacy approaches to tackling violence against women and girls.
I am running out of time, but I want to be very clear about disabilities to the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins. We will be considering those. I will take back what she has said in detail, absolutely take it on board and definitely consult.
Finally, I was very pleased at and grateful for the support of my noble friend Lady Howe of Idlicote. As her speech went on, I was waiting for the “but”, and it sort of came. We agree that filters can be very useful for parents. The online media literacy strategy will ensure a co-ordinated and strategic approach. It will be developed in broad consultation with all stakeholders. As far as the online age verification is concerned—which I can confirm will come in on 15 July—I know that there are issues, which she has discussed both in the Digital Economy Bill and also individually with me. We have decided that a review will take place, so we are not going to be including this, but I absolutely take on board the points she has made and will ensure that they are taken back.
There are a number of other points. I will write to noble Lords, as there are too many to mention. There are those—the noble Lord, Lord Storey, mentioned some of them—who say that because the internet is global, no nation can regulate it. If we have a strong regulator with a sensibly defined legislation that follows the money, as the noble Lord said, then I do not agree; I think it can be regulated. We will do our best to ensure international support with that. We are well placed to be the first to act on this, and to develop a system of regulation that the world will want to emulate. The White Paper begins that process and delivers that, and I commend it to the House.
UK Innovation Corridor
Lord Haselhurst
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the transport infrastructure needs of the United Kingdom’s Innovation Corridor (London, Stansted, Cambridge); and to what extent the current infrastructure limits that region’s potential to contribute to the nation’s wealth.
Lord Haselhurst (Con)
My Lords, I apologise for detaining your Lordships at this hour. I declare an interest: I am the unremunerated chair of the West Anglia Taskforce, and have been a user of the West Anglia line for more than 40 years. On 6 March, my right honourable friend Priti Patel staged a debate in the other place about transportation in Essex generally, but she did not dwell on the issues that I wish to put before your Lordships’ House this evening.
The West Anglia line denotes a corridor at the fringe of what is ordinarily believed to be East Anglia, because it comes out of north-east London into the upper Lee Valley, into Hertfordshire and Essex and then Cambridgeshire, and is perhaps not seen by many as true East Anglia. It is, however, a very important line. If I dare to quote myself from the report that the task force published in 2016:
“The West Anglia Main Line corridor is vital for the UK economy. London and the East of England are two of the fastest growing regions in the UK, and the West Anglia Main Line links them together. The railway is essential for bringing jobs, homes and businesses together”.
That is why it was felt more demonstrative to describe it as the innovation corridor of the UK.
If I may give a little history, in 1985 the decision was taken that Stansted should become London’s third airport, ending a long battle in which I was on the losing side. Although the term “integrated transport” was very much in vogue in those days, nobody saw fit to apply it in this instance by ensuring that the rail line was made fit for purpose if it was to serve an international airport. Regrettably, action on a proper railway linking Stansted to central London has not been undertaken by any subsequent Government and the problem has of course got worse. The regret which people who were on the receiving end of all this perhaps felt about disadvantage was all the greater for knowing that 20 years earlier in the 1960s, there had been a four-track railway in existence but it became a two-track railway on the advice of Dr Beeching. One does not have to be a sophisticated railway engineer to know that it is very difficult to operate both fast and slow trains on a two-track system. The only places where one train can overtake another are Harlow Town and Broxbourne. That does not of itself lend flexibility to the railway system.
Winding forward, we find that business is burgeoning on virtually the whole length of the route. At the northerly, Cambridge end, there is a tremendous concentration of high-tech industry. There is the biomedical campus at Cambridge, there is the airport and there is a host of businesses which are creating employment, drawing people into the area to fill the many vacancies that exist. Not only is industry becoming more important but the passenger numbers—people commuting and using the railway in any one of a number of ways—have vastly increased, putting pressure on the area. The population is growing still more, so there is continuing demand for more housing.
