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Oral Answers to Questions
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Transport (Chris Grayling)
Mr Speaker, as you know, we have a big programme of investment in transport across the north, after decades of underinvestment. That includes replacing every single train in the north of England, getting rid of the long-outdated Pacer trains, buying new trains for the Newcastle upon Tyne Metro and investing nearly £3 billion in the road network in the north, including an extensive smart motorways programme. The Transforming Cities funds are delivering to individual cities the opportunity to improve metro systems.
Judith Cummins
The Secretary of State may have seen that newspapers across the north have come together again this week to call on the Government to commit to a series of policy changes to power up the north. Towns and cities, villages and hamlets—despite our diversity, the north stands as one to call for more powers and more funding. At the heart of that must be the transformative new rail network linking the great north cities, including Bradford. Will the Secretary of State grasp this moment and make Northern Powerhouse Rail a priority, with a city centre station in Bradford?
Chris Grayling
First, Northern Powerhouse Rail is a manifesto commitment for this Government. The work is being done at the moment to take it forward. Indeed, as the hon. Lady should be aware, in the past few days we have published further details of the interchanges between Northern Powerhouse Rail and HS2, thus demonstrating further our commitment to that project.
With regard to Bradford, as the hon. Lady knows, I have had meetings with the council leader. I am extremely sympathetic to the need to ensure that Bradford is a proper part of the Northern Powerhouse Rail network.
Sir Patrick McLoughlin (Derbyshire Dales) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend consider publishing a report, showing in table form the investment in transport in the north between 2010 and 2019, and between 2001 and 2010, so that we can see what investment has been given to the north over the past nine years, and in the previous nine years, which just happened to be under a different Government? This Government can be incredibly proud of the investment in the north.
Chris Grayling
I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend. I pay tribute to him for what he did to step up investment in the north. When I listen to the Opposition waxing about a lack of investment in the north, I simply remind them that when they were in power they let a Northern Rail franchise with no investment in it at all, whereas this Conservative Government are replacing every single train in the north with either a brand-new or a completely refurbished train.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
When I drive around Europe this summer, I will not find any two major cities less well connected than Sheffield and Manchester. A review has been done of improving the road connections between those two cities, and there is now an agreed best way forward. When will the Government activate that, so that we get an all-purpose, all-weather route between those two cities?
Chris Grayling
I can tell the hon. Gentleman that the concept of the tunnel, which has been much reviewed and much discussed, is on the board agenda for the next Transport for the North meeting, and we are looking forward with interest to seeing the detail of those proposals. It is clearly necessary to improve trans-Pennine links. That is why we are committed to dualling the A66 and are putting in improvements on the A69. It is why I have asked Highways England to start work on better links between east Lancashire and west Yorkshire. Quite clearly, particularly given the vulnerability of the M62 to bad weather, a second route between Manchester and Sheffield must also be a part of the future.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Although North West Leicestershire is the centre of the midlands, most people in London think it is in the north. Despite delivering the highest economic growth outside London and the south-east, we have no passenger railway station. What is the Secretary of State going to do about that? Would not reopening the Ivanhoe line be an excellent idea?
Chris Grayling
I am very much aware of the potential to expand services in the east midlands by bringing back into service some of the routes that no longer carry passengers. It is why the new franchisees in the east midlands will be looking at bringing back services on the Robin Hood line, and I am happy to commit to discuss with my hon. Friend in much more detail whether we can do something similar in future with the Ivanhoe line.
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)
Thirty-three northern newspapers, including the Manchester Evening News, The Northern Echo, the Yorkshire Post, the Sheffield Star and the Liverpool Echo, are all supporting the Power Up The North campaign, demanding an end to underinvestment in the north. This Government have repeatedly broken their promises of investment in the north, with the region set to receive just a fraction of the investment to be made in London, and “northern powerhouse” has to be much more than a slogan. So will the Secretary of State take the opportunity to commit not only to electrifying the trans-Pennine route, but to matching Labour’s £10 billion-plus commitment to deliver a Crossrail for the north?
Chris Grayling
What I am not going to do is match Labour’s record of investment in the north, because it was lousy. The Labour Government spent nothing on trains, and did not upgrade railways in the north. We are upgrading roads in the north, and upgrading railways across the north. The trans-Pennine upgrade is the flagship—the largest investment programme on the railways in the next control period—and Labour Members have the brass neck to say that they are the ones with a plan. They did nothing; we are doing things.
Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Michael Ellis)
The maintenance of Hammersmith bridge is a matter for the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. Neither the borough nor Transport for London has approached the Department to seek funding to repair the bridge.
Zac Goldsmith
I am very disappointed that they have not done so. I understand the temptation for the Government to see this as a local issue, but it is much more than that. Greater London has just 33 major crossings; this one took 20,000 cars and 1,800 buses a day, so its closure for up to three years is catastrophic for residents and businesses, and is causing mayhem in an already congested part of London. I was disappointed to hear what the Minister said about not being approached by the borough or TfL—that needs to change—but the Government also need to show a proper interest, so may I please urge him to look at the matter again?
Michael Ellis
Transport in London is, of course, devolved to the Mayor of London. I have been astonished and exasperated in just the last couple of weeks in the Department to see how badly run Labour London’s transport is, and I am astonished by the indolence of the Labour London Mayor, Sadiq Khan. Hammersmith bridge is being neglected—my hon. Friend is right about that—by the Mayor, who is asleep on the job.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
The Transport Secretary should have done his homework a little better. I have here a copy of my letter to him of 11 April—and his response of 21 May; no urgency there—asking for assistance with funding for Hammersmith bridge, on the reasonable grounds that he had taken £800 million from the subsidy to TfL and the previous Mayor of London had wasted more than £40 million on the garden bridge. Can we stop the party politicking? Will the Secretary of State do his job sensibly and support TfL and Hammersmith Council, which are working together to resolve this matter, instead of grandstanding in this way?
Michael Ellis
It is a little rich for the hon. Gentleman to refer to party politics. The fact is that Hammersmith bridge has been a project for London since 2015, and the Mayor of London has done nothing about it. The fact is that it is the responsibility of the London borough and Transport for London mechanisms. The hon. Gentleman does not want to admit the facts, but the facts are those.
Greg Hands (Chelsea and Fulham) (Con)
It is now two months since the bridge closed, and the Thames is uncrossable for a remarkable three and a half-mile stretch. In that time, the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham has not yet even produced a report diagnosing the problems. All that it has done is have a row with Labour-run Transport for London over funding for work when it has not yet worked out what it needs. Will my hon. Friend agree to meet the Mayor of London and the council to bang heads together between the two warring Labour authorities and get the bridge open again?
Michael Ellis
We often see Labour authorities needing to have their heads banged together, because they are often at war, as they appear to be in this case. It seems to me that banging heads together in regard to this matter would be a good thing, and I will carefully consider my right hon. Friend’s request.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Ind)
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Michael Ellis)
The Government are committed to increasing cycling and walking, and to making our roads safer for cyclists and pedestrians. Spending per head on cycling and walking has more than trebled since 2010, and about £2 billion is now being invested in cycling and walking over the current Parliament. That is helping to fund new infrastructure in many towns and cities.
Dr Wollaston
I am sure that the whole House will wish to join me in wishing the very best to Chris Froome.
I welcome the removal of the cap from the Cycle to Work scheme, but many of the people who could benefit most from e-bikes are not in work. What will the Minister do to support the use of e-bikes and non-standard pedal cycles by older people and those with disabilities? Will he meet me to discuss how we can create a safer infrastructure to encourage such use, particularly in my constituency, where there has been a long-standing block to the Littlehempston to Totnes cycleway?
Michael Ellis
I shall be happy to meet the hon. Lady, and I extend similar sentiments to Chris Froome.
Investment has trebled since Labour was in office, thanks to this Government. In the past few days I have made two visits to support Bike Week, and I shall be making a Bikeability visit this afternoon. As a result of the Government’s £29 billion investment in roads, cycling is being supported, but, as I have said, I shall be happy to meet the hon. Lady to discuss the matter further.
Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)
As we have heard, this week is Bike Week, yet the Government’s own statistics show that they are failing to increase cycling. Research shows many people are too scared to ride a bike. This is hardly surprising given that aggressive driving is increasing and 10 cyclists are killed or seriously injured every day, according to the road safety charity Brake. Is it not high time for the Government to show some leadership and make a substantial investment in safe cycle routes and more traffic police to encourage everyone to cycle, rather than just giving tax breaks to a few wealthier cyclists when they buy a new bike? What the Government should do now is make cycling for the many, not just the brave.
Michael Ellis
I am pleased to say that I have been cycling this week, so I do not think it is just the brave who are going cycling. The average number of miles cycled per person has increased by 54% since 2002. The number of trips cycled has remained between 14 and 18 for the last 16 years, however, and we are putting massive investment into this area and will continue to do so.
Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)
Chris Law (Dundee West) (SNP)
Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)
Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
The UK port sector is resilient and flexible, and is well placed to adapt successfully in preparation for Brexit. My Department continues to work with the border delivery group to ensure that trade continues with minimum friction at UK ports. The Government shall take all steps necessary to ensure that vital goods continue to flow into the country when the UK leaves the EU, and we continue to liaise closely with the devolved Administrations.
Hannah Bardell
Last month we learned that the National Audit Office warned the Transport Secretary in advance that there was a high likelihood of a successful legal challenge regarding the no-deal ferry contracts, which directly contradicts his previous responses on the subject, so when will he admit culpability and apologise for this reckless action, which has resulted in a hefty bill for the taxpayer?
Ms Ghani
I am afraid that the hon. Lady needs to look again at the notes that have been placed in her hand, because she has contradicted herself in that statement. It is absolutely right and proper for the Government to prepare for no deal, and that was exactly what we did to ensure that vital goods got into the country in case of a no-deal.
Chris Law
Can the Minister explain why the Secretary of State or his Department could not identify P&O Ferries, or indeed our wonderful ferry system in Scotland, CalMac, as candidates for additional cross-channel ferry services—both of them, unlike Seaborne, do have ships—and what is his Department’s estimate for the next legal settlement?
Ms Ghani
I was hoping that the hon. Gentleman was going to talk up his own ports and the extra business that will become available once we have left Europe, considering how excited ports are about the further opportunities coming our way. As I mentioned earlier, it was right and proper that we prepared for no deal, and we were working with a number of Government Departments to make sure capacity was available. The question of capacity was not for this Department; it was for a number of other Departments. It is curious that the hon. Gentleman does not also reflect on what the Scottish Government wanted in place just in case they needed extra capacity as well.
Marion Fellows
So far the Secretary of State’s reckless actions on ferry contracts alone have cost £43.8 million in termination payouts to Brittany Ferries and DFDS, £800,000 in consultancy fees and £33 million to Eurotunnel, with P&O also expecting £33 million-plus legal fees to be added to the final bill, so the sum will be over £110 million. What is being sacrificed to pay for this, and when will the Secretary of State apologise?
Tonia Antoniazzi
The Welsh Assembly’s Brexit Committee found that a no-deal Brexit would pose a serious threat to the port sector in Wales, particularly in Holyhead and Fishguard. What recent discussions has the Minister had with the port authorities to avoid no-deal chaos in these Welsh ports?
Ms Ghani
I welcome the question. I was at the inter-ministerial group, which I chair, with all the port authorities, and I met Associated British Ports just recently. It is working closely with us to prepare for no deal, and it is excited about the opportunities that we can put forward through Maritime 2050, our 30-year strategy for investment in our ports, both in technology and in our seafarers, to ensure that we are ready for our new opportunities.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
We have had no apology today, and the Secretary of State sits there and lets his Minister come to the Dispatch Box while he shakes his head. The reality is that the next no-deal deadline is October, but we are not going to have a new Prime Minister in place until July and we will then have the summer recess. It will therefore be almost impossible to make proper preparations for a no-deal Brexit in October, yet the Transport Secretary is supporting a no-deal candidate for the leadership of the Tory party. Can the Minister detail any work that is going on just now, or is the Department so reckless that it just does not care, which will result in further chaos and another £110 million down the drain?
Ms Ghani
I do not know what to say—the hon. Gentleman is disappointed that the Secretary of State is not at the Dispatch Box, but this is my portfolio and I am pleased to be responding to his question.
If the hon. Gentleman was close to the maritime sector, he would be aware that we have been working with it for the past two years and that just this week we had the inter-ministerial group meeting with the port sector and I appeared in front of the all-party parliamentary group for maritime and ports. There is extensive dialogue and constant research to see what we need to do to continue to prepare, and if this arises again, come October, we will put preparations in place.
Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)
We could be just four months away from a disastrous no-deal Brexit, yet the Government have put on hold their contingency plans. The Secretary of State’s previous efforts resulted in 89 lorries and a refuse truck pretending to be on convoy to Dover, when in reality that route takes 10,000 heavy goods vehicles a day. He doled out contracts to ferry companies that did not have any actual ferries, or the means to get them, with terms and conditions cut and pasted from a fast food takeaway. He also threw 33 million quid away in an out-of-court settlement, and there are potentially many more litigations coming down the track. Will the Minister please give us a clue as to the Secretary of State’s next great plans?
Ms Ghani
Our plans amounted to just 1% of the no-deal planning, and it was the right thing to do for the Government to prepare for all eventualities. We were responsible in putting together the freight capacity that would be needed for critical supplies, including for the national health service. If the hon. Gentleman is so nervous about no deal, he should support a deal.
Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)
Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)
Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Michael Ellis)
In June last year, the Department issued a written statement to Parliament that reported progress on the actions from its road safety statement. The statement also outlined more actions, such as putting £100 million into improving 50 of the most dangerous stretches of A roads in England and committing to a refreshed road safety statement and a two-year action plan to address four priority groups: young people, rural road users, motorcyclists and older vulnerable users.
Liz McInnes
I thank the Minister for that answer, but last year 157 people were sentenced for causing death by dangerous driving. The average length of the sentence given was just over six years. Does he agree that if this Government had introduced life sentences for that crime, as they promised to do in October 2017, we might have seen a consequent improvement in road safety and fewer of those dreadful crimes occurring last year?
Michael Ellis
The Department and the Secretary of State take these matters extremely seriously, and a great deal of work continues to be done on the subject of road safety. Any deaths or injuries via drink-driving are of course totally unacceptable, and we will do everything we can to continue to mitigate that. The fact is that the Department has doubled the penalty points for improper use of a mobile phone while driving, and we have also been investing via Facebook in the Think! campaign. We continue to work across the board to mitigate these issues. We are in constant contact with the Home Office and the police service on this issue, and that will continue.
Gerald Jones
In August 2017, 22-month-old Pearl Melody Black from Merthyr Tydfil was killed after a runaway car hit a wall, which fell on top of her. The current legislation did not allow the Crown Prosecution Service to bring justice to my constituents, Paul and Gemma Black. I have written to the Secretary of State, to the Department and to Ministers and previous Ministers to request a meeting to see whether we can work together to bring about a change in the legislation so that other parents do not have to endure this in future. Will the Minister agree to meet me to see what can be done?
Michael Ellis
I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that tragic case of the runaway vehicle. The decision to prosecute lies with the Crown Prosecution Service. It would be inappropriate for the Department for Transport to comment on its decision, but I would be happy to meet him. I can say that DFT officials have been in discussion with the CPS and the Ministry of Justice about the case and dangerous driving offences more broadly, and we will continue to monitor the situation.
Marsha De Cordova
Last summer, I welcomed the Government’s announcement of a moratorium on shared spaces—road designs that remove the physical divides between the road and footways. Those cause considerable danger for blind and partially sighted people, including me, even turning some roads into no-go areas for people with sight loss. Concerns remain about what will happen to current shared spaces and the Government’s plans for the future. Can the Minister confirm that the Government recognise that such shared spaces are unacceptably inaccessible, and will funding be made available to make sure that they are made accessible for blind and partially sighted people?
Michael Ellis
I thank the hon. Lady for raising the point, which the Department is cognisant of. Research is being done in Scotland on this subject, and we hope for some results from that in the next several months.
Scott Mann (North Cornwall) (Con)
Michael Ellis
May I take this opportunity to say how much I enjoyed my visit to my hon. Friend’s constituency while I was responsible for another portfolio some time ago? My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has been to see the local challenge for the Camelford bypass and is therefore visibly sighted on it. It has much merit, and I am happy to meet my hon. Friend. My officials are working with Cornwall Council to assess the scheme so that a decision can be made as soon as possible, and I hope that it will get on and submit it.
Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con)
I welcome my hon. Friend’s mention of improvements to A roads. The most problematic A road in my constituency has had several visits from the Secretary of State. Detailed plans for improvements to what is known as the Sainsbury’s junction in Mansfield are with the Department: can the Minister update me on progress?
Michael Ellis
I understand there will be an opportunity to bid for funding on that matter shortly.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
I welcome the Minister to his new role. I hope that he will bring the same enthusiasm, especially for cycling and walking, as his predecessor, and I am sure that he is looking forward to appearing before the Transport Committee. Yesterday, our Committee was told that the Government need to change their approach to public education on using a mobile phone while driving if they are to fulfil the Prime Minister’s ambition of making that offence as socially unacceptable as drink-driving. Will the Minister commit to taking action to increase public awareness of the risks of driving while using a mobile phone, whether handheld or hands-free, which we were told reduces motorists’ capability to that of a brand-new driver. It is the equivalent of being at the drink-drive limit and makes a road traffic collision four times more likely.
Michael Ellis
It is very kind of the hon. Lady to invite me to appear before her Committee: I think that something is already in the diary.
On cycling, I have already spoken to Transport for London about that. I have been on a bike several times this week and will be again later.
On the important issue of mobile phone use while driving, the Department has been working extremely hard: we have increased the penalty points from three to six, and we have put a lot of investment into social media to warn users of the dangers, and we will continue to do so.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Transport (Chris Grayling)
Local bus journeys remain central to transport choices, accounting for around 59% of all public transport journeys. The Bus Services Act 2017, introduced by this Government, gives local authorities tools to improve local bus services and increase passenger numbers. The Government spend around £2 billion a year supporting passenger road transport. We are also investing record levels in the UK rail network as part of the biggest modernisation programme for many decades.
Jessica Morden
I know from constituents who commute that far more needs to be done to improve capacity and make traveling by rail more affordable, to encourage people out of their cars. What will Ministers do to address the fact that Wales is set to get only 6% of planned UK rail spending, despite Welsh routes making up 11% of the network? As part of that, can we have a new railway station for Magor as part of the new stations fund?
Chris Grayling
On that latter point, I am aware of the interest of the hon. Lady’s constituents, and it is something we will look at very carefully. I hope she welcomes the Government’s substantial investment in improved rolling stock, improved capacity and improved speed on the Great Western main line, which will benefit her constituency and the whole economy of south Wales.
The hon. Lady also talks about transport investment. It is surprising that, in the past few days, the Labour Administration in Wales have backed away from a major upgrade to the M4, which, of course, is the most significant artery for south Wales and its economy.
Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)
Given yesterday’s announcement on legislating for net zero greenhouse gases, what steps is my right hon. Friend taking to decarbonise public transport?
Chris Grayling
We are taking a variety of different measures. In this country, we will shortly be seeing the first battery hybrid trains and the first hydrogen-powered trains, and we are providing support for low emission and ultra-low emission buses. Indeed, I recently went to the constituency of the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones), to see the work that the local bus company is doing to introduce entirely electric-powered local bus routes. There is a huge amount happening, but of course there is a lot more to do to decarbonise the whole public transport sector and our road transport, too.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Has the Secretary of State had any discussions with the Treasury regarding a public transport voucher scheme that can be taken from pre-tax wages to encourage people to use public transport and thereby lower carbon emissions in our cities?
Chris Grayling
I have not, but I would be happy to discuss the hon. Gentleman’s concept. I am very interested in what he says.
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)
Bus services are in crisis. Since 2010, over 3,000 routes have been cut, fares have risen twice as fast as wages and bus use is in freefall. Last month, the cross-party Select Committee on Transport published a report on bus services in England outside London that recommended how to end this crisis, including allowing all local authorities to regulate or own their local bus services, providing concessions to young people and boosting funding. The report was led by the evidence. Will the Secretary of State listen to that evidence, accept the recommendations and make them Government policy?
Chris Grayling
Of course we will be responding to the report shortly, but if the hon. Gentleman looks across the country he will see that the place where bus mileage has been falling fastest is in Labour-controlled Wales. Actually, there has been a small increase in the number of routes during my time as Secretary of State. The Government are committed to supporting new, innovative ways to expand bus utilisation, which is why we support the demand-responsive services that are emerging across the country and are committed to ensuring that we provide the best possible choice for passengers.
The hon. Gentleman referred to the powers under the 2017 Act, and in my time as Secretary of State, I have not received a single proposal or request to introduce bus franchising under that Act. Notwithstanding that fact, I would be happy to do so if I saw evidence that it would improve passenger services.
Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Transport (Chris Grayling)
A comment was made earlier about investment in the north, and the Azuma trains, which will shortly be running to the north-east and Scotland and are already running in Leeds, are a huge investment in transport connections to the north. They will reduce journey times, and alongside that the substantial multi-hundred million pound investment that we are putting into the east coast main line will improve journey times, too. That is another sign of this Government’s commitment to providing better transport links in and for the north.
Julian Sturdy
I welcome that answer. The Secretary of State is right that the introduction of the new Azuma trains is an exciting development for the city of York, given the importance of the east coast main line to our great city, but can he assure me that we will have no further delays in their introduction? There have been signalling problems north of York, and the Azuma trains will be arriving in York on 1 August.
Chris Grayling
My understanding is that those trains are on track to start running as targeted at the start of August and will be going to Scotland later this year. They will deliver a transformative experience—more seats and faster, better journeys for people travelling from Scotland in the north to London and within the north, between places such as York and Newcastle. This is a really important investment.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
I hope that history will be kind about the right hon. Gentleman’s contribution to transport in our country. These trains were promised last December, and they are still not properly in service. When will we get them? Is he not concentrating totally on that waste of money called HS2, which is squandering the national treasure?
Chris Grayling
It is interesting that when I speak to civic leaders in the north, they all talk enthusiastically about HS2. The new trains are already operating and have been for several weeks. They have been operating, as intended, initially on the route to Leeds; they will start on the route to York, Newcastle and Edinburgh shortly; and later this year and/or early next year they will be in operation right the way up through Scotland. This is a huge investment in better transport for people all the way up the east coast.
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Michael Ellis)
Transport in London is devolved to the Mayor. Ministers and officials in the Department for Transport hold regular discussions with representatives of the Greater London Authority, including the Mayor and deputy Mayor, on a range of transport matters.
Theresa Villiers
Will the Minister speak to the Mayor of London to urge him to reverse the reductions in service to the end of the Northern line, which sees more trains turning back at Finchley Central, thereby requiring people to change trains?
Michael Ellis
I am sorry to say that the Mayor of London is letting Londoners down in transport. He has cancelled investment projects that are his responsibility, cut bus and underground services and axed an extension to the Metropolitan line, despite the Government loaning £2.6 million to the Mayor through our Department. I am appalled that, despite that loan, Sadiq Khan is letting Londoners down.
Mr Speaker
Let us hear Newcastle’s view on the Mayor of London and the city of London.
Chi Onwurah
In those discussions with the Mayor of London, will the Minister seek his advice on why it costs more to take a bus four stops up the West road in Newcastle than it does to travel across the entire Greater London area? Will he advise the Minister for buses to apply that to the rest of the country, rather than cutting three quarters of a billion pounds from annual bus services?
Michael Ellis
One reason why the Mayor of London has a black hole in his budget is that he has not been running transport services properly. I am sure that the hon. Lady’s area will be doing a better job and will hope to do a better job.
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Andrew Jones)
The Department sets the strategy for Network Rail. Its priority is to deliver a safe and efficient railway for passengers, freight customers and the taxpayer. The Secretary of State and I regularly meet Network Rail on its financial performance and progress against the aims set out in its delivery plan. The “Putting Passengers First” programme is built around issues facing the industry. We are engaging with Network Rail as it implements this programme.
Melanie Onn
Can the Minister tell me of any other publicly funded body that provides a service to 500 people every day that can decide to close that service, as Network Rail has with the Suggitt’s Lane crossing, without any consultation whatsoever?
Andrew Jones
We had a very good debate on the Suggitt’s Lane level crossing only last week in Westminster Hall. Network Rail is accountable to the Secretary of State, but that does not mean that we can interfere or overrule its operational decisions. However, I have undertaken to meet Network Rail to ensure that it is aware of the views of the hon. Lady and my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers). I met some of the people who had travelled down from the area to understand their views and will ensure that Network Rail is fully sighted on those views.
Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)
Network Rail made a mistake when it demolished the Leyland bridge, which links my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone). I am pleased to say that, with the Minister’s help, it is going to be rebuilt, but will he help us to keep the pressure up and ensure that those works are completed as soon as possible?
Andrew Jones
I will be happy to keep up the pressure. I recognise what a long-standing issue this is for my hon. Friend’s area and how hard he has campaigned on it, and I would be very happy to help.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
The Ebbw Vale to Cardiff line is a successful train service, but future improvements will require joint working between the Welsh Government, Network Rail and the Department for Transport, so will the Minister agree to meet me to help to secure extra investment for this crucial Valleys line?
Andrew Jones
I will of course happily meet the hon. Gentleman. The “Putting Passengers First” programme is all about greater collaboration and customer focus in the industry. I am happy to take that matter forward with the hon. Gentleman.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
As the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) pointed out, and as the Minister is well aware, residents in Grimsby and Cleethorpes are very angry about the closure of Suggitt’s Lane level crossing. I appreciate the Minister’s help and assistance, but the reality is that there is no real accountability on this issue. If the community cannot hold Network Rail to account through their elected representatives, surely it is now time to look again at the existing legislation.
Andrew Jones
My hon. Friend has campaigned vigorously on this issue, and I know that he chaired a meeting on 31 May between Network Rail and North East Lincolnshire Council to discuss the issue and options for alternative provision, with specific reference to the Fuller Street bridge. I understand that Network Rail has agreed in principle to contribute to the enhancement of that bridge, should it prove viable. The key point is to make sure that the views of all those involved are considered and that we come to a happy conclusion as quickly as possible. I am happy to work with all sides to help to achieve a positive outcome.
David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)
One thing that would help with Network Rail accountability would be the devolution of that responsibility to the Scottish Government. If the Conservative party is committed to devolution and strengthening the United Kingdom, when will it devolve control of Network Rail to the Scottish Government?
Andrew Jones
Devolution was not recommended as part of the broader review of powers, but I will of course make sure that the hon. Gentleman’s views are considered by the Williams rail review.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
My Department is considering the responses to the consultation on draft statutory guidance, to be issued to licensing authorities, on how they should use their extensive existing powers to protect children and vulnerable adults when using taxis and private hire vehicles. The response to the report by the task and finish group on taxi and private hire vehicle licensing committed the Government—I am keen to do this—to bring forward legislation to enable national minimum standards in licensing, enable greater enforcement powers and establish a national licensing database to assist in the sharing of relevant information.
Paul Blomfield
The task and finish group to which the Minister refers made its recommendation last September. Five months later, the Government’s response was only that they would consider the recommendation. A further four months on, in a reply to a written question last week, the Minister could say only that they would continue to carefully consider the issue, with a view to legislating—you could not make this up, Mr Speaker—“when time allows”. Given the chaos of this Government, we have all the legislative time in the world. When are they going to act?
Ms Ghani
I can see that the hon. Gentleman is as keen as I am to legislate in this area. We responded to say that we would be looking at national minimum standards, national enforcement powers and a national licensing database. I really am keen to move forward on this issue as soon as I can, and I am just waiting for the most appropriate time to do so.
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
The Minister knows what I am going to say, but I am going to surprise her, because this week, thanks to Steve McNamara and the Licensed Taxi Drivers Association, I had the chance to drive one of the wonderful new electric cabs in London. Is it conceivable that London will manage to electrify its taxis before the Government manage to bring forward the legislation?
Ms Ghani
I never want to lose out to the Mayor of London, so I hope that that is not the case. Greener taxis are on the agenda. Not only has the hon. Gentleman been incredibly supportive of this issue, but he has guided me in the putting together of our response to the task and finish group. As he knows, I really am keen to try to secure a date, and the fact that the matter has been mentioned multiple times this morning will help me to do so.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Andrew Jones)
Currently, on average, two East Midlands trains per hour call at Kettering northbound on weekdays, with one going to Corby and one to Nottingham. From December 2020, double the number of trains will call at Kettering: two will be on a dedicated St Pancras to Corby service and two will be on the long-distance Nottingham service.
Mr Hollobone
Kettering is a well-used, popular station with rising passenger numbers. Will the Minister confirm when electrification will arrive at Kettering and what other benefits to passengers there will be from the new train franchise?
Andrew Jones
The roll-out of the midland main line electrification is obviously a key project, and I will keep the House posted on its progress. I can inform my hon. Friend that the station will get many new benefits from the East Midlands franchise. They will include station wi-fi, LED lighting and help points. There will be improved lay-out and a bus interchange, a multimodal customer information system, drinking water fountains, customer lounges, refurbished toilets, new cafés, customer waiting areas, a third-party west side station entrance development, 60 new secure cycle spaces, six electric vehicle charging points, ANPR car park technology, 200 additional car park spaces and air quality monitors. Basically, it is all happening at Kettering station.
Mr Speaker
Indeed, and no one knows how to excite and inspire better than the Minister. We will now hear from North Ayrshire and Arran, apparently in relation to matters Kettering. The mind boggles, but we are about to be enlightened.
Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)
There is an issue that will, I am sure, have great importance for the people of Kettering, as it will for the people of Scotland. Fifty four per cent of delays and cancellations in Scotland are down to issues with Network Rail, and I am sure that the people of Kettering have a similar story to tell. Given that the respected think-tank Reform Scotland has said that the devolution of Network Rail to Holyrood would be a major step forward in integrating the Scottish transport network, why does the Minister not agree with Reform Scotland?
Andrew Jones
That was a very entrepreneurial link, Mr Speaker. As soon as the Scottish Government start using the powers that they have, they will be more credible when they ask for more.
Damien Moore (Southport) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Andrew Jones)
Northern is now running an extra 2,000 services per week compared with two years ago and is introducing major improvements for its customers, including 101 brand new trains, which will be operating on the network from this summer. This is part of a major programme of rail investment across the north, which will see room for more than 40,000 passengers at the busiest times and will help transform the rail experience for coastal communities travelling into the cities.
Damien Moore
The hourly service from Southport to Manchester Piccadilly is absolutely vital for residents and businesses in Southport. Will my hon. Friend and the Department for Transport join Network Rail in supporting my bid to restore the hourly service from Southport to Manchester Piccadilly in the December 2019 timetable?
Andrew Jones
My hon. Friend is a great champion of rail services in his area, just as he was of the Access for All bid for Hillside station. I appreciate how vital it is to have regular and reliable train services. I am aware that an additional service was added in the May ’19 timetable, and we are working on an extra service for December. Obviously, I am very happy to keep the pressure up and will keep him posted as we make progress.
Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
In July 2018, my Department published the inclusive transport strategy. Our ambition is to create a transport system that provides equal access for disabled people by 2030, and to ensure that disabled people can travel confidently, easily and without extra cost. The Department is making good progress delivering on the many commitments set out in the strategy, and I will be providing a one-year report to Parliament in the summer.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
Buses are not the only form of public transport with accessibility problems. It is still a huge issue for disabled people to get on and off airplanes. I have had constituents tell me that they have been literally manhandled on to flights. Even though airports are accessible, the airlines themselves still have a problem, and often people are left bruised and humiliated. Will the Minister meet me to talk about how we can encourage airlines to do something about that?
Ms Ghani
Absolutely. And that should not be the case. We have put together a really good inclusive transport strategy that sets out how passengers can be treated appropriately in all elements of their travel, and the airports should be doing much better. There is an aviation strategy, and there is also quite a big chunk in the inclusive transport strategy. I am more than happy to sit down with the hon. Lady.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
I was one of the MPs who was happy to support the Guide Dogs talking buses campaign. I even took a trip on a bus blindfold to experience the travel difficulties. It is now two years since the Bus Services Act 2017 was passed, and the Government are still stalling on the roll-out of audiovisual information. All we need is secondary legislation, so can we please have a timetable for when that secondary legislation will be brought forward?
Ms Ghani
We are dealing with the responses to the consultation and I will update the House as soon as I can. The hon. Gentleman can rest assured—I chaired the all-party parliamentary group on sight loss and I am very close to this issue. I want to make sure that buses are accessible to people with all sorts of disabilities.
Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
The Bus Services Act 2017 provides the tools that local authorities need, such as enhanced partnerships and franchising, to improve local bus services. We are working with interested local authorities to determine which of the powers provided are best able to support bus networks in their areas. We are also ensuring that pioneering technology, such as the forthcoming bus open data digital service, can overhaul bus services across England and give passengers the information they need to travel with confidence.
Graham Stringer
When Nicholas Ridley deregulated bus services nearly a third of a century ago, he promised that bus services would increase and be used by more passengers. Actually, bus deregulation has been a catastrophe and a disaster for the travelling public. Is not the answer to this question absolutely obvious—that the Government should encourage and allow all local authorities in England to re-regulate their services?
Ms Ghani
Unfortunately, the hon. Gentleman is painting an unrealistic picture. Up and down the country, there are varying numbers of bus passengers. In Bristol, bus passenger numbers are up by 50% and in south Gloucestershire they are up by 36%. We need to put a package of items together to encourage people to use buses. There is the ability to have either franchising or enhanced partnerships that allow local authorities to have a stronger and better relationship with bus companies.
Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Transport (Chris Grayling)
Given the Government’s announcement yesterday about our commitment to pursuing a net zero strategy for carbon emissions, it might be helpful to set out three ways in which my Department is playing its part in taking this forward.
We are now awarding funding for innovative new ideas to transform the railways. I have already mentioned the first operating hydrogen train, but we are putting together a package of additional measures, which are being announced today, to upgrade the technology on the rail system. The Government car service is already taking steps to decarbonise its fleet. I will be encouraging other Government Departments to get their agencies that have fleets to do the same. This summer, we will be publishing our clean maritime plan setting out our role as a global leader in tackling the whole issue of carbon emissions in the maritime sector.
Paul Blomfield
After the May 2018 timetable changes, I raised with Ministers the sacrificing of direct London to Sheffield train services to improve local services for London and the south-east. The latest timetable makes minor changes but no improvements. We still have too few early evening services and longer average journey times than 14 months ago. In the week that northern newspapers launched their Power Up The North campaign, what message does the Secretary of State think that sends, and what is he going to do about it?
Chris Grayling
The message it sends is that we have been very clear that while we are going through the process of upgrading the midland main line, there will be some effects on services. However, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will welcome the improvements that have just been completed at Market Harborough—one of the big parts of the programme of upgrading the route. Derby station was another part completed fairly recently. This is designed to improve journey times to Sheffield as part of a commitment to transport both to his area and the whole of the north.
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
As my right hon. Friend will know, decisions on bus routes are down to the Mayor of London. I think he needs to focus on delivering for Londoners and not just faffing around trying to take selfies. He should be spending more time with Londoners to understand exactly the sort of bus services they need and which journeys they need to take.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
With transport emissions accounting for 29% of all toxic emissions released in the UK, and at a time when Labour has declared that climate change is an existential threat to our nation and planet, will the Secretary of State for Transport tell the House why he has failed to undertake a full environmental audit of road investment strategy 2—the most ecologically and environmentally damaging road building programme for a generation?
Chris Grayling
We have another example of the Labour party’s war on the motorist. The hon. Lady should understand that the more congested our roads are, the higher the emissions. We cannot destroy our economy and get rid of our roads. We have to decarbonise road transport, but we also have to ensure that our roads flow smoothly. Those on the Labour Benches do not get that. They want to scrap road improvements, and they want more traffic jams. Those traffic jams increase emissions. The Labour party just does not get it.
Rachael Maskell
The Secretary of State may think that that answer gets him off the hook, but when road transport accounts for 69% of transport emissions, and air pollution claims 50,000 lives prematurely, he should be less complacent.
UK roads killed or seriously injured 27,000 people, including 2,000 children, last year. It is the most dangerous mode of travel. Why does the Secretary of State not invest in developing a sustainable, integrated public transport strategy, including active travel, as Labour would, instead of this catastrophe of a road building project?
Chris Grayling
We now know the truth: the Labour party is going to be anti-motorist. It is going to be anti-road improvements. It is going to set itself against the things we are doing to try to boost our economy in all parts of the country, through connections to our ports and better motorway links, unlocking the economic potential of places like west Cumbria. Labour does not care. We will continue our work to decarbonise our car fleet and support the development of new technology in buses, for example. We also have the biggest investment programme in the railways since the steam age. Labour has no ideas, and just wants to go to war with the motorist.
Craig Tracey (North Warwickshire) (Con)
Ms Ghani
I know that my hon. Friend has been a great champion of his constituency and has been liaising closely with HS2 Ltd. The infrastructure maintenance base that is proposed near Austrey is expected to have a minimal impact on the village when operational, because of its proposed location between the HS2 main line and the village. The site was also chosen because it will involve only limited movements of earth during construction. We expect HS2 Ltd to work to refine the route, to reduce environmental impacts. Where impacts are inevitable, HS2 Ltd will design plans for mitigation. Those plans are still in development and will be reported in the formal environmental statement, which will be deposited alongside the phase 2b hybrid Bill. If my hon. Friend requires a meeting so that I can flesh this out, I am more than happy to do that.
Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)
Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)
Stanford Coachworks in my constituency is a small, successful engineering business, building minibuses and luxury coaches. However, before its vehicles can be deemed roadworthy, they need to be inspected by the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency. At present, the availability and frequency of tests falls well below the demand, threatening the viability of the business. Will my right hon. Friend agree to meet me, so that I can explain this in detail and we can see what can be done to improve the situation?
Chris Grayling
We will certainly arrange a meeting for my hon. Friend with a Minister—either me or the roads Minister—to address the issue. I should say that this does appear to be a problem in his area, rather than one that is universal around the country, but we do not want to see any business suffering as a result, and we will certainly work with him to address the problem.
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)
Chris Grayling
I understand the point the hon. Lady is making because I have had similar issues in my own constituency. A principle that has been adopted both by her party when it was in government and by us is that, when assessing a person’s medical condition, it is not right or fair to go to their own GP because of the specific relationship that exists between an individual and their GP—whether that be an assessment for welfare entitlements or an assessment for a driving licence. We will always, as a ministerial team, work with Members across the House, if there are examples of individuals who have been hard done by as a result of a decision that is wrong, to see whether we can get the situation at least reviewed.
Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)
May I have an update on City of York Council’s bid through the major road network fund for dualling the York northern ring road? Will the new roads Minister meet me to discuss this matter and the levels of congestion that are causing huge concern to my constituents?
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Michael Ellis)
I am very happy to meet my hon. Friend, and I look forward to doing so to discuss that matter.
Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Change UK)
Ms Ghani
I know the right hon. Lady will use every opportunity to campaign, even through petitioning, to ensure that the voices of her constituents are heard. HS2 is committed to ensuring that it mitigates any impact and to working with local communities, but I am of course more than happy to sit down with the right hon. Lady and those from her communities to discuss this.
Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)
I am delighted to see the excellent new Minister in his place. As a Northamptonshire MP, he will know the stretch of the A45 between Stanwick and Thrapston that the Government are committed to dualling. The environmental study to unlock that project was supposed to be carried out during the current roads period, but it has not yet been completed. Will he put his foot on the accelerator to make sure that that work is done to unlock this dualling?
Michael Ellis
I will very much look into this matter. It is interesting to note that Labour Front Benchers would not be supporting this environmental plan. They are the ones who are engaging in a war on the motorist. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to have a look at the A45, because I know that that road has issues. It is about time Labour accepted that this Government’s investment in roads is something it should be duplicating, not resiling from.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
Ms Ghani
I am just as eager as the hon. Gentleman to legislate in this area, considering the amount of work done by the task and finish group. Our commitment is to make sure that standards are raised, security is dealt with and that national enforcement officers ensure that regardless of where people are in the country they are getting into a cab with a driver who has had a standardised background check and has met the threshold for safety and security. I cannot give any more detail right now, but I am pleased that so many Members are as eager as I am to legislate on this issue.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
Earlier this week, the all-party group on bioethanol issued its interim report on the availability of E10. This issue has been dragging on for very many years. May I urge the Minister to come to an early decision, after studying this report?
Chris Grayling
In principle, we intend to go ahead with the introduction of E10. It has to be subject to appropriate consultations. We have been particularly mindful of the impact on older vehicles, which are often owned by those on low incomes. However, it is the right thing to do, particularly given the environmental challenges we face, and we are now going through the process of moving towards its introduction.
Emma Dent Coad (Kensington) (Lab)
Chris Grayling
This House voted overwhelmingly to give Heathrow airport the go-ahead for the next stage of its plans for expansion, and I expect the will of Parliament to be followed in the future.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. If we have brief questions and brief answers, I will attempt to give everybody who is still standing the opportunity to speak.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
In congratulating my Northamptonshire neighbour on his elevation to greatness as the Minister for roads, may I point out that the most important item on his desk is the introduction of civil parking enforcement in Kettering? When will a statutory instrument be introduced to implement that scheme?
Michael Ellis
I am pleased to see Northamptonshire so well represented in the Chamber, as it always is. The Department for Transport has been working with my hon. Friend on that plan regarding legal powers for civil parking enforcement in Kettering. A lot of work has been done, and more still needs to be done by Kettering Borough Council and Northamptonshire County Council, but with my hon. Friend on the case I feel sure that progress will soon be made. We are hoping that those powers will be available early in 2020.
Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)
Chris Boardman in Greater Manchester and Sarah Storey in South Yorkshire are demonstrating the value that active travel commissioners add to the promotion of cycling and walking. Although a series of initiatives helped people to get on their bikes and get out walking, we now need a long-term programme of investment. Does the Minister agree, and, if so, what plans can we expect to be brought forward?
Michael Ellis
As the hon. Gentleman knows, almost £2 billion will have been invested in cycling and walking over the course of the Parliament. Spending on cycling and walking in England has doubled from £3.50 per head to around £7 per head over this spending review period, which is as it should be. Cycling is a highly positive thing for physical fitness, mental health and wellbeing and, of course, the environment. We continue to invest in a way that the previous Government never did.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
The weekend papers contained a striking photograph of £1 billion-worth of Crossrail trains sitting idly in the sidings. Some 479 drivers are not being used, which I understand costs £25 million a year, and £17 billion has been spent on Crossrail stations that currently have no trains going through them. Meanwhile, why does it take months and months to get any action from TransPennine Express in Hull to replace signs that are covered with gaffer tape? Why do we still have Pacer trains, and why was the electrification cancelled?
Chris Grayling
The hon. Lady will know that in the north large numbers of brand new trains are being tested and prepared for launch. She talks about new trains in London, but there are new trains in London, the north, the midlands, the south-west, the east coast main line, and the Great Western main line, as part of a massive investment by this Government in the railways and in better trains across the whole country, including her constituency.
John Grogan (Keighley) (Lab)
Is it time that Transport for the North got the same powers as Transport for London—namely the ability to determine spending priorities in the region without all final decisions being made in Whitehall?
Chris Grayling
The hon. Gentleman is arguing for the abolition of Transport for Greater Manchester, Nexus, and all the rest. Transport for London oversees the buses, and runs metro rail systems and its local Overground rail system. Those powers already exist in the cities of the north, and the hon. Gentleman appears to argue that those cities should lose those powers, which should be moved to Transport for the North. I do not think that is the right thing to do.
Douglas Chapman (Dunfermline and West Fife) (SNP)
I do not know whether anyone on the Government Front Bench managed to get to the electric scooter demonstration yesterday that was provided by Bird, but such initiatives can encourage a modal shift and get people out of their cars. Will the Minister consider legislation to open up the use of electric scooters on our roads, and help us to achieve our climate change targets?
Chris Grayling
We will always look carefully at new technologies, but any new technologies introduced on and around our roads need to be safe. We need to be confident that they will continue to be safe for not only those who use them, but those around them.
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
I refer to the Secretary of State’s response to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad) on runway three. I will try again. Given that the Government have now followed the Opposition in committing to net zero carbon emissions by 2050, surely the Secretary of State must see that Parliament might now vote a different way on a project that emits 6 million tonnes of carbon emissions per annum and provides zero net benefit to the UK economy?
Chris Grayling
I am afraid I simply do not accept that the latter point is true. This Parliament voted, by a majority of nearly 300, to give the go-ahead to a project that I personally believe is of key strategic importance to the United Kingdom over the coming decades. I think that says it all.
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
Whether it is electric scooters or dockless bike schemes, technology moves so much more quickly than the Department for Transport. After years and years, will the Secretary of State finally do something about dockless bike schemes, and help our local authorities respond to the changes?
Michael Ellis
This Department leads the way internationally on transport issues and is a world leader in considering our carbon emissions, cycling, walking and active travel. The Department is a world leader in these fields.
Sudan
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Sir Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the crisis in Sudan and ongoing human rights abuses.
The Minister for Africa (Harriett Baldwin)
The people of Sudan have shown incredible bravery and perseverance in their demands for an end to a brutal and unaccountable regime. We stand with them. The Transitional Military Council must listen to the Sudanese people and respect their legitimate demand for civilian rule.
Since the removal of Bashir on 11 April, the UK has made clear statements alongside our troika partners, the United States and Norway, as well as via the Foreign Secretary, calling for all sides to engage in an inclusive dialogue that leads to a swift and peaceful transition to civilian rule. The UK will continue to engage closely with the full spectrum of Sudanese actors, including civil society, in both Khartoum and London, to support a better future for Sudan.
We continue our call for Sudanese authorities to refrain from all violence, and for constructive dialogue that delivers a credible response to protest demands to resume. We welcome the work of the African Union in mediating, and the early progress reported towards the resumption of talks with the Forces of Freedom and Change. Following the sickening and brutal acts committed by Sudanese security forces on 3 June, I summoned the Sudanese ambassador to the Foreign Office last week, and told him in the strongest terms that these violent acts against civilians must stop.
Sir Henry Bellingham
I am very grateful to the Minister for her response. When Omar al-Bashir stood down and the Transitional Military Council took over—the Minister alluded to that—there was a huge amount of optimism. There were peaceful protests and there was space for opposition groups. Since last weekend, however, the situation has become horrendous. We have seen the Rapid Support Forces—the former Janjaweed militia—play a part in killing over 100 people. A number of women have been arrested, as have various opposition politicians, including Mohamed Esmat, and three key people from the SPLM-N—the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North.
The Minister mentioned the help she is giving to Sudanese diaspora groups here. What conversations are we having with them, and what additional assistance can we give the alliance? Will she provide more details on that? Its leaders are being arrested, and many key personnel who are abroad want to come back and need help. What efforts are the troika and Her Majesty’s Government making to put pressure on countries such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, which are apparently giving support to the Transitional Military Council?
Finally, the Minister rightly mentioned the African Union, which has a key role to play. Does she think it sensible for the AU to have suspended Sudan’s membership at a time when there should be dialogue, discussion and pressure applied, and what will she and the Secretary of State do to work with the AU, which is absolutely the key player in this, to make sure that common sense prevails, that space is given for democracy and that the will of the people triumphs in a country that has so much potential, but which is suffering so much at the moment?
Harriett Baldwin
I start by putting on the record my gratitude to my hon. Friend for his tireless advocacy on behalf of the people of Sudan, for his involvement in the all-party group on Sudan and South Sudan, and for the way he posed his question. He is absolutely right that we should also pay tribute to the tireless work of Her Majesty’s Ambassador Irfan Siddiq and his team in the embassy in Khartoum. They have been working relentlessly in very difficult conditions to put forward the view of Her Majesty’s Government, which is that we need to find a way of taking the inspiring activism that led to the removal of former President Bashir a few months ago, and moving forward in line with the aspirations of the Sudanese people towards civilian-led government.
My hon. Friend rightly pointed out the importance of a range of external actors and of our work with US and Norway in the troika. We are one of a group of countries that consider themselves friends of Sudan and want to play a constructive role in moving forward in this transition, which even the Forces of Freedom and Change recognise will have to be a protracted one, given that the country is coming out of a long period of direct rule by Bashir, and that the institutions and structures that we take for granted in our country take time to form in the transition to democracy. It is important therefore that there be an overall agreement, and that the sovereign council, which includes both the Transitional Military Council and civilians, be able to take things forward.
The US, Norway and the UK will work together constructively. We welcome the stance that the African Union has taken, and we fully support its envoy and the work that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed from Ethiopia has done to find a way forward. My hon. Friend also rightly points out the importance of engaging with our friends in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to ensure a smooth transition to civilian rule. The international community has been clear about the completely unacceptable behaviour of the Rapid Support Forces; we deplore the terrible atrocities committed. We will set out the potential rewards of moving to civilian rule and make sure that people understand the tools we have to sanction those who do not play a constructive role in that transition.
Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)
The constant protest in Sudan since last December resulted in President Bashir being removed from power by the military on 11 April and the council of generals assuming power. The Transitional Military Council has since been in negotiations with protesters about establishing a civilian-led Government. On 15 May, it agreed to a three-year transition period to civilian rule, but that changed on 3 June, when, fearing they had ceded too much power to the protesters, Sudanese paramilitary forces launched a violent crackdown. Since then, much of the country has been shut down by a three-day strike.
The African Union has rightly suspended Sudan from its membership until a civilian-led transitional authority has been established, but we need further pressure placed on the Transitional Military Council to continue the political transition. To that end, the Government should encourage our allies in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi to persuade Sudanese paramilitary forces to pull out of Khartoum and resume negotiations with protesters.
In December 2017, the former Foreign Secretary thought it wise to hold a trade forum with Sudan. We warned the Government at the time about striking trade deals with Sudan while ignoring the country’s human rights abuses, but they did not listen. The Government really need to get their priorities in order. Instead of constantly searching for new trade deals, we need to be prioritising human rights. I therefore ask the Minister to ensure that her Government call for an outside-led investigation into the killing of protesters, halt all deportations and removals to Sudan, support real regime change and ultimately use their diplomatic clout to ensure a peaceful transition to civilian rule in Sudan.
Harriett Baldwin
I assure the hon. Lady that we are using every diplomatic avenue that we can to seek to ensure that the uprising leads to a smooth transition to civilian rule. We are certainly not holding back on condemning the behaviour that we have seen from the Rapid Support Forces.
The hon. Lady mentions the important role that we can play in other forums. I can confirm that on Monday I will be in Luxembourg with other European Union Foreign Ministers to talk about the situation in Sudan, and to see what we can do on the strategy that I outlined, which is to show the clear upside for the economy of a smooth transition to civilian rule. I am sure that she would recognise that part of the clear upside has to be economic reform and the ability to start doing more business with Sudanese businesses, and that that is an important part of the transition.
In addition, we welcome the fact that the US has appointed a special envoy. We have our special envoy, Bob Fairweather, and the US has just announced that its special envoy is Ambassador Donald Booth, who is in Sudan today with American Assistant Secretary Tibor Nagy. Again, this is about reiterating our points about the importance of the smooth transition to civilian rule, and how that can unlock economic reforms and Sudan’s economic potential.
The hon. Lady rightly welcomes the constructive role being played by the African Union, which has sent very clear messages. She rightly says that these kinds of human rights violations and abuses absolutely need to be clearly documented. We have heard very disturbing reports, not only in Khartoum, but in Darfur. They are as yet unconfirmed, but through our diplomatic channels at the United Nations, we have again urged the UNAMID —United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur—peacekeeping mission to fully investigate them. She is absolutely right to say that these kinds of atrocities are not things that the world will forget, and that it will look to hold accountable those who have committed them.
James Duddridge (Rochford and Southend East) (Con)
I welcome the appointment of the US special envoy; that role has been left unfilled for too long. In September I was in Sudan, and I noticed a certain contempt—which continues—from the ruling elite towards more distant organisations, whether that was the US, Norway, the UK, the UN or, to a lesser degree, the AU. However, I did notice that the ruling elite took note of what was said by their near neighbours in particular. What leverage do we have, particularly through our foreign aid relationships with those near neighbours, that we can use to put pressure on for a peaceful solution? As part of our international aid programme, we are providing some £85 million of support to enable people to feed their families. As always with our humanitarian assistance, it needs to be predicated on need, rather than tied to any specific political act.
Separately, on the political track, we need to keep making clear statements about the potential upside for the Sudanese economy of following a path for reform—the upside that could exist if Sudan were to move out of being classified by the United States as effectively a state sponsor of terrorism. So there is a clear path that can be followed to a much better future for the Sudanese people. We encourage all actors, neighbours and the international community to work with the Sudanese people to achieve that.
Chris Law (Dundee West) (SNP)
In the past 10 days, at least 124 people have been killed by the regime forces and more than 700 have been injured, as protests have steadily engulfed Khartoum. We have also had widespread reports of sexual violence, mass arrests, gunfire in medical facilities and bodies floating in the River Nile.
The SNP follows the EU in calling on the Sudanese Government to release all journalists, members of the Opposition, human rights defenders and other protesters arbitrarily detained, and to conduct a thorough investigation into recent deaths and human rights abuses. I welcome the Minister’s statement and I note that she is going to Luxembourg on Monday to meet EU partners. Does she agree that a multilateral approach through such institutions as the EU is the most effective way to exert international pressure and to ensure that human rights are respected? If so, what conversations has she had with her European counterparts about the most effective means to do so?
Does the Minister agree that we are watching Sudanese society teeter on the brink of large-scale violence and potential civil war? What lessons has she learned in her Department from Myanmar that will help to avoid a similar situation?
Harriett Baldwin
The hon. Gentleman will have heard about the way in which we are engaging with our EU counterparts on this. We talked about near neighbours, but of course Sudan is very close to all of us, so it is important that we find a way to facilitate the smooth transition to civilian government.
The hon. Gentleman is right to talk about the terrible atrocities on 3 June that led to my summoning the Sudanese ambassador. This morning’s reports from our post on the ground state that there has been a continued reduction in the Rapid Support Forces present on the streets of Khartoum; that talks are continuing to take place, facilitated by mediators; and that African Union envoy Labat and Ethiopian envoy Dirir are playing a constructive role in moving those forward. So I think that we can welcome the international engagement, but we can also welcome the fact that, through this mediation by the African Union, there has been a de-escalation of the totally unacceptable behaviour of 3 June by the Rapid Support Forces.
Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)
Thank you for granting this important urgent question this morning, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Britain, as the Minister so rightly says, has a pivotal role to play as a member of the Troika, along with Norway and the United States, as it has for many years. And this House too—Jo Cox, our late colleague, and I worked on the atrocities in Darfur for many years, both when I was in opposition and when I was Secretary of State.
The critical point that Britain can make at this time is that there will be no impunity for the human rights abusers in the regime in Sudan who are conducting the most appalling events in Sudan—in Khartoum and elsewhere—in respect of civil society, which is trying to move Sudan to a better place. I refer not just to the appalling events that have taken place through militias such as the Janjaweed in Darfur; President George Bush referred to events there as a genocide and General Bashir must be held to account by the International Criminal Court. There is also the fact that the human rights abusers in the forces in Khartoum can be held to account today through mobile phone technology. There are many pictures of individuals who have been abusing the human rights of citizens in Khartoum and Britain should make the point that they will all be held to account in due course, no matter how long it takes.
Harriett Baldwin
I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend for his work at the time of the last Darfur crisis, and, of course, to our late lamented colleague Jo Cox, who made such an impact on the world’s attention to this situation.
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right: we must not lose track of accountability, particularly that of state security forces when there are documented human rights violations. As I said, we are hearing that there are a number of unconfirmed reports and that there is also evidence on mobile phones. We think that that is one of the reasons the internet has been shut down, and has continued to be shut down. As he will appreciate, that makes it difficult to confirm what has happened. That is why we have taken steps to go via the United Nations peacekeeping mission and called on that mission to get to the bottom of what has happened and of who has been responsible, so that they can be held accountable for these atrocities.
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
The announcement by special envoy Mahmoud Dirir that talks may resume is of course welcome, but I want to focus on the point raised by the former International Development Secretary, the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell). The terrible violence has an awfully familiar ring to those of us who had to deal with the tragedy in Darfur, because the traditional response of the Sudanese state is to deploy forces to crack down on those whom they wish to oppose.
There has been such a considerable difference between assessments of the number of people killed. I think the authorities claim that it is about 61, but, as we have heard, according to reports from other sources, including doctors, it is double that. There have also been reports of rape, and of bodies being thrown into the Nile. Did I understand the Minister to say that she thought that UNAMID could play a role in investigating all these atrocities, including those in Khartoum? If that is the case, and if there is support from both the African Union —which plays a very important role—and the United Nations, I think the whole House would support it as well, because we need the evidence to hold people to account. The tragedy in Sudan and Darfur is that far too many people have got away with far too much.
Harriett Baldwin
Let me clarify what I said. We believe that in Darfur, where the reports have been hard to confirm, UNAMID can have an important role in trying to get to the bottom of what has happened and ensuring that justice is served. In Khartoum itself there is also work to be done in terms of documentation, but my understanding is that no forces from UNAMID have been deployed there. Part of the evidentiary process relating to these atrocities will require us to try to get to the bottom of some of the documentation on people’s mobile phones. However, it is on the agenda of all the players, including international players, to find the best way of ensuring that we do not lose sight of the fact that these abuses must be met with justice, whether they are violations by the security forces or abuses by others,
Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)
Along with other Members who are present today, I visited Sudan last year. It was my fourth visit. The plea of the ordinary Sudanese is “Please do not forget us and please hear our cries when we really do need help.” They need help at the moment.
Our ambassador has been called in for a dressing down. Can the Minister assure me that our staff in Sudan are given maximum protection, because that is a worrying development?
I ask for two things. I share what my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) said. May we have an absolute assurance that the Minister will talk to the Home Office to make sure there are no deportations back to Sudan at the moment? That is the one thing the large diaspora here will want to hear.
The most worrying thing we found out from our visit last year was the rapid rundown of UNAMID. Can we stop that? Can we make sure we invest in UNAMID and get people back on the ground? That is the only way we will stop a dangerous escalation of all sorts of conflict in Darfur.
Harriett Baldwin
First, I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s strong interest in this area. I answer a lot of the written parliamentary questions that he tables. I want to put on record for the people of Sudan that of course Her Majesty’s Government will not lose sight of the issues and what is happening and they will remain at the forefront of our minds. The hon. Gentleman is right to point to the bravery of our ambassador and the team. This is the second time that we have drawn down our embassy staff to the minimum. I assure colleagues that of course we make sure that they are protected in the way that they need to be, but we have asked non-essential staff and families to leave and we have updated our travel advice for any British citizens thinking of travelling to Khartoum or Sudan more widely.
In terms of Darfur and UNAMID, I can say to the House that the decision last year to draw down troops has been implemented. That has been a fairly modest drawdown. There will be no further drawdown. Under the current circumstances it is important that that presence remain in place and we remain committed to being a partner supporting that deployment at this time.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. The Minister has been giving very thorough answers to the questions. That is my polite way of saying it would be helpful if she could perhaps be a little briefer as we proceed.
Conor McGinn (St Helens North) (Lab)
May I press the Minister on what she said in relation to UNAMID? There is significant evidence of continuing human rights abuses in Darfur. There is emerging evidence that the RSF has occupied bases that the African Union and the UN have left. There is a vote at the end of this month at the AU and the UN about a further significant diminishing of the UNAMID operation. Will the UK absolutely oppose any further withdrawal or drawdown because it is the last remaining safeguard for the civilian population there and if it is drawn down further we will hand complete control to the human rights abusers?
Harriett Baldwin
In the interests of brevity, Madam Deputy Speaker, I confirm that the UK position is that there should be no further drawdown.
David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)
Sudan finds itself sixth in the Open Doors world watch list for persecution of Christians and we know that the 2 million Christians there are subjected to extreme persecution, in particular in the Nuba mountains where thousands of Christians have been slaughtered and displaced, so this is a serious issue. Will the Minister consider the calls from Christian Solidarity Worldwide to convene a special session of the UN Human Rights Council on that issue?
Harriett Baldwin
The hon. Gentleman will be aware of the Foreign Secretary’s prioritisation of freedom of religion and belief in his work, and my colleague from the other place, Lord Tariq Ahmad, was in Khartoum last year making precisely this point.
The hon. Gentleman makes a very sensible point about the Human Rights Council. He will be aware that we tried to raise this at the Security Council last week but it was blocked by Russia and China. However, we will of course explore all international avenues to make sure that we keep this issue on the agenda.
Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
Cardiff has a strong and long-standing Sudanese community and many concerns have been raised with me by constituents who are also deeply worried about friends and relatives whom they are unable to contact because of the cutting off of the internet and communications. As the two former International Development Secretaries have said, unfortunately, cutting off information and using brutal tactics against civilians are par for the course for the Sudanese military and security forces. Given what the Minister said about UNAMID, what other methods can be used to verify what on earth has gone on, because I have heard horrific stories from individuals? Are we talking about the involvement of the International Committee of the Red Cross or other independent human rights monitors if UNAMID and other forces are not going to be in Khartoum and elsewhere? What message does she have for countries that continue to provide the Sudanese military and security forces with direct assistance, given their horrific record of abuse of civilians?
Harriett Baldwin
To the hon. Gentleman’s latter point, we believe it is important to raise those concerns with the relevant countries at the earliest possible opportunity, and I can assure him that we will be doing that. With regard to the documentation and the closing down of the internet, he makes some sensible suggestions on the ways in which we must try to ensure that we continue to be able to hold people to account for their actions, and I look forward to updating the House about the actions we have taken in that area.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
Despite the telecommunications blackout, we have heard that the UN has had reports that 19 children have been murdered and that 49 or so are believed to have been injured, some of whom have been sexually assaulted. On that specific point, will the Minister tell us what the Government can do to press for the protection of the most vulnerable, including children, during the horrific violence that they are seeing in their country?
Harriett Baldwin
As far as Darfur is concerned, the crucial organisation there is UNAMID. With regard to Khartoum, the important way forward there is to ensure that the Transitional Military Council and the Forces of Freedom and Change are able to continue with the current dialogue and that they recognise that peaceful protest needs to be part of this transition. We will try to ensure that all abuses and violations are documented and that people are held to account.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
The last I heard, the brave men and women working in international aid agencies such as the International Rescue Committee were still operating on the ground. Are we in contact with those organisations, and what are they reporting back? It is encouraging to hear that European Ministers are meeting to talk, so would not a new delegation be timely if that could be arranged at this time?
Harriett Baldwin
I agree with the hon. Gentleman. A few days ago, I met some of the leading non-governmental organisations that are delivering humanitarian assistance, and access is continuing to allow them to do that. Obviously one has to put on record one’s admiration for the bravery of the people involved. As far as a delegation is concerned, I understand that commercial flights from both Ethiopian Airlines and Turkish Airlines have now restarted. We hope that the situation will remain peaceful enough on the ground to enable us to update our travel advice, but at the moment the travel advice for British citizens is for essential travel only.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
And the prize for patience and perseverance, as ever, goes to Jim Shannon.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is always a pleasure to speak in this House, whatever time it may be—either first or last, it doesn’t matter.
Could the Minister outline the practical steps that she has been taking, as well as the statements that have been issued, to help to provide safety and security for those who are peacefully protesting? What discussions has her office had recently to attempt to lever diplomatic pressure—to prevent the killings, the abuse of protesters and the horrific sexual abuse of some women—on a Government who are downright refusing to meet the basic human rights of their people?
Harriett Baldwin
I would like to pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman but, in the interest of brevity, I must tell him that many of those points were covered in my earlier answers. Our travel advice for British citizens is kept constantly updated, and at the moment our travel advice is for essential travel only.
Local Housing Allowance: Supreme Court Ruling
(4 years, 10 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
Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to make a statement on yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling in the case of Samuels v. Birmingham City Council and the impact it will have on the Department’s setting of local housing allowance rates.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Will Quince)
The ruling was not against the Department; it was a case against Birmingham City Council. I will look at the judgment carefully. The Court decided that the local authority had used the wrong test when deciding whether accommodation is affordable. The assessment is needed when deciding whether someone has made themselves intentionally homeless.
The decision is primarily one for local authorities to consider with regard to how they deal with applications for unintentional homelessness. However, I will undertake to consider the implications fully with my Department. LHA rates are not intended to meet full rental costs in all areas. The intention behind the welfare reform programme is that the same considerations and choices faced by people not in receipt of benefits should also face those claiming benefits. The LHA policy is designed to make the system fairer for all to achieve that.
The Government recognise, however, that the impact of freezing LHA rates may have different effects across the country, with rents in some areas increasing at different rates. In view of that, a proportion of the savings from the freeze to LHA rates is used to create targeted affordability funding. That funding is being used to increase those LHA rates that have diverged the most from local rents.
Marsha De Cordova
I am grateful to Mr Speaker for granting the urgent question.
Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled on the case of Samuels v. Birmingham City Council, a case in which a single mother with four children was found “intentionally homeless” for not using her subsistence social security to pay the shortfall between her local housing allowance and her rent. Since 2016, the Government have frozen LHA, while private rents have continued to rise. That has meant that housing benefits no longer cover the cost of renting in the private sector.
Research by Shelter has found that for a two-bedroom home, even for the cheapest third of rents, LHA rates do not cover rental costs in 97% of areas in England. In the case that the Supreme Court ruled on yesterday, Ms Samuels was expected to use her social security to find an additional £150 a month to top up her local housing allowance to cover her rent. That put Ms Samuels in an impossible situation, essentially forcing her to choose between housing her family and feeding them. That is happening in the context of local authorities being forced to spend £1 billion a year on emergency and temporary accommodation, with the costs of preventing homelessness being pushed from national to local government.
The Government cannot continue to expect the poorest people in our society to find a way of paying for what the Government refuse to. The judgment sets a precedent. Will the Minister make a clear statement on the Supreme Court’s judgment and tell the House how the Government intend to respond? When will the Secretary of State reset LHA rates in response to the judgment? Finally, will the Minister tell us what assessment the Government have made of the hardship caused by the freeze in LHA rates?
Will Quince
The hon. Lady is right that LHA rates were frozen in the summer Budget in 2015 and have therefore been frozen since 2016. That was about getting our welfare bill under control. It was about ensuring that we provided the support necessary for those who needed it and fairness for those who pay for it, and making sure that our welfare system is sustainable in the long term. I can tell the hon. Lady that the freeze will end in March 2020. In all cases, the targeted affordability fund is available. We also have discretionary housing payments, and £1 billion has been made available since 2011.
Ultimately, it is a supply issue. LHA rates are one thing and supply is another. We need to look at successive Governments that have not built enough affordable—by which I mean council and social—housing. Nevertheless, the hon. Lady will be aware that I did a lot of work in this area before taking up my ministerial post. She would therefore expect me to undertake further work in post, and there will be more to come.
Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)
Rents in Cheltenham are relatively high. Does the Minister agree that bringing more housing on stream is critical to bringing down those rents? Does he join me in welcoming the £3 million that went to Cheltenham via the housing infrastructure fund to make what would otherwise be unviable developments viable, bringing vital housing on stream?
Will Quince
My hon. Friend is right that we are taking action to build the homes that our country needs. The LHA rate is an issue in so many cases because of supply and demand. Demand massively outstrips supply in certain areas, so I am pleased by the action that Cheltenham is taking with his support.
Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)
I pay tribute to Ms Samuels, who brought her case as far as the Supreme Court. Hopefully her struggle will result in change so that others do not have to go through this.
This case should be a wake-up call for many local authorities in how they process homelessness applications, while acknowledging that Scotland has much stronger homelessness legislation. Local authorities have been left in a very difficult situation because of this Government’s policies, which drive cases like that of Ms Samuels. Local housing allowance rates have been frozen at 2015 levels by this Government. Why will that freeze continue into next year? The Minister simply cannot say that this is about not wanting to subsidise the private rented sector, because the Government are actively doing that by not building social housing.
In the four years to 2018, Scotland delivered 50% more affordable housing units per head of population and—this is the important one—five times more social rented properties per head of population, and more in total, than England. The Scottish Government are also spending £12 million on discretionary housing payments to mitigate the Government’s freeze on benefits such as local housing allowance and £50 million to mitigate the bedroom tax.
A perfect storm has led to so many of us having cases like that of Ms Samuels at our surgeries—punitive, arbitrary and punishing cuts to social security, including housing benefit, coupled with rent increases and a devastating under-supply of social housing. When will the Government wake up to the crisis they are causing?
Will Quince
Despite the freeze in Scotland, we have seen LHA rates rise. One rate rose in 2017-18, three rates rose in 2018-19 and 16 rates rose in 2019-20. The hon. Gentleman knows me well enough to know that I am looking at various options in this area ahead of potential spending review bids. The freeze comes to an end next year, and I look forward to working with him.
James Duddridge (Rochford and Southend East) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to see the Minister in his place, which will give great reassurance to my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) that it is possible to leave the Government and rejoin at a more senior level in short order.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) hit the nail on the head. It is all about the supply of private sector housing. What discussions has the Minister had with the Minister for Housing on increasing the supply of housing and, in particular, building above shops? Whether in Birmingham, Colchester, Cheltenham or Southend, this has to be part of the solution.
Will Quince
I thank my hon. Friend for his kind words and his question. He is right that supply is a key element. Raising LHA rates would be one thing, but it will not have the impact we need if we do not build the housing that is desperately needed.
I am working closely with my counterpart at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, and we are looking at supply ahead of potential spending review bids. We will be holding regular meetings to discuss these matters further.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
The local housing allowance freeze is causing real hardship not just in Birmingham but across the country, and I will be raising the impact on Nottingham citizens in my Adjournment debate next Monday. Does the Minister not understand that the Government’s commitment to eradicating homelessness will continue to ring very hollow while his Department continues to pursue many of the very policies that created the problem in the first place?
Will Quince
I look forward to the Adjournment debate on Monday evening, when we will discuss these matters in more detail. We want everyone to have security in their home and a roof over their head, which is why we have committed over £1.2 billion to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping. We have published a strategy to end rough sleeping by 2027 and to halve it by 2022, backed by £100 million of initial funding, and we have changed the law so that councils can place families in private rented accommodation so that they get a suitable place sooner. Statutory homelessness acceptances fell last year.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
The Minister says that the Government’s aim is to get support to the people who need it and to make the system sustainable, but surely what this case underlines is that we have a welfare system that is broken and that the Government’s attempts to fix it are failing. We need the welfare system repaired and we need action to tackle cases like this, along with the record numbers using food banks and a welfare system that is not doing what the Minister states is its aim.
Will Quince
I am afraid that I do not recognise the picture that the hon. Lady paints. We are spending record amounts on our welfare system—over £95 billion a year for those of working age.
Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)
Does the Minister agree that this Supreme Court judgment not only highlights the huge gap between local housing allowance rates and the reality of rents in the private sector, but shines a light on the much bigger crisis of homelessness, which today is a massive part of my caseload and, I think, that of other hon. Members? It is a crisis that in Birmingham, the month after the case went to the Supreme Court, saw 12,000 households on the council waiting list including the homeless and 2,500 households in temporary accommodation. Does he accept that this will not be tackled until the Government recognise the need to invest in social housing on the scale required and adopt social security policies that tackle poverty rather than exacerbate it and compound the homelessness problem, and that unfreezing the LHA cap would be a first step in that?
Finally, does he recognise that the message here for Birmingham City Council and other local authorities is that they must always keep focused on the people, not simply on the procedures?
Will Quince
The hon. Gentleman should not underestimate my determination—I chaired the all-party group on ending homelessness—to absolutely deliver on our commitments to halve and then end rough sleeping. I recognise what he says about LHA rates, but that is not the case across the country. Rates are an issue in some parts of the country but not in others, which is why I am looking at this very carefully. I have been working with my counterparts in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, as he suggests, because supply is also an issue.
Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)
The local housing allowance causes us real problems in Stroud, because we are in the same area as Gloucester, where rents are much lower. That is nothing to do with this Minister, let alone this Government or previous, successive Governments; it was a Labour Government who grouped those areas together. Will he at least take a look at the impact on those groupings where rents are higher in some areas and lower in others?
Will Quince
The hon. Gentleman raises a good point. Those groupings are based on broad rental market areas, and in some parts of the country they pose an issue. A number of Members from across the House have raised this issue with me and I am looking at it.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
Under this Government we have seen the introduction of the bedroom tax and universal credit, both of which are causing rent arrears, and the Minister has actually admitted that UC delays are leading to an increase in prostitution. He says that the reason for the freeze in LHA rates, which is now making people homeless, is to stop the private rented sector being subsidised, yet another Government policy is leading to increased numbers of properties in the private rented sector. The right to buy has resulted in 75,618 sales and over 21,890 new starts since 2012, leading to a further imbalance between public and private sector housing. When will this Government get a joined-up, just social policy?
Will Quince
First, I want to correct the record. I did not make those comments at the Work and Pensions Committee yesterday, and if the hon. Gentleman checks the record he will see that that is the case. Since the freeze, LHA rates have been adjusted through targeted affordability funding, as I mentioned earlier. In addition, over £1 billion has been made available since 2011 in discretionary housing payments. I have made it clear that the freeze ends in March 2020 and, ahead of a spending review bid, I am looking at numerous options.
Business of the House
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
Will the Leader of the House give us the business for next week?
The Leader of the House of Commons (Mel Stride)
The business for the week commencing 17 June will include:
Monday 17 June—Second reading of the Non-Domestic Rating (Lists) Bill.
Tuesday 18 June—Motion to approve an ecclesiastical Measure relating to church representation and ministers, followed by a motion to approve a statutory instrument relating to the draft Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 (Specified Scottish Authority and Barred Lists) Order 2019, followed by debate on a motion relating to progress of implementation of the recommendations of the Cox report. The subject of this debate was determined by the Backbench Business Committee.
Wednesday 19 June—Remaining stages of the Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Bill.
Thursday 20 June—Debate on a motion on refugee family reunion, followed by a general debate on court closures and access to justice. The subjects of these debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee.
Friday 21 June—The House will not be sitting.
Tomorrow marks two years since the devastating Grenfell Tower fire. The survivors and bereaved have endured so much with such dignity, and I know that the thoughts of the entire House will be with them at this time.
Valerie Vaz
I thank the Leader of the House for the forthcoming business. My copy of the statement is on two pages; I wonder whether the second page is intentionally blank—we seem to have only one week’s business.
I thank everyone, including the Clerks, involved in the new edition—the 25th—of “Erskine May”, which is also available online, so lots of people will be able to look it up and hold the Government to account for what they do in the Chamber.
It looks as though the Backbench Business Committee has taken control of the business next week. Will the Leader of the House consider giving us an Opposition day? It seems that the Government have gone into the cupboard—it is a bit like “Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard”. I keep thinking of nursery rhymes, what with the 10 green bottles standing on a wall in the leadership election—
Valerie Vaz
Yes, blue bottles. The Government have gone to the cupboard, and lurking in there is the Non-Domestic Rating (Lists) Bill, which was published only yesterday but has its Second Reading on Monday.
I know that last week was the Leader of the House’s first week, but he said that he would come forward with the recess dates “in due course.” Parliament and the country have no idea what is going to happen after July and in September and October. The Leader of the House must have had some discussions; will he provide a bit more clarity on when he will announce the dates for the summer and conference recesses? This issue cannot be part of the campaign promises. The Leader of the House is Parliament’s voice in Government. Parliament is not irrelevant, particularly at this time, when we have a minority Government.
One of the many governmental powers that can be exercised without statutory authority, by convention, is the Dissolution of Parliament, or Prorogation if it is the end of the Session. The sovereign acts on the advice of her Ministers. We know that the breaching of conventions is not illegal, and we are talking about a convention, but the courts can look at it. It is outrageous, morally and constitutionally, for candidates in the Tory leadership election to suggest that they will put our gracious sovereign in a position to prorogue Parliament. Will the Leader of the House rule that out today?
At least three candidates have said that the UK will leave the EU without a deal, even though Parliament has expressly voted against it. Will the Leader of the House rule that out today? He must have seen the Cabinet note warning that the country is still unprepared for leaving on 31 October. It said that we need four to five months—that is at least until November—for trader readiness, and six to eight months to ensure that adequate arrangements are in place to build stockpiles of medicines. Should we not have a debate on whether the country is actually ready for leaving on 31 October?
The candidates are saying that they will renegotiate the withdrawal agreement. Are negotiations still ongoing? Is anyone talking to the EU? May we have a statement on the current discussions with the EU? Instead, we are getting a string of policy announcements, none of which is costed, none of which has been put to the electorate, and none of which has been agreed by the Chancellor. Handouts to the highest earners, according to the Resolution Foundation, would see 83% of gains going to the richest 10% of households, with the biggest beneficiaries, as a proportion of their income, being those on £80,000. The shadow Chancellor has said that the money involved is more than we spend every year on justice or children’s social care. I am pleased that the Leader of the House mentioned Grenfell, but not a single one of the candidates has said what they will do to prevent another Grenfell.
The Prime Minister said yesterday that employment figures have risen in the west midlands. I ask the Leader of the House to kindly ask the Prime Minister to correct that, because business leaders in Greater Birmingham have warned this week that stagnating employment statistics in the west midlands present a concerning picture. Unemployment fell by 0.1% between February and April, but the figures remain significantly above the national average, second only to the north-west. Why is employment stagnating in Tory Britain? May we have a debate on employment in the west midlands?
This week, the National Farmers Union organised an event at which farmers in the west midlands spoke of the terrible uncertainty of a no-deal exit and of how they need to use places such as the Netherlands to grow spinach, particularly in October when our growing season is coming to an end. May we have debate on the effect of no deal on the food and farming industry?
In Carers Week, in Tory Britain, there are around 7 million carers in the UK, 58% of whom are women. Hon. Members will have seen the display of the Multiple Sclerosis Society in the Upper Waiting Hall. One in three people with MS are not getting the care that they need. When will the Government publish the social care Green Paper?
The Leader of the House will have heard the words of the outgoing ambassador in Singapore, who said that people outside the UK have described the UK as beset by division, obsessed with ideology, and careless of the truth. All the major investment is going to Germany and France, but, worryingly, this is what we are hearing: £350 million to the NHS, free television licences for the over-75s, trade deals are easy, no deal is better than a bad deal, and strong and stable. You cannot run a country on rhetoric. The Government may have won the vote yesterday, but we will try again for the good of the country and for our reputation in the world.
May I ask the Leader of the House to kindly join me in wishing the Opposition Chief Whip a very happy birthday, as he has worked selflessly all his life for the good of the party and for the good of the country as a Minister and in Opposition? We wish him a very happy birthday.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
We all wish the Opposition Chief Whip a very happy birthday.
Mel Stride
There is only one person in this House whose birthday is more important than that of the shadow Chief Whip and that is the Chief Whip. I do not know when it is, but whenever it is I wish him a very happy birthday, too. I do not know what the shadow Chief Whip treats himself to on his birthday. Perhaps he polishes the instruments of torture in the Labour Whips’ Office. [Interruption.] He is a softy indeed, as the shadow Leader of the House says, and I wholeheartedly concur with her best wishes to the shadow Chief Whip.
The hon. Lady raised a large number of points, which I will attempt to deal with in turn. She made reference to the blank page that she has received in the forthcoming business. That is indicative of the large amount of business that we will be bringing forward in due course to fill that page and many others. She quite accurately raised the issue of the preponderance of Back-Bench business debates that we are putting forward at the moment. That is for two reasons. One is that we want to hear and engage with Back Benchers, because, as Conservatives, we have a very inclusive style of government. Secondly, the persuasive abilities of the hon. Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) know no bounds, so if we want to see fewer of those debates, we will have to have a word with him. The hon. Lady also made a request for Opposition day debates. They are handled through the usual channels and will, of course, be considered in a sensible and measured manner.
The hon. Lady mentioned the Non-Domestic Rating (Lists) Bill. That is a very important measure. The fact that we have brought it forward so quickly underlines its importance in making sure that businesses up and down the country are able to have more frequent valuations of their rates and bringing forward the first revaluation by one year to 2021.
The hon. Lady, once again and quite understandably, asked about the recess dates. I do not have an announcement to make this morning, but I will of course come back to the House with one at the earliest opportunity, and it will be for the House to pass the motion in that respect in the normal way.
The hon. Lady raised the issue of proroguing Parliament as, I think—I am paraphrasing her comments —a device, perhaps to ensure a no-deal situation in the absence of Parliament sitting. That is not the Government’s policy on this at all, and it is certainly our feeling that Her Majesty the Queen should be kept out of politics; it would be unfair to draw her into a political situation in that form.
The hon. Lady made several references to no deal and the various positions of the Conservative candidates—the runners and riders in the forthcoming contest. I do not think it would be right for me to comment specifically on any of them other than to say that what does perhaps unite the whole House is that having a deal is better than having no deal, provided that we can come together to secure that outcome.
To my surprise, actually, the hon. Lady raised the issue of employment—specifically in the west midlands—on which this Government, of course, have an outstanding record. We have the highest level of employment in our history. We have the lowest level of unemployment since 1974. We have halved the level of youth unemployment since 2010. We have continued economic growth, and living standards and real wages are rising as we go forward.
Let me finish by saying that the hon. Lady and I have already struck up a good relationship. We are already seeing eye to eye on many important matters such as restoration and renewal and the work that we will jointly be engaged in on the independent complaints and grievance scheme. We both believe that Parliament must have a strong and loud voice, and of course we both believe in debate and scrutiny. So given that we agree on so much, perhaps I could quote the immortal words of the late, great Amy Winehouse:
“Why don’t you come on over Valerie?”
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
We are what we remember, and what our forefathers did helps to shape the places we call home. In my home—my constituency—we remember Captain Matthew Flinders, who first charted the coast of Australia and whose body was found by chance during excavations in London recently. We want to bring him home to Donington in Lincolnshire. What ministerial statement might be made to help us in that effort, 200 years—more than that, actually—after Flinders was buried? South Holland simply wants to pay its final farewell to our master mariner.
Mel Stride
I thank my right hon. Friend very much for raising this issue. Matthew Flinders was a very great nautical man—a great explorer of Australia, in particular. Of course, my right hon. Friend and I share something in common in that we were both distinguished members of the Government Whips Office at various stages in our careers, which is probably why he has alighted on the fact that he is so good at finding out where the bodies are buried—but in this case we have established that it is somewhere near Euston station. I will do whatever I can to assist him in his quest to make sure that the remains of Matthew Flinders find their home where they should be, in Donington in his constituency.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
I thank the Leader of the House for announcing this thrilling instalment of non-business for next week. I also wish the Labour Chief Whip a happy birthday. All he wants is for his Back Benchers to observe a three-line Whip for once.
May we have a debate about sustainable populations? Today, the cull begins in this grotesque Tory horror show as the candidates are cut down to more manageable numbers—cruel, but necessary to maintain a healthy population. This is where “Britain’s Not Got Talent” meets “I’m a Tory, Get Me Out of Here”, as they are whittled away until the coronation of “the one”.
It is almost unbelievable that the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) is the runaway favourite, with all his baggage of Islamophobia and misogyny. He even now wants tax cuts for the rich in England to be partly paid for by national insurance contributions from Scotland. The only good thing about his soon-to-be ascendancy is that it speeds up the whole process of Scottish independence.
After all the difficulties, may we have a debate on drugs legislation and perhaps even “draw a line” under the problems? I do not think we should be locking up these senior Tories for all their drugs indiscretions, just as I do not think we should be locking up problem drug users who have addiction disorders, mental health issues or have suffered adverse childhood experiences. They should not be locked up either, but as with so many other issues, for this Government it is, “Do as I say, not as I do.” We have a criminal justice approach to drugs that locks up the poor and allows others to stand for the post of Prime Minister.
I listened carefully to the Leader of the House, but I still hear the candidates being prepared to suspend our democracy and prorogue Parliament to get this disastrous no deal through. That is the agenda of so many Members who are standing for the post of Prime Minister. Some of them refuse to rule it out. We need to hear clearly and definitively from the Leader of the House that he is not prepared to have our democracy suspended. Who would have believed that taking back control meant suspending our democracy and this House, when they ranted and raved about mythical, undemocratic Brussels bureaucrats denying us our democracy? We know who the true democracy deniers are now.
Mel Stride
The hon. Gentleman, as we all know, is one of the most talented musicians in the House, having been in a very fine band or two and even appeared on “Top of the Pops”. None the less, it is simply not good enough to come to this Chamber week after week and play the same old tunes—and as far as I can tell, they are all out of the ABBA playbook. Whenever he is pressing a Minister, it is “Money, Money, Money”. When he is pressing his electorate, it is always, “Take a Chance On Me”. Once again, he took the opportunity to raise his push for a second referendum, but if he continues to do that, it will not be long before we hear his version of “Waterloo”. That is about as good as it gets, I am afraid; I will be back by popular demand next week.
The hon. Gentleman asks for a debate on drug legalisation, which is a very serious subject. The House has much debated the matter in the past, but the largesse of the hon. Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) might extend to that if he feels it appropriate. The hon. Gentleman will have heard my answer in response to the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) about prorogation.
Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend find time for a debate on strengthening the law on people who are found guilty of animal cruelty? I am sure the whole House was shocked at the recent hunt where someone was found guilty of feeding fox cubs to the hounds, yet that person can still keep animals. The law should certainly be changed.
Mel Stride
May I first pay full tribute to my hon. Friend for all the extremely effective and important campaigning that he does on animal cruelty? I should point out that the Government have taken this matter extremely seriously. We have increased the maximum sentence for animal cruelty from six months to five years. We have introduced CCTV coverage in slaughterhouses, and we have taken action on puppy farms and online sales of young dogs. The debate that my hon. Friend requests would perhaps be a good one for the Backbench Business Committee.
Ian Mearns
I am very pleased to be in charge of the business of the House. [Laughter.] I thank the Leader of the House for the business announcement.
Applications for estimates day debates must be submitted by tomorrow. We understand that a number of applications are being thought about or prepared, but we have not actually received any applications so far. The Backbench Business Committee will consider applications next Tuesday afternoon, and we understand that the debates will go ahead on 2 and 3 July.
May I reiterate the birthday wishes to my right hon. Friend and constituency neighbour the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown), our Chief Whip? I do wish him a very happy birthday. He has been very gentle with me recently, so I am very grateful for that.
The Leader of the House has just been extolling the Government’s record on employment, but 30 local and regional newspapers across the north of England have come together to campaign on Powering Up The North. Our chamber of commerce in the north-east of England has issued a report this week saying that employment has fallen by 20,000 over the past quarter in the north-east of England and by 26,000 over the past year. Unemployment in my constituency has grown month on month, and it now stands at 7.1%. May we have a debate in Government time on the northern powerhouse and the unprecedented unification of 30 local and regional newspapers across the north of England and on the disparity in economic progress between the regions of England and the south-east?
Mel Stride
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his questions and for the fine work he does as the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee. The House will have noted his very pertinent call for action on the estimates day debates and for applications to come through to meet tomorrow’s deadline so that those subjects can be debated in early July.
I note the hon. Gentleman’s request for a debate in Government time on the northern powerhouse. This Government are certainly extremely proud of the investment that has gone into the north. Specifically on the north-east, it has had faster productivity growth than London since 2010, and we are of course investing £600 million in infrastructure and jobs in that region.
Maggie Throup (Erewash) (Con)
Just two days ago, a vehicle fire severely damaged a road bridge in my constituency between Sandiacre and Long Eaton. This has resulted in the road being closed, and a long diversion through the constituency of the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) on roads that are already congested. Will my right hon. Friend facilitate dialogue between the Department for Transport and Derbyshire County Council to ensure that we have a rapid assessment of this bridge and see what can be done to repair it quickly, so that people can travel freely again through my constituency?
Mel Stride
My hon. Friend’s raising of this very specific matter is entirely indicative of the very assiduous approach she takes to her constituency matters. She is quite right to raise this issue, and I can confirm that I will do whatever I can to assist her in the approaches she is seeking to be made to the Department for Transport.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
May I caution the Leader of the House against trading song lyrics with my fellow colleague from MP4, the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), and indeed the shadow Leader of the House, the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz), not least because the preceding line to the lyric the right hon. Gentleman quoted—
“Why don’t you come on over Valerie?”—
from “Valerie” is:
“Stop making a fool out of me”,
which is exactly what she will be doing here every week? And
“So I say
Thank you for the music”,
but let us stick to the business of the House.
Will the Leader of the House at the very least endorse the words of the leadership contender he is supporting this afternoon, who has said:
“Proroguing parliament in order to try to get no-deal through, I think, would be wrong for many reasons.”
Will he at least endorse that?
Mel Stride
As for the lyric
“Stop making a fool out of me”,
nobody was attempting to make a fool out of the hon. Gentleman, I can assure him.
On proroguing, I have made it very clear that the view of Government Members and of the Government is that this should not be used as a device to ensure that Parliament is absent from the decisions that may have to be made towards the end of October and, furthermore, that it would not be appropriate for Her Majesty the Queen to be drawn into those kinds of political decisions.
Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)
GCHQ, headquartered in my constituency, is now in its centenary year. It was founded in 1919, under the then name of the Government Code and Cypher School. May we have a debate to allow hon. Members from across the House to pay tribute to the brilliant men and women who work in that organisation and who keep our country safe in an increasingly complex and dangerous world?
Mel Stride
My hon. Friend raises an important point, and within our security services there are many unsung heroes who make many sacrifices—some, indeed, make the ultimate sacrifice—for the defence and security of our country. It would be a good subject for a debate, perhaps in this case an Adjournment debate.
Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)
Mr Fearon delayed his pension for two years. He did not know, and he was not informed by the Department for Work and Pensions, that the law had changed, and that if he wanted to reclaim that backdated two years’ pension in a lump sum, he could get only one year, with the second year paid in instalments over 20 years. But Mr Fearon does not have 20 years. He has lung cancer and has had his last session of palliative chemotherapy. He has lost out on a year of his pension for which he worked all his life. Will the Leader of the House find time for a debate on the effect of those pension changes on people who are terminally ill, and will he go in to bat for Mr Fearon?
Mel Stride
I cannot comment on a specific case, but given the terms with which the hon. Lady presented it, I recognise that it perhaps needs to be looked at rather urgently. I would be happy to facilitate whatever approaches can be made in that respect to the Department for Work and Pensions, and if she would like to write or speak to me after business questions, perhaps we could work out the best way to do so.
Neil O’Brien (Harborough) (Con)
May we have a debate on police pension sharing arrangements after divorce, which I believe to be a genuine scandal? One of my constituents has lost tens of thousands of pounds—roughly a quarter of his pension—because the part of his pension that was supposed to be paid to his ex-wife is not being paid to anybody and is being pocketed by the Treasury as a result of decisions made several decades ago. I think that is a genuine scandal, and I wonder whether we could debate it in this House.
Mel Stride
In the first instance, it might be worth my hon. Friend writing to me with the details of that case, so that I can ensure appropriate discussions with Ministers at the Treasury or the Department for Work and Pensions.
Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)
It is shocking that hundreds of people each year are sent to prison for non-payment of council tax, often because the law is wrongly interpreted by magistrates, and the issue affects the most vulnerable and often the poorest people in our society. Chris Daw QC has started an e-petition, calling on the Government to change the law. This requires just a tiny change to the law, so may we have a debate in Government time so that we can sort out this terrible injustice?
Mel Stride
I think that I can offer the hon. Gentleman something a little more useful than a debate, because if he has specific ideas about how what he expressed as a relatively modest change to the law might make a big difference in this area, I would be interested in discussing that with him and putting those ideas to the relevant Ministers.
Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)
On 22 June, I shall again have the honour of opening the Droitwich Spa food and drink festival, which for many years has been led by an inspiring man called Patrick Davis, who will be standing down this year from those responsibilities. May we have a debate to celebrate the many food and drink festivals, boat festivals, heritage events, plum festivals and a whole host of things that happen right across the country, to celebrate our food and drink, our heritage and our culture, and to show our thanks to the many people who do so much to make that happen?
Mel Stride
I echo everything that my hon. Friend has said about the Droitwich Spa food and drink festival, and if I am in that area at the appropriate time I would very much look forward to attending it. Curiously, somebody on the Front Bench told me that my hon. Friend’s favourite food is asparagus—I do not know the relevance of that, but I am sure there will be plenty of it at the food fair.
Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)
Despite being part of Lloyds Banking Group, the Halifax, which is predominantly located in England, offers more competitive products to customers across the board than the Bank of Scotland, which is almost solely based in Scotland. There is only one Bank of Scotland branch in England, but there are three branches of Halifax in Scotland, which shows clear geographical discrimination against consumers in Scotland and is deeply unfair. Will the Leader of the House make a statement and say whether he agrees that that is unfair? Does he agree that Lloyds Banking Group should apologise and offer all customers the best deals, regardless of where they live in the UK?
Mel Stride
Clearly, I do not know all the specifics of the matter the hon. Lady brings before the House. However, we do have Scotland questions on Wednesday 19 June, and that might be a good opportunity to ventilate the issue.
Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)
I know we are all concerned about ending poverty pay. Yesterday, I was among a group of MPs who met care workers from AFG—the Alternative Futures Group—who are being paid below the minimum wage because of cuts to sleepover rates.
Closer to home, staff employed by Interserve at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office are on strike in a dispute over pay and terms and conditions. The Government really should be concerned to learn that these hard-working staff, one of whom was awarded an MBE in the recent honours list for his years of work in the Department, are being paid less than they should be. Food banks have had to be set up to support these workers, who are currently in dispute. May I urge the Leader of the House to ask the Foreign Secretary to make a statement as a matter of some urgency, agree to bring this contract back in-house, treat these workers with the dignity they deserve, and ensure poverty pay is well and truly ended?
Mel Stride
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point. More generally, there has been growth in real pay for over a year, thanks to our economic policies. Of course, it was this party and this Government who brought in the national living wage, which was increased well above the rate of inflation at the beginning of this financial year.
With regard to the specific issue and the strike that he raises, I would be very happy, if he wants to write to me, to facilitate a meeting with the relevant Minister. I also point him to Foreign and Commonwealth Office questions on Tuesday 25 June.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
Earlier this week, it was revealed that Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust continues to burn thousands of tonnes of coal to heat its buildings at City Hospital, despite promising residents two years ago that the 50-year-old boiler would be shut down permanently. The hospital is blaming the Treasury for the delay, but frankly that is no comfort to the visitors, staff, patients and local people whose health is damaged by air pollution. May we have a statement from the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care—I guess he may have more time on his hands after today—on how he intends to end this shameful situation?
Mel Stride
On the general point about coal, this Government’s green policies led to the longest extended period of our not having to use coal for power generation in our history, but in Cumbria a Labour council is seeking to reopen a coalmine. We take this issue extremely seriously. On the specific matter of Nottingham hospitals and air pollution, if the hon. Lady would like to write to me, I will make sure the relevant Minister engages with her in an appropriate manner.
David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)
May we have a debate in Government time on the privatisation of visa processing? My Swinton constituent Jack McGruer wants his fiancé Sarah to come over from Brazil, but due to a breakdown between the Home Office and VFS Global, they find themselves in limbo. Will the Leader of the House use his good offices to help me intervene with the Home Office, and try to get them out of limbo and back together in the UK?
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
It has been widely known for some time that the Ministry of Defence, for reasons best known to itself, is planning to hand over the MOD fire and rescue service to Capita. There has been no statement and no indication of what lies behind the process or this decision. Will the Secretary of State at least come to the House and make a statement on why the MOD is planning to hand over this valued service to Capita to prop up that company?
Mel Stride
The hon. Gentleman raises a very specific point, so I think the best way to move forward would be for him to write to me. I will then be very happy to take up the matter with Ministers.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
Following on from the question by the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee and his reference to newspapers in the north, including The Yorkshire Post and the Hull Daily Mail, campaigning on Powering Up The North, on 23 June it will be five years since the then Chancellor George Osborne launched the northern powerhouse. I would like to echo the Chair’s request for a debate on what progress has actually been made in closing the gap between the north and London and the south-east, on giving the north real devolved powers to drive change and not just have talking shops, and on whether it is time to regenerate the Humber docklands in the same way and with the same impetus as the London docklands were regenerated over 40 years ago.
Mel Stride
This is the second question calling for a debate on the northern powerhouse. As I said in answer to the first, I think it is a very good idea. We should collectively across the House, depending on the routes available, think about having such a debate, principally, from the Government’s point of view, because we feel we have made a substantial commitment to the north of England. We have had unprecedented investment in better transport across the north, as the hon. Lady will know, with £13 billion of investment so far—a record level—and further planned investment to come.
Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)
Dozens of my young constituents attend the Buchanan and St Ambrose High School campus in nearby Coatbridge. There has been much concern about the health of children attending the school since reports of teachers falling ill with the same type of cancer, and one boy with autism going blind, reportedly due to arsenic poisoning. Given that the site the school is built on is a former landfill that included arsenic, I am very grateful to the Scottish Government for having instituted an inquiry into this matter, following representations from Fulton MacGregor and Alex Neil, but I hope that the parents are involved at an early stage. Will the Leader of the House bring about a debate on building public buildings, including schools, on former landfill sites, so that we can get to the bottom of this?
Mel Stride
What the hon. Gentleman describes is obviously of considerable concern. I am pleased there is an inquiry, as he has set out, and I would certainly recommend that he raise the matter at Scottish questions on 19 June.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
Last weekend, another unauthorised encampment was set up in Newport, this time on Beechwood Park, causing huge frustration and cost for residents, local authorities and the police. The Government have recently consulted on extra powers for local authorities and the police to deal with such circumstances, so may we have a quick update from Ministers on giving our authorities the powers they need?
Mel Stride
That would be a very good question to ask on Monday 17 June at Housing, Communities and Local Government questions.
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
May we have a statement or debate on the actions of the Home Office contractor Serco, which yesterday announced that it will go ahead with 300 lock-change evictions of asylum seekers before its contract ends in September? Does the Leader of the House recognise the anger and disgust of many Glaswegians at the actions of Serco, and does he agree that the Home Office should instruct Serco to halt that policy, especially given that there are live legal proceedings brought by a Glasgow South West constituent, who is appealing this decision in the Inner House of the Court of Session?
Mel Stride
I believe the hon. Gentleman tabled an urgent question on this matter that was not granted, so I recognise how important it is to him. If he writes to me in more detail, I will make sure that appropriate Ministers are engaged on it.
Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Change UK)
Madam Deputy Speaker, I warn you and everyone else that I am about to use the C-word. It is 203 sleeps until Christmas, which most people of course will welcome, but it is also 140 days before we are due to leave the European Union without a deal, which business certainly does not want, and for which there is no majority in this place or the country. Unfortunately, Labour Front Benchers were unable yesterday to deliver enough votes from their own MPs to begin the process of stopping us crashing out of the EU without a deal. The Leader of the House, who is a good man and will always do his best, has said that the Government take the view that Parliament should not be prorogued by whoever is our next Prime Minister, to the exclusion of Parliament, so that we crash out without a deal—so the Government apparently think that would be the wrong thing for any future Prime Minister to do. What will he do to ensure that Parliament takes control of the process, and that we do not leave without a deal at the end of October because of an irresponsible Prime Minister?
Mel Stride
The Government’s future position will of course be determined by a new Prime Minister, but I feel confident, from all I have heard from those putting themselves forward for that position, that all of them recognise that a deal is the best way forward. The answer to the right hon. Lady’s question, I think, is that the best, most secure, most sensible and rational way forward for us as a Parliament is to come together and support a deal with the European Union.
Martin Whitfield (East Lothian) (Lab)
Will the Leader of the House join me in congratulating Scott Glynn of Tranent in East Lothian, who was awarded an MBE in Her Majesty’s birthday honours list? Since 2013, the Walk With Scott Foundation has raised over £300,000 for local communities and charities, but more importantly Scott brings people together to chat, talk and make new friends. May we have a debate on the role of volunteers in keeping our societies strong, safe and together?
Mel Stride
A short while ago, of course, we had a very good debate on the voluntary sector. I recognise its utter importance and, like the hon. Gentleman, I salute all that it does. I echo his remarks and congratulate Scott Glynn on his well deserved MBE.
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
I am assisting a veteran’s widow who is living on the breadline in Bosnia, on an armed forces pension. She loses a significant proportion of her pension due to a steep service charge for processing her cheque, and she has to receive a cheque because the UK cannot transfer funds electronically to Bosnia. Will the Leader of the House ask his former colleagues in the Treasury to find a way to ensure that she and others like her are not penalised, and to make a statement setting out the solution to the problem?
Mel Stride
The hon. Gentleman raises a specific matter regarding the use of cheques to pay pensions. I would be very happy to take that up—perhaps in conjunction with him, if he writes to me—with the relevant Minister at the Treasury.
Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)
The Government stated in answer to my written question that they do not collect centrally the figures for spending on veterans’ support services by region. May we have a Government statement to determine where money is spent on supporting veterans who have served their country?
Mel Stride
I do not have sight of the precise presentation of those statistics at this moment. However, if the hon. Lady dropped me a line about that, I would be very happy to take it up, see what the situation is and discuss with Ministers whether this might be done slightly differently or on a more disaggregated basis, as she suggests.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
May we have a statement, or indeed, a Government U-turn, on TV licences, so that over 3 million pensioners continue to receive free TV licences?
Mel Stride
There has actually been a statement on free TV licences, which will be—[Interruption.] It may have been an urgent question, but I refer the hon. Gentleman to that.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I again welcome the news that Asia Bibi has been relocated to Canada after being falsely accused of blasphemy in Pakistan. Unfortunately, the blasphemy laws are still in place, and are still being used to persecute religious minorities. In fact, the very cell that held Asia Bibi is now occupied by Shagufta Kausar and Shafqat Masih, two Christians also falsely accused of blasphemy. Worse still, in February, upon hearing that four women had been accused of blasphemy, an angry mob attacked a Christian village, leading to the displacement of approximately 200 Christian families. Will the Leader of the House agree to a statement or debate on this very important issue?
Mel Stride
I thank my hon. Friend for raising this extremely important matter. We welcome reports that Asia Bibi has been able to travel freely and can now make decisions about her future. We are very concerned about the persecution of members of all religious minorities and the misuse of the blasphemy law, which is why in December, the Foreign Secretary announced an independent review of Foreign and Commonwealth Office support for persecuted Christians overseas. As to a debate, this would be an excellent subject for, perhaps, an Adjournment debate.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
The consumer safety Minister—the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Kelly Tolhurst)—has finally told Whirlpool UK that she intends to order the recall of at least half a million of its dangerous tumble dryers, responsible for hundreds of fires in homes across the UK. Whirlpool has until tomorrow to respond. May we have a statement on Monday, so that the Government can say, after four years of inaction on the worst consumer safety crisis of modern times, how they intend to proceed?
Mel Stride
On the face of it, there is clearly a very serious issue here, which has been highlighted in the past. It is very good that the Minister has intervened in this way to make sure that action will be taken.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
On the day of the European elections, my constituent, Christine Fletcher, had to rush her unwell daughter to hospital for a brain scan. Christine could not then get a proxy vote, because she was not the person who was incapacitated by the medical emergency, yet as far back as 2015 the Electoral Commission recommended an extension of the grounds for proxy voting to cover such circumstances. May we get a Government statement on when they will adopt such a sensible, simple measure, so that people such as Christine do not have additional stress when they are dealing with an already stressful situation?
Mel Stride
The best place that I can direct the hon. Gentleman to is questions to the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission, which are on 20 June.
Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)
I have had complaints from two of my smaller charities about a letter that they received from the noble Lord Pickles on behalf of The Parliamentary Review, asking them to take part in a competition by submitting 1,000 words on what a worthy charity is. The only problem is that they are then asked to cough up £950 for what they wrote to appear online, and £2,800 for it to be in print. Does the Leader of the House think that it is appropriate for people to trade on the name of Parliament? And might he just have a quiet word with the noble Lord, and all the other great and good people who put their name to this scheme?
Mel Stride
I do not know the details of the matter to which the hon. Gentleman refers, but on the basis of what he has said on the Floor of the House, I would like to know a bit more about it. If he were to write to me, I would be very happy to look into the matter.
Hong Kong
(4 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for Asia and the Pacific (Mark Field)
The proposed changes to Hong Kong’s extradition laws have understandably caused grave concern in Parliament and across the country. Already this week I have responded to an urgent question and an Adjournment debate on the issue. I should now like to update the House on the latest developments.
Overnight on 11 June, thousands of mainly young protesters blocked the roads around the Hong Kong central Government offices and the Legislative Council complex. There have also been violent exchanges between protesters and police. I appreciate that these scenes will have shocked many Members of the House and many millions of our constituents, and I should like to take this opportunity to appeal again for calm and considered dialogue.
Freedoms of association, speech and expression are all guaranteed by the joint declaration signed in 1984 by the Government of the People’s Republic of China and the United Kingdom and enshrined in the Hong Kong Basic Law. I am sure that the House will join me in expressing grave concern at the violence that has occurred. It is imperative not only that any protests are conducted in a peaceful manner, but that the authorities’ response is proportionate.
Despite the violence that occurred yesterday—I should report that since that time, there has mercifully been calm in the vicinity of the Hong Kong buildings to which I referred—it is important to recognise the unprecedented and overwhelmingly peaceful expression of public opposition that we saw at the march on 9 June, with families, church groups, business owners and professional associations all well represented. This was one of the largest single demonstrations of public concern in Hong Kong since the handover in July 1997.
There can be no doubt that the strength of public feeling in Hong Kong is profound about the proposed changes to Hong Kong’s extradition laws, and of course their broader implications. As the Foreign Secretary made clear in his statement yesterday, we urge the Hong Kong Government, even at this late stage, to heed those concerns and to engage in meaningful dialogue with local and international stakeholders. Now is surely the time to pause to reflect upon the impact of these controversial proposals. It is vital that the measures are subject to full legislative scrutiny and that the Hong Kong Government give proper consideration to all alternative proposals.
The proposed Bill had been due for a Second Reading on 12 June. However, the planned debate has been postponed until further notice owing to the protests. A vote on the proposals was due on 20 June. It is not clear yet whether the protests will affect that timetable.
Madam Deputy Speaker, you will already be aware that the UK Government are fully engaged on this issue. I spoke on Monday about some of the actions we have already taken, including the Foreign Secretary’s joint statement with his Canadian counterpart on 30 May, the British consul general’s statements locally, and our engagement with all levels of the Hong Kong Government, including the Chief Executive, Carrie Lam, herself. In all these contacts we have reiterated our message of allowing time for proper consultation, and for adequate safeguards to be included in any legislation to address key human rights concerns.
In addition to the Foreign Secretary’s statement yesterday, in which he called upon the Hong Kong Government to listen to the concerns of the people and to take steps to preserve Hong Kong’s rights and freedoms and its high degree of autonomy, he also made those concerns clear directly to the Chief Executive, Carrie Lam. We shall continue to engage the Hong Kong Government on this critical issue and to raise our concerns with the Chinese Government, reiterating the fundamental importance of upholding the Sino-British joint declaration.
The British consul general to Hong Kong, Andy Heyn, most recently discussed developments in Hong Kong, including the extradition proposals, with the Director of the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office and the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing in April 2019.1 have been in very close contact with him in recent days.
I note that the Chinese ambassador to London commented on the BBC’s “Newsnight” programme last night that the joint declaration is, as he put it, an “historic document” that has “completed its mission”. Once again I strongly disagree. The joint declaration remains as valid today as it was when it was signed over 35 years ago. That joint declaration is a legally binding international treaty, registered with the United Nations. Its objectives clearly apply to both of its signatories—the Government of the People’s Republic of China and the UK. It remains in force, and it remains acutely relevant to the conduct of day-to-day life in Hong Kong. We expect China to abide by its obligations.
I should make it clear that we do not believe that the proposed changes to the extradition laws in themselves breach the joint declaration, as the treaty is silent on matters of extradition. However, we are concerned that the proposals, as currently framed, risk leaving the extradition process open to political interference. That could, of course, in future undermine Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy and the rights and freedoms, guaranteed in the joint declaration, that are of course central to its continued success. Those concerns are heightened by the knowledge that the court system in mainland China lacks many of the judicial safeguards that exist in Hong Kong. We remain concerned about the continuing detention and trials of human rights lawyers and defenders, and the lack of due process and judicial transparency within mainland China. There is, of course, alarm at the prospect that fear of politically motivated extradition to China could cause a chilling effect on Hong Kong’s rights and freedoms, and more insidiously might result in increasing self-censorship.
Hong Kong matters hugely to the United Kingdom, not only because of our shared history. There are some 300,000 UK citizens living there, and many more travel to and through Hong Kong every year. Hong Kong is one of the most thriving, exciting, dynamic cities in the world. It retains its distinctive identity, both within China and internationally. It is, of course, a global financial centre and serves as a gateway to one of the biggest markets in the world.
We remain committed to strengthening our rich and wide-ranging relationship with Hong Kong. We shall continue to work together as partners in support of global free trade, and we shall continue to develop our bilateral trade links with Hong Kong. However, it is also vital for Hong Kong’s continuing success that one country, two systems is fully protected, and that the rights and freedoms that make Hong Kong such a prosperous city are safeguarded.
I once again call on the Hong Kong Government to pause, to reflect and to take meaningful steps to address the concerns of the people, businesses, the legal professionals, judges and the international community about the proposed changes to the extradition law. We must, and we shall, continue to press them so to do. I commend this statement to the House
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
I thank the Minister of State for advance sight of his statement, and for the customary tone of concern and deliberation that he brings to these issues. At the outset, I should like to ask him a couple of specific questions about the proposed extradition Bill, which I do not think were covered in his statement.
First, have the Government sought or received any safeguards from the Hong Kong authorities that, once that proposed Bill is on the statute book, the powers it contains cannot and will not be extended to include the extradition of political activists and dissidents? Secondly, what safeguards have been sought or received with respect to British citizens living in Hong Kong and British national (overseas) passport holders, should the proposed extradition Bill be passed?
However, as the Minister of State has rightly observed, our concerns go deeper than those specific issues—the implications of the extradition Bill and the violent protests we have seen on the streets of Hong Kong in recent days. Our concerns also must go to what has undoubtedly been the steady erosion over recent years of compliance with the joint UK-Sino declaration, signed in 1984—the agreement that was supposed to enshrine the one country, two systems approach, to ensure
“a high degree of autonomy”
for Hong Kong and to protect its political, cultural and social rights and freedoms for at least 50 years after the 1997 handover. Just 22 years on, we see those freedoms and that autonomy being steadily taken away.
Last September the Hong Kong National party was banned, on so-called grounds of “national security”—the first time since 1997 that any Hong Kong party had been outlawed by the authorities. In April, nine individuals—students, professors and human rights activists—were found guilty of “incitement to public nuisance”, just for the supposed crime of organising the 2014 umbrella protests, facing sentences of up to seven years in prison. Now we have the proposed extradition Bill, which many fear is the thin end of the wedge when it comes to Hong Kong’s judicial independence. No wonder opinion polling by the University of Hong Kong has found that public confidence in the one country, two systems commitment has fallen from 77% in 2008 to just 40% today. No wonder our Foreign Affairs Committee has said that China is moving closer to a “one country, one system” approach. It is, sadly, no wonder that we have, as a result, seen protests in Hong Kong in recent days, and the growth of the pro-independence movement in recent years.
So the big question today is, what are the UK Government prepared to do to demand that the Chinese authorities go back to the commitments that they made in the 1984 statement? As the Minister of State has said, the Chinese ambassador said last night that that is an historic document. But the Chinese have been saying that for two years. Two years ago they said it was an historical document that had no “practical significance” and was “not binding”. I agree with the Minister of State when he condemns those comments, but we have to ask, is it any wonder that the Chinese are so dismissive of the joint agreement, and prepared to commit flagrant breaches of it, if we as a country are not prepared to protest when they do so? Let me make it clear: I mean that not as a personal criticism of the Minister of State, but as a general indictment of the Government’s approach over recent years, which has not been as clear and robust as just set out by the Minister of State.
I am not the only one making that indictment. Last year it was Chris Patten, the former Member for Bath, the last British Governor of Hong Kong, who described the Government’s stance toward China as craven, in seeking a trade deal at the expense of advocacy for human rights in Hong Kong. He said that a series of
“outrageous breaches”
of the 1984 declaration had prompted little more than
“a slightly embarrassed clearing of the throat”
and some
“tut-tutting”
from the Government. This is a theme going back to 2015, the year after those umbrella protests, when George Osborne visited China and was praised by the state-run media for being
“the first Western official in recent years who has stressed more the region’s business potential instead of finding fault over the human-rights issue”.
Last year, after her own visit. the Prime Minister was praised by the Chinese state media for “sidestepping” human rights in favour of “pragmatic collaboration”. They concluded:
“For the Prime Minister, the losses outweigh the gains if she appeases the British media at the cost of the visit’s friendly atmosphere.”
But those losses do not outweigh the gains if they amount to the erosion of democracy and autonomy in Hong Kong, if they amount to the abandonment of the 1984 joint agreement, and if they amount to the endangerment of the rights and freedoms of Hong Kongers, including British nationals and passport holders.
Let me end by asking the Minister what action he and the Government will be taking, not just to express concern about these recent events, but to end their “craven” approach to China and to demand that the Beijing Government return to honouring the terms of the 1984 agreement.
Mark Field
I thank the shadow Foreign Secretary for her contribution, and I strongly agree with what she said towards the end of it. We clearly must stand up at this stage, as indeed we have. I think it is a misapprehension to suppose that we have been “craven” in relation to the very delicate issues in relation to China, which are broad-ranging and involve not just trade but other aspects of a relationship with a leading nation in global affairs.
We believe it is vital that the extradition arrangements in Hong Kong are in line with the high degree of autonomy and the rights and freedoms set down in the joint declaration. We believe that that is vital not just to Hong Kong’s best interests, but to China’s. It is very evident that, even if there is a self-interest on the part of the People’s Republic of China, from its perspective a recognised global offshore financial centre providing not just financial but legal services—the idea of a common law legal system, and the idea of having the confidence of international capital markets—will be vital to its own economic growth, and not least to the future of its ambitious belt and road initiative.
We are, however, very concerned about the potential effects of these proposals, and we would like to see a pause. As the right hon. Lady will know, this issue came to the fore not—according to our understanding—at Beijing’s behest, but as a result of a particularly difficult case: that of a Hong Kong national who had allegedly committed a murder in Taiwan and then returned to Hong Kong for his extradition to be made to Taiwan. The Taiwanese authorities have not demanded that. None the less, that has made for a difficult situation as far as extradition is concerned.
As I said on Monday in response to the urgent question from the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West), we fully understand that there are wide ramifications, such as the prospect of relatively minor offences being subject to extradition involving UK or, indeed, other non-Hong Kong nationals and their being sent back to China on what might be trumped-up political charges, particularly given the anti-corruption drive introduced by President Xi’s Administration.
I hope that you will indulge me, Madam Deputy Speaker, and allow me to say a bit more. The right hon. Lady raised some general issues about the UK-China relationship, and I think that it would be appropriate to erase them at this stage.
We all know that the growth of China presents great opportunities, but also challenges. It is in our interests for China to support a rules-based international system, but it is pushing back in some key areas in that regard. We believe that the system is under huge strains, for a variety of reasons. We are entering a period of greater strategic competition, and engaging with China is vital for the preservation and evolution of existing structures. However, we do and will continue to challenge it when we disagree with, for instance, its approach to freedom of navigation in the South China sea. We speak up very strongly on human rights violations, such as those in Xinjiang.
We are active in ensuring that Hong Kong’s specific rights and freedoms, and high degree of autonomy, are respected in full. We take a very clear view of our own national security, along with other countries. Only last December, we named China as being responsible for a particularly damaging cyber-intrusion.
As we look to the coming decades, it is clear that our relationships with high-growth economies such as China will be increasingly important, not only to our growth but to the shape of the global system in the face of technological transformation. Striking a balance—there will, inevitably, always be a balance, but striking the right balance in our relationship—will be more important than ever.
James Duddridge (Rochford and Southend East) (Con)
I am a sinophile, but Beijing’s current interactions with Hong Kong are deeply unhelpful, which is a particular issue because Hong Kong can be a bridge into and out of China. In 2017, on the eve of Carrie Lam’s ascension to the role of Chief Executive, I visited Hong Kong with other Members of Parliament, and met not only civil society groups but members of the legislature. Even back then, there was a palpable sense that there was a wrong trajectory, and a wrong pace towards greater integration. What message can we send from the House to civil society in Hong Kong, and in particular to members of the legislature, to show that we are there for them and are watching what is happening?
Mark Field
My hon. Friend obviously takes a great interest in these matters, having been a Foreign Office Minister in the past himself. I think that the biggest message we can send is the very fact that so much attention has been paid to the issue. This is the third parliamentary debate on it. Our debates are clearly followed avidly in Hong Kong, and will continue to be so.
We want to see peaceful demonstrations. It is worth pointing out that the rule of law does apply to demonstrations. At the time of some of the Occupy movement demonstrations, when there was an over-reaction, or a perceived over-reaction, from the Hong Kong police, fines and indeed prison sentences were meted out. We want to ensure that the rule of law and the autonomy that allows freedom of expression in Hong Kong are maintained. That is underpinned in the joint declaration, and, indeed, in all the arrangements that underpin the essence of one country, two systems.
Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)
I am grateful for advance sight of the Minister’s statement, and I welcome his strong words, but those strong words must be matched by strong actions.
Legal professionals have expressed concern about the rights of those sent across the border to be tried. The conviction rate in Chinese courts is as high as 99%, and arbitrary detentions, torture and denial of legal representation of one’s own choosing are common.
I am sure the Minister will agree that the fundamental rights of freedom of expression and assembly have been shown to be at risk in Hong Kong, with at least 72 protesters hospitalised by police. I wonder whether he has seen some of the social media reportage of protesters who have been protecting journalists. One journalist working for CBS Asia had been given a helmet and protected from tear gas by protesters. The protesters were also turning up the next day to clean up rubbish and ensure that it was recycled. I think that demonstrates the spirit in which they are trying to express their views.
Does the Minister agree that police violence such as this is unacceptable? What representations has he made, and will he make, to his counterparts in Hong Kong about the need for a de-escalation?
Many Hong Kongers fear that authorities will use the proposed extradition law to target political enemies, and have expressed concern about arbitrary detentions and the use of torture. Following a recent report from the Foreign Affairs Committee which called for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to redouble its efforts to
“hold China to account through UN mechanisms, public statements and private diplomacy for its human rights violations”,
what conversations have the Foreign Secretary, and the Minister himself, had with his Chinese counterpart about the need to protect human rights and freedom of expression?
Mark Field
I thank the hon. Lady for her constructive comments. I think we know from what we have seen on our television screens and on the vast social media that this issue is of grave concern—as she said, 72 people have apparently been hospitalised. As I said in my response to the urgent question on Monday, our biggest single concern is that the Chinese legal system is so disaligned with the Hong Kong system, which has led to arbitrary detentions, delays and the like.
We clearly want to see no violence either from protestors or in disproportionate action from the police, and clearly we would hope, and very much expect given what has happened with the Occupy movements in years gone by, that those guilty of disproportionate action or indeed of violence would be properly brought to account.
Representations are made to the Chinese Government on a vast range of areas; they are meat and drink to all of us as FCO Ministers, as they are to Ministers in a number of other Departments. We will continue to have a six-monthly report on Hong Kong; we are criticised at every opportunity by the Chinese embassy for so doing, but we believe the one country, two systems model must be maintained. The management of it is obviously a matter for the Hong Kong Government; however, the Chinese Government are on record as supporting the extradition proposals.
We will continue to raise Hong Kong at all levels with China, and clearly, as the hon. Lady will appreciate given the importance of the issue, over the course of this week there have been plenty of opportunities, both with China and our Hong Kong counterparts, to make clear our grave concerns, which are shared by millions of our constituents.
Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
The Minister has made a very important statement today. He has absolutely confirmed that the Government are going to step up their support for the joint declaration treaty and look at what more we can do to enforce it, and of course that is welcome, but I am very concerned—as I am sure others across this Chamber and across the nation are—for the more than 300,000 British citizens who are in Hong Kong now. While we all want to see a peaceful resolution through strong diplomacy to resolve this issue, what assurance can the Minister give us that the FCO stands ready to support our citizens should the situation deteriorate?
Mark Field
My hon. Friend is absolutely right: we will do our level best and do whatever we can from our side to calm some of the passions, not least because of our 300,000 UK nationals there. We are not aware at present of any British nationals being caught up in the violence of the past 48 hours. The question of British nationals overseas was brought up by my hon. Friend’s constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double), and we do have some ongoing obligations in that regard.
We are concerned about the potential detrimental impact of these extradition proposals on the rights and freedoms of all people resident in and travelling through Hong Kong. At present the FCO is not providing specific advice relating to the proposed extradition Bill as it affects British nationals overseas, particularly as this legislation is still under consideration. However, we do believe that it is of the utmost importance that any extradition arrangements respect the high degree of autonomy and the rights and freedoms of the Basic Law. The arrangements will of course apply to all citizens, but we particularly have British nationals overseas and UK nationals very much in our heart, and will ensure our consul general does all he can to deal with any of the concerns raised.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
Yesterday a young Hong Kong woman came to my office and showed me pictures of what had happened to friends of hers who had been protesting in Hong Kong. She showed me videos of tear gas being used and the injuries they had sustained as a result of rubber bullets being used. These things happen because the authorities that employ these methods think they can get away with it. She understood, as I think we should all understand, that the joint declaration is now under attack not just from the People’s Republic of China but from Carrie Lam’s Administration in Hong Kong itself.
As the hon. Member for Rochford and Southend East (James Duddridge) said, the question is what signals we send, and I have to say to the Minister that the signal that he sends today in saying that the UK Government do not see the extradition changes as a breach of the joint declaration is fundamentally wrong and has to change. The purpose of that joint declaration is to protect the human rights of the people of Hong Kong. The legislation proposed by Carrie Lam’s Government is a fundamental attack on these human rights, and if we are to stand by the joint declaration we should be opposing these changes unambiguously and vigorously at every turn. I have to say to the Minister that it is not good enough to hide behind a question of legal construction when this is actually about our political determination.
Mark Field
I think that is a rather unfair characterisation of our position, if I may say so. I know that the right hon. Gentleman has a long-standing interest in Hong Kong—this has been our third exchange at the Dispatch Box over the course of this week—but I was merely making the point that the joint declaration was silent on the issue of extradition. We very much feel that the spirit of the joint declaration is fundamental, for the reasons I have set out about the high degree of autonomy, freedom of expression and the like, but I was just making the narrow point that extradition was not raised in the joint declaration of 35 years ago.
The right hon. Gentleman touched on the use of tear gas and rubber bullets, and I would therefore like to talk a bit about export licences; I know this has been brought up in the pages of The Guardian today. The last export licence from the UK for tear gas hand grenades and tear gas cartridges used for training purposes by the Hong Kong police was in July 2018. The last export licence for rubber bullets was in July 2015. We rejected an open licence for riot shields as recently as April 2019. The issue of export licences is close to all our hearts, and it comes up time and again in our work overseas. We are monitoring the situation very closely and will of course undertake to review all current export licences. We will have no qualms in revoking any licences found no longer to be consistent with the consolidated criteria, including criterion 2, which I think the right hon. Gentleman will be aware of, dealing with respect for human rights.
Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Change UK)
The Minister rightly criticised the Chinese ambassador’s remarks on “Newsnight” yesterday, but is this not part of a pattern, as has been said? Is it not clear that there is no independent judiciary in mainland China, so anybody who is either taken illegally—as has been the case in the past, as with the booksellers—or taken with the complicity of the Hong Kong Government authorities is actually potentially facing an unfair trial by the Communist regime, with terrible consequences? Is it not time that we were more robust in what we say about the nature of the Chinese regime, and that, instead of pulling our punches because we are so afraid that our economic situation post Brexit will make us weaker, we stood up for our values and the commitments we made when we signed and agreed the joint declaration and said that for 50 years there would be one country, two systems?
Mark Field
We absolutely stand up for one country, two systems, and will continue to do so. On the Floor of the House on Monday I expressed some deep concerns about the Chinese legal system, which have to be borne closely in mind when we are considering any changes that potentially lead to individuals being extradited from Hong Kong to the mainland, and we will continue to make those robust statements.