Stansted Airport has now achieved a throughput of over 28 million passengers per annum and the airport is proud that 50% of the people who come do so by some form of public transport. That is to be commended but, again, it puts a strain on the railway system. Successive Mayors of London have also proved ambitious in wanting to control and expand the inner London rail system to achieve a metro-style train service. This is also difficult to fit in with a railway that has to cope with medium destinations and the very outer destinations. One has to report that few freight paths have been created, despite the fact that Stansted Airport has become a major depot for the likes of FedEx and UPS.
All these demands on the railway simply cannot be met by a rickety, two-track system. Everyone, but everyone, is dissatisfied with the situation which has now arisen—and, at the moment, it shows no sign of getting better. For a while, we thought that the new dawn had arrived, with the emergence of the Crossrail 2 project. I am wholly supportive of this scheme. The project is vital for London, but it also provided the opportunity to boost the prospect of four-tracking on the railway between Tottenham Hale and Broxbourne, which would have opened up great possibilities. Unfortunately, the delay to Crossrail 1 is having a knock-on effect and creating renewed uncertainty about the timetable for Crossrail 2. I implore the Minister to recognise that doubts over Crossrail 2 really must not be allowed to mean that attention to the limitation of the West Anglia line is going to be put on hold. If that is to be the case, two very serious problems will arise for the Government.
The first is that Stansted, which has permission to use its facilities up to a level of 43 million passengers per annum, compared with the present 28 million, is the only airport in the London system with sufficient capacity to cope until further runway capacity is provided. As we seem to find any number of transport schemes where delays occur, I am dubious about the confidence with which Heathrow says that its third runway will be available by 2025. I suspect that it will be later than that. So the only place where new services coming into London can go is Stansted. The airlines are, understandably, very concerned about the quality of the connection to the city and pressure is being exerted. The Manchester Airports Group, the airport operator, is now very concerned about how the problems of the railway line can be overcome. Also, how are we going to get people to fill all the 5,000 or more jobs that are going to be created in the next few years? They will not all be found locally; many will travel from London and the means of doing that has got to be facilitated.
The second problem may seem more minor. Junction 8 on the M11 was the original access to this growing airport and remains important. The decision about the airport was made before a decision about where to put a motorway services area on the M11, and it was then chosen to do it on the same roundabout. I appeared at the public inquiry with the then Member for Hertford and Stortford to object to this. Our pleas were turned down. We were told that we did not know anything about it; the department had the experts; everything was going to be all right. Unfortunately, the whole thing was blocked very quickly after it had opened. More money has had to be spent to try to change the configuration of the roundabout and now even more is going to have to be spent. The simple answer would be to move it, because the congestion problem will not be overcome easily. With more housing planned for the area, the worry is that an inspector conducting an examination of the local plans of some of the immediate housing authorities would ask whether they had taken sufficient account of the capacity of this key roundabout to sustain their plans. That would be a disaster for local authorities.
There could be other solutions, to some extent. It would be churlish of me not to acknowledge that there are new trains, except they will not be able to perform to their full capabilities on a track system which has insufficient capacity. Digitalised signalling may mean that more trains can be put into the system, but that does not resolve the problem of the slow and the fast. There are 82 crossings on this railway line between London and Cambridge. Perhaps some of them could be weeded out. Passing loops could possibly be created to provide a few more overtaking opportunities. The airport tunnel is already constrained. There is also the question of whether or not more services might go in to Stratford, taking some of the pressure off Liverpool Street. If track capacity cannot somehow be expanded, even by a small amount, before extra tracks are provided, the only other answer is fewer trains or fewer stops. This would lead, I believe, to a battle royal between the different interest groups and the Secretary of State would find himself an uncomfortable adjudicator. Before it gets to that state, we must have facts on the table—although I recognise that even studying options costs money for Network Rail. Every possible intervention should be assessed for what it could achieve and at what cost, because that is the only way we will be able to persuade alternative funders to come in, for which I know Sir Peter Hendy would be very grateful.