We are in a world where China is rising, however, and we have to maintain an engaged relationship, as I am well aware the hon. Gentleman understands. That points to the balance in diplomacy that I mentioned earlier. I would like to think we have worked together in forging constructive collaboration on a range of shared challenges including microbial health, climate change, the illegal wildlife trade, money laundering and even threats to international security over North Korea.
There is therefore a range of global challenges on which we have to build trust with China, but we also must accept that our values are fundamentally different, so I am afraid that there will always be a block. Rightly, we must have the confidence, along with partners, to stand up for the values that are close to our heart, but we also have to recognise from our own history that those values evolve over time. Working together and building a sense of trust with China, and indeed with rising nations in other parts of the world, is an important part of diplomacy and we shall continue to do so.
Bill Presented
Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Secretary David Gauke, supported by the Prime Minister, Secretary Sajid Javid, Secretary Amber Rudd, Lucy Frazer, Victoria Atkins and Will Quince, presented a Bill to make in relation to marriage and civil partnership in England and Wales provision about divorce, dissolution and separation; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow and to be printed (Bill 404) with explanatory notes (Bill 404-EN).
Backbench Business
Social Housing
(4 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House recognises that there is a housing crisis with too few genuinely affordable homes to rent and buy; further recognises that the number of new social rented homes built in recent years has been too low; notes that the Government has set a target to build 300,000 homes a year, which is unlikely to be achieved without building more social homes; further notes that Shelter’s recent report, A Vision for Social Housing, concluded that 3.1 million new social rented homes need to be built over the next 20 years; and calls on the Government to adopt a target of building 155,000 social rented homes, including at least 100,000 council homes, each year from 2022.
It is an honour to rise to discuss one of the most critical issues facing us, and I thank the Backbench Committee for affording me the opportunity to do this today. Sadly, looking round the Chamber, I see surprisingly few people here to share the debate. I thank those who are here, but I am surprised at how few there are, given the very real and pressing crisis that we face in this country. It is the foremost of all the crises that we face.
The housing market is fundamentally broken, and it is the social housing sector that has been the casualty. As a result, homelessness is up 50% and rough sleeping has risen 160% since 2010. Elsewhere, hundreds of thousands of people are living in homes that are not fit for human habitation, yet this is the fifth wealthiest country on the planet. Despite that apparent national wealth, we are impoverished by crushing personal debt, large mortgages, high private sector rents, student loans, significant unsecured debt as great as it was in 2007 and stagnant wages that have failed to keep up with the cost of living. It is no wonder that the UN rapporteur has observed us as a country in crisis where the social fabric is not just frayed at the edges but badly torn.
This week marks the second anniversary of the terrible tragedy of the Grenfell Tower fire, and we are reminded of how recent and current policy on social housing has failed and continues to fail our society, so how is it that the market and the policies that govern that market are not delivering the much-needed housing? The social housing report commissioned by Shelter in January estimates that the UK needs to build 155,000 social homes a year for the next couple of decades. That is the scale of the crisis. If good housing is fundamental to the quality of our lives, why is it not the basis for everything in our society? Lord Porter put it succinctly when he said that, with a housing problem,
“you haven’t just got a housing problem, you’ve got an education problem, you’ve got a health problem, anti-social behaviour problem, whatever.”
It is clear that we need to reset the market and restore the principle that a decent home is a right owed to all, not a privilege for the few.
Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the market has failed in constituencies such as mine, where it is getting more and more expensive to either rent or buy, and that we therefore need to build council houses to provide security for people and their families, including accessible housing, given that more and more people with disabilities cannot find homes?
Matt Western
My hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point, and I will come on to it. I am particularly familiar with his constituency, and I know that many areas of our country have seen high house price inflation, which has priced out young people, a lot of whom would ordinarily want to stay in those communities. This needs to be urgently addressed through social housing.
Twelve months ago, I was fortunate enough to meet a former soldier at one of my Saturday surgeries. He was back in his home town of Warwick, having been discharged from the Army after 10 years’ service. A veteran of several tours, soldier Y found himself searching desperately for a job and a home, and he was not in a good place. He was really struggling. He had he been diagnosed with, and was clearly suffering from, post-traumatic stress disorder. Soldier Y was sofa-surfing. Until relatively recently, it would have been possible for him to access one of the hostels provided by Warwickshire County Council, but the cuts since 2013 have resulted in a huge drop in capacity and places such as Beauchamp House in Warwick are no longer available. I have mentioned soldier Y, but I could have spoken about any of the dozens of people I have met since my election in 2017, all of them desperate for help to resolve their own housing situations.
Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)
I would like to thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Drew). I agree with him wholeheartedly about the need for a major council house building programme. The issue I would like to raise is the need for much greater funding for local authorities to build council houses. In my area of Reading, there has been an ambitious programme to build council houses within the limited scope of the funding that is available, but more funding is clearly needed. We have an excess of brownfield land in Reading, a former light industrial town. We have enough brownfield land to build all the houses that are needed until 2036, and I understand from colleagues that many other boroughs, towns and cities around the country face a similar situation in which former industrial land is available but there is no funding to enable the local authorities to build. Does my hon. Friend agree that that should be a priority for this Government?
Matt Western
My hon. Friend makes another important point. This is absolutely about the cost of providing housing and land and about how authorities are facilitated to do that. This is the most pressing issue of our time, as I have said, and Government policy should be to help our local authorities. Indeed, at one of the meetings of the parliamentary campaign for council housing, which I co-chair with my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud, Lord Porter made it clear that, in his view,
“all the bad things in our society stem from bad housing, and the best way to fix any of those problems is to make sure as a fundamental that everybody’s got safe, secure, decent housing.”
I could not agree with him more.
We only have to walk down streets such as the Parade in Leamington Spa—and, I am sure, any of the high streets across the country—to see some of the casualties of this crisis: rough sleepers curled up in our doorways or sitting at street corners crying out for help, asking for loose change, desperately trying to create personal order out of social disorder. Inevitably, there will be an ex-forces person among them, but no matter—they are all one community now. Surely civvy street was not meant to be this uncivilised or, for an ex-soldier, this ungrateful.
To understand how we got here and where we need to go, it is worth briefly considering the past and how times have changed. Had soldier Y been lucky enough to have been returning from the first world war rather than from Afghanistan 100 years on, he would have been greeted by the then Prime Minister’s promise of “homes fit for heroes”. Lloyd George recognised the importance of social provision and knew that because house building would be difficult it was only through subsidies that local authorities would be able to afford to deliver them. His progressive social and local authority approach kick-started the sector and resulted not just in a growth of housing supply but in improved standards in all new homes. It was actually following world war two that the council house really arrived. Enlightened administrators strove to deliver them, and none more so than the Attlee Government, which, despite the ravages of war and the shortage of materials, managed to build more than 1 million new homes to replace many of those that had been destroyed.
Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)
On that point, statistics show that the construction of social housing has fallen 90% since 2010? Under the right-to-buy scheme, houses are not replaced on a one-for-one basis, which has led to a drastic fall in provision. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to look at how we can tackle these issues?
Matt Western
My hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point. We have seen an absolute crash in the supply of social homes, and I understand that only one is being built for every five we are losing. Those are the tragic numbers that underline this, and they explain why we are seeing so many social crises in our communities.
Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
I should like to congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this really important debate. Although there are not many colleagues on the Conservative Benches this afternoon, there is huge support for social housing on this side of the House. He made a point about numbers. Cornwall is not led by a Conservative council, so I am not making a party political point here. When I came to the House in 2010, Cornwall was delivering around 700 social homes each year, but in this past year, according to the Library, the number was 1,437. That is a doubling of the number of social homes available to people in Cornwall, which has a very challenging housing market because it is such a popular place for people to have second homes. Where communities and local authorities work together and innovate, it is possible to use the Government’s policies to meet local housing need.
Matt Western
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention and I hope that she will make a speech later. Her point is valid and I am sure there are huge pressures in her community and other parts of Cornwall. I have discussed this very issue with many of her colleagues on the Government Benches, and I know that the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) and Members from Somerset reflect similar views. There is a lot of hardship in our rural communities related to access to and requirement for social housing. What is being done in her constituency is admirable, but it comes down to the ability to borrow and what can be done. She may be referring to provision by housing associations, but I am particularly keen that we should see a rapid ramp up in council housing provision if we are ever to achieve the 300,000-plus figures that everyone mentions.
As I was saying, the achievements of the post-war period were extraordinary, and under the Attlee Government an astonishing 80% of houses built were council houses. Materials were in short supply, but they achieved it. The boom continued under the incoming Conservative Government. In response to Churchill’s challenge, Macmillan who had been appointed Minister for Housing, delivered more than 750,000 council homes in just one year: things had never been so good.
The giddy heights of those years and new social housing developments ended abruptly at the end of the 1970s with the radical policy changes of the incoming Conservative Government, and one of their first moves was to cut public expenditure for housing. Giving council tenants the opportunity to buy the homes they were living in, at a generous discount, was one of the defining policies of the Thatcher era and more than 2 million council tenants took advantage of it.
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend acknowledge that one of the first acts of the incoming Conservative Government was to shift housing subsidy away from bricks and mortar and into housing benefit? It was a conscious policy decision and the consequence was not a shortage of money, but the spending of £22 billion a year on personal subsidy instead. As lower-income people are increasingly trapped in the expensive private rented sector, that is set to explode still further. The collapse in social house building is an extremely false economy.
Matt Western
I thank my hon. Friend who is very learned on this topic, and I bow to her knowledge. She is right: what we have seen is a transfer of wealth from the public to the private sector. A big chunk of that budget has gone into private pockets, as opposed to into public assets. Changing that is the ambition behind my motion.
That period was a watershed: it developed our unhealthy obsession with housing and a dependence on the fortunes of the private sector to satisfy it. Rising house prices were all the talk in the pub and they became the nation’s conversation, fuelled by the press and an insatiable media seeking feel-good stories and helped along by the Government of the day. House prices seemed an impossibly good driver of the economy. Those who had capital and a good wage could buy a place and, through the sell-off of council houses, those fortunate enough to have access to money could bag a bargain. What was not to like?
Perhaps most striking was the impact on young people who rapidly realised the possibility of ownership was drifting away from them: data shows that at the age of 27, those born in the late 1980s had a home ownership rate of 25%, compared with 33% for those born five years earlier in the decade and 43% for those born 10 years earlier in the late 1970s. With hindsight—perhaps for some of us at the time—the excesses of the heady 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, when access to finance was unlimited and we saw the mass sell-off of council housing, were akin to financial ecstasy, but it would only be a matter of time before the market would go cold turkey. Of course it did, with the credit crunch and the global financial crash of 2007-08. At the core of that financial disaster was over-leveraged debt and bad property debt. Lending had reached unsustainable levels.
We reach the present day, and housing has become simply too expensive—ridiculously so against relatively flat incomes. The average house price in my constituency is £285,000, 20% more than the average in England and Wales. Supply has been constrained for decades, but now the wrong housing is being built in the wrong places, and it is unsustainable. People are increasingly being driven out of the communities that they work in, such as in my constituency of Warwick and Leamington, and that threatens the local economy. Though average salaries are greater than the average for England and Wales, they are only 10% higher, meaning an absolute differential of 10% against the average house price. Put another way, the ratio of house price to wage is 9.2; for England and Wales it is 8.0.
Despite all that, the council has built just eight social homes in the past four years. Soldier Y is not just an individual: he is the victim of a systemic problem in our housing provision—market is no longer the right word. That is why we need to re-set the sector. Yes, the Government have set an ambition of building 300,000 homes, but they are falling way short with just 223,300 built last year, even with the numbers being distorted by the permitted development of office blocks that are often wholly unsuitable to long-term or family accommodation. While 47,000 new affordable homes were delivered in 2017-18, 57% were homes for affordable rent, 23% for shared ownership and just 14% for social rent. For many people, affordable rents are no longer affordable, given that in reality they can be set at up to 80% of market rates.
Most concerning is that the Government have no target for social rented housing. As I said earlier, Shelter’s commission on social housing estimates that 3.1 million homes need to be built in the next 20 years if we are to arrest this crisis. That is an average of 155,000 a year, which would cost only £10.7 billion per year. Just 6,500 homes were built last year, and at that rate only 130,000 would get built over the next 20 years, or just 4%.
We could afford to build those homes. According to Shelter’s report and data provided by the New Economics Foundation, we currently spend £21 billion on housing benefit annually, money that more often than not is going to private landlords. Instead, what we have seen is a massive increase in the private rental sector, insecure tenancies, fees scandals, rogue landlords and too little agency involvement in enforcement among local authorities.
What needs to be done? I want to see a radical reconstruction of our communities. In Tuesday’s debate, the Minister suggested that it is a complicated landscape, but I am afraid I have to disagree. We have made it complicated by yielding to market interests and failing to regulate in the interests of our people and our communities. In my view, we need to urgently reform planning, adopting a model similar to that in Germany; resurrect a regional spatial strategy, including for new towns and villages; reform compulsory purchase; scrap the nonsense that is viability, which is a scam exploited by corporate house builders; and ensure a 50% minimum of social housing on all greenfield developments and 80% on all brownfield sites in towns and cities.
We can address the funding though redirecting housing benefit to investment in the assets that come from building new homes. We should stop the sell-off of 50,000 social rented homes a year, and I urge an end to the right to buy. There are so many things we could do. I have talked about funding, and there is also the possibility of using pension funds, whether local authority pension funds or new ones, to support building homes. Birmingham and Greater Manchester are leading the way. On land, we could do so much with the public estate rather than selling it off to the highest bidder.
I am conscious of time and I know that many Opposition Members wish to speak. As I have said, we face a crisis and, to paraphrase Macmillan, the housing market has never been so broken. Homelessness is now 277,000 and 1.1 million are on housing waiting lists, while rough sleeping has risen 165% since 2010. The Government could, and should, deliver 3.1 million social homes over the next 20 years. It is an explicit target of 155,000 social rented homes a year and it is critical that we focus minds on delivering it. That is what my motion seeks to do. Without it, the housing crisis will only get worse.
Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) on securing this debate. I share his disappointment about the attendance, which I will come to in a moment. If I may flatter him, he has not been a Member for too long, but he has, at an early stage, realised that we cannot influence and change everything. He has decided to focus on housing, which I would have thought was the No. 1 issue for all Members, because we do not want any more people sleeping on the pavement.
I hope this does not upset colleagues, but when she visited No. 10 Downing Street, Mother Teresa asked Baroness Thatcher, “What are people doing on the pavement?”. This is not a new phenomenon. I know it seems like it, but I have reached a stage where I have heard many of these things before.
I can understand the excitement, certainly in my party, at the result that has just been declared upstairs, but Parliament is not working well and I am increasingly worried. If the country and Parliament are split, we have to accept it and get on with the work. I want to see Parliament functioning. My colleagues may have decided that no one is interested any more in speeches made here, but it should not be like that. This House should be at the centre of everything.
I applaud the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington for focusing on the No. 1 issue of housing. I am not at the start of my career, but I hope that my hon. Friends who are fairly new and starting their careers will come to realise that this is an important place and that speeches made here should count. I hope our wonderful Whip has taken note of that, and perhaps we might organise things a little better. Although I am delighted to have the company of one or two of my hon. Friends, I am somewhat embarrassed. The hon. Gentleman takes this issue seriously and made his presentation to the Backbench Business Committee, and I can only apologise for there not being more support for his debate.
I suppose the reason I was first elected 30 years ago is of the sale of council and corporation houses, and I will come to that a little later. I am glad the hon. Gentleman mentioned Macmillan, because my party’s election manifesto in 1951 said:
“Housing is the first of the social services. It is also one of the keys to increased productivity.”
I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we should see social housing as a national investment.
I have not come here to bash my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing. I have read the Green Paper and the Labour party’s paper on these matters, and they both contain some really good points. I suppose it is naff to say that perhaps we could have some cross-party working, but if we do not have an election this year and limp on to next year something has to be done. We are all affected by housing, as we see at our surgeries and from our postbags.
The hon. Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad), who is here, has done a fantastic job of ensuring that Grenfell is not forgotten. I do not want to correct the shadow Leader of the House because she is a jolly nice lady, but she said that none of our 10 leadership candidates had mentioned Grenfell, which is not actually the case. I interviewed them rather grandly, and I mentioned Grenfell to each and every one of them, because we have to make sure it never happens again. I know that the hon. Member for Kensington and other members of the all-party fire safety rescue group will not shut up until we have real change.
The Government do not seem to have a national target, and the 300,000 figure that is so often mentioned is for new homes in general. I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend East (James Duddridge) has joined us, because I represent an urban area of the Thames estuary where every single plot of land is built on. We cannot build on our parks, and we have no brownfield sites to build on, but his constituency has some space for building and he is rather keen that there should be more housing above shops on the high street. He also wants more housing between Southend and Rochford, the two areas he represents, in addition to the excellent proposals to transform the Queensway estate. Although it is not my area, I am very happy about that.
There is a bit of a row in Essex about where the new building will take place, which is why I had an Adjournment debate on it three weeks ago. I understand there is some resistance in parts of Essex, but there is no resistance in my hon. Friend’s constituency.
James Duddridge (Rochford and Southend East) (Con)
My hon. Friend is entirely right in outlining my priority for building above the high street and in the area between Southend and Rochford, so long as we get the right infrastructure—the so-called outer relief road that would link Shoebury to the wonderful Southend airport and beyond. So long as we get our fair share of infrastructure funding, there is space north of Southend and on the high street, if Ministers listen on planning to facilitate that and get everything joined together.
Sir David Amess
My hon. Friend makes a jolly good point, because all colleagues present agree that we have to make sure the infrastructure is there when we build— theschools, the transport and all those other matters. In my area there has been too much enthusiasm for building flats, and we have a parking nightmare.
With a new leader of the Conservative party and Prime Minister, hopefully Southend will become a city next year, and Leigh-on-Sea has been nominated the happiest place in the country to live, so we have all sorts of people wanting to live in our area, and we do not really have the infrastructure to support them.
I ask the Government for a little more clarity on targets. The number of houses built for social rent has fallen from 40,000 in 1997 to just 6,000 in 2017. Shelter has given all colleagues a good briefing—one of my daughters works for Shelter, which is a very good organisation—and is calling for 3.1 million new social homes over the next 20 years, which, by my calculation, as the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington said, is 155,000 new properties every year. That is a little ambitious, but I would be very pleased if we got part of the way there.
If this Government and future Administrations are to get anywhere near that number, we must look at how we can re-energise and revitalise the construction industry to support that increase. There is much talk about Brexit, and some people say it is all terrible and that jobs are being lost in the construction industry because Poles and Bulgarians are coming over here, and all the rest of it. In that sense, we have ourselves to blame. We really need to make sure that we have the skilled workforce to build good-quality housing that does not lose heat—there are all sorts of issues to be considered.
As I have said, I was a beneficiary of the sale of council houses. When I was elected for Basildon, 40,000 properties were owned by the development corporation and the Commission for the New Towns. Of course, when Margaret decided that we should offer people the opportunity to buy, there were all sorts of restrictions on it; it depended on whether a person had lived in their property for 20 years or 30 years, and so on. I am not having a go at the Labour party, but the then Labour Members did not oppose the measure. [Interruption.] As the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Drew) says, they did not oppose it because it was popular.
The issue about which the House should be concerned is how those capital receipts were not used, and how we did not go on with a new programme to build social houses. There are arguments about whether some councils were not running the stock well, and then things moved over to housing associations. All these things have been tried, but the point at the core of this is that we want more housing. As the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington said, we now know that the real problem was that the construction boom of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s was not sustained. If social house building had been maintained since the 1980s, I do not think we would be having this debate today.
Basildon was a tremendous success as a new town. I have an argument with my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) about which was the better new town, Basildon or Harlow. I know it was Basildon. It was designed brilliantly, and we put in the organisation. The use of compulsory purchase orders was done very well, without destroying the lives of those who, for instance, did not want to lose their little bungalows.
I support the Government in going part-way towards restoring the old scheme, which gave young people and families the opportunity to have a place to call home without facing the risk, as they do now, of a private landlord evicting them at very little notice. It was not a problem for central and local government to work together to deliver the housing stock when it was needed, but now local authorities do not have the power or confidence to build, and developers are taking an ever more rigorous approach to development. As I have said, in Southend West there is far too much building of flats.
Sarah Newton
My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. I absolutely agree that we need to build more social and genuinely affordable homes. What he is highlighting as working so well in urban areas could also work in rural areas. We can create new, green, sustainable villages or small towns to meet the unmet housing need that he is so well articulating. I agree that this is about communities coming together with the local authority and central Government to plan beautiful places where people want to live, with green infrastructure, schools, health services and places of work—places in which we would all be proud to live.
Sir David Amess
However long the present Government last, I want them to deliver on my hon. Friend’s vision for the future, because we cannot all live in London and the south-east. Scotland has huge, beautiful areas. Perhaps we could get some more houses built there, or in the midlands or the north, and so on. These are all factors. She represents a very beautiful part of the country, but people also need jobs, which is the other conundrum we have to look at.
I congratulate the Government on the 2017 White Paper, in which they acknowledged the need to build the right homes in the right places. As well as recognising demand, that statement applied to the use of brownfield land. As roughly 95% of local planning authorities have published their surveys of available brownfield land, it should be easy to identify the areas that are ripe for development. We have to get on and do this; surely it must be easy to identify them. I know that the Government are looking to have planning permission in place in principle for 90% of sites by the end of next year. I would be very disappointed if there were any unnecessary encroachment on our precious greenbelt land. There we are: I am introducing a bit of nimbyism.
If we are to increase the number of social houses in this country, we need to look at how to boost house building in general. Of course, there is no one policy that will invigorate the industry, but perhaps the most important factor is having a skilled British workforce, as I have said. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy must work hand in hand with the Department for Education to produce those skills. My party can be proud of the number of young people attending university, but that should not be seen as devaluing the high-skilled, often manual jobs required to ensure the immediate increase in the number of social houses. Just because someone is posh and well educated, it does not make them any better as a human being than someone who works in care homes or elsewhere. It is important that we have a high-skilled workforce. [Interruption.] I will rapidly move on with my speech, Madam Deputy Speaker.
We need to encourage local councils to get building by removing the borrowing cap for new build properties, which has existed for too long. A Local Government Association survey found that 94% of housing stock-owning councils would use a removal of the borrowing cap to accelerate or increase their house building programmes. By 2041, the population in the south-east will have increased by over 30%, while in the north-east that figure will be below 5%. That is another factor to consider.
I should remind Opposition Members that in 2001, at the height of the Labour Government, only 60 new homes were built. That is absolutely dreadful. I could go on and on about that. I have heard all these promises before and seen not much being delivered. We must achieve a significant increase in social housing and re-examine permitted development rights. Successive Governments of all persuasions, dating back to the 1990s, have failed to support the construction of social housing. We really must change that.
In conclusion, everyone’s home is their castle—of that there can be doubt—and there are an awful lot of castles in Scotland. Social housing benefits young people, families who have struggled to get on the property ladder, elderly couples in the private sector and homeless individuals. It is our duty in this House to support the construction industry and make sure that we build more social housing.
Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to take part in this debate and even more so to follow the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess). We might not agree on everything, but he always speaks with knowledge and passion about something that is close to him. We have a Southend theme in the Chamber, given that two of the four Government Back Benchers are from Southend.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western), who is a doughty champion of social housing, particularly council housing. It is a great honour to jointly chair the campaign with him and we have made some progress. We are pleased that the Minister is still in place, although he might have ambitions to move elsewhere. He does listen and he has acted. He has done some laudable things, in particular some of the changes to the viability assessment that are in train. I hope that he will listen to this debate and respond in due course—as he did to a number of us who spoke in Tuesday’s debate, of which this debate is part 2—on a specific aspect of the housing shortage, namely, the shortage of social housing.
I have limited time and will keep my remarks short, because other Members want to speak. I am indebted to my council in Stroud, in particular to Doina Cornell, the leader, and to Chas Townley, who chairs the housing committee, but also to the wisely named Pippa Stroud, the head of housing strategy, who deals with this problem day in, day out. I will say some things that are quite technical, and I make no apologies for that. I expect the Minister not necessarily to be able to answer them in this debate, but to take them away, to read them and then to talk to me privately or to reply in correspondence.
The biggest problem we face is that we want to build more social housing. We have a good record, for a small council. We have built 230 social units over recent years and have another 50 to 70 potentially in the planning process, some with the land already allocated. I do not want to go over the same ground as others, but as other hon. Members have said, land values are a significant problem and our biggest barrier in rural areas—I will be unapologetic in concentrating on semi-rural areas such as Stroud. The problem now is that the council has tended to max out the sites that it has available, either by reusing existing council housing that was unsuitable and therefore knocked down and replaced, or by using garage sites, which are terribly controversial. No one wants to use them for garages until someone wants to knock them down, when everyone then says that they are their most important asset. Some things become problematic when one tries to grapple with these issues.
No one has mentioned it yet, but I should advertise the Monbiot report, which Labour commissioned. People will take it to be a terribly political report, but I hope the Minister will look into it, because it contains some things that a Conservative Government could consider. We are in an era in which we are looking into how to value land properly and how to tax it and to encourage better use of it. We all have in our constituencies land that is used inappropriately that could be used for social housing.
Besides the lack of land, the biggest challenge or barrier we have is how difficult it is to bring brownfield land into use. All the subsidies have gone now, and the CPO process is so labyrinthine that most councils will avoid it or use it only as a last resort. We could do with powers to look into how to take land that is not being used appropriately into public use, not necessarily for social housing but certainly for affordable housing. Stroud is a classic case: we lose out badly where others outbid the council, and without the CPO powers we are unable to do something about that.
As I said, I wish to make some technical points about why we find it quite difficult to deliver more social housing, which I will include in the framework of affordable housing. We all know the difference between the two, but if we do not have more affordable housing, we will not get more social housing, because that is a key component.
Pippa Stroud has told me of the issue of vacant building credit. When a redevelopment is taking place, a credit is given against the floor area of the vacant building, and that element is then applied against an affordable housing element. The problem is that the way the process operates means that the affordable housing is rarely built. A good site has just come forward, but no affordable housing has been realised. That is frustrating, to put it mildly, because it should have been. If the process does not deliver affordable housing, it does not deliver social housing.
The Minister knows only too well about the viability assessment, which links in with our problem. I was pleased when in the previous debate the Minister talked about the problem we have with the local housing allowance. The Government are reviewing that issue, and I will take that at face value. It is an important issue in Stroud because it is in the same local housing area as Gloucester. Because our rents are much higher, my constituents end up having to pay more top-up. Therefore, they are often driven out of Stroud into Gloucester, or even further field.
On major sites, the current problem is that there is some incoherence in the Government’s national planning policy. This is an important issue in rural areas. Although we would call many of our sites larger sites, to my colleagues in rural areas they would be seen as relatively small sites. Nevertheless, they are important. The danger with such sites is that they can yield high value to the developer, particularly if they can say they will deliver so many affordable or, dare I say it, social units, but it does not quite work out as it should. Where we have designated rural areas and there are cash contributions towards rural housing, but not on that site, we need to make sure that this is bottomed out so that the money is used appropriately. I hope the Minister will look into how we designate a site. Even in Stroud, which is a semi-rural area, there are sites that are deemed not to be rural even though we would say they are very rural. I had an argument many years ago about post offices, because what I thought were some of our most rural post offices were designated as urban, for reasons that I never understood. There are arguments about how designation works.
Penultimately, there is an issue with the rural exception site cross-subsidy, which is a way to cross-fund affordable housing using market housing on the available rural sites. The difficulty, particularly for social housing, is that once landowners are given the notion that they could possibly provide more higher-end housing, it raises their expectations and it is much more difficult to bring them back to the reality of affordable housing, let alone social housing. Will the Minister look into the rural exception site cross-subsidy, because it is important? It is not right at the moment. There is no magic formula, although I wish I could give the Minister one. His Department will need to do some research to see how it can be altered, because there are some—I will not say abuses, but some opportunities that could be realised are not being realised.
I shall finish on the right to buy, which I hope we will suspend in semi-rural areas because we have lost so much of our good housing stock. I do not know whether the Government are rethinking this issue, with housing associations. It is galling that in a matter of time the 200-odd units that we have built could be bought and go into the marketplace. The most frustrating thing of all is when they are then fed back into the private rented sector, and there are sometimes two people next-door to one another and one is paying twice as much rent as the other. If they find out what their neighbour is paying to the council, those are some of the most difficult conversations I have, trying to justify that differential in the rent. We have to look into that, because it cannot be acceptable.
A lot could be done, but we are pleased that the cap has been removed, although it has not gone completely because there are obviously borrowing restrictions. We are keen to deliver social housing. We have a huge backlog of people waiting to be housed in Stroud. We can do our bit, but the Government have to help us. Otherwise, we will find that we are at the margins when we should be at the centre, dealing with our housing problem. As the hon. Member for Southend West said, it is a perennial problem, but it is acute at the moment.
Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) on his tireless work and campaigning on this incredibly important issue. I am sure that, as it is for me, 50% to 60% of the casework of every Member is on issues of social housing and the lack of it.
We can look back at Labour’s record and think that we could have and should have done more, but let us not take any criticism from those on the Government Benches. Under Labour, between 1997 and 2010, there were 2 million more homes, there were 1 million more homeowners and we saw the biggest investment in social housing in a generation. Fast forward to the present day and there are now 1.2 million people on housing waiting lists throughout the country. What was the Government’s response? Just 6,464 social homes in 2017-18—the second lowest total on record. At this rate, it will take 172 years to give everyone on the current waiting list a social rented home. That is simply a diabolical rate when compared with the 150,000 social homes that were delivered each year in the mid-1960s, or the 203,000 council homes delivered by the Government in 1953. The evidence is clear: it has been done before and it can be done again.
My constituency is in the London Borough of Merton —a borough that had just 255 lettings in the past year, including just 146 one-beds, 65 two-beds, 43 three-beds and, amazingly, just one four-bed. With figures like these, what hope do any of the 10,000 families on Merton’s waiting list have of ever finding a place to call home? I would be the first to criticise Merton for the level of importance it places on social housing—I do not believe the council concentrates on it enough or is innovative enough—but the Government cannot get away with just blaming Merton.
In 2010, George Osborne cut funding for social housing by more than 60%, leaving us reliant on private developers to provide social housing—the most expensive way to provide a social housing unit that could ever be dreamed up—or on housing associations developing on the basis of the new affordable rents. Surely we must all agree that it is a criminal act to the English language to use the word “affordable” in this context. I am not sure about other Members’ constituencies, but 80% of market rent is not affordable to the vast proportion of people in my constituency. This left housing associations with the dilemma: did they continue to endeavour to fulfil their historic mission to provide housing for people in need, placing themselves under the financial risk of having to charge those rents and to borrow so extensively on their assets; or did they simply give up the ghost? That was a really difficult choice to make and I criticise no housing association in that regard.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
My hon. Friend has made a very good point. Some housing associations behave well and some behave badly under those circumstances. This was not only about new build, but about the conversion of more than 110,000 existing social rented homes to affordable homes, taking them out. Was that not a deliberate policy by a succession of Conservative and coalition Governments not just to not replace social housing, but to diminish the quantity of social housing?
Siobhain McDonagh
I think that had many motives. One motive was to diminish social housing, but it had the consequence of putting housing associations at financial risk, leading to a terrible crisis and an expensive crisis. My hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) informed us of the amount we are currently spending on housing benefit. If we reduce grant rates, we increase the rent and simply place more demand on housing benefit.
Let me give as an example a London and Quadrant development on Western Road in Mitcham. I met my constituent, Tracey. She was desperate to move for many reasons. She had got to the top of the list. I said, “Tracey, bid for this lovely new place, which has been built by L&Q on Western Road.” She said, “I would love to, Siobhain, but the problem is that my partner and I work and the rent is £1,000 a month. We simply could not pay it.” The very people for whom these properties were intended cannot afford to rent them because they go to work.
It is people’s real experiences that motivate me to be interested in this topic. It is about the hundreds of my hard-working constituents who are living in overcrowded conditions at private sector rents that leave them with little to live on and some without even enough to eat. Those families cannot afford to get on the housing ladder. There are not enough social homes to go round. For those who do make it into the private rented sector, they are always just one step away from finding themselves without a home. Not a week goes by when I do not meet yet another hard-working family who have been evicted from their privately rented property and threatened with homelessness just because the landlord can collect more rent from somebody else.
Ms A, with her two young sons, lives in a privately rented property. She pays £1,200 a month, less than the market rent. The landlord could get £2,000 a month. Her young son found his dad dead in bed. The importance of their staying in that home is paramount: so the kids can get to school; she can get to work; and they can get the support from our local church, Saint Joseph’s. She cannot afford to lose that home. When she came to see me, she said, “Siobhain, it’s in a terrible state of repair, and the landlord just told me to think myself lucky. Will you get environmental health involved?” Over the weekend, I thought about it. I know what the consequences will be if I get environmental health involved: six months later, that lady will lose her home. My alternative is to go back to my church to see whether I can find people in that church who will do some of those repairs for her.
Another lady, Miss P, has been a tenant of her privately rented home for the past 14 years. She has never owed money. She has three children and her husband has learning difficulties and a number of health problems. She has received her section 21 notice. It has expired and she faces two years in temporary accommodation at the moment. In two years’ time, who knows how much longer she will be in temporary accommodation. She is desperate to find a property in the private rented sector, but nobody is going to rent to her and she finds it unimaginable that she is in this position.
At 7.30 last Friday, a lady and her 17-year-old son came to see me in a distressed state. They said they were a homeless family from Lewisham who had been housed in Morden for the past year. They had received a phone call that day from Lewisham to say that they must leave their property next Thursday and move miles away. So the eldest son cannot continue his A levels, the middle son cannot continue his GCSEs, and the third son is going to have to move away from his school. This is a vulnerable family who are in temporary accommodation as a result of domestic violence.
Thankfully, Lewisham has changed its mind and it is leaving the family there, but how many families are uprooted, with children having to leave their school? As other hon. Members have suggested, a housing problem is an education problem, is a mental health problem, is a family breakdown problem, is a crime problem.
I am tired of the endless reports, the countless debates, the fruitless words and the lack of action. The Government have a house building target of 300,000 new homes per year, and they cannot simply keep willing the end of more homes without finding the means to provide them. So what will it be? Will we back here at the next debate offering the same ideas and hearing even worse statistics, or will this Government finally open their eyes and see the devastating reality of Britain’s 21st century housing crisis?
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
First, let me congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) on securing this debate and on his excellent introduction. He is right that social housing is absolutely central to what we, as politicians, are here to do. It is damning to see the empty Benches opposite—it really does send out a very poor message to the rest of the country about where our priorities are at the moment.
As most Members have already said, week in, week out, housing problems are a No.1 issue in my constituency surgeries—whether it is to do with a lack of affordable housing, poor living conditions, homelessness, or landlords simply not rectifying problems in properties. We can talk about house numbers in the hundreds of thousands, but we should not forget that at the heart of this matter are real people facing real difficulties because we have had nine years of failure. Sadly, it is no exaggeration to say that this Government have failed across the board when it comes to housing. They have failed buyers and renters alike. They have allowed the leasehold scandal to emerge, and they have failed to tackle the root cause of the problems that the sector is facing.
I am pleased that today’s debate is focusing on social housing. It is no coincidence that the steep decline that we have seen in social house building has coincided with an increase in homelessness and soaring private rents. Since this Government came to power, rents have become increasingly unaffordable, with private renters spending, on average, 41% of their household income on rent. In those circumstances, it is no wonder that more than half of private renters say that they struggle to meet their housing costs. Worse still, Shelter reports that a third of low-income renters are struggling to the extent that they have to borrow money just to keep a roof over their head. That means that putting money aside to save for a deposit so that they can eventually own their own home is completely unrealistic. A lack of social housing has put enormous pressure on the private sector, which means that a quarter of private renters, equating to more than 1 million households, rely on some element of housing benefit or universal credit to keep a roof over their head.
We have already discussed the Supreme Court judgment yesterday on the local housing allowance, which demonstrates the current injustices in the system. I know that in Neston, in my constituency, rental costs for a property are at least £150 a month more than the local housing allowance provides for. That is a totally indefensible and unsustainable situation, but what choice do people have? The decline in social housing stock has left more than 1.1 million people trapped waiting for social housing, with many of those families facing greater instability with rising rents in the private sector. At the same time, the number of homeless families living in temporary accommodation has increased to 74% since 2010. Let us just think about that. These are young people who may be forced to move out of area, potentially affecting their schools, their family connections and their jobs. Temporary accommodation really does strike at the heart of what we are trying to build with families in this country.
Welfare reforms have made private sector landlords increasingly reluctant to let to tenants who rely on housing benefit. As we know, many landlords simply refuse to accept any tenants who are in receipt of benefits. This is a discriminatory practice, and I pay tribute to Shelter for its campaign on that. Sadly, though, it is a fact that someone who is facing homelessness is not going to look to bring a court case for discrimination; they will simply look elsewhere—if there is anywhere else to look. The reality is that landlords’ behaviour will carry on in this way, while local authorities, in an ineffective attempt to discharge their statutory duties, will continue to hand out lists of private sector landlords to those facing homelessness, but those landlords will never actually rent their properties to those people because they are in receipt of benefits.
Siobhain McDonagh
Both of my parents came to Britain from Ireland at the end of the 1940s, when there were postcards in the windows that said, “No Irish, no blacks, no dogs”. Does my hon. Friend agree that if there were such postcards today, they would just say, “No benefits”?
Justin Madders
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. Yes, we were familiar with the sign, “No DSS”—the one that used to apply. Letting agents, lenders and landlords all need to get the message that they are operating a potentially discriminatory policy. This really does go to the root of the difficulties we have when people are making homelessness applications. If they get a section 21 notice, that does not seem to have much effect on priority. It is almost as though there is a waiting game. Court costs, eviction notices, stress and uncertainty all have to come before any real priority is applied to people who are facing homelessness. The system is not working; it is under tremendous pressure and supply is nowhere near meeting demand.
Why do we still have the bedroom tax? Six years on, the same injustices carry on. I regularly see constituents who are still paying it and have been paying it for six years now. It is absolutely causing havoc with their finances. They are getting into debt and struggling to pay their day-to-day costs—and for what? To pay this unfair tax with money they do not have. If we have a new Prime Minister who genuinely wants to show that they are different from what has gone before, the first thing they should do is abolish the bedroom tax.
Of course, it is no coincidence that at the same time as we are facing this crisis in social housing, home ownership is also declining. Just a quarter of people born in the late 1980s own their own home by the age of 27, compared with 33% of those who were born five years earlier, and 43% of those born earlier than that, in the late 1970s. There is a clear trend here. There is a danger that an entire generation will be locked out of home ownership, because there is no sign of the situation improving. A major part of the reason for this collapse is that house prices have grown far faster than incomes, leaving young people struggling to meet the affordability tests set by lenders. Even if they are able to save the tens of thousands of pounds needed for a deposit in the first place, it is still a struggle, because the average home in England now costs eight times more to buy than the average pay packet. There are 900,000 fewer homeowners under the age of 45 than there were in 2010. The trend is going backwards, and that is why there is so much need for more social housing.
We must build new social homes and affordable homes, both to rent and to buy, for all those who need them—yes, for the most vulnerable, but also for those in work and on ordinary incomes, for young people, for families locked out of home ownership, and for older people reaching retirement who are facing old age in insecure, unaffordable, unsuitable properties. All those people are being failed by current housing policy. We are facing a situation where, for the first time, children can expect to earn less than their parents. After decades of the number of houses being built failing to keep up with demand, we are at a crunch point where home ownership looks out of reach to an entire generation.
I am pleased to say that my local authority is taking the lead on this. Cheshire West and Chester Council has now built in Ellesmere Port the first council housing we have seen in 40 years, as part of a mixed development. I was absolutely delighted to welcome the shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), to this new development only last month. I am very proud that after 40 years, we are starting that development, but due to the huge increase in right-to-buy applications, we are not even standing still. Of course I support people’s aspiration to own their own home, but the right-to-buy policy is incredibly short-sighted, because the reality is that far from there being one-for-one replacement, there is probably about one property being replaced for every four sold. I agree with the Local Government Association that this situation is completely unsustainable. The loss of social rented housing pushes more families into the private rented sector, further pushing up rents and exacerbating the housing crisis. In addition, as we have heard, some of these houses end up in the private rented sector, which again pushes up rents.
It is a gargantuan task to replenish this country’s depleted housing stock. I am pleased that after many years of stagnation, we are seeing quite a lot of house building going on in my constituency, particularly on brownfield sites, but very few of these developments have any affordable housing. That is because the permissions were all granted some time ago, and the developers used rules brought in under the coalition Government to plead poverty and tell us that they could not build affordable houses because they could not maintain their 20% profit margins. As a result, all these new houses are being built, but on just about every private development in our constituencies hardly any affordable housing is being built. Most developers sought release from those obligations four or five years ago but have only started building in the past couple of years. It is therefore quite clear that the affordable housing was not the problem; it was about what they wanted to do to maximise their profits—it was greed. If we are going to build ourselves out of this housing crisis, we cannot continue to rely on the same avaricious developers who have got us into this mess in the first place. A cursory look at the leasehold scandal tells us everything we need to know about the priorities of some developers.
There is a massive job ahead of us, and things need to change. Enough is enough. My Front-Bench colleagues have set out a very ambitious plan about how we can achieve this. Yes, we need to build 1 million more genuinely affordable homes; yes, we need to target Help to Buy on first-time buyers on ordinary incomes; and, yes, we need to give councils the freedom to build and retain council homes for local people. But we need to get on with it now. This Parliament is broken. We look around and absolutely nothing is happening. The Government are incapable of making decisions. Every day they spend arguing among themselves is another day further away from tackling this urgent and very real crisis. This country deserves so much better.