I know that the Government have been persuaded to undertake so many projects but in the end a choice has to be made. I hope that tonight I have gone some way towards persuading the Government how much rests on reducing the restrictions on the UK’s innovation corridor.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Haselhurst, for this debate, because a number of colleagues and I have been discussing the title, “innovation corridor” and some of us thought it was the east-west railway from Oxford. I am obviously proved wrong and it is a much better corridor from London to Cambridge via Stansted, and probably a bit further than Cambridge as well. The noble Lord made some really powerful points about the third-rate status of that line; it has been like that for 60 or 70 years. I remember going up it on a steam train as a student and it was very bad in those days, although it has had more tracks since then.
The noble Lord mentioned that the roads are congested and that there is a continuing problem with emissions. Of course, the Government now have commitments to carbon reduction, but we need a massive reduction in the carbon associated with transport in particular. It was interesting to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Vere, discussing bimode trains last week. The Government have committed to getting rid of diesel trains by 2040 but bimode trains with diesel engines are apparently exempt—presumably except when they run diesels. I can see a time when we are going to be moving towards electric cars, which will hopefully reduce some of the traffic jams the noble Lord was talking about, but there has to be a decent passenger service to go along with that.
There are some new developments on freight which should help. These involve high-speed freight in what are now no longer required as passenger trains—electric ones, obviously. I think that the first service will probably start between London Gateway and Liverpool Street. Customers are very interested and there is money there. Network Rail needs to provide access to the stations, but the key is that the customers want it and it will take some of the road freight congestion off the parallel roads, in this case and many others. Of course, it is very difficult to conceive how long-distance freight in the road freight industry can achieve the carbon reductions, because the weights are so big and the technology for battery lorries is not really there yet.
The innovation corridor needs to start at London and go beyond Stansted to Cambridge, and to Ely. The whole railway sector there is pretty bad and I can see demand going up, as the noble Lord said, quite significantly. I look at rail access to the four main London airports—Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton and Stansted—and all apart from Stansted have four tracks on part of their route into London. It is not on all of it, but it does allow, as the noble Lord said, some fast trains to overtake the slow stoppers.
When Crossrail opens, they will probably have to get rid of the ridiculously priced Heathrow Express, which I think is still £22 for a single now, compared with £3 or £4 on the Underground; it is somewhere in between on TfL trains. The same should happen at Gatwick, because on the Gatwick Express and the Southern services the fare structure is incomprehensible to most people, particularly visitors to this country, and there are so many trains that you do not need the special ones. However, you need some fast services, not just from the capital city but from other places as well. I hope that we can get that to Stansted as well, but as the noble Lord said, it is not just about the track but the tunnel to the airport itself.
There is also a problem around Cambridge, because of the enormous growth in demand, as we know. There are lots of small railways around there which could have services, possibly with a few chords built here and there, to help the communities get into Cambridge to work; that would reduce the traffic congestion in Cambridge itself. Four tracks are therefore essential, as much as we can, between London and the airport. From what I have heard, having talked to some engineers, it is not that difficult. I appreciate that there are level crossings, which will have to be sorted out, but there is space to do it, at least for a good length so you can overtake the slow trains.
That will not happen without some pretty strong pressure from the local authorities all the way up the line, and the users. I understand that Cambridgeshire County Council and the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority are keen for public transport offers to Cambridge and Peterborough, an area which stretches as far as Wisbech, March, King’s Lynn, Thetford, Stonemarket, as well as Stansted Airport and Hitchin. There are lots of small routes that could be reinstated, including to Wisbech. The biggest problem is at Ely: stopping trains going north to south—largely the passenger trains—which conflict with the big freight train flows from Felixstowe to the Midlands. A plan to improve that has been around for about 40 years but nothing has been done about it. It is not that expensive but something is needed to enable the freight trains from Felixstowe, whose capacity is constrained by this bottleneck, and passenger trains that may be going on to Wisbech, to get through Ely and to allow the traffic to cross the level crossing there, which is always a problem.