Emma Dent Coad (Kensington) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) for bringing forward this debate, which has provoked really good comments across the House.
In my constituency, the council has, at last, initiated a programme of building homes for social rent. This depends on the Mayor of London’s funding pot of £33 million, for which we are very grateful, to provide 330 new homes. That will go some way towards replacing the 120 homes lost in the Grenfell Tower fire and housing 135 homeless households, as of yesterday, still waiting for permanent accommodation—those from the tower itself, those from Grenfell Walk, and those from the neighbouring walkways who cannot bear to continue to live there.
However, this is not just about numbers. Our council, I am afraid, has a poor record in providing new social rented homes. It entered into a devil’s deal with a developer partner whereby a number of homes for social rent, some intermediate and some for private rental, were built. Sadly, some were very poorly constructed. Construction standards in many were appalling. In one new development, the drains constantly backed up into the kitchen sinks. The homes had to be evacuated while the floors were drilled out and new drains fitted. In another, dodgy drains brought rats up into the building’s first floor, where they could run unhindered as the supposed fire doors had such large gaps underneath them. This was a building that some Grenfell survivors had been moved into. The roof leaked. A ceiling collapsed. The lift broke, and a traumatised resident was stuck in it for hours. Radiators were found not actually to be attached to the central heating system. These problems continue.
In some of our new housing association mixed developments, the story is the same. In brand new buildings, roofs have leaked, ceilings have collapsed, loos and hand basins have fallen off the walls, and even a floor has collapsed. Membranes were not fitted into the external walls, so damp came straight through, causing black mould. Balconies were not fitted with drainage, so they flooded. Badly fitted cladding and window surrounds allowed rain to come in. Some basement flats flooded as door jambs were set too low. These properties, which are just three years old, are just a few examples of a common problem.
Throughout all this, the council is powerless to act. We have spoken to environmental health, building control and health and safety, and they do not have the powers of enforcement they need to make a difference. These issues are endemic across the country. We have a generation of, frankly, grotty new buildings. Many may not last 50 years, as did their predecessors that were demolished to make way for them.
The drop in construction standards is due to the total lack of strategic forward thinking. We have relied on skilled workers from abroad for so long that we forgot to train our own. Now that tens of thousands have returned —many to eastern Europe—due to Brexit anxiety, we have huge gaps in our skills, and no one is planning to invest in training for employment in the construction industry. The other issue, of course, is developer greed. They specify the cheapest possible materials to make a larger profit. I do not need to list the horrors that that can produce.
If we are to build 1 million homes, we need not only changes to the housing finance system and Government funding, but a generation of skilled workers, as the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) said, and the building materials to create good-quality, well-built homes. Apprenticeships should be the answer, but many of them are poor quality. Some provide little training, apart from how to wield a glue gun; that is an actual case. The apprenticeship levy was a good idea but is poorly implemented. I believe that the pot has reached £1 billion, but contributing and receiving companies tell me that they do not have time to push through the complex bureaucracy, nor do many of them have the capacity to give good training, with all the best intentions. We must train our young people.
A specific Kensington-based problem is that of luxury developments left empty, which forces up the cost of everything, including social housing, and makes it even more difficult to build the homes we need for everybody. Many luxury homes, we suspect, are bought to launder illegally gained money. We hope that this matter will begin to be tackled next year, when the Registration of Overseas Entities Bill becomes law. I was pleased to sit on the Joint Committee that scrutinised the draft Bill. It will force beneficial owners to register their names and, we hope, will disincentivise the drug lords, people traffickers and other vermin who want to dump their dirty money in my constituency.
I will give an example of a luxury development with empty flats. On Kensington Road, almost opposite Kensington Palace, there was a 700-bed Victorian hotel, of Italianate design, in a perfectly good state. It was quite an interesting building. It was bought up by Candy and Candy, which flattened the site and was given permission by our fabulous council to build a luxury development of 97 flats. I pass that building regularly, and only four of the lights are ever on. Imagining that the flats had all been bought and left empty, I spoke to the staff, who said that some of them had not even been sold after four years but were being kept off the market to keep the price up. I find that absolutely obscene.
As we begin commemorations tonight on the second anniversary of the atrocity of the Grenfell Tower fire in my neighbourhood, it cannot be clearer that we need to create a new generation of social rented homes, with stable tenancies, of good quality, where families can fulfil their dreams, increase productivity and reach their full potential in security and safety.
Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)
I would like to thank and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) on securing this crucial debate. Housing is possibly the second most important issue facing this country at the moment after climate change, and it is one that affects the majority of the population—some of them very badly indeed.
In Ipswich, we had 175 people accepted as unintentionally homeless and in priority need last year. We also had 42 accepted as intentionally homeless. I despise the idea that anybody should be categorised as intentionally homeless. They may have made bad decisions in their lives that led to them becoming homeless, but the vast majority had no intention of being homeless, and they do not want to sleep on the streets or on friends’ floors. They are not intentionally homeless, and I would like to see that category abolished altogether. We also had 12 people categorised as homeless but not in priority. That just goes to show the size of the problem involved, when people who are recognised as being homeless are not considered priority cases simply because there are so many cases that are of a higher priority.
The number of homeless acceptances in Ipswich is significantly higher than the national average and, indeed, the regional average. That is partly because people intentionally move into Ipswich because they are more likely to be housed. Any Member who represents a rural constituency and is honest with themselves will know that someone who is homeless in a rural constituency is more likely to be housed if they move into an urban constituency.
I am very proud of Ipswich Borough Council’s efforts to deal with this problem. Seventeen new council houses are receiving their topping out tomorrow morning in my constituency. We have 60 new council homes under construction on another site, and we have 16 new council homes about to be started on a third site. We have a 45-person temporary housing unit nearing completion, which will be taking homeless families directly out of so-called bed and breakfasts from next month.
I have been round one of these so-called bed-and-breakfast hostels where homeless people have to be placed. I was told to leave—I was ordered out of the premises by a member of staff after I had been there for about an hour, because I had been smuggled in by one of my constituents. My constituent told me, “You won’t be allowed to visit; we’re not allowed to have any visitors.” I said, “Well, I am the Member of Parliament,” and they said, “That doesn’t make any difference. The owners of this place will keep anybody out—councillors, Members of Parliament or whoever.” It is a place to live, but my goodness, it is not somewhere we would want anybody that we knew to live. We need to ensure that when people are homeless, there is somewhere for them to go straightaway, and so-called bed and breakfasts are not the answer.
Since we took back control of the council in 2011, 269 social rented homes have been built in Ipswich, and about half of them have been built by the council. I was proud to take my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) around the largest of those estates two years ago. I note that my predecessor took the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) around the same estate, despite the fact that it was built by a Labour council, and despite the vituperative opposition from Conservative councillors at the time and the opposition of that self-same predecessor to the development.
In that case, we were able to build the council estate, I am glad to say, and it was entirely for social rent, but my predecessor’s opposition was not always ineffective. A development of 94 new council homes at the 1,300-home Ravenswood estate was blocked. It had gone through planning application and appeal, but my predecessor went to the Conservative Secretary of State and persuaded him to block the building of the 94 council homes, on the grounds that 20 of them should be shared ownership. Some £300,000 of council money was wasted on the abortive preparation work, and £1.5 million of Homes and Communities Agency funding was lost to my constituency as a result of my predecessor’s direct intervention.
There have been not just historical blocks on the building of council housing; there was an attempt to block the 60-home estate that we have under construction on the grounds that it was all going to be social housing. The only way to ensure that we could continue with that development and be allowed to build the social rented housing was to set up an arm’s length company to offer some of the exact same homes at higher, so-called affordable rents. The local Conservatives even tried to block the homeless families unit that we are finishing next month.
Yes, we need far more financial resources, we need a more skilled workforce and we need more freedoms for local authorities to build those council houses, but we also need the Government to dismantle the intentional hurdles that are still there. Yes, I am very pleased that the cap has been removed, but the Government need to drop their ideological opposition to council housing—not just here in Parliament, but among their councillors. It is not good enough just to have the right words; we also need to see deeds.
This is not about planning permissions. The private sector has hundreds of outstanding planning permissions for flats and houses in Ipswich, but it prefers to build detached, executive homes on greenfield sites in rural areas because it can make more profit that way. Only council housing will reduce homelessness and reduce rates in the private sector by reducing the massive additional demand over and above supply. It will increase the stock of housing for sale by reducing the incentive for buy to let. It will provide the houses that people need, and the people who need them the most will be the most likely to have them provided as local authority housing.
The private sector has not built the homes we need. The experiment to bring an end to local authority housing and to put everything into the private sector, started by Margaret Thatcher in 1979, has failed. It is time to accept that, and it is time to do what we know works.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
May I add my thanks to my hon. Friends the Members for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western), and for Stroud (Dr Drew)—the real midlands engine behind this debate? The fact that we have had speeches from Members from around the country shows that this is a national crisis. The problems are different, but housing supply goes to the heart of them.
In high-value land areas such as my constituency, the problem is particularly intense. House prices are more than 20 times earnings, and the average rent of all properties is more than £2,000 a month. The lowest quartile of house prices, which are the properties we would perhaps expect people on low incomes to be able to afford, reaches well over £500,000. Indeed, the only type of accommodation that is affordable to anybody on the London living wage, let alone the minimum wage, is social rented housing. That is why I am very pleased we are having a debate specifically on this issue. Yes, we need a greater supply of many different types of housing, including in the private rented sector, of good quality and at affordable rents, and we obviously need owner occupation, but the real crisis that has developed over the last 30 or 40 years is in the supply of affordable housing.
I do not want to talk too much about statistics, but there are two or three that I find particularly pregnant. One is the 165% increase in rough sleeping since 2010. There is no good reason for that to have happened, other than Government policy and neglect. Another is the number of social rented homes being built. I think the number was about 6,500 in the year for which figures are most recently available, compared with 40,000 in the last year of the previous Labour Government, but in the decades after the war, the figure was regularly 120,000 a year, year after year. Those disparities show exactly why it is no surprise that we have a crisis.
I would add another statistic. It is slightly more esoteric, but it is an indication of how Government policy has gone off the rails. The London Assembly member Tom Copley did a very good report recently on permitted development—in other words, the conversion, without the requirement for planning consents, of office blocks to residential accommodation, or the slums of the future, as they are now being called. I suppose a silver lining to that cloud is that none of those will actually be social housing slums, because not one of those properties is likely to be a social home. Of the 300 converted in Hammersmith since the policy changed five or six years ago, not one will be a social rented home.
That is one method by which the Government ensure that social housing is always the poor relation, and is never delivered. It is why, rather than talk about the statistics, I will talk in the few minutes I have about the politics. Unless we confront the political differences between the two parties, we will not deliver on social housing. There are obviously big differences on other areas of public policy—the NHS, education and so forth—but there is deeply ingrained in the post-Thatcher era Conservative party an antipathy to and a manipulation of social housing, which has ensured that it has declined over those 40 years.
It is interesting that we now hear Conservative politicians—I do not know whether these are the beginnings of an apology—talking about the stigma of social housing. I have never felt that there was any stigma attached to social housing. That may be because it accounts for a third of my constituency, so it is prevalent. It may also be because it is absolutely in demand, because of its affordability. There has not been such a thing as a hard-to-let property in Hammersmith since the 1970s, and there are long waiting lists for any particular type of home. That is also because, as in the case of many London boroughs—I do not know about the situation outside London—a large proportion of our stock is what are called acquired properties. These are on-street properties that are now very valuable—Victorian and Edwardian houses that were bought up when they were cheap in the 1970s and 1980s—and they are giving life to the mixed communities that we enjoy in London, and which have been imperilled, as I say, by Conservative Government policies.
We heard the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) refer to the policies of the Thatcher Government and the right-to-buy policy. However, if that had been just about home ownership—about enabling people to buy their home, which is a popular and perfectly justifiable policy—we would have had the replacement of those homes. The demand for social housing did not suddenly go away overnight in 1980s; it continued. However, that replacement has never happened, and it does not happen now. Even now, despite a lot of attention being drawn to the issue, only two social homes are replaced for every five that are sold off.
The policy was actually about politics and social engineering. It was about trying to outwit the Labour party through what was perceived to be a part of its own electorate, by saying to people, “We will give you a very valuable asset for way below the value of it”, and that is perhaps why in Basildon it became popular on all sides. The policy was about something else as well. It was about saying—going back to the point about stigma—“You can do better than that,” and, by implication, “If you don’t buy your own home, but stay in a council house or housing association property, there must be something wrong with you.” The policy was taken up and developed in a more and more aggressive way, particularly in London, by Conservative politicians in the 1980s and 1990s.
I am thinking of the era of Shirley Porter—that was about straight political advantage as well, but it was not just about that—and about what Wandsworth Council did, as well as what was later done with my own council houses and those in Fulham. These cases are prime exponents of how to manipulate what should be the most important asset in people’s lives for political, social and, in some cases, moral purposes. People were told that council housing created a dependency culture, and that people should be paying market rents. As my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) said in an intervention, we saw that extraordinary and damaging shift from subsidising land and building to subsidising private landlords, primarily through the extraordinary increase in housing benefit, with billions of pounds every year being wasted in that way.
There is a document that I often refer to, and will go on referring to until it is better known. It was written about 10 years ago by the then Conservative leader of Hammersmith and Fulham Council, and it had wide currency and gained a lot of favour with the coalition Government. In effect, it proposed the end of council housing based on four principles. The first was that we should have near-market rents, and not have below-market rents. The second was that we should have no subsidy to allow the building of social housing. The third was that there should be no security—no more lifetime tenancies, only fixed-term tenancies that were renewable. Finally, there should be no legal duty on local authorities to rehouse people, as there is under the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977 for those who fall into vulnerable categories.
The explicit aim was to reduce over time the volume of social housing to about 5% to 10% of what it currently is. That may sound like fantasy, but three and a half of those four principles were quickly adopted by the coalition Government, and we have seen the effect of that in the 10 years since then. There are now affordable rents that are 80% of market rents, and short-term tenancies that mean that families grow up in insecurity, not with a home, but with temporary accommodation for that period.
The cut in subsidies that my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) referred to cut away at a stroke the ability of councils to build new homes, and led to the massive decline that has been mentioned. We did not quite get no duty towards homeless people, but we got a duty that could be discharged in the private rented sector. The effect of benefit cuts and other measures introduced by the coalition Government was that people were placed in temporary accommodation or in the private rented sector and were often—because of the cost of renting in high-value areas—sent a long way from home. Those policies may have been dreamed up in policy forums in west London, but they got the ear of the then Minister of State for Housing and Planning, now Chairman of the Conservative party, and quickly became policy, and that has led to the parlous situation that we are in.
Let me be a little more specific and concrete by describing what happened in my area when there was a change of political control. We had eight years of the Conservatives running Hammersmith. Social housing was not only a low priority, but was sold off as it became vacant. More than 300 council homes, which tended to be the larger, more expensive three and four-bedroom street properties, were sold off, so that they were no longer available to rehouse people. In most cases, there was no requirement on developers to provide any social housing. There was a policy not to build any more, and to reduce the quantity of social housing in an area that had more than 10,000 people on the housing waiting list—a problem that was resolved by abolishing the housing waiting list.
Let me contrast that with the current situation in Hammersmith under a Labour council whose first and clearest priority is to resolve those problems, and whose second priority is to provide decent-quality, affordable social housing for a new generation. In partnership, it is building 440 new affordable homes, with the possibility of another 300 on top of that. Through development deals, and as a result of the council pushing developers hard to ensure that a large proportion of new housing is affordable, there could be another nearly 2,400 homes. Over the current four-year planning period, we expect more than 3,000 new affordable homes to be built in a borough that has some of the highest land prices in the country. At least a quarter of those will be new social homes—the first to be constructed for many years in the borough.
That development will make a profound difference to the lives of my constituents. The difference between living in insanitary, overcrowded and insecure housing, and having a proper, secure, assured tenancy of a property that is well constructed and maintained, cannot be overestimated. That should be a priority for this Government, but it simply has not been a priority for Conservative—and indeed Liberal Democrat—Governments over the past few years.
Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)
The hon. Gentleman’s point about safe, decent housing goes to the heart of the concerns of my constituents in Deans South. Decades ago, they were sold substandard housing by West Lothian Council, and many of them have had to live there for many years. They include a constituent who has bronchial issues, as does her son. We are close to a resolution, but it will take the will of the council, the developer, social housing, and local politicians. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that when there is an opportunity to right the wrongs of the past, we should work across the political divide and do everything we can to do that?
Andy Slaughter
I agree, and it is good to hear that message coming from different parties, regions and countries. I hope that we will also hear it from Conservative Members. Hon. Members might have gathered that I am not entirely persuaded of the bona fides of the Conservative and Unionist party on this matter, but if it genuinely wishes to change its spots there is now an opportunity to do that. That must, however, involve a large-scale building programme of social housing in this country. Frankly, I do not see that aim among the current incumbents responsible for the job, but I would be delighted to be proved wrong.
Even in the past few years, the Housing and Planning Act 2016 attempted to allow the sale of housing association homes; I am glad that attempt has been abandoned. The prospect of means-testing for council tenants created more insecurity and led to the treatment of social housing as second-class housing. That idea has also been abandoned. We have seen a change in recent years, in that the Government are less willing to take up extreme right-wing and radical policies, but we have not seen any alternative. I am sure that when the Minister responds to the debate, he will have statistics prepared by his civil servants, but such statistics never persuade anybody. We will believe there is a commitment to social housing when the Government start to build it, enabling and motivating local authorities and housing associations to build houses at an affordable rent. Without that, everything else is rhetoric.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the hon. Members for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) and for Stroud (Dr Drew) for securing this debate. We can perhaps take it for granted that other things are currently occupying hon. Members and we would otherwise have a better turnout of people wishing to contribute to the debate. We have to be fair to everyone, wherever they are.
For me, there are two facets to this issue: homes to buy and rent, and social housing provision. Although Northern Ireland has a different set up for the allocation of social housing, the difficulties are the same. I wish to bring a Northern Ireland perspective to this debate, even if the Minister has no responsibility whatsoever for social housing in Northern Ireland—if only he did, we might be able to do some things.
Housing is a major issue in my constituency. Benefits might be pushing it at this moment in time, but housing continues to be the No. 1 priority. The Minister has been generous with his time, and in making himself available for meetings and discussions that we have asked for. I know he has a deep interest in his ministerial responsibility and takes it seriously. He is committed to addressing the problems and, like everyone else, we look to him for a satisfactory, positive and capable response.
When a young couple decide to marry and move in together that is a time for celebration, but such celebrations are short lived when we realise that the choices for first-time buyers and even renters are severely limited. As soon as a couple without children declare that they both work, there goes any chance of a social housing allocation—that has happened in many cases that I have been involved with—because there are simply not enough social housing projects in the works to meet the need. In my own borough council area of Ards and North Down, on 20 March 2018, there were 36,198 applicants on the social housing waiting list. Of those, 24,148 were in housing stress, which means that they needed housing quickly. In 2017-18, 11,877 households were accepted as statutorily homeless. The Northern Ireland Housing Executive does not build houses in Northern Ireland, although it did in the past. Housing associations now build them and we have had a number of social housing build projects in my constituency, which have certainly helped, but the fact of the matter is that we need to encourage more.
People will often say, “Well, you can rent privately.” Again, these figures will probably not correspond with those in other Members’ constituencies, because the rental system is different, but the median weekly rent for social housing is £77 a week for Housing Executive houses. The median weekly private rent is £98 a week. For those not working, the Government no longer make up the difference. For those who are working and are not in receipt of housing benefit, an extra £100 a month is hard to come by when statistics show that the Northern Ireland average disposable income is a fifth less than the UK average.
The issues for those seeking housing in Northern Ireland are critical. The fact is that we are not building enough homes to affordably rent and, due to price hikes, not many developers can afford to lower prices to social housing prices either. I believe we need to do more. I say that conscious of the fact that in Northern Ireland we need to do more, too. We need to build more to meet the need that is out there.
In Westminster Hall yesterday, I spoke on domestic violence and homelessness. Some people remain in abusive relationships because they fear that they have nowhere to go. If there was housing stock to go into, that fear would not hold people back from coming out of the cycle of abuse. The problem illustrated in yesterday’s debate is clear: if you are in a cycle of domestic abuse, getting other accommodation is extremely difficult.
The Crisis briefing provided for this debate highlighted the case in England. I believe the underlying issues are replicated in Northern Ireland. In 2017-18, fewer than 7,000 new homes were provided for social rent. Although that is a slight improvement on the post-war low of 5,900 social homes built, it is far lower than the recent peak of 40,000 in 2011 and the previous peak of 57,000 houses in 1992-93. In the three decades following the second world war, councils routinely built more than 100,000 homes a year for social rent. If we had those days back, I think the issue of those who need to rent would be addressed. We need to allocate more funding to build affordable homes to buy or rent. That would mean they could scrape together a deposit for a home. With the average income not allowing people to rent and save at the same time, we are seeing people stuck in a renting cycle, paying someone else’s mortgage and improving their home.
I recently worked on a private rent case, which is an example of the story I am trying to tell. The landlord put the house up for sale after his rental tenant of seven years had put in a new kitchen at her own cost. That is disgraceful, but it does happen. This single mother saved for years to fit the kitchen, yet she will never get the benefit of it. It is shocking that that should happen. It is little wonder that The Irish News reports:
“Over a third of 20-34-year-olds in Northern Ireland have yet to permanently move out, compared with around a quarter in GB...Over 36 per cent of people acquiring their home through Co-Ownership have children. According to the recent report from the Intergenerational Commission, millennials are half as likely to own their own home by the age of 30 as the baby boomer generation were at the same age.”
My second son Ian and his wife—they were married just over a year ago—bought a co-ownership home in Newtonards. Co-ownership homes provide a great opportunity for those who want to own a home but cannot pay the whole mortgage. It is 50% buy and 50% rental, but it does get them on the housing register. It gives them that opportunity, so I commend co-ownership.
To return to the quote from The Irish News relating to 20 to 34-year-olds in Northern Ireland, this is not from a lack of work or saving ethic, or a flamboyant lifestyle; this is to do with the fact that in early 2018 average pay was still £15 a week lower in real terms compared with 2008. It is harder for people and we are not making it easier for them by allowing them to do what so many in my generation did and get a wee council house that they then buy at a reduced price when they are able to afford it.
I am very fond of my colleagues on the Labour Benches and they know it. We get on well on many, many issues, but I support the right to buy. I always have supported it in my constituency, because I can see the benefits of it. I understand that things are different for some other constituencies, but I support the right to buy scheme. In Northern Ireland, we have restrictions—not all properties are available to buy. For instance, you cannot buy bungalows, because there is a dearth of bungalows. You can buy flats and houses, but you cannot buy bungalows.
We have a generation who are now expected to do it all. They pay for broadband at £40 a month, which is not a luxury but a necessity when banks and shops are closing their high street presence in favour of the low-cost web. They either pay astronomical car insurance and petrol or pay up to £60 a week for the train and bus to work. They might allow themselves a social trip to the cinema, which in my day—I am not sure if you are in the same age bracket as me, Madam Deputy Speaker; I think you are probably not—cost £3 for two tickets. That is a long time ago: the tickets now cost over £15! How do we expect them to have a quality of life which is taken for granted by so many of us in here and still have the ability to have a home?
We must make housing stock a priority across the UK. I think the Minister is committed to that; that is my feeling from my discussions with him. I say that honestly. I believe he has the opportunity to prove himself. That is what he has said he will do. It must be affordable to rent or buy, and to do that we need a more effective strategy than the one we currently have. That is why I have no difficulty in supporting the motion tabled by my colleagues on the Opposition Benches.
From the beginning, when I first became an elected representative many, many years ago, originally on Ards and North Down Borough Council and then in the Northern Ireland Assembly, the biggest issue has always been housing. It continues to be a big issue. Generations of hard-working people are crying out for the right to be safe and secure in a home. We need to do more to provide that for the so-called lower and middle-class people who are the backbone of this country.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for helping to secure it and I congratulate the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) on leading it. He made an excellent opening speech, which covered all the key issues in the motion. I agree with his comments, and those of other Members, that it would have been nice if there had been more Members in the Chamber, but it has probably led to better contributions because people have not had a time limit imposed on them. In one way, it has allowed the matter to be explored in greater detail.
I liked the way the hon. Gentleman illustrated the post-war housing policies versus the modern Tory housing policies. I agree with the sentiment about the cry for investment, clear targets, brownfield development and ending right to buy. These are matters I intend to return to.
We have heard some excellent speeches from the Back Benches. The themes seem to be homelessness, quality of existing stock, affordability, the critical matter of the lack of existing stock, and waiting lists.
For too long, since the Housing Act 1980 which allowed the right to buy, social and council housing has been the poor relation of housing aspirations. The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) mentioned a stigma that is sometimes attached to social housing. Clearly, people owning homes is not a bad thing, but the rules for the original right to buy have led to the current crisis in social housing, with homes being sold at a discount, the receipts bypassing councils and going to Westminster, and councils not being allowed to fund or build new council housing stock. It did not take a genius to see that it would lead to a housing crisis.
Since the original sell-offs, 40% of flats sold in England under right to buy have entered the buy-to-let market, pushing up private rents, increasing the housing benefit bill and costing the taxpayer. To balance that extra cost to the taxpayer, local housing allowances have been frozen, as we have heard today, which has put pressure on social housing stock and resulted in homelessness as people cannot afford to live in the private rented sector.
In addition to the failed right to buy legacy, we had further disastrous policy decisions by the Lib Dem-Tory coalition Government and the 2015 Tory Government. The bedroom tax—not only unjust but proven to be illegal in some of its applications—has led to increased personal debt and rent arrears, the cost of which has been borne in the social sector by other rent payers and local tax payers. It just shifts a central Government cut on to local tax payers. Furthermore, the local housing allowance cap was to apply to refuge accommodation, which would have caused that vital support sector to collapse, had it not been for the belated but welcome U-turn.
Universal credit has caused issues wherever it has been rolled out—the five-week delay, massive rent arrears—and this has had an impact on social and council housing stock in terms of the ability to maintain properties and build new ones. Meanwhile, in England and Wales, the 1% year-on-year rent discount in the social rented sector, which the Tory Government have forced through, is applying downwards pressure on the revenue available to look after the stock. And now we have the ongoing voluntary right to buy pilot for social homes. If this is fully rolled out, the sales projected will result in a £10 billion discount in the sell-off of stock, which means £10 billion effectively going to subsidise people to buy houses and being taken out of the investment revenue available.
Another negative policy has been the disastrous reinvigorated right to buy scheme introduced in 2012. Since then, approximately 76,000 houses have been sold, but there have been only 20,000 new starts or acquisitions. Not only are the UK Government miles from meeting their one-for-one replacement target over three years, but the gap is widening every year to the tune of about 7,000 houses. Worse, the replacement figures are based on new starts or acquisitions; we do not monitor completions or when houses become available for people to move into. It is almost a wheeze. I am pretty sure that someone could get a JCB, dig a hole in the ground for a 20-house development and show they had started 20 new houses. On paper, they would have met the new start criteria, but the important thing is: when will these houses be available for people to move into?
Under the one-for-one replacement target, the new houses need not be of the same type or built in the same location. This is clearly another failing policy putting further pressure on the social housing sector. It does not matter what the Minister says; it demonstrates that housing policies are still flawed. It also shows that replacement is not just a numbers game; there is much more to it. The motion mentions the number of houses that need to be constructed, but we need houses of the right type, in the right location and with access to local services and public transport, and to do that a mass of planning is required. Indeed, several hon. Members have mentioned the importance of planning.
Prior to entering the House, I served as a local councillor and was lucky enough to have housing as part of my cabinet portfolio. I was glad to instigate plans to convert low-demand flats into family houses for which there was a much greater need and much greater demand. In conjunction with the SNP Government, East Ayrshire Council implemented a council housing build programme to build new houses, including houses that were suitable for the elderly or adapted for wheelchair use. People are often trapped in houses not suitable for them, so building new suitable housing can change people’s lives and free up larger properties for families who need them. If thought out properly, that is a clever way of refreshing the housing stock, and there is a spin-off as well: it reduces delayed discharges from hospitals, which is another important aspect.
Moreover, in East Ayrshire, as elsewhere in Scotland, part of the new council and social housing build policy is aimed at brownfield developments. The council is building new houses, creating new assets, freeing up properties for families and building proper houses while actually regenerating areas, which brings further drive and growth in the area.
All that shows that the picture can be different from the issues we have heard about today. There are ways forward and this can be solved, as the examples from East Ayrshire show. There it has been done in conjunction with the Scottish Government. Not only are they building new houses—this relates to some of the asks of hon. Members today—but they have ended the right to buy policy and so retained an additional 15,000 houses in stock. They also started a council house build programme in April 2009. It was the first council house build programme in a generation. Between 2007 and 2018, the supply of affordable homes in Scotland was 35% higher than in England and, in the last four years, that rate has been 50% higher.
In the same four-year period, the Scottish Government have delivered five times more social housing per head than England. We have built more council houses in Scotland than have been built in the entirety of England over the period of the SNP Government. That has been based on centrally funded money from the SNP, along with some local housing revenue money, not on the sell-off of existing council house stock. In Scotland, we are doing this despite Tory austerity and despite having to offset the bedroom tax, the council tax relief and LHA reductions, which obviously has put further pressure on the Scottish Government’s budget and local budgets. In Scotland, we also have stronger legislation to protect homeless people and give them the right to housing.
We have heard some excellent contributions from across the Chamber today. I hope that some of the examples I have given show that going forward with drive and ambition we can build more houses, make them fit for purpose and regenerate areas. In that area, the Scottish Government have been leading the way.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) on securing this debate on the housing crisis. I also congratulate him and my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Drew) on the council housing campaign they have led together. We have had some glorious contributions from the usual suspects today—we need a better term for the usual suspects, don’t we? We need to brand them better, but the expertise and knowledge in the House has been well worth hearing.
As has been said across the House, the focus is not in this Chamber. The focus of the media is outside, where the latest Conservative party vanity project is playing out and sucking the life out of this place. We are all on hold. We have no meaningful legislation to debate, no progress on Brexit and no substantial action on all the big issues facing people across the country. Even the Minister reportedly admitted that the Government were not focused on housing—after Brexit, he said, the Government would turn to housing. How long will that take? And in the meantime, what do we have? A lot of consultations and a lack of action.
It is two years tomorrow since 72 people—the vast majority were social housing tenants—died in the Grenfell Tower fire. We know that the fire was avoidable, but Inside Housing has today exposed, to my horror, the multiple times that members of the all-party group on fire safety and rescue, some of whom are present, pressed, pressed and pressed again for Ministers to strengthen fire safety regulations in the wake of the multiple fatalities at the Lakanal House fire.
In 2014, the APPG wrote to previous Minister, Stephen Williams. Following more letters, the Minister said that he was
“not willing to disrupt the work of this department by asking that these matters be brought forward”.
In November 2015, the next Housing Minister, James Wharton, promised that he would make an announcement shortly. By September 2016, a year later, there was still no announcement, so the APPG wrote again to the next Housing Minister, Gavin Barwell. It wrote again to chase that letter in October and November 2016, following a parliamentary question in which the Minister had said that
“we have publicly committed ourselves to reviewing part B following the Lakanal House fire.”—[Official Report, 24 October 2016; Vol. 616, c. 16.]
That Minister refused a meeting with the APPG and claimed that other letters had gone awry.
In November 2016 the APPG wrote again, raising a tower block fire earlier that year in which a pregnant woman had died. In February 2017, it wrote again, having not received a reply, pressing for a date for the promised review. In April 2017, the Minister replied, suggesting again that correspondence had been lost. The APPG wrote again, pointing out that it was 11 years since part B of the building regulations was last reviewed and that it had been promised action by three successive Ministers since 2010. In May 2017, the Government replied, brushing off concerns about the fire in which the pregnant woman had died. Finally, on 19 May 2017, the APPG sent another letter pressing for action. That letter was sent only a month before the Grenfell Tower fire.
In all, the APPG wrote to Ministers 21 times. It is hard to know what to say. The changes that the APPG was calling for have still not been implemented. The Secretary of State said last week that the legislation to implement wholesale reform of our system of fire safety and building control would not be brought forward until the next parliamentary Session. The culture of indifference stopped action before Grenfell, and two years on, we see the same pattern.
My direct plea to the Minister today is to speed up the action. I know that he has consulted on approved document B and launched a consultation on Hackitt, and that the Government have said that they will pay for the removal of flammable cladding, but two years on from the fire, the fundamentals of the system remain unchanged. Flammable cladding remains on blocks, approved document B remains unchanged and the accountabilities in the system have also not changed. That is simply not good enough.
Turning to the wider crisis in our affordable housing supply, we have heard so eloquently today about the scale of the housing crisis, which spans beyond the issue of social housing, although that is without doubt the vital building block in creating a housing market that works for everyone, not just the few. My hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington set out the context of the housing crisis and the history of council house building, with the big boost to building that we saw after the second world war. My hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) told us very powerful stories about what that means for people in today’s situation, where we do not have the house building that we once saw.
Over the last nine years, not only have the Government failed to tackle the gap between social housing supply and demand, but their policies are turning the gap into a gulf. Research from the National Housing Federation and the homelessness charity Crisis shows that England needs to build 145,000 affordable homes a year for the next 12 years. As we have heard, Shelter has put the figure at 3.1 million social rent homes over 20 years, but the last two years have seen the lowest level of social rent homes built since world war two. Only 6,500 were built last year, which is a fall of over 80% since the last year of the last Labour Government. The number of new homes built for affordable home ownership has almost halved since the time of the last Labour Government to less than 13,000 homes last year.
It is not hard to see why house building numbers have plummeted under this Government. Real-terms Government funding for new affordable homes has been cut by around 90%—it was less than £500 million last year compared with over £4 billion in the last year of the last Labour Government. The funding is nowhere near enough to deliver the scale of homes that we need, particularly because while the Government have failed at building, they have proved successful at selling off our existing social housing stock.
As we have heard, the Government promised a one-for-one replacement of homes sold under right to buy, but in reality, we are seeing one home built for every four sold. Over the past five years, under the scheme, councils have lost enough homes to house the population of Oxford. Councils do not even get to keep the profits from the sales; two-thirds of the receipts are sent to central Government. Meanwhile, as hon. Members have so eloquently said, the term “affordable” has been tested to the limit and beyond, including homes that are at 80% of market rents. Since 2012, over 111,000 genuinely affordable homes for social rent have been converted to those not so affordable “affordable” homes.
As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said, we simply do not have enough social housing. As a result, over 1 million households are on the council waiting list, and if house building carried on at the current rate, it would take 172 years to get those people the homes that they need. Last year, 18,000 fewer social lets were made to homeless households than a decade before. Rough sleeping has doubled. There are 120,000 children in temporary accommodation—my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Sandy Martin) told us about the quality of that accommodation. There are more families pushed into more expensive, less secure, worse-quality private rented homes; a million more households paying private rents, which have skyrocketed by an average of getting on for £2,000 a year since 2010; and thousands still paying the bedroom tax, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) pointed out.
The impact of all this is not just felt by individuals, because Government finances are being hit, too. The housing benefit bill, going straight into landlords’ pockets, has more than doubled since the early 2000s. Spending on temporary accommodation increased by 39% between 2011 and 2016—my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) pointed that out so well. It is an utterly false economy of spending—£22 billion a year on housing benefit rather than investment in the bricks and mortar that would keep an asset in the ownership of the state, to be enjoyed by everybody at a lower cost. Of the children living in poverty, 1.3 million live in private rented accommodation. We could lift a lot of those children out of poverty if they were in council housing. We have our priorities completely the wrong way round and it is a waste of Government funding.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden said, Labour’s record, although not always perfect, was clear: 2 million more homes, a million more home owners, and the biggest investment in social housing in a generation.
The next Labour Government’s plans for social housing are more ambitious. We want to build a million genuinely affordable homes over 10 years, including the biggest council house building programme of nearly 40 years. Crucially, we will stop the haemorrhaging of our stock by suspending the right to buy. Labour long called for the lifting of the cap, and we are glad that the Government have finally listened, but that alone will not work, especially for the 205 councils that no longer own any housing stock—they will be unable to use their new borrowing powers.
Labour will back councils to set up new housing revenue accounts. We will make long-term funding available so that councils have the certainty to properly invest in social housing. Along with the money, councils and housing associations will have new powers and flexibilities to build again at scale. We would end the Conservatives’ so-called “affordable rent”, redefining “affordable” to be linked to local incomes. We will transform how land is available and how much it costs. We would scrap permitted development, which Members have talked eloquently of already, and we would invest in making sure that all council and housing association homes are warm, safe and dry. The money we save in housing benefits will be recycled into helping tackle the causes of the housing crisis, and our new homes would meet green standards.
Tomorrow’s anniversary, marking two years since the Grenfell Tower fire, is a terrible reminder of the tragic consequences of not giving social housing tenants a voice. The tower block fire in Barking on Sunday, where more than a third of the properties were social housing, was a stark reminder that too little has changed. Highly flammable material on the side of a tall building, and residents’ complaints ignored—these lessons were not learned after the Lakanal fire a decade ago, and they have not been learned following the Grenfell Tower fire. We must do better.
The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)
I commend the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) for securing this important debate. I agree with him that above all else, it should be the collective mission of the House to build the homes that the next generation needs.
I agree with other Members that the attendance across the House for the debate has been disappointing. I am sure none of us will take any pleasure from the fact that there was not a single Liberal Democrat in the Chamber to talk about this very important issue. It is indeed important, because since taking up this role last year, boosting the supply of housing of all types has been my night-and-day obsession as Housing Minister, so a largely useful and constructive debate such as today’s certainly helps.
For the most part, I am grateful that Members have come forward with constructive suggestions, and indeed questions, which we will try to answer—in written form if I cannot answer them today. I want to pick out one or two.
I agree with the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington’s basic assertion that bad housing leads to lots of other bad things and that good housing sits at the base of a fruitful and happy life. A secure home is something to which we should aspire for all the people whom we serve, and it is certainly a central part of our mission. I was very affected by his specific point about a veteran whom he called soldier Y. I hope that he is engaging with the Coventry, Solihull and Warwickshire armed forces covenant partnership, which I understand does a fair amount of work in his region in connection with the covenant and the housing rights that come with it.
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving such a balanced view of the last three or four decades of house building and the part that Governments of all types have played in producing an under-supply. Both my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess), who has sadly had to go and do his duty in Westminster Hall, and the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Drew) referred to the complexity of the issue and suggested that there should be a cross-party effort to reach some kind of general solution.
Let me now issue a gentle reminder to Members. I understand that, in these circumstances, it is the role of the Front Bencher to point to a utopian future in which everything will be easy and simple and it will just be a matter of writing cheques and handing out shovels and houses will appear. However, this is a problem and a crisis that has been decades in the making, and I think we all have a duty to share some sense of responsibility.
Back in the days when I was a Westminster councillor, we were induced out of council house building and owning by the then Labour Government, who would only give us our decent homes money if we got rid of our council housing stock. A number of Members, not least the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), tried to dredge up ancient history and point to some kind of ideological opposition to social housing among Government Members. In fact, more council houses were built in the last year of Margaret Thatcher’s 10 years as Prime Minister than were built in the 13 years of the new Labour Government.
The shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), has often nodded in agreement about the lack of council house building during the years when he was part of the Government. I think that only about 2,500 council houses were built during those 13 years. Much has been said about the right to buy, but during all those years not a single finger was lifted against it. The policy persisted throughout the entire period, and is still popular with those who can benefit from it.
The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) rightly raised the issue of supply. The Government are committed to increasing the supply of all tenures of affordable housing, helping to meet the housing needs of a wide range of people including those who are on a pathway to home ownership. I am pleased to say that we are already delivering on our commitments: since 2010, we have delivered more than 407,000 new affordable homes, including more than 293,000 for rent. In fact, more affordable homes have been delivered in the past eight years than in the last eight years of Labour government. More than 481,000 households have been helped into home ownership through schemes such as Help to Buy and right to buy.
We are not complacent, however, and we are certainly not slowing down; far from it. Housing remains our top priority, and we are championing the delivery of more affordable homes. We want to see local authorities deliver a new generation of council homes across the country. That is why we scrapped the housing revenue account borrowing caps last October, freeing up councils to double their delivery and, we hope, to exceed that level. Removing the borrowing caps will also help to diversify the house building market, with councils more able to take on projects and sites that private developers would consider too small.
The abolition of the caps means that stock-owning councils such as Warwick now have the financial flexibility that enables them to borrow to increase council house building. Even councils that do not own housing can get on with building homes. They have the flexibility to borrow to build up to 200 without opening a housing revenue account, subject to obtaining a direction from the Secretary of State. I am keen for all councils to seize the opportunities available and quickly start ramping up delivery to meet local housing need. I am considering what assistance we can give councils that do not have HRAs, either by providing advice and expertise or by pairing them with councils that do have HRAs to help them to act quickly.
We support councils and housing associations with grant funding for the construction of new affordable homes. We have made over £9 billon available through the affordable homes programme, which will deliver 250,000 additional affordable homes by March 2022. We listen constantly to the affordable housing sector and work to create a stable investment environment to support the delivery of more affordable homes across the country. We have introduced strategic partnerships to offer housing associations greater flexibility, ensuring funding can be allocated where it is needed across multiple projects while still meeting overall delivery targets.