The other issue, which the noble Lord touched on, is new developments. There is one at Mildenhall, a former RAF station. So many of these developments provide lots of lovely housing but with no public transport at all. There has to be a station if possible, and, if not, a commitment to bus services, although they do not usually last very long. Therefore, the whole area needs a good looking at, with the local authorities, to improve the corridor.
The climate change issues are serious at the moment, and I hope that the Government will maintain and strengthen their targets. However, they have to have a credible means of doing so, which is not always there at the moment. Department for Transport figures show that congestion is likely to grow by 55% by 2040—the cut-off date for diesel trains and a few other things—but it is hard to think how congestion can get 55% worse in many places. Maybe the Minister has a solution to that. We have to have a solution, but rail is probably the only one that will work.
This is an innovation corridor. It could be a catalyst for doing it all together: a modern, integrated, green transport system for passengers and freight. I hope that the Government will start taking it seriously. In the meantime, I hope that the Minister will take on board some of my comments about the new type of freight, which is completely different. We must apply it to passengers and freight and get some of them off the road if we are to have any chance of achieving the targets.
Baroness Brown of Cambridge (CB)
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Haselhurst, for securing this short debate on an important topic. I declare my interest as a resident of Cambridge.
I draw the Minister’s attention, and that of the House, to an important proposal developed by the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority and its leader, James Palmer, for the Cam Metro, and ask the Minister to support this innovative and ambitious plan. I am told that there are more jobs than people in Cambridge, and I know from experience that the university, Cambridge colleges and the science parks that ring the city are finding it increasingly difficult to attract bright young researchers to Cambridge because of the cost of housing in the city and the poor transport infrastructure. Researchers with young families are being forced to live further and further out of Cambridge in order to afford appropriate homes, and face long commutes, increasingly beyond reasonable cycling distance, by car and bus.
This is not healthy for the city, which is surrounded by blocked roads each morning and vehicles contributing to poor air quality and climate change. It is not healthy for families, when commuting steals so much family time, and it is not healthy for the colleges and the accidental exchanges that can lead to new ideas when young academics no longer participate in college life. The traffic in Cambridge is also making it a less appealing destination for tourists, who make an important contribution to the local and national economy.
The combined authority is developing plans for the Cam Metro: a 160-mile route including six miles of tunnels under Cambridge. It is expected to create 100,000 jobs and support the building of a further 60,000 homes in the area, while taking 44% of cars and 18% of buses off the roads in and around the city. It will link the university, science parks, including Addenbrooke’s Hospital and the Royal Papworth Hospital and the biomedical campus, with railway stations and villages out to St Neots and developments at Mildenhall and Haverhill.
The Cam Metro will be innovative. My noble friend Lord Mair, a world-leading civil engineer whose research covers tunnels and stability, has been involved in developing plans for the tunnels, which would showcase sensors and techniques developed by his research centre. The metro would be a fully autonomous, clean, battery electric-powered wheeled tram system running on a dedicated tarmac route, so avoiding the major costs of conventional tram and train infrastructure. The cost of the scheme is estimated to be about £4 billion—far cheaper than any other road or light or heavy rail solutions. It would unlock the important further growth of the region and be linked to east-west rail to support the London, Stansted and Cambridge innovation corridor.
I ask the Minister to offer the Government’s support for this exciting and innovative plan, which would help to ensure that the region can continue to attract the best and brightest young researchers and their families to contribute to innovation and economic growth in the UK.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Haselhurst, for bringing this debate to the House today. It is an important issue.