This funding certainty also makes it more viable for larger housing associations to take risks and invest in more ambitious projects, with greater delivery flexibilities and funding guaranteed over a longer period. And we have gone further, providing the sector with longer-term certainty of funding. In September last year, the Prime Minister announced a £2 billion long-term funding pilot starting in 2022, which will boost affordable housing by giving housing associations long-term certainty and moving away from the stop-start delivery that characterised previous approaches to funding. For the first time in their history, housing associations can now bid for funding up to a decade long.
This unprecedented approach will deliver more affordable homes and stimulate the sector’s wider building ambitions. Strategic partnerships and our 10-year funding commitment mark the first time any Government have offered housing associations such certainty. They will also allow them to explore the use of greater technology in house building. I visited a factory in Walsall in the west midlands recently where Accord Housing will be producing 1,000 homes for affordable and social rent out of the factory, and so good are the environmental standards of these new homes that there are lower arrears because people can afford to heat and light them more cheaply. There are huge opportunities coming out of this programme that I hope associations will take. We have also set a long-term rent deal, announcing that increases to social housing rents will be limited to the consumer price index plus 1% for five years from 2020. Through all these measures, we are creating an investment environment that supports both councils and housing associations to build more.
As set out in our housing White Paper, we are determined to support households who are locked out of the market, and therefore we are also funding affordable home ownership. I am pleased to say that through our affordable homes programme we have delivered 60,000 shared-ownership homes since 2010. We believe that shared ownership has an important role to play as part of a diverse and thriving housing market in helping those who aspire to home ownership but may be otherwise be unable to afford it.
This Government pledged to address overall housing supply in our 2017 housing White Paper and our ambition to deliver 300,000 homes per year on average by the mid-2020s was set out in the autumn Budget of 2017. The Government agree that affordable housing will play a vital role in reaching this target, which is why we have created stable investment for the sector; now it is time for housing associations and councils to step forward and build more.
We recognise the need for more social rent homes, which is why also in 2017 we announced an additional £2 billion of funding for the affordable homes programme to deliver social rent homes in areas of high affordability pressure. This funding should deliver at least 12,500 social rent homes in high-cost areas, in a move to support families struggling to pay their rent. This represents a real change in how we focus the Government’s grant funding, targeting our most affordable homes to the areas where they are most needed. I want to stress that a mix of different tenures is vital to meet the needs of a wide range of people and allow the sector to build the right homes in the right places.
Alongside affordable home ownership to help those struggling to purchase their first home, our expanded programme offers two rental products. Affordable rent enables us to maximise the number of homes built with any Government investment, while social rent will meet the needs of struggling families and those most at risk of homelessness in areas of the country where affordability is most pressured. We will continue to provide opportunities for more people to afford their own home and seek to build on the progress made in building new social homes as we approach this year’s spending review.
This Government are committed to delivering more affordable housing, as I have outlined. We want to support the delivery of the right homes, whether for rent or ownership, in the right places. We have listened to the sector and introduced a number of measures to create a more stable environment. We have increased the size of the affordable homes programme, reintroduced social rent, removed the housing revenue account borrowing caps for local authorities, announced £2 billion of long-term funding for housing associations through strategic partnerships right through a decade, and we are setting out a long-term rent deal for councils and housing associations in England from 2020.
The hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones) raised the issue of Grenfell—as did the hon. Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad)—and she will know that much of my time has been focused on building safety. While we are committed to increasing supply across the country of all types of housing, not least for social rent, the hon. Member for Croydon Central is right to continue to challenge us on the work we still need to do to make sure those buildings are delivered and built in a safe environment. I am pleased that we managed to get our response to the Hackitt inquiry out last week. We have accepted all the recommendations and, indeed, gone further on them, but there is definitely more work to do. The House has my commitment that, however long I am in this job, and I am now coming up on 12 months—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] Thank you. The House has my commitment that this will be one of my primary focuses. Many of us will attend memorial events tomorrow to commemorate the second anniversary of that appalling tragedy, and while it is a point at which we will remember the 72 lives that were lost, it is also a reminder to us all in this House that the system that was built up over a number of decades that resulted in that awful tragedy has to change.
Matt Western
May I start by thanking everyone across the House for their incredibly valuable contributions to what I would agree with the Minister was a constructive and illuminating debate. I particularly thank the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) and my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Drew) for supporting and sponsoring this debate today.
As we have heard, it is generally understood that housing is particularly important, but that social housing is even more so. We have heard from across the country just how expensive housing can be in so many of our towns and cities. We have heard about multiples of 20 against average income, such is the expense of property—certainly in Cambridge, London and elsewhere.
We have also heard just how popular social housing and council housing can be and about the massive loss of stock we have suffered in recent decades. My hon. Friends the Members for Ipswich (Sandy Martin) and for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) gave good examples of what can be done when local authorities have the foresight and the ambition to deliver good-quality social housing. We also heard illustrations from my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh), who described the reality for her constituents and the hardship that they face.
Elsewhere, my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) talked about the struggles that people still face incurring the bedroom tax and asked why that tax still had not been cancelled.
The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) highlighted very well the reality for young people in particular and explained what a struggle it is for millennials to get on the housing ladder.
I also thank the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown), who highlighted the very positive reality north of the border and described what it had been possible to achieve in delivering housing as a result of being liberated from some of the constraints we have here. He also talked about the challenges and the threats from universal credit and of Help to Buy.
I thank the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones), for her excellent summary of the debate. I will not attempt to repeat that, but she rightly highlighted the reality of what has happened, as we find ourselves still reflecting on Grenfell two years on. She talked about all the mistakes that were made with Lakanal and described how people were indifferent and not listening. That case and those arguments have also been well set out in the campaign led by my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad). I thank the Minister for his summary and for his warm words, and I look forward to working with him in the future.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House recognises that there is a housing crisis with too few genuinely affordable homes to rent and buy; further recognises that the number of new social rented homes built in recent years has been too low; notes that the Government has set a target to build 300,000 homes a year, which is unlikely to be achieved without building more social homes; further notes that Shelter’s recent report, A Vision for Social Housing, concluded that 3.1 million new social rented homes need to be built over the next 20 years; and calls on the Government to adopt a target of building 155,000 social rented homes, including at least 100,000 council homes, each year from 2022.
Parliament as a Workplace
(4 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered making Parliament a more modern, family friendly and accessible workplace.
It is a pleasure to open this debate. I place on record my thanks to the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate and allowing it time in the main Chamber. As the House is currently debating the restoration and renewal of the Palace of Westminster, now seems a good opportunity for a concurrent debate about how we can improve the workings of Parliament better to support Members, staff and the public.
I know that the appetite for change varies from Member to Member and that no single person has all the answers. Change requires addressing many complex issues and I hope that debates such as this give Members an opportunity to put across their views. Parliament is an old building, and its methods and workings are unmistakably historic. Many of our practices are globally renowned and often make our parliamentary democracy the envy of the world. In other ways, we are stuck in the past, perhaps too afraid of reform.
That is not to say that some family-friendly and accessibility reforms have not been achieved. Over the past few years we have seen the creation of an onsite nursery and the recent introduction of proxy voting, and we currently have a more diverse representation in Parliament than ever before. Those have been made possible by a vast array of people and I want to place on record my thanks to Mr Speaker, the former Leader of the House, the shadow Leader of the House, Government and Opposition Whips, the House of Commons Commission, the Procedure Committee, the Women and Equalities Committee, the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), to name but a few.
Those of us who are keen to continue the modernisation of Parliament know that we cannot stop here, especially given that it is 1,306 days since the last debate on the family friendliness of Parliament, initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips). From my own perspective, before entering Parliament, I was an employment rights lawyer for many years, specialising in maternity rights and family-friendly working. When my local MP retired at the 2017 general election, I agonised over whether to put myself forward, particularly as my son was only two at the time. It was the existence of the House of Commons nursery that made the decision to stand for Parliament possible. Two years on from that, with a husband who is also a sitting MP, it was the recent introduction of proxy voting that has enabled us to have a second child.
The fact that there has been change does not mean that we should stop there. If Parliament is to be truly representative of those we seek to serve, we must continue to look at ways to break down barriers for those who might consider putting themselves forward for public office. Shortly after my election in 2017, my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Frith) convened 11 newly elected Members of Parliament to produce a pamphlet on ideas for reforming Westminster. Together we came up with a range of far-reaching proposals that showed that there are MPs who want to help to improve the workings of Parliament for the benefit of all.
In my experience, one area that we should consider for reform is how Members of Parliament vote. While I recognise and respect that some Members advocate remote electronic voting, given the importance of parliamentary votes I believe that the act of physically attending the Lobby to be counted is an important part of our democratic process. It helps to ensure engagement of MPs and I know many of us use the time to raise issues with other colleagues. However, the voting system in its current form is time consuming, particularly when there are multiple votes. With each Division taking around 20 minutes, if we have eight or nine Divisions, 650 MPs are left walking around in circles through the voting Lobbies over and over for hours on end. That is not an efficient use of 650 MPs’ time.
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
I wish to place on record my agreement with my hon. Friend on that point. In my four short years as a Member I have spent more and more hours walking through the Lobby in multiple votes, especially in the complicated votes on Brexit. We should be here to take part in the debate, and physically present in the Lobby, but we should be able to speed up the process and vote electronically.
Ellie Reeves
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her intervention.
I recall that, on the occasion of one of the EU votes, my Fitbit started buzzing because I had done 10,000 steps, but I had not left Parliament all day: I had just been walking in and out of the voting Lobby. It should not be like that. When we were voting on the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill—obviously an incredibly important issue—we were sometimes voting for nearly two hours, which is a long time and it could be done a lot more quickly. For many of us it is the difference between seeing our families that evening or not. As many will know, my son is a regular in the Lobbies. One vote at 7 pm means he can vote with me, but multiple votes means childcare having to be arranged and my not being able to see him that night.
Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)
I agree with my hon. Friend, and it is about not just Members but the staff of the House seeing their families and getting home.
Ellie Reeves
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I will talk a bit more about that later. This is as much about those who work here as those sitting in the Chamber. Parliament is about a lot more than just us.
There are ways in which we could make the process take less time and be more efficient, while still observing and respecting parliamentary traditions. In recent years, the Clerks have moved from paper forms to recording votes on iPads. Using simple and straightforward technology, we could move to a system in which multiple votes can be registered at the same time. That would not be possible where votes are contingent on one another but, as they rarely are, it could significantly reduce the time we spend voting. Not only would that be a far more efficient use of Members’ time, but it would make a huge difference to those with caring responsibilities or suffering ill health.
In addition, the system of hundreds of Members queuing up to give their name to three Clerks can lead to long queues in the Lobbies, and colleagues have struggled at times with the cramped and claustrophobic conditions. I recall the evening of 15 January, when 432 Members formed a small crush to get into the No Lobby. Instead, we could have a series of electronic booths lined up in the Lobbies, which would speed up the process. It would be simpler, more efficient and, arguably, a lot more accessible.
Alongside the simplification of votes, it is important to look at the certainty of the parliamentary week. We live in extraordinary political times, and a degree of uncertainty and unpredictability will always come with that, but there must be a way to improve the system to provide some degree of routine and certainty to the parliamentary timetable.
At present, we organise our diaries week to week by finding out the next week’s agenda in the business statement on a Thursday morning. If we have late votes on a Monday, it gives Members with caring or childcare responsibilities only one and a half working days to secure arrangements. This can be further complicated by the addition of urgent questions, ministerial statements, Standing Order No. 24 applications and protected time for debates.
Following publication of the “Good Parliament” report, I am delighted that the Women and Equalities Committee has just announced an inquiry into ensuring the House of Commons meets the needs of both men and women and how it can best address equality issues. The right hon. Member for Basingstoke may wish to speak on this in more detail but, 100 years since women were given the right to vote, only 32% of current Members are female, so it is vital that we use such inquiries not only to understand the barriers to greater female representation but to endeavour to remove them.
The inquiry’s terms of reference mention the lack of predictability in, and advance knowledge of, parliamentary sitting patterns. The inquiry would welcome written submissions from anyone with experience of these issues. I hope that many Members will use this opportunity to highlight previous difficulties.
Even the smallest changes can have a big impact in giving certainty to those who work here. For example, the Leader of the House could attempt to provide a provisional fortnightly rundown of the business of the House. The past 20 years have seen widespread and welcome changes to parliamentary hours, and the days of all-night sittings are, thankfully, long gone, but we could look again at this area, perhaps through a Speaker’s Conference, better to judge the feeling across the House.
Members whose families reside inside or outside London will have differing opinions on when is best for Parliament to sit and, although such conversations can be difficult, we should not shy away from having them in order to improve and modernise. We could equally consider deferring more Divisions or allocating set times for casting votes, particularly if lots of votes are to follow the moment of interruption, especially on Mondays when that comes at 10 pm. We could instead defer those Divisions to the next sitting day, for example, much as we do for other motions. That is not just for the benefit of Members; it would give Clerks, House staff and security personnel a better understanding of their working patterns. After all, this debate is as much about them as it is about us.
Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the lack of certainty about things such as recess dates is a problem because it does not allow people to plan holidays if they have children at school? That causes huge problems not only for Members but for staff in this place.
Ellie Reeves
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for pre-empting my next point. The cancellation of recesses this year will no doubt have had negative consequences for the work-life balance of those who help to facilitate the work of Parliament. Without the Clerks, Committee specialists, librarians, catering staff, security personnel, cleaners or the many others who make up the Westminster family, Parliament would grind to a halt and cease to work effectively. Many are restricted to taking time off when the House is in recess. The cancellation of two weeks of recess will no doubt have seen annual leave revoked, holidays cancelled and valuable time with friends and family postponed.
Moreover, I am aware that many of our recesses, although designed to coincide with school holidays, often reflect only London term times. While that is helpful for those who live in London, there are many MPs whose children’s school holidays clash with when Parliament is sitting, placing additional pressure on those Members to arrange suitable childcare for those times. Parliament is often accused of being too London-centric, and although that is not always warranted, we should perhaps be more mindful of that in future when deciding recess dates.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
I think that my hon. Friend knows that I fully support what she is saying, having brought up a very large family when the hours here were pretty terrible. Before she finishes, will she address the challenge we face in wanting to make this place more attractive and somewhere that a woman thinks it is possible to have a family and a proper life? A lot of women are being put off by the daftness of our routines.
Ellie Reeves
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention; I know that he cares strongly about these issues. Parliament is a fantastic place to work, and being a Member of Parliament is a real privilege. There has been lots of change but, as I have said, we should not stop there. We should always be looking at how to break down barriers, make this a more accessible workplace and encourage more and more people to enter.
Parliament has to work for everyone and be open to as many people as possible. For our representative democracy to be truly representative, we have to look outside to make sure that our practices fully reflect society. When I show constituents around Parliament, we often get on to the topic of prayer cards. Many are surprised that we still participate in daily Christian prayers. While I find the process of prayers at the start of the parliamentary day a calming influence and the support of the Speaker’s Chaplain invaluable, by limiting that part of our procedures to Christian beliefs only we are missing an opportunity to widen the appeal of Parliament and better reflect the country. I would fully welcome bringing other faith leaders into Parliament to offer a selection of readings that reflect the make-up of the communities that we represent. Likewise, for those of no religion, an apolitical “thought of the day” could be introduced. There is an opportunity here, too, to improve our customs better to reflect the world around us.
As I said earlier, while appetite for change varies from Member to Member, and while no one person has all the answers to improving how our parliamentary democracy works, it is clear that we must have more debates such as this to give Members a platform and an opportunity to express their views on how Parliament can best operate. It is undeniable that Westminster is often an outdated place. I am thankful for the previous efforts made by so many people to enhance and modernise our Parliament, including the Whips, who are always so understanding, particularly on childcare, but I acknowledge that they have to work within the existing frameworks.
As I hope I have made clear, this debate is not just about the work of Members. It is about making Parliament more modern and accessible for the thousands of other people who work on the parliamentary estate and those who wish to come here in future and make our democracy even more representative of those we seek to serve. Just as we needed the full transparency of proxy voting for those on parental leave, if we are to make Parliament a more modern, family-friendly and accessible workplace, we now need to make Divisions more straightforward and bring a degree of certainty to people’s work routines. If we can continue these conversations and set about enacting positive change, we will see our democracy flourish and reach our goal of becoming the Parliament that truly reflects society as a whole.
Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves) on securing this important debate, and I look forward to hearing the other contributions. I commend the work that has already been done, particularly, as she says, by the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), Mr Speaker and many others, including the former Leader of the House, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom). I am sure that the new Leader of the House will be a valiant champion of the need to ensure that this is a good place to work in future.
We have to start this debate with some cold, hard facts. We know that we are a group of people who are hugely committed to our communities, and that we are professional, sensible people, but all too often this place can be portrayed as chaotic because of the way that we do, or do not, organise ourselves. That is not only down to the Government’s motions and the Order Paper. We have to start to look at how this place looks from the outside if we really are to resolve the problems that we face in respect of this place, not only as a workplace for Members of Parliament, but as somewhere that represents our constituents.
Winston Churchill once said that
“we shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.”
Never a truer word has been said of this place. I love this place and would never want to see Parliament move out of it, but we have to take it into account when we try to understand why it currently does not work as a workplace for so many people. The building was built for a time when this country was a very different place and very different people became Members of Parliament. How many people were wheelchair users back when this place was first built, or rebuilt after the fire? How many people were women? We know the answer to that one: absolutely none. This building was built and our procedures were set out when women and disabled people were not considered, and when dads had few responsibilities compared with those they have today. We have to take all these things into consideration as we move forward.
Mr Sheerman
The right hon. Lady is making an excellent point, as did the previous speaker, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves), but both are MPs quite close to London. The Speaker once came to Huddersfield and spent a lovely day with me. When he got off the train, he said, “This is a long way, isn’t it?”. It is 192 miles. In some senses, the perspectives of those of who come to work here from a long distance away are qualitatively different from the perspectives of people who represent London and south-east England.
Mrs Miller
The hon. Gentleman has brought up an important point. Part of the problem we have is that each one of us is very different. I am a commuting MP, and my journey to and from this place takes an hour and 40 minutes. I am sure it does not take the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge an hour and 40 minutes to get home—I hope it does not; otherwise, she needs to have a chat with her Mayor of London. It is wrong to sweep us all into a “London and the south-east” bag and assume that we all have the same challenges. It is different for each of us.
Mr Sheerman
It is fundamental, though, is it not? We start at 2.30 pm on a Monday because people have to get here from Scotland and the north of England, flying, using rail and so on, and these days we finish early on a Thursday because people have to get back to their constituencies. We are moulded a bit by the distances that many of us are from Parliament.
Mrs Miller
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that those are factors to consider. In fact, one reason why I was not going to talk about start and finish times was that it is a specific discussion. If he will allow me to take issue slightly with what he said, I feel that certainty is far more important. We can all cope with a lot of things in life as long as we know what is going on. All too often, the chaos that I mentioned feels very real, not just to us and staff in our parliamentary offices, but to members of staff here. I have been asked a number of times in the Tea Room, “Ms Miller, do you know when the vote might come?”. People want to be able to plan their days. The way in which this place is organised, and particularly the use of urgent questions, is a real problem for us, but I will come on to that in more detail in a moment.
Mrs Miller
Of course I give way to the right hon. Gentleman. I hope that Madam Deputy Speaker will not take a dim view of my allowing interventions.
Tom Brake
Does the right hon. Lady agree that another factor that must be taken into account is whether the Government of the day have a majority? She was elected in 2005, and I suspect that between 2005 and 2015, there was a degree of stability in people’s ability to plan work, because successive Governments had a majority. When that is not the case, things become much more unpredictable.
Mrs Miller
I understand the right hon. Gentleman’s point, but it is not the point that I am making. He is right that there is an unpredictability when we have to deal with enormous issues such as Brexit. I suppose that I am talking about the things that we can control that we are not controlling, and that, I think, is part of a modern workplace. I will come on to that in a bit more detail.
We all agree that being a Member of this place is an immense honour, but that does not mean that we have to keep it in a time warp. Sometimes we feel the great pressure of the history of this place. We may not want to challenge what has gone before for fear of being seen to be disrespectful of it. We must acknowledge that that is a pressure on each of us as Members, perhaps in different ways.
Modernisation would help us to attract new and different people to being Members of Parliament. Yes, perhaps it would attract more women, more disabled people or people with younger children, but it would be people who want a less chaotic and more certain place in which to work—a place to which they feel they can contribute.
There is a much more fundamental issue here for all of us, regardless of our gender, sexuality or ethnicity. If we thought about this place in a more focused way, it would help us to retain Members of Parliament. This place is at its best when we have Members who have been here for many years as well as Members who are brand new, because that gives a perspective on procedure, debate and the history of this place. We need to work far harder at retaining MPs. Women in particular move away from this place far too soon. It would also help us to support better our staff in our parliamentary offices, and those parliamentary staff who support us so freely and so well. We have a responsibility to act to make sure that this is a modern workplace.
Another more fundamental issue that I will place on the table for others to comment on is trust in Parliament. We can take this debate today at a very superficial level—as being about women with children, childcare and nurseries—but it is also about how much trust people have in a workplace that looks more akin to the 18th century than the 21st.
The Brexit process has challenged people’s trust not just in parliamentarians, but in the nature of Parliament. We need to keep that in mind as we move forward and think very carefully about the challenge that the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge has put on the table today. We cannot continually kick into the long grass the need to modernise this place and to get to grips with some of the issues set out by her, me, the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) and the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake).
Some of the groundwork has been done with “The Good Parliament” guide, and I think that all of us would want to put on record our sincere thanks to Professor Sarah Childs for what she has done. Some of those changes, as the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge said, have come into play. The nursery is very important, not just for us, but for our staff. My staff use that nursery, and I can keep great staff, which I might not otherwise have been able to do, because we have that nursery.
Proxy voting is long overdue, but being modern is not just about people who have small babies. My very small babies are now very large babies; in fact, the youngest is 17. It is actually even more difficult—you might have some sympathy with this, Madam Deputy Speaker—to look after a 12-year-old, if you have no childcare, when you are trying to go and vote or have been called in for a meeting during a recess. On more than one occasion, my children were parked with a policeman at the back of the Speaker’s Chair—thank goodness for those policemen providing that help and support—because nothing else was available. As we think of modernisation, we must think more roundly about the pressures on our lives at times other than those very important times when we have small children, and that we think about buildings and procedures hand in hand.
I hope that this debate will make us feel that we need a clear plan for moving forward. I pay tribute to Sarah Childs for her report. I pay tribute to the work that the Speaker has done, the work done by the Commons reference group on representation and inclusion, and all the other elements of work that has been going on, including, obviously, around the Cox report. Many, many different things are happening, but to me it all feels very fragmented. As somebody who is incredibly interested in this issue, I have found it very difficult to keep up with what is really going on. The right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington, who is on the Commission, will of course know far more than I do, and will be on top of it all, but it can be very difficult for many of us to know the long-term vision for this House as a modern workplace.
It feels very much as though—this is meant not as a criticism, but as an observation of fact—modernisation is being considered in quite a piecemeal way. We need to think about the risks that that poses to our being able to hold people to account for delivery of modernisation. We need to have clear managerial responsibility for modernisation. At the end of this debate, who will be responsible for making sure that the things we have talked about actually happen? I do not think it should be the Leader of the House, because he is also part of Government—it should be wider than that. We need to think about the procedures and the processes in play.
One immediate and very deep concern that I have is for the mental health of our parliamentary and constituency staff, and of Members of Parliament, because the chaotic approach and uncertainty that I mentioned are well-known triggers for mental health problems. If we do not act quite swiftly on this, we are at risk of being widely criticised for not acting. Constant uncertainty has an impact. We do not know when debates will start every day, because we do not know how many urgent questions there will be. We think, “Does that mean I will have to cancel or move meetings?” Of course, it is not just us who do that—it is also our parliamentary staff. Some Members who do not have parliamentary staff here have to do it themselves. It is a very inefficient use of time.
The hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge highlighted inefficiencies around voting, but I would say that the issue is much more widespread than that. The right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington talked about Brexit. Yes, that has certainly brought a lot more unpredictability into the system, but we could take control of a great deal of that unpredictability and that chaotic feel.
I call on those who are able to influence these matters to hold an urgent review of the House timetable. I would be interested in the Leader of the House’s comments. He is relatively new to the post, but I am sure that he already has well-formed views on these things. Could we, for instance, put urgent questions before questions and debates? If these questions are so urgent, let us have them before we start the day. As the hon. Member for Huddersfield said, most Members of Parliament are here in London. The vast majority are not like me, commuting on the train. We could therefore perhaps have urgent questions at 8.30 am, before the day starts, so that they do not disrupt the flow of Members’ days—or perhaps from 9.30 am to 10.30 am, to help people with caring responsibilities. That would be a way forward. It seems straightforward to me; I am not sure why we do not do it.
When I joined this place, I had three children, the youngest of whom was three. I have a husband, and I care for two elderly parents who live with me. I am a living and breathing sandwich generation person, and I do not think we speak up enough for sandwich generation people. We often hear people with young children talk, but we do not hear those with caring responsibilities talk enough. I believe greatly that we should all do more to look after our elderly and ailing parents. As well as talking about nurseries, we need to talk about elder care issues, for not only ourselves but our members of staff.
We need a Parliament to be proud of, that attracts the best to stand for election and to be members of staff here, regardless of their age, ethnicity, gender, sexuality or caring responsibilities. Our building, procedures, culture and philosophy here are hugely important—they shape our Parliament, but what should also shape our Parliament is the people we represent. How does a young woman who comes here to visit me feel when I take her into Committee Room 14, which I love, and she sees no women on the wall, just a group of extremely old men? How does any person from a black and minority ethnic background feel about how representative this Parliament is of them when they see nobody of any minority ethnic background on the walls? I will probably now be corrected; there will be someone somewhere. How does a wheelchair user feel when they have to use the service lift to get around?
We need to take all those issues into account when we talk about restoration and renewal. How do people feel when their meetings with their MP are cancelled at a moment’s notice because three urgent questions are granted on the day, with little notice, causing the sort of chaos that we now see daily?
James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
I apologise for not having been here for the beginning of the debate; I hope I am not being discourteous. I am listening carefully to my right hon. Friend, and I agree strongly with most of what she says. However, I am concerned about her suggestion of having urgent questions at some other time than when the House is sitting. Surely the whole point of an urgent question is that a Member of Parliament —a Back Bencher—can raise an urgent matter, and the Speaker may or may not allow that to occur. If there is a special slot for UQs at some time other than when the House is sitting, surely they would lose their entire purpose.
Mrs Miller
My hon. Friend is right. I suppose I am suggesting that we would sit from half-past 9. Moving towards a more nine-to-five approach to our day here would not only be better for people who live in London; this place would then look a little bit more like everybody else’s workplace. I do not know whether the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington experiences the same thing, but when I am on the train in the morning, my constituents say, “Why were you on the train at 20 minutes past 10 on Monday night? That can’t be a very effective use of your time.” I am not particularly suggesting that we should have urgent questions when the House is not sitting. I am just suggesting that we need to think about organising them into the day, so that they do not continually create a sense of chaos, with no one knowing when debates will start or finish.
Mr Sheerman
I thank the right hon. Lady for giving way again; she is being very kind. She has paid a lot of tributes, but I hope she does not mind me saying that she has missed one. Having been in this place a long time, I know that it became civilised because women came here. I do not want to use the “B” word too often, because I will get a bad reputation, but Tony Blair made a hell of a difference to this place. He helped to increase the number of women in this place, and women have changed it a lot since 1997. There is much more to do, but we should put it on the record that women have already civilised this place almost unrecognisably from when I was a young MP.
Mrs Miller
That is an interesting reflection. Having a broader range of people in Parliament, regardless of gender, would also have a civilising effect, but I tend to agree. It is nice to have a Parliament that resembles the constituencies we represent.
This is such an important debate—perhaps even more so than the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge intimated. It is about trust in this place, because if this place does not look like anything else and does not act in an apparently professional and organised manner, we undermine our constituents’ trust in a place that is there to represent them and their views. Parliament enables us to serve our constituents, and we need to ensure, in planning for the future, that this is a place they can relate to and is accessible for them. Right now, we can make real change quite quickly and create far more certainty in our days by stopping the use of UQs at the beginning of the day to delay, amend or sometimes even obliterate debate completely because of the number that have been granted.
I will close my remarks there, but reflecting what the hon. Member for Huddersfield said a few moments ago, let me say that when I first met you, Madam Deputy Speaker, you said: “Women in this place have to work twice as hard as men, because we are still not 50% of the people here.” You are absolutely right, and hon. Ladies will know that. Part of my contribution to the debate was really to reflect on the comment you made to me all those years ago. We do need far more women here to have the civilising influence that the hon. Gentleman was talking about.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I am delighted to hear the right hon. Lady say that. The situation has improved somewhat since those days, but it has a long way to go. I can say that with the impartiality of the Chair, because I do not think there is anyone who will disagree.
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
First, I ought to mention that when I applied to speak in this debate, I told Mr Speaker that I might have to leave the debate slightly early, and I apologised for that—ironically, for family reasons.
I want to speak mainly about the accessibility part of this debate, but I will mention one or two other things briefly. When the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) mentioned that there are no ethnic minority portraits in the Palace, she said somebody would stand up and correct her, and that is what I am going to do. I have seen one, and that is Shapurji Saklatvala, who was the MP for Battersea North a long time ago, before the war. He is one, but what about David Pitt or Learie Constantine, who were both Members of the House of Lords? I have seen no illustrations of them. In particular, Learie Constantine was a giant of 20th-century politics. His actions led to the first Race Relations Act in the 1960s, among many other things, and he was the first non-white peer to be appointed, again in the 1960s. There is no recognition of Learie Constantine or, for that matter, of David Pitt, who equally made a great contribution.
I want to mention one other thing before I move on to accessibility. To this day, it is more difficult for women to be MPs, particularly if they are travelling from a long way away from Parliament. I can remember one example. I will not name this particular individual because she is a friend of mine, and I have not warned her that I was going to mention it. When I was first elected in 1997, I remember one of the many women elected in that intake, who was a terrific MP and a great speaker. If anybody in this Chamber saw her speak, they would have thought that woman was going places—that she was going to be in a future Cabinet, or whatever. She had small children and a constituency about 100 miles from Parliament, and within weeks she said to me, “I’m going to do one term, and then I’m off. I just cannot juggle everything I’ve got to do with the hours.” Some things have improved, but many of them still have a long way to go.
Mr Sheerman
My hon. Friend, because of his family history, knows about this subject better than almost anybody I know. I was a friend of his father and I am still a friend of his mother, who had adjoining constituencies to mine. He will know, because he has that dual perspective, how different it is being a Member of Parliament with a constituency in, say, Yorkshire—a long way away—and being a London MP. If we are going to modernise this House, we have to balance the two very carefully indeed.
John Cryer
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I think things have changed to a large extent. He mentioned my dad, who was an MP here in the 1970s, when there were all-night sittings. From 1974 to 1979, just on our side of the House, we lost 17 MPs in five years from heart attacks, strokes, haemorrhages and all the rest of it. Things have changed, but as I have said, they still have a long way to go.
John Cryer
That would be quite tricky to introduce—we could probably have a whole week of debates about such things, so I will not dwell on that.
Let me move on to accessibility. We all have disabled constituents—members of local associations, Liberal Democrat organisations, or constituency Labour parties—who come to see us, often in wheelchairs. They find it difficult to get in and out of the Palace of Westminster, despite the efforts of staff who work hard to make things as easy and accessible as possible for those with disabilities. A lot of community groups, particularly Afro-Caribbean community groups, tend to have an older age profile with members who often walk with difficulty or are in wheelchairs, and who find it difficult to get in and out of the supposed mother of Parliaments.
Some years ago I was not an MP but a trade union officer. I was the political officer for what was then the Transport and General Workers Union and is now Unite the union. It is the biggest union in the country, and has a large number of disabled members. I remember organising a lobby, and as usual with lobbies the meeting took place on the main Committee corridor. We were campaigning to keep the Remploy factories open, and the industrial officer who organised that lobby with me was Jennie Formby, now general secretary of the Labour party—I still work with her. There was only a small group of people in wheelchairs, but I vividly remember it taking an hour and a half to take those people from the Committee corridor to Carriage Gates where they could get in cabs. Even getting people picked up in cabs was tricky—it was not just about getting them from the corridor to Carriage Gates.
This is supposedly a people’s Parliament, but if a large section of the population cannot easily get in and out, can it really be that? We must change things. I am not sure exactly how we should change them in a building such as this, which, as the right hon. Member for Basingstoke said, was built in a different era and for very different needs, but they must change. We must be able to get people who have serious or lesser disabilities in and out of Parliament, so that they can get to Central Lobby, Westminster Hall, the Committee corridor and the upper Committee corridor. If we cannot do that when work takes place over the next few years, we will struggle to call it a people’s Parliament.
Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves) for securing this important debate, and other colleagues for their contributions.
I wanted to speak in this debate because I think there are two purposes to the drive to continue the reform of Parliament. The first is to ensure that Parliament is as attractive a workplace as possible for as many people as possible. I am always disappointed when, either on a school visit or in my constituency, I ask people to put their hands up if they would like to take over from me as the next Member of Parliament for Bristol North West, and there are very few people—this includes young children and people at my coffee mornings or my constituency pub politics—who want to do that. I am sure there are a whole host of reasons why people might not want to become a Member of Parliament, but it is a huge shame for this Parliament and for our country.
One of those reasons—this is true especially for women, because even with hands-on fathers such as myself, women still bear the burden of child caring responsibilities, as does my wife, who I pay tribute to today—is that people see the chaos. People see the lack of planning, the living in two locations, and think, “How on earth could I do the school run or deal with nursery?” As I am now learning, with multiple children that becomes even harder. We must continue to reform this place so that it is somewhere to which people from across the spectrum of our community wish to come and contribute, and answer that public service calling. People need a workplace that works for them and their family.
I should also make the case for fathers. As I said, my wife still bears the childcare burden because of the inflexibility of what happens in this place, and I am disappointed by that. We should always remember that dads want to spend time with their children and families as well, and in this modern age people should be able to balance those obligations with their choice of career. Many of my peers who work in business or in other organisations increasingly take employment and career choices that mean they have more flexibility to be with their families: maybe not working on Fridays, taking an early or a late finish to be able to do the school run, or being in an annualised hours position where they can take school holidays off. Many of our wives are successful people in their own careers. We want to be able to help them and contribute to raising our families, so that they can pursue their careers alongside us.
Parliament has an important role in setting the tone, not just in the delivery of democracy in this House but in what we as a Parliament expect from the wider economy. There have been many debates in this Chamber and in Westminster Hall about the impact of difficulties around childcare, family choices and practices in the workplace: the fact that dads are not having access to shared parental leave because it will have an impact on their career, and the “mummy track” impact on mums, losing the salary and seniority they deserve as a consequence of caring for children. We need to be saying that we want reform in this place, as well as in the wider economy. We should set the tone here and then legislate, through the Government, to ensure that the same is the case for the wider country.
We should give thanks, as other hon. Members have, for the progress that has been made. As a new Member, I did not know that the nursery in 1 Parliament Street used to be a wine bar. That was news to me. Apparently there was a debate about whether we needed one fewer pub in this place. I do not know why we have a pub at all. I know that might be a controversial statement, but I have never had one in my workplaces before. A nursery seems perfectly sensible, and I welcome that.
I benefited from proxy voting after the birth of my second daughter, Edie, when I was able to proxy vote via my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy). There was a clear distinction between the arrival of my first and my second. My first daughter, Ophelia, was born when we were having crunch votes on Brexit. My phone was ringing in the delivery suite, asking whether I was available to vote. I was allowed off the Whip on that occasion, but in the immediate days after the arrival of my daughter, when a father wants to be at home to help and contribute, I had to come back and forth to vote. Proxy voting has solved that, but—this was mentioned in the debate on proxy voting, because I was here for it—dads are able to benefit from proxy voting for only two weeks. If I want to take more time in a shared parental leave setting, as I could do in a workplace outside of here, I am unable to do so. That is one example of why the case for reform and modernisation needs to continue.
I should pay tribute and thanks. There are, of course, some benefits to raising a family here in Parliament. I shall just share a short story, which is loosely related to the topic today. My wife took my two daughters to see her sister-in-law in Washington DC recently. Of course, to take children on to a plane they need passports. It was very easy to get my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge, as someone with standing in our community, to sign the passport documents to authorise that my daughters are real. Sadly, my hon. Friend forgot to put her passport number on the form. My wife went to the passport office. I was in the constituency, an example of having to live in two locations, and received a call from my wife in distress. It was the last date to be able to get the passports sorted, otherwise the trip would have to be cancelled. My hon. Friend was in her constituency being busy, too.
Much to our relief, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) turned up at the passport office here in London and filled in the form in place of my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge, until he realised that he had lost his passport, which was why he was there, and could not sign off the form. To the rescue was my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer), the husband of my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge. Between the chair of the parliamentary Labour party, the shadow Chancellor and two Labour MPs, we solved the passport problem. Why on earth we could not just put a form in the post like every other family, I have no idea.
On that note, Madam Deputy Speaker, I again congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge on securing this debate. I congratulate other right hon. and hon. Members on continuing the push for reform at pace, to make this a place where mums and dads who want children and want to be able to spend time with their family will come and contribute to the public service and leadership of our country, so that together we can lead that change for the economy, too.
Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)
I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves) on this excellent debate. It is sad that it is not more broadly attended because it is an important topic. As a Member of Parliament who has to spend anywhere between 10 and 15 hours a week travelling to and from my constituency, I was grateful to hear of the great experiences that others have who travel shorter distances.
Members have made important contributions. The late and much-missed Jo Cox said that we in Westminster
“are behind the curve compared with working practice in much of industry, and the charitable and public sectors, and that is a problem… if we act differently and change the culture and working practices here, we can change how others operate. We should do that, because we are here to change and improve the United Kingdom.”—[Official Report, 10 November 2015; Vol. 602, c. 46WH.]
I could not agree more. If we are to make laws and policies that are forward thinking and progressive, we must get our own house in order.
When I came to this place, I could not help thinking it was a cross between Downton Abbey and Hogwarts. I know people have great affection for the Houses of Parliament, but there is no doubt it is stuck in the past. It is steeped in great history, but it is not forward looking enough. It has a rich history of failing to be a workplace that is anywhere near as functional or inclusive as it should be. The hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) spoke of his shock and surprise when he arrived here to see how many pubs there were. I shared that experience.
Of the many places I have ever worked—the corporate industry, the energy sector, other MPs’ offices, foreign Governments—the only place I have seen something similar is the media. I started at Good Morning Television the year after the last pub in the building had been closed, and it was closed for a very good reason. People often visit us here in our workplace—for example, we bring constituents into this place—and it is still a mystery to me that there are so many pubs and places to buy alcohol and that alcohol is served during the day at receptions.
None the less, progress has been made. When we introduced proxy voting, I think we all breathed a sigh of relief. It has been interesting to hear from male colleagues whose partners have recently had babies or are about to have them and who have missed out on proxy voting but who will now benefit from it. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) has just introduced a proposal for extended parental leave for those who have premature babies. That is a sensible proposal that I hope the Minister will consider.
Dame Laura Cox’s report last October concluded that a
“culture of deference, subservience, acquiescence and silence”
was enabling abuses of power and the mistreatment of colleagues to go unchecked. It should not have taken one of our colleagues having to come here in a wheelchair on the day she was due to give birth to force proxy voting through. She was incredibly brave in what she did—she stood by her principles—and it is because of her that we have finally taken that step forward.
We have heard many stories about an endemic culture that normalises bullying and harassment, which continue to permeate our politics. That is the sad reality of decades and centuries of ancient tradition in this place. We have plans to refurbish this place. It is predicted to cost between £4 billion and £6 billion of taxpayers’ money just to bring this place and the other place up to standard. The Scottish Parliament, which will shortly celebrate its 20th anniversary, cost a little under half a billion pounds. We could build between eight and 10 Scottish Parliaments for the cost of the refurbishment. Some argue that this place would be better turned into a museum and that we could build a new Parliament in another part of the UK.
Mrs Miller
I did not want to stop the hon. Lady’s flow, but she referred earlier to the Cox report and the grievance procedures. I hope that she will have noted that we have secured a short debate on the Floor of the House next Tuesday to press for progress in those areas. I hope that she will be able to support that debate.
Hannah Bardell
The right hon. Lady has read my mind, because I was coming to that. I am glad to see that among the threadbare business for next week there will be an update on that important piece of work. It is very important that we move that forward. I commend her on the important work that she and the Women and Equalities Committee, which she chairs, have done on this. She said that the Brexit process had challenged people’s trust in politics and in this place. I agree with that and would go further: it has exposed the crumbling relic of a democratic institution that this place is. We face the prospect of having a candidate for Prime Minister who wants to prorogue Parliament and have a no-deal Brexit, which will have a devastating impact. How will we get public trust if we cannot even have proper business and legislation in this place?
The right hon. Lady talked about the built environment and the paintings around this place. I have had the good fortune to sit on the Speaker’s Advisory Committee on Works of Art, and it has been a privilege to do so and particularly to see the work that has been done on the 209 Women project. I commend all those involved in that project, but during that period, I learned that 25 times more money had been spent over the past 20 years on buying pictures of men for this place than had been spent on buying pictures of women. Let us not forget that the photographs of the female parliamentarians who took part in the 209 Women project were taken by female photographers, who were not paid, which is a really important point. When we are trying to support women and their work, we must remember that they should be properly recognised. Without radical changes to this place to make it more inclusive, we will not properly reflect society.