The innovation corridor is an interesting concept and certainly does not lack ambition. Its stated aim, to compete with Silicon Valley, labels it as high in ambition. But it is important not to underestimate the complexity of the situation. This is already a thriving area: the fastest-growing area in the UK. It benefits from above average wages: it has a very high percentage of graduates and a high rate of job growth, and GVA per hour is 20% above the UK average. It is already attracting many innovative companies at the forefront of technology. In addition, it obviously offers a good and pleasant living environment.
So, on paper, it has everything to offer, and it is these kinds of innovative companies and workforce that we have to offer the world if we are ever as a nation to recover from the self-inflicted Brexit wound. I say that from the perspective of a person who very much hopes that we do not leave the EU—but, even if we were to remain in the EU, we have already done ourselves great damage as a nation.
At one end of this corridor is London, one of the world’s great cities; at the other end is Cambridge, one of the world’s great universities; and in the middle is Stansted, providing essential aviation links—essential because if one is to survive and thrive economically in the modern world, aviation is an important aspect of the mix.
But there are difficulties: corridors are much more challenging to develop than mere clusters. Reports on this concept have emphasised the complex governance and the number of local authorities involved along the length of the corridor. This was identified by Professor Enright as early as 2015 as a hurdle that needed to be overcome. As yet, there is no equivalent of Transport for the North for this area to bring the local authorities together.
The infrastructure challenges are various. There is the roads issue that the noble Lord, Lord Haselhurst, mentioned, and the rail issue that both he and the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, emphasised; there is the need for up-to-date and cutting-edge telecommunications and ICT infrastructure; and there is pressure on housing. The brutal truth is that, unless these problems are addressed, all the branding efforts that have been made so far will not make the essential difference that we need. Addressing these problems needs funding as well as co-operation, and government is needed to provide leadership.
For the rest of my speech, I will address specifically transport-related issues. It has already been mentioned that it is proposed that Crossrail 2 should provide additional tracks—the badly needed four-tracking that has been referred to—on the West Anglia main line to enable faster and more frequent services. The National Infrastructure Commission report in 2016 estimated that the West Anglia element of Crossrail 2 would cost £3.7 billion at 2014 prices—clearly more in today’s prices. But it would enable and unlock the development of 80,000 homes.
Crossrail 2 is still at the early stages of consultation, and problems with Crossrail 1 have slightly taken the shine off plans for phase 2. However, if this corridor is to develop successfully, it is essential that Crossrail’s current problems teach us lessons rather than allow the concept of Crossrail 2 to be buried. Further development is also needed at Stratford station, and along the upper Lea Valley.
When preparing for this debate, I thought back to a visit that the committee on which I sit in this place made to a science park near Cambridge. That involved us taking the train and getting off at Cambridge North station—a very successful new development. However, what was brought home to us at the time was the total inadequacy of the current rail line. The train was delayed that day. We waited for five or 10 minutes for it to depart for Cambridge—at which point an announcement was made that the train was not going to stop at half the stations it was supposed to stop at on the way. At that point, half the people on the train got off. They had waited unnecessarily; in fact, they had missed another train in the process. This was just one occasion, but it illustrates very clearly the unreliability of that line. A Network Rail report published in February this year recommended some detailed improvements to the line and recommended that the options should be developed to the strategic outline business case stage. Will these improvements go ahead and on what timescale will further development of the proposals go ahead?
Another issue that should be raised is that, alongside its other aspects, this is a job creation project. As the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, pointed out, this is an area of very low unemployment. When we visited start-ups in the Cambridge area during the meeting I referred to earlier, the heavy reliance on EU citizens for new personnel being taking on as staff was obvious. I am seriously concerned that an inadequate amount of skilled labour will be available at the highly skilled level required for jobs of this kind as a result of the Brexit issues we face.
Finally, I will raise the issue of Stansted Airport. It has great potential for more intensive use and will help to fill the gap that Heathrow is designed to fill but is not yet on stream to do so. Heathrow seems to be developing rather slowly at the moment—but if the rumours are right, we may move to the next stage of the process as a result of announcements tomorrow. We need Stansted to increase the number and availability of flights in the UK coming into the London area. I emphasise that, although Stansted does well in the number of people going there on public transport, it still suffers from a less than adequate train service. It advertises a 47-minute journey, but the average time taken is 54 minutes and some trains take more than an hour. There are 77 trains a day, but fewer on weekends and holidays. Basically, links to Stansted need to be improved along with the rest of the rail line. This needs to be a development fit for the 21st century, with modern solutions, passive housing and a reliance on rail, not road, if it is to be truly successful.
Lord Rosser (Lab)
My Lords, the good news is that I may take up fewer than the 10 minutes that I am allowed. Like other noble Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Haselhurst, on securing this debate. He has had an invaluable and proactive involvement in promoting the infrastructure needs of the London-Stansted-Cambridge innovation corridor, not least through his role as chair, unremunerated, of the West Anglia Taskforce and the case made in its report for investment in rail to support growth. I wondered, given what the noble Lord said earlier—not about the confusion but about the fact that some people do not see the West Anglia line as necessarily being in what they would regard as East Anglia—whether it ought to be called the “West-East Anglia main line” to clarify the situation.
We have heard one word of caution and I am sure other noble Lords have had a briefing from the National Trust, of which I, along with many others, am currently a member. The trust has referred to the significant growth and infrastructure development planned for Cambridgeshire and the surrounding areas through the UK innovation corridor and the Oxford-Cambridge Arc. The trust goes on to say that without proper oversight or a comprehensive approach, the concurrence of two major development projects in the same region increases the likelihood that the developments will fail to protect nature, the countryside and the heritage of the whole region. A more specific concern is about Wimpole Hall and the grade 1 listed parkland in which it sits, which are apparently within both the UK innovation corridor and the Oxford-Cambridge Arc. It would be helpful if the Minister could give some meaningful assurances about the concerns of the National Trust, which has the support of a great many people for what it does, not least older people who are the group most likely to vote. Of course, major projects cannot be allowed to grind to a halt, but neither can we have a free for all for developers over what they can do and where in areas designated for expansion and development.
I shall repeat without apology what the noble Lord, Lord Haselhurst, says in his foreword to the West Anglia Taskforce report:
“London and the East of England are two of the fastest growing regions in the UK, and the West Anglia Main Line links them together. The railway is essential for bringing jobs, homes and businesses together”.
The taskforce’s terms of reference were to improve connections to an expanding Stansted Airport and Cambridge from Liverpool Street and to encourage opportunities for economic growth along the route, including the expansion of services in the Lea Valley. Some provisions for service improvements, including new trains, were contained in the franchise agreement for Greater Anglia, which the Dutch state-owned company retained in 2016 for another nine years.
The taskforce concentrated on practical and feasible recommendations on cost, impact and effectiveness, and particularly, as has been said, on the need for four-tracking of the line from just south of Tottenham Hale station to just north of Broxbourne station. This is the most pressing need on a line that already suffers performance and capacity-wise, under even the current volume of traffic, from being two-track, a problem that will remain for much of the rest of the line south of Tottenham Hale to nearly into Liverpool Street. Four-tracking of the stretch identified in the report will also be vital if the Crossrail 2 project is to go ahead. On that score, one hopes it has not been seriously blighted by the delays and cost issues now associated with Crossrail 1.
At the launch of the report in late 2016, the then Minister for Rail said that he was impressed by the level of support that the noble Lord, Lord Haselhurst, had gathered across the political spectrum from local government, national government in the form of the Department for Transport, London government and many companies and private individuals who had come together to support the report. The same Minister then told the Commons in a debate on 8 November 2016:
“The report also makes a clear and compelling case for action, so it is just the sort I want”.
He went on to say that the report’s recommendations,
“deserve careful consideration. We need to assess them against the case for investment across the network as a whole. The Government will now give the report the consideration it deserves, which will be a thorough and careful assessment, so that we can respond formally next year”.—[Official Report, Commons, 8/11/16; cols. 538-9WH.]