We have made significant strides. We are the gayest Parliament in the world, or one of the gayest, and I am proud to be a woman who is gay in this place. When I stood for election and for selection, I stood against four men. I looked at the line-up and thought, “Why do I want to do this? Why do I want to go up against four men to go to a place that is very male dominated?” I did it because I wanted to be part of the change that I know many young women cannot see.
In Scotland, we have also made significant strides. We have a gender-balanced Cabinet. When Nicola Sturgeon became First Minister, she was one of only a handful of leaders in the world to do that. It is really important that we have politicians who are hard-working, relatable and can bring their personal experiences to this place. We saw that in the most recent election. There are Members across this House with a vast array of life experiences, but we have to make sure that we have that not just in Parliament and its elected representatives, but in our media. I often look up at the Press Gallery, at the press who are looking down at us, and I do not see many female faces or people of colour. It is really important that we have people reporting on our politics who are as diverse as possible.
We have had contributions from Members who have spoken about access to this place. If this building was being built from scratch today, there is absolutely no way in which it would meet health and safety standards. The hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge talked about the voting system. We have proxy voting, but electronic voting would save us a huge amount of time. On the last count that I did, which was in March, I calculated that we had spent 205 hours—five and a half working weeks—just voting. Given that Parliament sits for only 35 or 36 weeks a year, a huge amount of time is being wasted just on voting. Nobody is arguing that we should not be here debating and voting. That is extremely important, but, as the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) said, perhaps we could have an allotted time for urgent questions and have predictability in our business, particularly when we have people travelling from our constituencies, businesses and other organisations to come to see us in Parliament. Having to cancel meetings at the last minute and not being able to get back for children’s events and caring responsibilities is a ridiculous situation. There is no other such employment anywhere. We do our constituents an injustice, and in my view we cannot properly represent them and their issues when there is such a lack of predictability, progress and activity from a legislative perspective. Brexit has dominated so much of the legislative timetable that it has created and exposed the inadequacies of the system.
I understand that people like the banter and to have a wee chat in the voting Lobbies, but for goodness’ sake, we live in a modern world. We should be able to have those meetings and engage with one another. It just exposes the inaccessibility of the Government and the inability to get answers from them that people feel the need to use the time in the voting Lobbies just to corner other people, because they cannot get the proper responses, meetings and time that they feel they need.
Tom Brake
I want to use this opportunity to draw to the attention of the hon. Lady and other Members present to the fantastic opportunity that we have with the Northern Estate programme, as part of which we shall build a, I think badly named, temporary Chamber—a Chamber that could in fact be permanent. If we cannot get reform here—which is quite difficult to do, because there is a certain amount of inertia—we should make sure that for that temporary Chamber, which we will be sitting in from about 2025 onwards, those issues are at the very least tested, so that if they are successful, they can be reintroduced here when we come back to a new Palace of Westminster in 2031 or thereabouts.
Hannah Bardell
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that important point. However, if I am still here in 2031 and Scotland is not an independent country, I will eat my hat, quite literally. The thought that I would still be having to come to this place horrifies me.
We do not have a seat in the Chamber for every Member. So many times I have heard people argue, “We need to queue up and vote in the Lobbies because people need to be here for the debate,” yet we can only fit half the Members of this place into this Chamber to listen to a debate. For goodness’ sake—it is common sense. Let us have a Chamber that is big enough. I know of so few Parliaments—I have been in Parliaments all over the world, including Malawi at the beginning of last year—that do not have electronic voting. The European Parliament and the Council of Europe have it, as do the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly. It is not difficult, so for goodness’ sake, let us just get on and do it.
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), in a recent speech, made a point about half terms and summer breaks. She included reference to experiences in Scotland. In parts of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, the recesses do not match up to the holidays. I have colleagues who sometimes have an overlap of less than 10 days, so they cannot even get a break with their families. I am in no doubt that we have a huge amount of privilege being in this place, and this is not about having a rant and a moan; it is about saying to our constituents, “Look, we could do a much better job for you, and a much better job by you, and more people—women—from across the social and the economic spectrum could be encouraged into this place if it had a proper, modern working ethic.”
I shall finish by reflecting on some of the experiences of my staff, many of whom have been with me since I was first elected. About the end of 2015, we started an all-party group on deaths abroad and consular services, because we had two constituents—women—who had been killed abroad in suspicious circumstances. Since then, we have taken evidence from about 60 families across the UK who have lost loved ones abroad. That has been a harrowing and deeply distressing experience for me and my staff—nothing like the experience that those families have had, but none the less the vicarious trauma that my staff and I have experienced has been significant.
We have worked with the parliamentary authorities to get the right emotional support, and it has become very clear to me that there is not appropriate emotional support for staff members. All our staff members do an incredible job, and they often have to deal with distressing and difficult constituency work. We must do much more, through the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority and the other authorities, to ensure that our staff get the proper support when they come to work for an MP, because we are all individual employers and we have a very important responsibility to our staff to ensure that they are properly protected. They will be able to serve our constituents properly only if they get the right support, and this place will be a modern Parliament that can properly reflect all parts of the UK and all people who live in it only if we can make it a modern and sensible working place.
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
There are some heavyweight names attached to the motion: that of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), and my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves), who opened the debate with an outstanding, wide-ranging speech. It was right to bring this matter to our attention and to keep it on the agenda.
Before my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer) goes off to do his bit in childcare, I have to say that it is good to see that my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge has dispatched him to do that. It would be interesting to hear from him on what it was like to be the child of an MP. It certainly did not put him off. He was also an older child of another MP—both his father and his mother were Members of Parliament. It is good to see him in his place, but we accept that he has other duties to go and do.
Many Members are probably not aware that the sitting time changes were thanks to Dame Joan Ruddock, who pulled together a group of cross-party Members. We consulted and voted on the various proposed times. It is pleasing that the Health Secretary, a hands-on-dad, was also involved.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) was part of a group of new MPs, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge, who contributed to an important Fabian Society pamphlet about change. I wrote the introduction. I did not agree with all the suggestions in the pamphlet, but it was good to see that new Members were proposing changes.
A number of reports have been published. Many Members have referred to “The Good Parliament” by Professor Sarah Childs, which was commissioned by the Speaker and published as long ago as 2016. Its 43 recommendations address three parliamentary dimensions. Even before its publication, people were making trivial remarks such as “Oh, it is about everyone using the same toilet.” Professor Childs had to arrange many meetings to try to convince people that hers was a serious and hard-hitting report.
As I have said, the report identified three parliamentary dimensions. The first was “Equality and Participation”, which asked
“how a diverse group of MPs might be selected for, and elected to, Parliament”.
The second, “Parliamentary Infrastructure”,
“covers everything from the buildings and furniture of Parliament to the official rules and working practices”.
The third, “Commons Culture”, looked beyond the formal rules to examine the parliamentary culture and its effect on diversity.
Who selects parliamentary candidates is a matter for the parties. My hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), who is not present at the moment, has put the responsibility for all-women shortlists squarely on Tony Blair. I would say to him that many members of the Labour party, women and men, fought long and hard to secure all-women shortlists. As a result, 49% of the parliamentary Labour party are women. That movement rose from the grassroots to the higher echelons of the party, and 1997, when so many women were elected to Parliament, was an important milestone.
Tom Brake
Does the hon. Lady agree that some fantastic organisations are working to improve diversity in the House, notably Operation Black Vote? I mention OBV by way of an apology to her and to the Leader of the House, because I have to attend an event that it is hosting here this afternoon. The event will finish by 5 pm, and if I do not leave I will miss the opportunity to support and, perhaps, mentor a person from OBV to ensure that people from ethnic minorities are better represented in the House.
Valerie Vaz
I absolutely agree with the right hon. Gentleman, and I congratulate Sir Simon Woolley on his elevation in the Queen’s birthday honours. It is well deserved. I mentored someone from Operation Black Vote last year. It has an incredibly good set of people who come from different backgrounds; the person whom I mentored worked in social care. That is the kind of organisation that we need to have.
I do not know if you are aware of this, Madam Deputy Speaker, but the Commissions of both Houses have responded to the UK gender-sensitive parliament audit, the first ever such audit produced in the UK. The Commissions are monitoring and publishing annual progress against four of the audit’s priority recommendations. The kind of recommendations that they are prioritising are
“Developing a parliamentary policy for children and families”,
informed by good practice in other Parliaments;
“responding to the Cox report, and…forthcoming inquiries”
on bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct; awareness of the support available to MPs, peers and staff
“to address abuse and threats via social media”;
and making information
“more readily available on the different groups or organisations in Parliament with specialist knowledge…and clearly signposted”
in order to
“support parliamentarians to take account of gender impacts in their work”.
We are pleased that the monitoring will continue.
Many Members have mentioned restoration and renewal, which gives us an opportunity to focus on the physical aspects. We need to make life much easier for people with disabilities or hearing difficulties. In new buildings such as Portcullis House, it is much easier for those with hearing difficulties to hear people. Everything possible has to be done to make Parliament accessible.
The right hon. Member for Basingstoke is right: a number of reports are coming out and we must make sure we do not lose sight of any of them. They need to be pulled together; the House authorities are aware of that, and certainly the Clerk of the House has his eye on how they will all pull together.
Mrs Miller
I have a genuine question: the Clerk of the House is not responsible to Members here; how do we solve that problem? It is very difficult for Members to know who is responsible for these things, because the Clerk cannot come to the Floor of the House.
Valerie Vaz
I did not mean that they were responsible; ultimately it is a matter for the Commission to pull those reports together. Reports will come to the Commission and will then be disseminated. I do not know whether the right hon. Lady is aware of this, but many of the responses given to the Commission are disseminated; if she checks her inbox and the parliamentary intranet she will see that everything that goes on in the Commission is published, as are any reports that need to be brought to people’s attention.
There is political will on this. It is not just a matter for the Leader of the House and the Opposition parties. We will work together, but certainly the Commission is the governing body at this stage, until things change—if they do; and if people want a more accountable Commission, that is what will happen. At present, however, these matters are for the parties nominated to the Commission, and the Clerk of the House. It is not for individual MPs to take it on themselves to do these things, although I have to say that when individual MPs have good ideas and take them to various places such as the Commission, they come to fruition. The right hon. Lady sat on the Speaker’s reference Committee; I know she is not on it currently, but that shows that there are good things that people can pull together. Things can and do happen.
Mrs Miller
Does the hon. Lady think the current House of Commons Commission is accountable, and if not would she support change?
Valerie Vaz
Well, we are all elected, and we are all appointed by our parties; we also have two non-executives who sit—[Interruption.] The right hon. Lady says we are appointed, but the Leader of the House and I are on it by virtue of our parties through the usual channels; that is the way it works. I am sure she is not casting any aspersions on the previous or current Leader of the House. It is an interesting way of working. The Clerks—the House authorities—have to be responsible for the way the House operates, and then things are done through the Commission. the fact that we have a Commission is very good. I sat on the House of Commons Governance Committee; we heard evidence on how things it works, and things changed as a result of that. There is an opportunity, if Members wish, to have another House of Commons Governance Committee—whether the Leader of the House and I would be on it, I do not know. The work is disseminated, however, as the right hon. Lady will see if she checks the intranet.
Of course we also have the Cox report, and Alison Stanley has now reported on whether the independent complaints and grievance scheme works. Her report makes for interesting reading. A unit has been tasked with implementing some work. We have a newly appointed independent director of cultural transformation, Julie Harding, who is doing town hall meetings with staff and trying to understand what goes on in order to get cultural change, and that will continue.
In a previous debate, I said I did not know what was happening to Professor Sarah Childs’ recommendations, and suggested that we do what is normally done to keep track of projects: have a Gantt chart, on which we collect all the recommendations. As the right hon. Lady is Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, I wonder if she might look at the report three years on, and commission a further inquiry on where we are on Professor Sarah Childs’ report and how many recommendations have been actioned. People thought the proxy voting was going to be difficult, but it has been as smooth as possible and works really well.
The right hon. Lady’s Committee produced a report on women in the House in January 2017, and I notice that the Government rejected all six of the recommendations in their response in September. One recommendation was that all the parties should aim for 45% of their Members of Parliament to be women. Her Committee also said that section 106 of the Equality Act 2010 should be implemented. The Government responded that they did not want to do that, and that they would rather just talk to the political parties, but I wonder if the Leader of the House could take that away and look at it, and perhaps report back at a later date. Many hon. Members have touched on the fact that we are becoming a diverse Parliament. I have to say that 31 of the 52 minority ethnic Members are from the Labour party; 19 are from the Conservatives, one is from the Lib Dems and one from the Independent Group. Exactly half are women, so we are getting it right on that score.
Another important report, “Race in the workplace” by Baroness McGregor-Smith, was published on 28 February 2017. It found that people are still being held back in the workplace because of the “colour of their skin”, which is costing the UK economy the equivalent of 1.3% of GDP a year. She said that if black and minority ethnic people progressed in the workplace at the same rate as their white counterparts, the UK economy could be boosted by £24 billion. The McGregor-Smith review made 26 recommendations. One urged the Government to create a free online unconscious bias training resource that would be available to everyone in the UK, and to develop a simple guide on how to discuss race in the workplace. Two years on from that review, I ask the Government and the Leader of House to assess where we are on that. As Baroness McGregor-Smith said:
“The time for talking is over. Now is the time to act.”
More importantly, on 28 February2017, the Government launched a business, diversity and inclusion group to bring together business leaders and organisations to develop ways of removing barriers in the workplace and monitoring employees’ progress. The then Business Minister, the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Margot James), chaired the group. She immediately wrote to the FTSE 350 companies, asking them to drive increased diversity in the workplace and to take up the McGregor-Smith review, but sadly there are still just six women chief executive officers in the FTSE 100 companies. More needs to be done. According to a recent report by Green Park, there are only five BAME CEOs in FTSE 100 companies, and 48 FTSE 100 companies had no ethnic minority presence on their boards in 2018.
Hon. Members will know that we always talk about the gender pay gap, and that is important because this Parliament not only looks at itself but also looks outside. A key figure shows that in 2018 women worked for free for 51 days of the year because of the gender pay gap. We must close that gap as soon as possible. We Labour Members feel that we have a proud record on progressing women’s rights. We brought in the Equal Pay Act 1970, the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, the Equality Act 2010 and the minimum wage, and we introduced Sure Start. Our shadow Cabinet is nearly 50% women, and we hope that that will continue. The important thing is that many people outside this place perhaps cannot afford the things that we can, such as their own workplace nursery. If we were to implement our policies, the extension of the 30 hours of free childcare would make an important difference to women in the workplace generally, whether or not they ended up in here, and families on the lowest incomes would be eligible for additional subsidised hours on top of the 30 hours.
It is vital that we make this place fit for the 21st century for everyone who works here, who visits and who wants to come here. We all want our Parliament and our democracy to thrive, so we should be continuously looking for opportunities to improve it, and I know that all Members, whether new or old, are constantly doing that. As we look for opportunities here, we must recognise that changes can be made through legislation, and that as we change ourselves, we can also change society to make it more equal.
The Leader of the House of Commons (Mel Stride)
I thank all those who have contributed to a valuable and wide-ranging debate, and especially the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves) for sharing with us her many ideas, which were clearly built on her experience, in another life before Parliament, of workplace and maternity rights. I also recognise that the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer), who is no longer in his place for the very good reasons he gave, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) put their names to the motion. In mentioning my right hon. Friend, perhaps I may take this opportunity to thank her for the work that she does as the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, and say that I particularly look forward to the prospect of working closely with her in the weeks and months ahead.
As I said, we have had a wide-ranging debate. That is part of the nature of the solutions we all look to when we seek to have a Parliament that is fit for the 21st century and to ensure that the heritage, the wisdom of the ages and the things that make this Parliament work extremely well—there are many; we tend not to focus on them and to take them for granted—are preserved while we move forward positively. That came out in the debate.
As I listened to the various contributions, I noted the wide variety of areas on which hon. Members rightly alighted. The hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge mentioned the onsite nursery, electronic voting, the recess dates, school holidays and parliamentary Prayers. My right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke mentioned commuting to Parliament, retention of MPs and staff, proxy voting, mental health, the parliamentary timetable—especially UQs—disability access, restoration and renewal, women in Parliament and ethnic minority portraits.
The hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead mentioned accessibility and disabled access and the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) mentioned job sharing in an intervention. The hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) referred to shared parental leave, and I was gratified to learn that his eldest daughter shares the name Ophelia with one of my daughters: it is a lovely name. I will certainly take away from this debate the wonderful image of several Labour Members and the shadow Chancellor failing to fill in a passport form at the Passport Office: I am sure there were very good reasons for that happening on that occasion.
This is an important debate. If our Parliament is not properly accessible, does not project an image that gains the trust and respect of the public or is not truly representative of the country at large, it is a pretty poor state of affairs. I accept that more can be done at every turn. On the point about representation, “The Good Parliament” report has been mentioned. It is an excellent piece of work. It gives the figures: at present, just 32% of Members of Parliament are female, and the figure for the House of Lords is just 27%. On just that one metric, that is clearly not right, and much of the debate has understandably been framed in the context of how we address that particular issue, along with several others.
I pay tribute to my predecessor, who did some excellent work in several areas that have been raised this afternoon, not least of which is proxy voting. We should not forget that the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) was the first to exercise a proxy vote on 29 January. I also thank the Procedure Committee for the valuable work that it did in that respect. My predecessor also drove through work on restoration and renewal, which will bring with it many opportunities to address some of the accessibility and, perhaps, technology issues that have been raised.
One of the aspects that did not feature in everybody’s contribution, but is very important and was raised by the shadow Leader of the House, is the independent complaints and grievance scheme, on which much additional work now needs to be done. I look forward to working closely with her on that. My predecessor did a great deal to move that element forward.
As we fall over ourselves to say that things are not right or are archaic, and all the rest of it, we should not overlook the progress that has been made or, indeed, assume that we are stuck in a previous century, because many good things are occurring. There have been changes to the sitting hours, which many Members mentioned. Most recently—this was during my time here—we made a number of helpful changes in 2012. We now have childcare facilities for those aged three months and above, up to five years, the family room off the Lower Waiting Hall, the baby-changing facilities and various other things that are advances in their own right.
A huge amount remains to be done, of course, which I would categorise in at least four areas. The first is a change in the culture of the House of Commons and the Palace of Westminster, particularly through the independent complaints and grievance scheme, which has a role in ensuring that we have a system that has zero tolerance for harassment and bullying in any form. I join the shadow Leader of the House in thanking Julie Harding, the independent director of cultural transformation, for her work, particularly in that regard.
The Alison Stanley report, the six-month review of the scheme, has been mentioned. The scheme has now been going for about a year, and the report has made some interesting recommendations. I look forward to working with the shadow Leader of the House on reviewing those recommendations, particularly on the efficiency of the system, training requirements and resourcing.
There are outstanding matters across the three strands of the Cox report, most notably on the second and third strands. As the hon. Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell) may have mentioned, we have a debate on the report next Tuesday and I urge all those present to join us. I will have another outing and we will be able to discuss these matters in even more detail—something to look forward to.
The second area is about supporting parents, and many Members specifically mentioned the piloting of proxy voting. We need to see where we go with that. Clearly we could take other avenues. We could broaden the scope of proxy voting to different situations, and I look forward to looking at that closely.
A number of Members commented on the working hours of the House, which the Procedure Committee has previously looked at in detail. There was a survey on these matters in 2017. The problem, as with so many of these issues, is finding consensus. It is for the House to make these changes, and it is for the House to come together and form consensus on any proposal that may be made.
Several points have made about the organisation of business, and I will briefly touch on one or two of those points. My right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke raised an interesting idea about the timing of urgent questions, although it contains the nub of the problem with many such ideas. Although it may have some beneficial effects in one respect, it has more negative effects in another. It is about balancing the two. Specifically, if we had urgent questions very early in the parliamentary day, we would still need all the processes that happen in the background leading up to Mr Speaker’s decision on whether to grant an urgent question. That would be shifted several hours earlier and would therefore cause problems earlier in the day, although it would perhaps solve some of the problems for others later in the day. We need to debate and consider such things closely, and I would be happy to sit down with my right hon. Friend to have a closer look at her suggestions, if she would like to do that.
The hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge talked about the possibility of deferring Divisions late at night, which is an interesting suggestion, and at least one hon. Member talked about the Whips and the valuable role they play in pairing, slipping and so on. They are often the unsung heroes of the parliamentary processes. I say that as a former Whip and therefore somebody who fully grasps, should I say—to be generous—the impact that they can have upon one’s future.
Accessibility is very important. We have a real opportunity with the restoration and renewal project to get some of these things right, and I am very excited about that. The matter was raised by the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead, who made some strong points. As the shadow Leader of the House pointed out, it is not just about lifts, ramps and those kinds of things. Often, it is about the acoustics, lighting, security and technology—all these things that make buildings more accessible.
My final point is about technology in this place. There are great opportunities to use technology better here. The hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge pointed out that we could speed up voting by holding multiple votes at the same time on iPads, provided the votes were not contingent on each other. We have real opportunities to look at using technology to do things differently, although we have to be careful in considering change in those areas.
To respond to the hon. Member for Livingston, I am not particularly drawn to the idea of electronic voting. There are clearly some benefits, but I am very drawn to the idea of Members getting together at a moment in time when conversations with Ministers and others can occur. That is important, and the second point to underscore is that spending the time to get here and do that means that we have to think more about what we are voting for than we would by, alternatively, clicking something or touching a screen.
To be slightly self-indulgent, I would like to float my own idea, which I first floated in 2011. It went absolutely nowhere, because it was obviously far too frightening and radical, but maybe we have moved on. The idea was to have a list of those about to speak up on the annunciator, so that if we knew that the Leader of the House was going to speak in two or three speakers’ time, we could scamper to the Chamber to listen to his pearls of wisdom.
There could be an even greater benefit—I know that I am straying into dangerous, radical territory, Madam Speaker, but let me finish my point at least—because if that information were known several speakers in advance, it could be communicated to the wider world through technology. I could be sitting on a bus and an app could suddenly ping to tell me that the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) would be on her feet in 10 minutes. I would obviously not dismiss that fact for a second, but would press “Yes, please, I’m absolutely gagging to hear from the hon. Lady”, whereupon she would appear on my screen. I could listen to her or perhaps to my local MP on that bus trip and become more engaged with Parliament and my Member of Parliament. Part of the problem is that we do not know when Members will be called to speak, so that might be one idea.
Hannah Bardell
I have to say that I find myself in agreement with the right hon. Gentleman on that point. I am a member of the Council of Europe, and that is exactly how it operates. We know the order of speakers well in advance and exactly how much time we will get to speak—there is none of this increasing or reducing the time limit; it is much more organised. So he will have my support if he brings forward that proposal.
Mel Stride
I thank the hon. Lady very much, although I am not sure that I have the support of the Chair—I am desperately trying to hold everybody together, which I might just about be able to manage. If the hon. Lady would like to discuss that further with me, I will be happy to do so, although of course I raise these points fully aware that they are far more complicated than the manner in which I have presented them might suggest.
Perhaps I should conclude and leave a minute or two for the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge to respond to the debate, if she would like to. Again, I thank everybody for their contributions. I have listened extremely carefully to everything that everybody has said and my door is always open. The mission to reform Parliament is deep and complicated, and it often faces considerable resistance from all sorts of different directions, but the House has my commitment that I am happy to work with Members from all parties to see how we can improve matters.
Ellie Reeves
I thank everyone who has taken part in the debate. I said at the outset that no single person has all the answers in respect of the modernisation of Parliament, but this afternoon has been an important opportunity to enable Members to put forward their different views on this important matter.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) talked about the role of fathers in all this. It is important that we do not forget the role of fathers, who are increasingly, and rightly, now playing much more active roles in their children’s lives. I will benefit from my husband, my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer), having two weeks of proxy voting when I have our second child. We did not have that when I had our first. Equally, many colleagues and friends of mine in the world of work are able to take shared parental leave with their partners, but that is not open to us. It is incredibly important to look at the role of fathers.
The right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) summed up perfectly the chaos of Parliament and what it is like here never to know quite what is going to happen during the day. It is a really unusual way to work and is unique to Parliament. We never quite know what is going to happen, what is going to be on the Order Paper and what questions are going to come up. That not only affects those who have caring responsibilities, but can be detrimental to the working lives of MPs and those who support us in our roles. The right hon. Lady has some fantastic ideas about how we can be clearer about our procedures and how they work.
Several interventions related to the role of staff. I hope that, when we talk about this issue in future, we do not lose sight of the fact that hundreds of people work in Parliament supporting the work that we do. We need to be mindful of their needs and their roles.
The right hon. Member for Basingstoke talked about the need to have a clear plan and procedure. It is important that we do not go away from this debate and never talk about this subject ever again. The last broad, general debate on making Parliament more family friendly was around three years ago. It is important that we keep up these conversations and do not shy away from the ongoing debate about reform.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered making Parliament a more modern, family friendly and accessible workplace.
University Hospital Coventry
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
I am grateful to Mr Speaker for granting me the opportunity to raise this issue, which is very important to my constituents in Coventry South. I am sure it is also important to the constituents of colleagues from Warwickshire.
I thank my colleagues—my hon. Friends the Members for Coventry North East (Colleen Fletcher), for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson) and for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western), and the hon. Members for Nuneaton (Mr Jones), for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) and for North Warwickshire (Craig Tracey)—for their support. Together, we sent a letter to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to request a meeting to discuss these issues, and I am keenly awaiting a response. Many of those colleagues also attended an informative meeting with two surgeons from the hepato-pancreato-biliary unit at University Hospital Coventry, Mr Khan and Mr Lam. The point of the letter was that we wished to discuss the transfer of the HPB unit, which provides pancreatic services at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire, to hospitals in Birmingham and Worcester.
UHCW has been developing pancreatic cancer services since 1990. It has an excellent team of doctors, specialists, nurses, surgeons and other healthcare professionals, and has completed more than 1,000 major operations and thousands of other therapies. It deploys cutting-edge robotic, endoscopic and radiologic technology to treat patients in Coventry. It takes a patient-centred approach to its service, resulting in excellent feedback from those who have undergone treatment in its care. The success of the department cannot be denied. The outcomes of therapies are on a par with international standards in all spheres. Proposals to shut down this extremely successful department will be a great loss to the NHS.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. He is making a very important point. Does he agree that one of the key issues, as he was just alluding to, is that with any potential loss of service comes not just the potential loss of reputation but what haemorrhaging effect it may have on the rest of this great hospital?
Mr Cunningham
Yes, I fully agree with my hon. Friend. That was one of the points made by the surgeons whom I and the hon. Member for Nuneaton met a few weeks ago.
These proposals stem from the 2014 regional review of services. They are based on the fact that the UHCW was not providing care for enough people, according to the requirements of the Department of Health and Social Care and commissioning guidelines. There were serious capacity constraints at University Hospital Birmingham, leading to multiple cancellations of operations on the day and prolonged waiting times. The process of the review was in fact challenged by a legal notice. The initial proposal stated that UHB and UHCW services should be amalgamated, with the teams working together to develop a model that would provide more efficient services in the west midlands and maintain operating at both sites, with the joint service to be led by UHB.
Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. These are important services that my constituents also access. Clearly, amalgamating these services is of concern to me as it will take away the choice of residents as to whether they want treatment at Coventry or Birmingham. As the population is growing significantly in our area, amalgamating those services may also lead to longer waiting times. Does he agree with me?
Mr Cunningham
The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point, and I will be touching on that a little later on in my comments.
As a bigger hospital in one of the UK’s biggest cities, UHB had a great deal of influence over these discussions. It soon became apparent to the UHCW team that the sacrifices would be one-sided. UHCW felt that it must pull out of the talks, as it was clear that its services would be downgraded and its specialised work would be removed completely—services that it had worked hard to develop. That would be detrimental to the people of Coventry, Warwickshire and beyond.
In November 2018, NHS England served a formal notice on UHCW to transfer specialised liver and pancreas services to UHB in Birmingham or risk decommissioning. UHCW was denied the opportunity to establish the population base required to be an independent centre. There is now a concerted effort from UHB trust management and NHS England to enforce the takeover of the HPB centre at Coventry.
The simple and accepted solution, which is in line with the professional recommendations, is to implement the agreement between UHCW, Worcester Acute Hospitals NHS Trust and Wye Valley NHS Trust to provide the liver and pancreas specialised service at UHCW NHS Trust. It is important to highlight the ongoing capacity constraints at UHB. The realignment from Worcester and Hereford to UHCW would effectively fulfil the required population base to be an independent centre—as per Department of Health and Social Care guidelines—and also reduce the very long waiting times for cancer operations and improve access.
The proposals demonstrate more short-sighted, efficiency-obsessed thinking from NHS England based on the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines. The findings of the 2015 review, which stated that UHCW’s HBP unit does not serve enough people, totally ignored the good standard of pancreatic care at UHCW. It is of the highest quality and helps to provide patients with the best possible outcomes. NHS England’s proposals threaten the standard of care, which I will raise shortly. The proposals will have a detrimental impact on those in need of this care in Coventry and elsewhere in Warwickshire. Although the 2015 review stated that the HPB unit—
Mr Cunningham
Although the 2015 review stated that the HPB unit did not reach the population requirements, thousands of lives are saved because of the outstanding service that the team at UHCW have developed. The most obvious problem that my constituents in Coventry South, and people in east Warwickshire, will be faced with is geographical, as the hon. Member for Nuneaton said. Many of them will have to travel about 16 miles for treatment, which will be very costly. They will have to take trains, and we all know the problems associated with that. The time it will take patients who currently use the service to travel to Birmingham is unfair. Patient access will no doubt be reduced, as the journey time, as my colleagues from Coventry will be well aware, is about an hour by car and over 80 minutes by public transport. The journey time for patients who currently use the service at UHCW and live outside Coventry, in rural areas out of the reach of public transport, will be considerably longer and the journey will be considerably more expensive. NHS England will directly increase the stress and physical discomfort that patients and family members will have to endure. In addition, once patients have made the hour-long, or hours-long, journey to UHB, there will be a good chance that their treatment will be cancelled or delayed.
University Hospital Birmingham specialises in liver transplants, and it has a success rate that the whole of the west midlands is immensely proud of. Understandably, those operations take priority because of the speed with which they need to take place. Patients at the hospital who have other, slightly less urgent, conditions find that their operations are routinely cancelled in place of a liver transplant. Moving pancreatic services to Birmingham will dramatically increase the number of patients at risk of having their vital operation cancelled. Any patient who suffers from pancreatic cancer, or people who have a family member who has died from this terrible disease, will know that the speed of detection and the speed of treatment are absolutely vital to survival. It is extremely hard to detect, and, as a result, doctors need to act quickly after a patient has been diagnosed. Any delay to operations decrease the chances of survival even further.
The closure of the HPB unit at UHCW also poses a risk to the overall status of the hospital. By closing a key unit, the hospital is at risk of losing its specialist status, and, as a result, being downgraded to a district hospital. That will have a domino effect on the rest of the hospital.
Matt Western
My hon. Friend is making some very powerful points. For me, one of the most staggering facts —I am sure he will agree—is the sheer scale of the number of such operations that are undertaken at Coventry—5,000 over the past two years, I believe. That does not seem a small figure to me. Does he agree that it is surprising that this is even being considered in the first place?
Mr Cunningham
Of course, I totally agree. As I have outlined, it is not about just the volume of operations but their quality, and the skill of the surgeons, the nurses and all the auxiliary staff who do the best that they can for the patients. UHCW will inevitably lose its most skilled doctors and staff, and see the disintegration of the team, service and leadership that the unit has spent so long building.
Finally, I understand that UHCW has written to NHS England outlining its opposition to these proposals—something that I fully support, as I am sure my colleagues here do. It is concerning that UHCW may face these proposals being forced upon it by NHS England, justified by guidelines that have little thought or respect for the quality of care already being provided and the concerns of local people. Not only do these guidelines ignore the quality of care, but NHS England has shown an incapacity to implement them fairly and equally across the country. There was a similar case in Stoke, but rather than close the unit, NHS England allowed it to carry on operating as normal, despite not meeting the population requirements. Will the Minister guarantee that NHS England will work with UHCW and support it by allowing it to continue to provide these outstanding services to the people of Coventry and Warwickshire?
The Minister for Health (Stephen Hammond)
I thank the hon. Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) and congratulate him on securing this important debate. I thank the other Members who have contributed. I want to start this debate, as I try to start all debates in the House when talking about the NHS, by congratulating and thanking the staff who work in the NHS—in particular, given the nature of the debate, the staff who work in the hospitals of Coventry and Warwickshire and throughout the west midlands.
The hon. Gentleman made a number of important points that I will try to address. I know that he wrote the Department a letter in May. I will ensure that there is a response to it, but I can tell him now that the response will be that I would be delighted to meet him and the fellow MPs who have signed the letter to discuss its contents and what I am about to say.
The hon. Gentleman raised a number of important concerns regarding the discussions to transfer HPB services from University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust to University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust. HPB services treat patients who have disorders of liver, bile ducts and pancreas, including pancreatic and liver cancer. A large volume of HPB services are delivered in local hospitals, but because of their complex nature and the high cost of care, delivery in conjunction with specialist tertiary centres is often necessary.
As the hon. Gentleman indicated, in October last year, NHS England confirmed that no decision had been made to transfer or close the HPB service in Coventry, despite some concerns that national clinical service specifications were not being met. I understand that he is still concerned about that, but I can confirm that there are currently no plans to transfer HPB cancer services away from University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust. However, NHS England is actively supporting the trust to work alongside University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, to ensure that patients have access to safe, high-quality treatment.
University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust has said that it is proud—rightly so—of the HPB service, which has excellent outcomes and feedback about the quality of healthcare provided, as the hon. Gentleman mentioned. In 2015, the West Midlands Clinical Senate reviewed the three HPB services across the west midlands and recommended combining them across two sites, because they did not meet national requirements.
The “Improving Outcomes” guideline document specifies that a population base of at least 2 million is required to make a compliant service. Currently, University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust treats a population of about 1 million. The guidance also specifies that for a population of around 2 million, around 215 pancreatic and liver resections a year would be expected as a proportion of the population size.
The hon. Gentleman talked about the number of operations and resections done by this unit. Between 2013 and 2018, an average of 80 resections a year were performed in University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust. He quoted a rather larger figure, but it was 80 pancreas and liver resections a year. I am happy to discuss with him at the meeting the number he quoted, but it is not one I recognise.
I understand that, over the past two years, teams in both trusts have been discussing how to work together with a view to creating a single point of access and shared multidisciplinary teams for HPB in the local area. Both trusts have agreed that the most complex services should be conducted on University Hospitals Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth site. However, the trusts are yet to agree on an established definition of the most complex surgery. The clinicians from both hospitals who are currently delivering the service will continue to work together to develop this new combined model of care. NHS England will determine the best way to meet patients’ needs collaboratively, based on specialist surgical skills and the skills that are available at each hospital, as well as on the volume and complexity of clinical cases.
I would like to reassure the hon. Gentleman and, indeed, other Members in the Chamber that I recognise that discussions concerning service change are controversial, and this case is no exception. However, I would also like to reassure hon. Members that all service changes are designed to drive up service quality, meeting the specific requirements of local populations and trying to achieve what is best for specialist service users overall. The hon. Gentleman has set out, with great emphasis, the significant challenges that remain, and it is right that the trusts continue to work together to determine the best method to deliver these highly complex services.
The hon. Gentleman and, I hope, all hon. Members know that cancer is a priority for this Government. Survival rates are at a record high. Since 2010, rates of survival from cancer have increased year on year. However, as we know, there is more to do. That is why, last October, the Prime Minister announced a package of measures that will be rolled out across the country with the aim of detecting three quarters of all cancers at an early stage by 2028.
As part of the NHS long-term plan that we announced in January, the Government have outlined how we will achieve the ambition to see 55,000 more people surviving cancer for five years in England each year from 2028. The Department invests £1 billion a year in health research through the National Institute for Health Research. It spent £136 million of that on cancer research in 2017-18, which is an increase of £35 million on 2010-11. The NIHR is funding and supporting a range of research relevant to liver cancer, including a £1.76 million trial of liver resection surgery versus thermal ablation for colorectal cancer that has spread to the liver and early research on specialised magnetic resonance imaging scanning to detect liver cancer that has spread from colorectal cancer. There is much still to be done, but much is being done.
Mr Marcus Jones
I hear clearly what my hon. Friend says about the improvements that are being made in this area and in wider cancer care, but I am still concerned about the potential loss of what is a good service from Coventry. I am also concerned that at the moment, while no decision has been made, discussions and negotiations are clearly going on in that regard. It is quite obvious from the discussions that the hon. Members for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) and for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) and I have had that not everybody in those organisations is in the loop, actually knows what is going on and is satisfied with this situation. Will my hon. Friend look at what more can be done to make sure, in this situation, that information is disseminated widely between clinicians and organisations so that we ensure we do not unnecessarily lose very high-quality people from organisations such as University Hospital Coventry?
Stephen Hammond
My hon. Friend makes an important and valuable point, and as a result of this debate I pledge to write to the hospitals to ensure that the ongoing discussions between the various parties are as inclusive as possible. As I said earlier, I will happily meet him, the hon. Member for Coventry South, and other Members.
Mr Marcus Jones
My hon. Friend is kind and generous in giving way, and I thank him for the commitment he has made. There has clearly been little public engagement, but that is what we need with regard to any changes that are made, so that the public can understand the rationale behind these changes. I am aware of one person who has been chasing information about this issue, but they have hit a brick wall.
Stephen Hammond
My hon. Friend is assiduous in representing his constituents and making his points. As I have said, these discussions have not yet concluded, and it would be hugely inappropriate for me or any politician to try to prejudge the right clinical outcomes. When those clinical outcomes have been worked through and the discussions finalised, I have no doubt that University Hospitals Birmingham and the Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership NHS Trust will wish to publicise the result of those discussions as widely as possible.
Mr Jim Cunningham
Following the intervention by the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones), the Minister mentioned a wider discussion and involving the public. We met some representatives, including Mr Peter Burns, who is the former chair of the local chamber of commerce and a very influential person. Such organisations, as well as other public bodies, must be brought in and consulted. Will the Minister agree to do that?
Stephen Hammond
It would have been inappropriate for me to be involved in clinical discussions, but I hear what the hon. Gentleman says. Before we have that meeting, I will write to him on that point. I hope that we will have a meeting relatively soon, so that we can finalise what should be done.
Service change is often controversial. We should rightly scrutinise any service change, but that should be based on patient safety and the right clinical outcomes. I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising this matter and continuing to hold us to account, and I look forward to meeting him and other hon. Members to discuss the issue further in the near future.
Question put and agreed to.
Westminster Hall
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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High Streets and Town Centres in 2030
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the Eleventh Report of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, High Streets and town centres in 2030, HC 1010, and the Government response, CP 84.
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. It also gives me great pleasure to discuss the report by the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee on high streets and town centres in 2030. I thank everyone who contributed to our inquiry, including our witnesses. We took a range of evidence from retailers, councils, landlords, planners and academics, and we came to our conclusions after eight evidence sessions and two visits. I thank the Committee staff for their work in putting the report together.
The reason why the Committee decided to conduct this inquiry is, I think, pretty obvious. The decline of the high street is a matter of concern to Members across the House because it is a concern to our constituents and the general public. The change—the reduction in the number of people shopping, in some cases the empty shops, and in the worst cases the decay and deterioration across villages, small towns, larger towns, cities and district centres—is almost entirely down to online shopping.
Some 20% of sales are now done online: the highest percentage anywhere in the world. That has happened in the UK over a fairly short period—the past 10 or 15 years—and in many cases the use of shops and the reaction of councils and the Government have not kept pace with that very rapid change. We as politicians cannot and should not want to halt it, but we must look at what we can do to mitigate its impact and address the situation.
We concluded that the days when the high street was 100% retail—for much of the 20th century, people went to their high streets or town and city centres to shop—have gone, and that there now needs to be a strategy in each area, backed by the local community, initiated by local councils and supported by local traders, to create a different approach to the activities on the high street. We concluded that if high streets and centres are to survive and thrive by 2030, they must become
“activity-based community gathering places”,
with a reduced retail element and a wider range of uses, including green space, leisure, arts and culture, health and social care, and housing, with the community at its heart. Retail will be there, but there will be a number of other activities drawing people in. People will be drawn in by the coffee shops and leisure activities, and then they will go shopping, which will be an important part of a wider experience. That is what we see for the future, and our report looks at ways in which we can get there.
We concluded that local councils have a really important role to play in developing that approach. They need to work with their communities and businesses, and try to create a sense of place for the area, which might be very different from the place next door. On one of our visits, we went to Stockton, which had been badly hit by the loss of retailers. It was putting on bike rides, fun runs, marathons, outdoor theatre and other activities to try to encourage people, particularly in the summer months, to come into Stockton centre and use the retail facilities. We heard about Malton, which is successfully branding itself as a place to go for food. Centres can identify themselves in different ways to show that they are an attractive place for people to come to.
Business improvement districts, where local businesses come in, can play an important part. We were pleased that the Government accepted our recommendation that community representatives should be encouraged to sit on BIDs. BIDs should be about not just business, but community. That is in keeping with our general recommendation to change the whole approach of high streets from simply retail and business to wider community uses.
A key issue from a council perspective was local plans, which should be living mechanisms that are kept up to date. We urged all local authorities to adopt
“living documents, regularly updated to capture and reflect changing trends,”
which
“must be forward looking, anticipating what will happen in five years’ time.”