I hope that in her response the Minister will be able to spell out precisely what decisions and actions on transport infrastructure in the London-Stansted-Cambridge innovation corridor the Government—including Network Rail, for which the Government are responsible—have taken on, and in the light of, the recommendations, including on four-tracking, in the taskforce report since that debate in the Commons some two and a half years ago, in view of the enthusiastic response to the report from the then Minister. We shall be able to see from the Government’s reply to this debate whether that enthusiastic response from the Minister has been matched by actions as opposed to words.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Haselhurst on securing this debate and on raising and highlighting the role of the innovation corridor in our nation’s economy. I thank all noble Lords for sharing their insights and—I think no one would disagree—unique expertise in this area.
Many noble Lords raised helpful challenges to the Government’s response to this report, but perhaps it is a rare pleasure to be considering a report that deals with the problems of success. The innovation corridor is one of Britain’s fastest growing regions. It is a hub of knowledge, with world-class universities and cutting-edge clusters of commercial innovation, advanced technology and bioscience. This combination is driving a vibrant, thriving economic success story—one that the Government support and will continue to support in future.
My noble friend has raised his concerns that transport infrastructure may become a barrier to growth in the area, particularly rail capacity on the West Anglia line given the likely continued growth at Stansted and Cambridge. However, as my noble friend is aware, trying to increase capacity on the West Anglia line is not easy without new infrastructure. I appreciate very much his range of suggestions about the ways one might do this. As noble Lords have noted, the railway is already at capacity with today’s rail services, although measures are being taken to try to increase reliability and capacity. I am not sure I will be able to deliver quite the enthusiasm that the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, seeks, but I will do my best to set out the work that has been done.
The business case for delivering four-tracking along this route is expected to represent high value for money, if the rest of the proposed Crossrail 2 scheme is built. However, as a stand-alone proposition, analysis suggests that the scheme does not facilitate sufficient additional services to generate the benefits required to offset the capital expenditure. Given the uncertainty around Crossrail 2, we need to identify what can be done in the short to medium term to support growth on the line. I will share two examples with your Lordships.
First, to build on the work already undertaken, Network Rail hopes to undertake a study of the West Anglia main line that will sketch out options for future funders. Secondly, although we do not currently intend to develop a digital signalling scheme—that is difficult to say late at night—on the Anglia route for delivery in the current control period, the 2018 digital railway strategy identified it as a potential candidate for further consideration for delivery in the medium term, meaning in control period 7.
The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, raised her concerns about progress with Crossrail 2 and the detrimental effects it might have on the West Anglia main line. She wisely reminded your Lordships’ House of the importance to learn from other schemes in development. Here, I draw the House’s attention to the recent publication by the Infrastructure and Projects Authority on this subject, titled Lessons from Transport for the Sponsorship of Major Projects. The department will consider the report’s findings very carefully.
The Government remain focused on improving the affordability of the Crossrail 2 scheme. In its current form it comes with a large price tag and, as yet, no final decisions have been made. The Government have launched an independent affordability review, chaired by Mike Gerrard, which is making good progress, and the department and Transport for London received initial recommendations for further work on this. This further work is now completed and will inform the next steps of the project and the completion of the review.
Recognising the constraints on providing new infrastructure, as I have mentioned, in the meantime measures are being taken to try to increase reliability and capacity, not least the £1.4 billion investment in a brand new fleet of trains for every single service and route that Greater Anglia operates across the entire network. The trains will be phased in during 2019-20, with the first trains running on the Stansted Express route from summer 2019.
A number of noble Lords raised concerns about the ability to support growth at Stansted. The Government are sensitive to those concerns and are working through our longer-term aviation strategy to make sure that the infrastructure needs of the aviation industry are met.
The important points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, about carbon reduction and the potential to move freight from the roads on to the rail network were well made. I draw the noble Lord’s attention to our recent strategy on the future of urban mobility, which has a big focus on carbon reduction and active travel.
I will mention some of the ways in which the department is supporting growth in this important corridor but, before I do that, I will respond to the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, about the points made by the National Trust. We are aware of the National Trust’s concerns about the development of infrastructure in the corridor, and those delivering that infrastructure will engage with the National Trust during the consultation process and will continue working with it as plans develop to make sure that its views are taken into account. We were pleased to see that the National Trust acknowledged the work in the environment Bill to make sure that a net gain for biodiversity is part of such projects.
Recognising the importance of infrastructure in supporting economic growth and prosperity, the Government are providing significant funding to enhance journeys and connectivity. For example, we are upgrading a 21-mile section of the A14 between Cambridge and Huntingdon. This new road, which is due to be completed by the end of 2020, will cut a significant amount of time from journeys. We will also seek to cut journey times around Harlow by building new junction 7A on the M11—I hope your Lordships have a map in your minds—and will continue further investment on the M11 in future road programmes. I undertake to write to my noble friend regarding the issues he raised in relation to junction 8.
We also recognise the importance of rail as a key transport element connecting the region to its innovative business clusters and international gateways. We recognise that needs change as an area develops and so Network Rail has recently undertaken the Cambridge corridor study, which identified a series of infrastructure improvements to accommodate the expected growth across the railway in and around Cambridgeshire over the next 15 to 25 years, and will allow funders to make informed decisions about planning the network for the years to come.
The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, asked where we were in the decision-making process. Obviously, these ideas are at a very early stage of development and the study does not make any assumptions about which organisation, if any, will fund the proposals, so it is too early for the department to say which schemes we will do and who might fund them. As soon as plans for that are available, we will share them.
Another example of development work we are engaging with in the area is the considerable interest and support for new stations in Cambridgeshire. The Department for Transport has partnered with three local partners—AstraZeneca, the Greater Cambridge Partnership and the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority—to fund Network Rail to design proposals for a new Cambridge south station, which would primarily serve Cambridge Biomedical Campus. The Government are also supporting Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority with a £95 million investment over five years through the department’s Transforming Cities Fund, which will transform connectivity in the combined authority through a range of investments in transport and infrastructure.
In response to the request by the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, for the Government to support the CAM scheme that is being developed, I will mention it to Ministers and make sure that they are aware that the plans are being worked up.
The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, made the point that transport needs need to be taken into account when supporting housing growth in an area, and that is what the Government’s Housing Infrastructure Fund is aiming to do. Two housing infrastructure funds from the corridor have been successful. One is the Docklands Light Railway scheme, which has been allocated £290 million, and the other is the Cambridge north-eastern fringe scheme, which has been allocated £227 million. Finally, we are supporting local enterprise partnerships in the corridor to improve transport links within the region.
In conclusion, while I recognise the concerns raised by my noble friend and other noble Lords around the West Anglia main line, I hope I have gone some way to reassure him that the innovation corridor is recognised for its contribution to the nation’s economy, and while further progress is made with Crossrail 2, the corridor is being supported by significant investment in the interim. The aim of that investment is to improve connectivity and to deliver the vision of a more integrated, reliable, safe, reduced-carbon transport network that supports the continuing growth of the economy within the innovation corridor.
Lord Rosser
The Minister referred to the new trains, which, as I understand it, were part of the franchise renewal for Abellio in 2016. Although that is genuinely most welcome, do the Government accept that new trains have a limited impact on serious track capacity constraints on the West Anglia line, particularly at peak times, and that track capacity is a Network Rail matter? The Government are responsible for Network Rail and presumably can do something about it.
Baroness Barran
The noble Lord is right that to maximise the impact of new trains, one would need more track, but I hope that I have explained the limitations on doing that in the short term. Obviously, there are other advantages from new trains, such as improving the speed of journeys, but the noble Lord makes a fair point that one would need more track in order to maximise the impact.