Local authorities should have dynamic strategies for the high street of the sort we have just talked about. We were pleased that the Government basically accepted that all local plans should be reviewed every five years, and that town and city centre strategies should be looking at least 10 years ahead. They were on the same wavelength.
All I would say to the Government is, go look at the cuts of about 50% that councils have made to their planning budgets. When planning departments prioritise planning applications, they often lack staff with the capacity and capability to think ahead and do the necessary local plan work. There is a concern that councils often have not caught up with the rapid change in online shopping, and therefore their local plans are out of date and do not reflect that change. They are not looking at the changes that they need to make to the land use in their town and city centres.
When we went to Darlington, it was readily accepted that a whole retail area might simply have to be closed down, and that a completely different use might have to be found for that part of the town. It is very simple maths: if 20% of the shopping that was done on the high street 30 years ago is now done online, we need 20% fewer shops. We do not want that to happen in a pepper-potted way, which would simply mean a bit of decay everywhere; we need to concentrate it and change how that land is used in the future.
We recognise that, as part of this process, the Government’s £675 million future high streets fund was helpful. It was there for councils and businesses to tap into and use for this change process. Of course, we do not think it is enough, although the Government do: that is one point of disagreement. We also made the point that the taskforce that the Government set up— Sir John Timpson came along and talked about it—is a really helpful way forward, but we said that it cannot be a talking shop. It must be a place where councils and others can go and get real, hard advice, and where we can collect examples of good practice. Very often, what is done in one area can be learned from and implemented in another. That is something that we can greatly benefit from.
We identified two additional areas of interest where local government is trying to work with business to change, and where change is needed from central Government. The first is compulsory purchase orders. We learned that where councils try to change land use in an area, they often have to compulsorily purchase some properties. Again, we are pleased with the Government’s response. They accepted that and said that they will review the whole process, which is cumbersome, long-winded, time-consuming and costly.
A slightly more difficult area was permitted development rights, for which the Government consulted about extensions at the same time. We said that before the Government further extended permitted development rights, it would be helpful if they carried out an assessment of the impact on the high street of their previous extensions to those rights. The Government did not agree to that, which is disappointing. It is always good to have an impact assessment on what has already happened before doing something else, but we disagreed on that.
We were clear that permitted development rights should not be allowed to get in the way of a local plan that tries to change the fundamental land use of part of a centre. If a local authority is trying to change buildings from retail into housing, leisure or a park, for example, it is not helpful if someone converts the odd shop into a house a few months before that local plan comes into effect. The local authority would then have to say, “Actually, you did that under permitted development rights, but now we have a local plan, which means we need to compulsory purchase those properties and fundamentally change the land use.”
There ought to be a proviso that if a local plan is going to re-designate an area and affect particular properties, it is not helpful to have permitted development rights for the same properties at the same time. The Government need to think carefully about that. At the end of the day, it is not helpful to the individuals to be given that freedom, which is not really a freedom.
The biggest issue on which we disagree with the Government is that of business rates. Every bit of evidence we received showed that there is a problem. I am serving as a guest on the Treasury Committee, which is conducting an inquiry into business rates, and exactly the same sort of evidence is coming forward. Not everyone has the same solution; some want wholesale reform of business rates, while others simply want some changes to make them fairer, but the demand for change was pretty consistent. The reason is that it is considered unfair that Amazon pays 0.7% of its turnover on business rates, and it took quite a bit of extraction to get that figure out of Amazon, while high street chains spend between 1.5% and 6.5% of their turnover on business rates—in other words, more than double, and in some cases it is 10 times as much.
That simply is not fair—this is about the element of fairness. People on the high street are trying to trade at a significant cost disadvantage. Only the Government can alter that. Simply altering business rates will not change the high street back to how it was 20 years ago, but there needs to be a recognition that shopping habits are changing and that taxation policy ought to change in line with that.
We recommended that the Government look at a number of options: an online sales tax, an extension to VAT, a green tax on deliveries, or anything to reflect changing shopping habits. That money could be used to reduce the general business rates paid on the high street, to give a holiday when a business carries out improvements to stop an immediate rise in its business rates, or to add to the Government’s fund to help high streets. The Government had all those options—we were not totally prescriptive—but they came back and said no; they did not want to do anything at all.
The Government said that they were bringing in lots of reliefs, which they are, but a point that has been made to us quite strongly is that although the sticking plaster of reliefs is a welcome and useful mechanism, lots of those sticking plasters on top of one another becomes an unsightly and terribly confusing mess. Lots of people said that the system was now really confusing, with a number of reliefs in place. The evidence that I heard at the Treasury Committee evidence session the other day clearly suggested that the need for so many reliefs so frequently indicates that the basic system is flawed and in need of more substantive review.
Interestingly, Sir Amyas Morse, in his retirement swansong before the Committee at our evidence session on local authority finance—he is normally forthright in his views—said:
“I am concerned as to how realistic basing everything on business rates really is…it is concerning as to whether something that is based on a square footage formula in the modern day is going to be terribly relevant to measuring business activity… Even though it may be convenient to go forward with it now, I cannot believe it will endure forever, because it is just such an odd way of trying to measure business activity.”
He is right. Business rates are easy, and we are probably not going to tear them up, forget about them and change them tomorrow, because they are relatively easy to collect—that is a great benefit of them—but thinking that all business taxation at local level should rely on square footage is something that goes back historically, because it was an easy thing to do when everybody shopped in a shop. Ministers have to think a bit about the longer term.
Sir Amyas said that the situation will not endure forever. Well, Ministers do not tend to endure forever. Perhaps this Minister has other aspirations but, realistically, at some point a Minister will have to grasp the nettle and consider, if not completely scrapping business rates, then at least recognising that reform has to happen in the light of changing shopping habits. That is the big issue on which we really want to push Ministers, because at some point this is going to change, and we cannot carry on disadvantaging our high street retailers in the meantime.
As I explained, local government has a role here in developing strategies and local plans; central Government have a role in looking at changes to business rates, compulsory purchase powers and other things; and retailers also have a responsibility. I mentioned that Stockton is doing interesting things, and I asked, “Is bringing all these ventures into Stockton centre really helping?” They said, “Yes, sort of, but when we asked some of our retailers how many more people they got through their shops, they said, ‘Not that many, because we close at 5.30.’” Retailers have to understand that they have to change their approach to suit the customer—that is really important. We heard other examples of retailers, even small ones, using social media to advise their regular customers of changes to products in their store.
Landlords also have to get real. There are still landlords with completely unrealistic retail unit asset values on their books, based on rental values as they were 10 or 15 years ago. Some big retailers are proactive and engaged. They engage in BIDs and look at how they can improve their shopping facilities, while others just see them as a money-making venture. We saw examples of shops lying empty, but there was a long lease, so the landlord was just sitting there and getting the money in, and had no real incentive to go and find another tenant. There have to be changes in that respect.
We asked the Government to review the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954, and they say that they will look at whether that should be reviewed. That was a helpful response. However, we also asked the Government at least to consider how they might look again at upward-only rent reviews, and they said, “No, we’re not going to interfere in contracts between landlord and tenant.” We only asked them to look at that. I hope that they might have another think about looking at it, because it was raised with us on a number of occasions.
There are challenges not merely for local government, but for central Government, retailers and landlords. We have said that there are real challenges. We can all see the challenges and problems on our high streets. We were worried and we said in our concluding remarks:
“Unless…urgent action is taken, we fear that further deterioration, loss of visitors and dereliction may lead to some high streets and town centres disappearing altogether.”
Given what has happened over the past 10 or 15 years, and if another 10 or 15 years are spent going in the same direction, we can see that happening.
We cannot predict what lies ahead, but online sales have doubled in the past five years, so it is almost certain that they will grow. The situation will not stand still. People will not reverse their shopping habits but carry on in very much the same direction, which will further undermine retail sales on the high street—it is bound to.
In our report, however, we said that provided that everyone, including the Minister—who is present, while others are not, so we will direct this to her—considers and puts into place our recommendations, high streets and town centres can have a better future. That will require a shift from retail-focused activities to new purposes and uses that foster greater social interaction, community spirit and local identity.
I am pleased to recommend the report. I hope that we can all work together to have it implemented. Many of our recommendations have been accepted by the Minister, but I have pointed out some that have not; I hope she will give us an even more helpful response about those today.
Several hon. Members rose—
Graham Stringer (in the Chair)
Order. I intend to call the SNP spokesperson at 2.30 pm. Five Back Benchers are indicating that they wish to speak, so the arithmetic is straightforward: there is no need for a time limit.
Mr Mark Prisk (Hertford and Stortford) (Con)
I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests—namely, that I am a director of Stanfords, a travel and cartography business, and, with my sister, a joint owner of a small commercial high street property.
It is a pleasure to follow the Chair of our Select Committee, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), who gave a good synopsis of the inquiry and of the report. I will share a number of the points that he made, but I will try not to duplicate.
This issue affects not just every high street but, by that very fact, every community. Every constituency has areas we can think of that are seriously struggling to cope. High streets face difficulties due to a long-term shift in the way people shop, rising costs and the fact that consumer demand is struggling and changing. That perfect storm of rising costs and weaker demand means that we need to rethink the role and character of our town centres or high streets.
I will focus on three areas. First, town centres are not dead—that is certainly the view of the Government and of our Committee—but an awful lot of them are in intensive care, and some may not make it. We need to free our high streets. Look at the different reasons cited for the problems: restrictive planning arrangements, a heavy burden of taxes and charges, and an unwillingness of some retailers to rethink their business model—as we have heard—and of building owners to reconsider how they collaborate with their near neighbours. Town centres therefore need to change. The requirement, as the report rightly says, is to move towards a broad range of communal activities. Fundamentally, for a town centre to succeed in the future, it must be a place where people want to meet, to shop, sure, and to socialise, to go to a movie, to keep fit, to meet friends or to eat and drink—all those different activities. In different locations, however, the exact priorities will be different depending on local demand.
The concept of a place where people want to meet means that a successful town centre not only has to be able to adapt from where it is now but has to be free in the future to adapt as consumer demand continues to change. It needs to have a public realm that is attractive, welcoming and safe. That is about functional and aesthetic design and about engagement with the community. I totally endorse the point about adapting BIDs, including having community representatives. The other element of the notion of a place where people meet is that access has to be convenient. As Members present understand, beneath that is a whole raft of issues including the location and pricing of parking, alternative means of transport to the town centre, walkability and the interactions of pedestrians, cyclists and so on.
Secondly, on flexibility, the Chair of the Committee rightly pointed out other planning issues, but one of the critical ones is use classes. I understand why in the past they were established but, frankly—I say this as a surveyor —they have become too complex and counterproductive. Some argue, “We just need to tinker a little with the use classes, remove some of the sub-categories and everything will be fine.” I strongly disagree. We need to establish a single town centre use, which is consumer-facing and embraces a wide range of activities. I recognise that there might be an argument for food preparation to be a subset, on the grounds of public health, but to my mind, the notion of that town centre use class, which would allow movement of activities, is crucial for town centres to have flexibility.
Alongside that, ensuring that building owners, businesses and local authorities change their mindsets is important to flexibility. That is about the quality of local leadership, which was clear from the evidence to the Committee. Often the distinction between neighbouring towns is the calibre of local leadership. Mark Williams, director of the Hark Group, said:
“Leadership must come from the local authority, for the reasons I have said: it is their town and it should give very clear direction as to what it wants.”
That is true, but with one caveat: the local authority cannot do that on its own; it has to work in partnership. Property owners and other stakeholders need to collaborate. The collaborative nature of forums such as BIDs where everyone involved works together is important. I would like to see BIDs strengthened with new powers, capabilities and membership.
Finally, on digital taxes and online competition, I am disappointed by the Government’s response to the report—although I recognise the hand of the Treasury, probably, rather than of the Ministry. I take the view that we must ensure that all retailers pay comparable tax rates, unlike now. Online retailers have an inherent competitive advantage, as the Chair of the Committee rightly pointed out. Within retailing, we need to shift to a much stronger emphasis on turnover, rather than on fixed property costs.
I have seen several good propositions, such as a simple consolidated tax for smaller businesses or—from Tesco—an online sales levy. A reduction in the business rate would allow such an online sales levy, to ensure that, from the Treasury’s point of view, the revenue is balanced and, from the competition point of view, the online retailer and the bricks-and-mortar retailer are able to compete fairly. There is a good opportunity there. I simply say to the Minister, I hope that we will see more lateral thinking on that.
Finally, in my book, this issue affects every single community. We need to see action, in particular if we are not to see the very heart of many of our communities disappear altogether.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
I welcome this report, and add my thanks to the Chair of the Committee, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), and everyone who contributed to it.
Town centres and high streets matter because they are the hearts of our communities. They are the places where people come together to access goods and services, to meet each other and to enjoy leisure time. People often feel a strong sense of connection to their place and they enjoy local distinctiveness as part of their identity. People enjoy the relationships they have in their local town centres, with the shopkeepers and café owners who serve them, with the voluntary sector organisations they encounter, and with the public services that they can access in such locations.
Our report found that unlike in the 1990s, when high street decline was linked to the wider economic recession, and the threat of the internet was only beginning to loom on the horizon, the issues facing town centres now are much more fundamental and structural. I will high light a number of issues covered by the report that are affecting the town centres and high streets in my constituency.
Whether in West Norwood, East Dulwich, Brixton West Dulwich, Dulwich Village, Herne Hill or Crystal Palace, I am proud of the distinctiveness of the town centres and high streets in my constituency, the independent businesses, which serve their communities, and the sense of place and community, which they help to foster. Businesses in my constituency are really suffering. Rents in London are going up, and rents feed into the calculation of business rates. One owner of a hugely popular, much-loved local shop contacted me to say that following the recent revaluation, his rateable value had increased by 110%, and his bill by 34% once transitional relief had been applied. Added to that, he told me that he is being squeezed by increases in employers’ national insurance contributions and his rent. His turnover is substantially down as a direct result of online competition.
In West Norwood next week we will see the closure of the last bank in the town centre, when Barclays shuts its doors for the last time. That is a particular blow in an area with a high number of elderly and disabled residents, and one that will further increase financial exclusion in that part of my constituency and harm the wider town centre. Trade will be driven away as people go to other places for their essential banking transactions and choose to spend their money elsewhere.
The relaxation of permitted development rights is already a disaster, resulting in poor-quality homes in the wrong locations and no affordable housing or contribution to services and facilities. The good examples of office-to-residential conversion generally would have achieved planning consent in any event, so PDR has simply facilitated the delivery of poor-quality homes. For town centres, the Government have proposed further expansion of permitted development rights to enable shops to be converted to residential. That would be an unmitigated disaster for town centres. It is true that in many town centres there is too much retail space, but how and where to reduce that and introduce other uses is a strategic decision that should be taken by the local authority, in consultation with the community. Allowing landlords that freedom runs the risk of gap-toothed high streets up and down the country, rather than the sensible consolidation of a retail heart where it is needed.
Our report is right to identify the critical nature of strong local authority leadership in supporting healthy town centres, but planning departments have been cut to the bone under nine years of austerity. Thriving town centres need a strong vision, effective partnerships between councils, businesses and the community and investment in the public realm, increasingly with a focus on sustainability and climate change at their heart. We need to clean up the air in town centres, deliver safe routes for walking and cycling and create pleasant open spaces resilient to hotter summers and wetter weather. That simply cannot be done with current resources. Government must invest in and empower local authorities to play the leadership role on behalf of our towns centres that we know can be so effective.
I want to return to the issue of business rates. A fundamental problem for our town centres is that business rates do not reflect the value that people place on their local high street. They penalise town centre retailers in more expensive property, to the benefit of internet-based businesses operating out of low-value warehouses. It is the job of the taxation system to redistribute resources according to the public goods that communities value. Town centres are one such public good. The value of the relationship that an isolated elderly person has with their local shopkeeper does not appear on any balance sheet. Our taxation system must take account of that value and redistribute resources to serve our town centres.
It is for the Government to provide the policy and taxation regime that can support our town centres, whether by creating an obligation for banks to provide branch-based services in every community in the country, redistributing businesses rates to support our town centres or investing in our local authorities to equip and enable them to play a leadership role. The Government are not doing enough; they must show more leadership.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer, I believe for the first time. As a distinguished former leader of a city council, you will understand the importance of the high street not only to our towns and cities but to people across the country. I apologise to the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), the Chair of the Select Committee, for being slightly late for the debate; I was engaged as the secretary of the 1922 committee, administering the ballot for the leadership of the Conservative and Unionist party.
I have a long memory of the high street; when I was a young lad, the shops were open probably five days a week: on Saturday all day, closed on Wednesday lunchtime and often closed on Monday, too. It was the advent of another subject dear to my heart—large-scale immigration to this country—that enabled the Gujarati community and others to come here and see the benefit of cornering the market and opening for longer. That shows how retail outlets have to change with the times. It is no longer good enough to be open from 9 to 5.30 or 6; shops have to be open seven days a week to make money.
I think it is fair to remind the Minister that this report is cross-party and its recommendations are agreed and strongly endorsed by all members of the Select Committee, so they have a lot of strength behind them. I want to touch on one or two things that are appropriate on this issue. First, to rejuvenate our high streets, I agree with the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) about allowing retail properties to be converted to rather unsuitable homes for people. They were originally intended to be retail units and were not built as homes, and often they are unsatisfactory.
However, there are large numbers of flats above high-street shops that were originally made as homes. A lot of those have been converted to become storage units, office space or for other purposes. To rejuvenate our high streets, we need to get people back to living in those properties. In times gone by, the shop owners would live above the premises and have a very short commute to work. These days, that is not the case. We need, and should encourage, a rejuvenation project to encourage those properties to be brought back into use for living accommodation.
The Chair of the Select Committee mentioned our visit to Darlington and Stockton. It was shock to us that Marks & Spencer—a key store in the middle of the high street—had closed down. We asked why, and were told that it could not make money. It had a 250-year lease on the property, and the property owner quite reasonably said, “Fine. You just keep paying us for 250 years.” No one would take on the lease because it was too expensive, so it blighted the whole high street. The Government need to look at ownership of properties, because without understanding who owns properties and what pressure can be brought on them to change the basis of rent or encourage them to let the properties at a reasonable rate, our high streets will be blighted forevermore.
I was also struck when I had a briefing from Tesco about business rates and their impact on its stores. Tesco, a very successful company across the UK, has concentrated not on the big retail stores but the smaller, Metro-type operations on our high streets. That is welcome because it brings retail back to people at a reasonable price, drives footfall and encourages the development of other comparable retail units on the high street. The slight problem is that its finances on turnover and business rates are remarkably tight. It makes only something like a 4% margin, so if retail sales fall, those stores will be in potential crisis. If they close, many other stores along that high street will close with them, because people will not go to them. There is a fact of life that we must look at: frankly, business rates for retail units are not fit for purpose and need fundamental reform.
The arguments about an online sales tax are reasonable, and I think there are concerns. The first question is whether we can collect the money. Business rates associated with a property are relatively easy to collect. However, an online sales tax should also be reasonably easy to collect. The next issue is where that money goes. If an online sales tax is introduced on warehousing or companies such as Amazon, will it be collected from a central point and then distributed? How will it be provided to local authorities, which will depend on business rates, or some form of business taxation, for their funding?
My answer is that we need an online sales tax, but it needs to be set at a reasonable rate—1%, 2% or whatever—and then distributed on the basis of the business rates income that otherwise would have accrued to a local authority. That is one way we could make this happen. Not reforming business rates is completely unacceptable, because the burden will become greater and greater. The other issue that affects retail units is that, as the Government response to our report shows, the Government have done a whole series of complicated things that, frankly, have distorted the market completely. They have distorted business rates and made them even less fit for purpose, which is why we need fundamental reform and review.
High streets up and down our country have gone through various problems, and many of them are looking a bit tired. They need to be refreshed and reconsidered. We need new ideas, new shops, new facilities and encouragement from local authorities to increase footfall to those premises. We must build up the partnership between local authorities and retailers. It is a symbiotic relationship: the reality is that if local authorities do not co-operate with retailers, they will lose business rates income, which will be even more important to them in the future. We look to my hon. Friend the Minister to come up with some wise words and stronger action—particularly on business rates, on which the Government’s response was rather disappointing. I hope we see further action from the Government in that area.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I, too, welcome the Select Committee’s report. I thought it was outstanding, particularly in the light of the challenges that my city experiences on a day-to-day basis, on which I have advocated action in this place. Those who are familiar with our debates on these issues will know that I have made many contributions, particularly about business rates—an issue that the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) articulated so well and that I will return to shortly.
York provides an incredible high street experience for people visiting our city, but we also need to make the city work for local residents, who increasingly do not visit the city centre. We should reflect more on the experience of residents and on how communities engage with these issues, because communities can really make a high street. Although our city has 7 million visitors a year, we must give the residents—those who are there day in, day out—the opportunity to have both a real shopping experience and a wider experience. That is why I welcome the report’s suggestion that we should look at not just a retail opportunity but a whole community opportunity.
Bishy Road in York was, frankly, a dying high street. The post office had moved out and the street was struggling. However, it has been rejuvenated, to the point of winning a Great British High Street award, because it built its whole centre on the wider community. Traders’ engagement with the community means that it is now the go-to place in our city for a retail experience; there are lots of different types of outlets on the street.
However, the picture across the city is not universal. York has many exciting places for people to engage in, which very much attract the external community—I am thinking of Jorvik and the museums in our city centre—but local residents really struggle to be able to afford to benefit from them. Like so many places, York has seen a real hollowing-out of shopping centres, particularly on Coney Street, where shops are struggling, not least because of the huge pressure on business rates.
Before I move on to business rates, let me mention the great opportunities for innovation across our city. The report did not particularly reflect on markets, but they are a great place for businesses to develop and grow. We should look at the role of markets on our high streets, and at how they interact with the wider retail experience. Spark:York, a new development built in shipping containers, has enabled many businesses to start up. It has a real vibe about it and it provides great opportunities. Those kinds of initiatives will help to bring some regeneration. For example, Spark gives good, ethical businesses the opportunity to start up and then move out to benefit from opportunities on the wider high street.
I take slight issue with what the report says about transportation into urban centres. It focuses on car parking. In an age when many of our urban centres are so polluted and congested, we need to ensure that there is really good public transport infrastructure to bring people in. York has one of the best park and ride facilities in the country. Opening up opportunities for living streets, for active travel and for park and ride on public transport is a way of regenerating our urban centres. Of course, if people walk and cycle rather than just going to their cars, there is more engagement; it has been shown that businesses benefit more if people use public transport and active travel. I hope that the Minister will take that on board.
We also need to ensure that there are real community spaces in the heart of our cities. I am thinking about libraries—people used to go to city centres to visit libraries, but they have disappeared—swimming pools and green spaces. We must ensure that people can access community hubs. Because of the lack of facilities and space, and the cost, community hubs are often pushed out to the periphery of the city. If there were go-to places at the heart of the city for residents to congregate and attend events, residents would be drawn into the city again. We need to square that circle to ensure that we have good community spaces in the heart of our city centres.
Business rates have been a particular problem in York. The analysis of what has happened was worked through with Make It York and the York Retail Forum. Across the country, 29% of the high street is owned by international businesses. We might, at one level, argue that that is inward investment, but at the same time it leads to a detached relationship between landlords and local centres. Investors who own property in the city centre often have wider interests, including maintaining their share price and increasing the value of their assets. When an investor charges high rent on a property, that hurts the shop owner, but there is a wider, more important benefit to the investor. Higher rent increases the property’s valuation, which pushes up business rates, so people are hit by higher rents and higher business rates.
The false economy, or bubble, that that creates is forcing many of the independents in York, and many other shops, off the high street. We have to address the relationship between property owners and the city or town centre. Social clauses should be built into contracts to force that relationship back to a sensible place. If a property owner does not make the right decisions for the wider area then, frankly, they should not own space on the high street.
We must also look at new developments. In York, we are on the cusp of the exciting York Central development, which has been through many iterations in planning. It was going to be a full retail piece built into the city centre. That is no longer the case, but the plan is still to have retail outlets as part of the 400,000 square metres site. However, if the planning goes ahead, which sees the development in isolation from the rest of the city, there could be a serious detrimental impact on the city itself.
When we look at developing new sites, we need to take into account the broader impact. Sadly, that is not the case for the York Central development, where no appraisal was undertaken to see what its impact could be on the wider city. The plan is on the Secretary of State’s desk. There has been a request for a call-in, which we hope will be honoured to allow the plans to be revisited, not least because of the plan’s housing and limited wider economic opportunities.
I welcome the Government’s future high streets fund, which is a good start. Like many, I believe that it needs to grow and be dedicated to sharing good practice. York has an interest in benefiting from the fund to ensure that our city works for residents as well as visitors in future. It is also important for those people up and down our country who are working hard to try to make their high street businesses work for everyone’s benefit.
Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer, and to be here as the newest member of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) on the excellent report, which was published before I joined the Committee.
The plight of our high streets is an issue for every MP in the country. Only a few high streets have escaped the pressures on the retail industry that have affected our towns and cities in recent years. Only yesterday came the announcement that Bedford will lose its Topshop and Topman store. We have already lost our Marks & Spencer store, which was in Bedford for more than 100 years. The loss of such stores is a big blow to our town, but the fact is that more of us are shopping online and prefer the convenience of free parking and more choice offered outside the town centre.
I agree with the report’s overall realism and its recognition that we will have to be creative and think of ways to transform our high streets, making them attractive as community hubs. I am encouraged to see such an initiative already taking place and blossoming in Bedford. From next week, in collaboration with WH Smith, a Marks & Spencer food offering will be available from the Harpur shopping centre in the town centre. Last weekend 74 independent traders in Bedford joined forces to promote “fiver fest,” with offers in each store for £5. Our local business improvement district is investing in promotional activities throughout the year, and the shopping centre, which has had an impressive facelift, now offers a soft play area. Local businesses are fighting back, and it is initiatives like those that give me great hope that our towns will survive.
However, it will be an uphill struggle as long as the Government’s austerity agenda continues. Over recent years they have actively created a hostile environment for retail, and I am concerned that several prominent Tory leadership candidates seem determined to disregard all the evidence about the catastrophic impact of a no-deal Brexit on businesses, many of which have no plan for an economic shock.
I share the report’s vision for activity-based community gathering places where retail is a smaller part of a wider offering and where green space, leisure, arts and culture, and health and social care services combine with housing to create a space based on social and community interactions. It is important that we remember, however, that not everyone can adapt. Recent changes present a big loss to those who are less mobile. Older customers who do not shop online or have access to out-of-town outlets have suffered. Vulnerable people must not be forgotten in regeneration plans. We must focus on better, affordable, greener, wheelchair and family-friendly public transport and spaces.
I have pledged my support for the council’s bid to the future high street fund, but in reality the fund is insufficient to cover the urgent investment needed for long-term sustainable urban regeneration. I hope that the next Prime Minister understands that investing in our high streets and creating a level playing field for online and urban retail will pay dividends for businesses and communities.
Douglas Chapman (Dunfermline and West Fife) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) for bringing forward the report and for the positive and meaningful contribution that the Committee has made to the overall debate. As several hon. Members have said, this issue affects every constituency, irrespective of where it is. I support many of the report’s recommendations and know that if more SNP colleagues were in their places, they would support them, too.
The Government have not accepted all the recommendations in full. I hope the Committee will keep pushing and encouraging them to deliver more, fund more and provide more, especially in leadership, which is critical to future success. The hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr Prisk) said that some of our town centres are not dead but may be in intensive care, and they really need that support and leadership if we are to make them viable, vibrant places for the future.
The hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) homed in on business rates, which could be a big driver in how town centres are allowed to develop, as well as how we might start to deal with the closure of banks and post offices, which affect the general feel of our high streets. The Committee’s report talked about the impact of business rates on town centre businesses and looked at methods to reduce the burden.
I have a few examples from Scotland—as the Minister will appreciate, I usually do—where for the past 10 years we have run a highly successful business bonus scheme: a package of rates relief now worth £750 million to small businesses. Under the current scheme, small businesses can claim rate relief to the combined rateable value of their business premises up to £35,000 or the rateable value for individual premises if under £18,000. Therefore, many businesses do not pay rates at all, and even those with rates that sit between £15,000 and £18,000 can still qualify for a 25% rate relief. Such support saves businesses up to £7,350 each financial year. As margins in the retail sector are becoming so narrow and squeezed, that is sometimes the difference between shops staying in business and pulling down the shutters.
Under the Scottish Government, 90% of businesses will pay a lower poundage than they would anywhere else in the UK. That all equates to the most generous package of non-domestic business rates relief in the UK. Just as the Committee has suggested, small steps can make a huge difference to the vibrancy of our town centres.
In Scotland, we have also launched a £50 million town centre fund in partnership with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, to boost high streets and town centres. I note that the Committee recommendations on the UK Government’s future high streets fund underline the importance of strong local leadership. There is no better business intelligence available than that obtained from people working on the ground among businesspeople and retailers and the communities in which they operate. It is vital to tap into that knowledge to identify where best to allocate resources that will drive forward growth and help our town centres adapt to modern-day markets. That important point was raised by the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), who talked about the need for local town centres to adapt and change. He came here hotfoot from the 1922 committee; maybe that should now be called the 2022 committee, if he wants to adapt and change in the future.
Another area that has been important for Scotland has been the growth in regional economies. We have invested heavily in the city growth deals. As I am sure the Minister will recognise, we have not, disappointingly, seen those deals matched by UK Government Departments. The Scottish Government have already committed £388 million more to the growth deals than the UK Government. Although it may not be relevant to this particular report, I say to the Minister that we would like to take these opportunities to up-skill our people and develop our town centres as best we can, but we need to have that funding matched pound for pound by the Westminster Government.
The Committee’s report notes the challenging economic environment in which town centres and high streets are operating. Given those challenges, we cannot ignore the impact of Brexit, which I believe will only make things worse. The British Retail Consortium recently warned:
“A no-deal Brexit means the public will face higher prices and less choice on the shelves. British businesses desperately need certainty about the UK’s future trading relationship with the EU and will be severely disadvantaged by a no deal.”
I do not know whether there will be any change in that respect, given today’s Tory leadership election results; we live in hope. The consortium also pointed out that a no-deal outcome in October would disrupt retailers at one of the busiest times of the year, as they stock up for black Friday and Christmas. This week it noted a six-year low for retail footfall in May, due to political uncertainty around Brexit deterring shoppers.
Brexit uncertainty has also had a detrimental effect on workforce availability for many high street businesses, particularly in hospitality, where there is a high reliance on EU nationals for labour. In her response, can the Minister address what action is being taken to protect our town centres from the catastrophic consequences of a no-deal Brexit?
I take this opportunity to share some of the initiatives being pursued in my own constituency. I will link them to the Committee’s report as best I can. I pay tribute to Dunfermline Delivers for the outstanding work it has done over the last 10 years, as manager of the Dunfermline business improvement district. The work it does is truly remarkable. I am sure every hon. Member will have examples of how BIDs have been instrumental in improving town centres.
Like most town centres, Dunfermline suffered a serious decline in retail as online shopping became more important but, as the hon. Member for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin) suggested, we found it was time to fight back. He mentioned the 74 businesses that came together to try to improve things, and that it is exactly what happened in our town as well. We had the same empty shops and closure signs around our town centre. Luckily, we had been protected by some bigger retailers, including Marks & Spencer and Debenhams, which decided not to leave the town; we are thankful they made the good business decision to remain. In fact, town centre vacancy rates have actually dropped from 17% in 2014 to 14% in 2018. We would all like to see that trend in all the constituencies represented here today.
I believe that the drop in Dunfermline vacancy rates is in no small part thanks to the efforts of Dunfermline Delivers to maintain footfall in the town. It has been working hard to diversify what the town has to offer. For example, we have one of the biggest fireworks displays in Scotland, attracting 40,000 visitors every year, as well as a popular food and craft weekend.
My personal favourite is the Outwith festival, which is run by Dunfermline Delivers in conjunction with local organisations Avocado Sweet, Firestation Creative and Write Rammy. Now in its third year, the Outwith festival has enjoyed phenomenal success, with over 7,000 attendances across four days in 2018. The festival organises a range of entertainment from music to comedy to dance, and has a real family-friendly feel. Crucially, it brings people into the town centre, where they can take advantage of other retail, historical and cultural offers we can give. With a 98% satisfaction rate among festival goers last year, it is no surprise that the festival will return bigger and better this year. I am glad that the Committee endorses the fact that the issue is not just about retail—there needs to be a full mix of entertainment, a sense of place and places for people to go to enjoy the town centre, so it can allow itself to regenerate.
That is a real success story, as are other BIDs around the country. I encourage the Minister to consider how she can support town centre organisations to recreate that kind of success. I have given examples—I am sure others can as well—and we can learn from each other, to make sure we are all pulling in the same direction.
Dunfermline has also tried to succeed in attracting small, niche businesses to the town centre in recent years; the Happy Earth Place and Little Shop of Heroes are two examples. Last year I visited the Sew Studio, which had recently expanded into a second retail unit on the High Street, diversifying its sewing supplies shop to offer sewing and crafting classes. It is a real hub that helps the town centre feel more vibrant.
The Committee’s inquiry pertains to areas that are devolved matters, but I hope Members appreciate the value of comparing approaches in constituent parts of the UK, working towards what is a clearly a common problem. In our support for town centres, we really are all in this together. I have heard some great ideas that I will take back to my constituency. I wish the Committee well in pursuing its recommendations and look forward to hearing a positive way forward from the Minister.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I thank the Committee, its members and its staff for the excellent report. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) on securing this debate and on his opening remarks, which were wide-ranging, informative and comprehensive, as well as excellently delivered. I thank all the hon. Members here for a reasoned debate, delivered in a good atmosphere, considering shared concerns about the future of our high streets at this important time.
This week, Arcadia, one of the biggest retailers in the country, narrowly avoided a collapse, which would have put 18,000 jobs at risk. Even so, Arcadia workers still face 50 shop closures and 1,000 job losses; my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin) highlighted some of the impacts of that on his constituency. Arcadia will not be the last retail group to struggle. Too few retail magnates have not given sufficient thought to the long-term sustainability of their retail groups, leaving workers and consumers to pay the price. Mike Ashley is as successful in his self-proclaimed role of saviour of the high street as he was in selling Newcastle United. The Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee has compared working conditions in Sports Direct to “a Victorian workhouse.” That is not the kind of high street we want to see.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) highlighted, the identity of our town centres is wrapped up with the retail sector, which is the largest private sector employer in the UK, employing one in 10 of our workforce. When I walk down Northumberland Street or through Eldon Square in Newcastle and see the vibrant mix of consumers and traders, I am grateful that my city centre appears to be weathering a very difficult trading environment; but that cannot be said for all cities and especially not for our towns.
Indeed, as this report highlights, there are often differences within towns. My hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) spoke about some of the innovative practices that some businesses on her high street were using to attract more foot flow. In Newcastle, Grainger market, our Victorian gem, is putting on tea parties and gastronomic delights in order to do the same thing.
What this review tells us is that, if our town centres are to survive to 2030, they must be grounded in community. Local authorities have a responsibility for the economic and social wellbeing of the places and communities they serve, but the scale of the issue demands action from central Government to ensure that our local authorities have the necessary powers to do their job, as hon. Members on both sides have emphasised. That must be backed by proper funding—much, much more than the pitiful £1.2 million put into the regeneration pilot in 2017. Our high streets and town centres anchor our local economies and offer jobs, services and a sense of place, but that is declining year on year. Every retail location type—high streets, retail parks, shopping centres—saw the number of occupied units decline at a faster rate in 2018 than in 2017. The high street vacancy rate rose from 11.2% to 11.5%; in retail parks it jumped from 4.9% in 2017 to 7.1% in 2018. There are 50,000 empty shops in the UK. In shopping centres, 6% of empty space has been empty for two years. On the high street, that figure is 5%. There have also been more than 100,000 job losses in retail over the past three years alone.
Some people say it is inevitable that online shopping will kill the high street, but it is wrong to think that the rise in internet retail equals empty shops and job losses. The impact of technology on our society involves political choices, and in this case the impact is due to Government inaction. As we see in this report, many shoppers still enjoy shopping as an experience; the most successful high streets are those with a good mix of retail, leisure and services, which provide a vibrant community space, not just a collection of businesses.
Under this Government, we have seen chronic under-investment in infrastructure, particularly outside London and the south-east. For example, the north-east receives less than one third of London’s transport spending per capita. According to the Local Government Association, outside London we have lost 117 million miles of bus routes—nearly half of all council-subsidised services—since Tory austerity began in 2011.
Every month, 60 bank branches and 250 free cash machines close, with devastating effects on access to cash in rural areas, and despite repeated promises to safeguard our post offices, we face 2,500 potential closures over the next year. We welcome today’s announcement by UK Finance that the banking sector will work to support people’s free access to cash, but it is not enough. Will the Minister take note, follow Labour’s lead and ban automated teller machine charges?
This Government have not only failed to take action but repeatedly ignored their own warnings. Despite the recommendations of this report, they have chosen to extend permitted development rules, which, as we have heard from many hon. Members, can effectively depopulate town centres in the day, which has an impact on retail and restaurants and makes it harder to enforce high standards for new homes. Will the Minister take note and suspend any further extension of permitted development, as hon. Members have called for?
In their response to this report, the Government refuse to recognise that online retailers should be contributing more. The system is past its sell-by date, having been
“designed in 1990, when businesses made money in a very different way.”
Those are not my words, but those of the Conservative Mayor of the West Midlands, Andy Street, who understands that high street retailers are being crippled by an outdated business rates system and has called for online retailers to pay more tax—as indeed have hon. Members such as the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr Prisk) today.
The Tories have failed our high streets, failed our retail sector, and failed our economy. They have no claim to be the party of business. As the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Douglas Chapman) highlighted, a no-deal Brexit would be catastrophic for businesses, extending that failure and wrecking many of the businesses on our high streets and in the retail sector. I ask the Minister to rule out a no-deal Brexit—[Interruption.] I am sure it is within her pay grade to do that. Will she at least say that she will not support a Conservative candidate who supports a no-deal Brexit?
Labour’s industrial strategy will rebuild our economy for the many. Unlike this Government, we care about every part of the economy. As part of our “innovation nation” mission, we will raise productivity and job quality in sectors such as construction, agriculture and retail that have been wholly neglected by the Government’s industrial strategy. Labour would fund a new catapult centre to boost the take-up of innovation in the retail sector, creating higher wages and better jobs on high streets across the country.
Our high streets are reaching crisis point, which is why Labour has an emergency five-point plan to resurrect and rebuild our town centres. I will finish with that plan. First, we will ban ATM charges and stop post office and bank branch closures. Secondly, we will provide free bus travel for under-25s. Thirdly, we will roll out free public wi-fi in town centres, so that we have networked centres that encourage people to spend their time as well as their money. Fourthly, we will establish a register of landlords of empty shops in each local authority, making it easier to bring shops back into use. Finally, we will introduce an annual revaluation of business rates, ensure a fairer appeals system and review the business rates system to bring it into the 21st century.
Labour’s plan will revive and reinvigorate our high streets, which must urgently adapt. We will take the urgent action required; will the Government follow in our plan and commit real resources to ensuring that our town centres can survive and thrive?
Graham Stringer (in the Chair)
Before I call the Minister, I will say two things. First, my notes said that the Minister was Kit Malthouse, but you are no less welcome for being unexpected, Minister. Secondly, can I ask you to leave a short space of time at the end of your speech for the Chair of the Committee to wind up?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Mrs Heather Wheeler)
Absolutely, Mr Stringer. I am Heather Wheeler, just in case anyone had not worked that out. The other Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry), should have been responding, but sadly he is at a funeral today. It is therefore my pleasure to respond to the debate. Clearly, my 16-minute speech is going to go nowhere, as I am leaving time for the Committee’s Chair to reply. As always, Mr Stringer, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.
I thank all members of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee who are present for their cross-party report into high streets and town centres for working with the Government to support the sustainable transformation of our high streets. We are pleased that the report broadly recognises the Government’s measures to instigate structural change, and we agree with the diagnosis that local places are best placed to know what their local solutions are—with appropriate support from central Government. It is a helpful report and, as has been said, we have broadly accepted its recommendations. Although I cannot cover everything in the short time available, I hope that hon. Members present will see how the Government are pursuing a holistic package of measures to transform our high streets and town centres for the long term.
Last year was particularly challenging for UK retailers, bringing into question traditional success models for towns and high streets. Quick to respond, in July 2018 the Government commissioned an expert panel, bringing together a wealth of expertise from the retail, property and design sectors. Chaired by Sir John Timpson, it explored the question that brings us here today: how do we catalyse change and ensure that town centres across the country adapt and thrive for future generations?
Our package includes a £675 million future high streets fund to support local areas in England to invest in town centre infrastructure, to make a real difference to the underlying structure of the high street. This demonstrates our commitment to taking long-term action to help high streets and town centres evolve through investment to improve town centres. We thank the Committee for commending our work in this area and echo its sentiments. We are currently considering more than 300 expressions of interest, and we have placed significant weighting on local leadership, vision and strategic ambition when assessing the bids. The places progressing to the second stage of the fund and receiving revenue funding to support the development of their plans will be announced later this summer.
As the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) said, business rates are a bone of contention. Since the 2016 Budget, we have introduced a range of business rates measures in England worth more than £13 billion over the next five years. This includes the announcement in the 2018 Budget to take a third off eligible retailers’ bills for two years from April 2019, which is worth an estimated £1 billion alone. We have also doubled small business rate relief from 50% to 100% for eligible businesses, resulting in more than 655,000 small businesses —one third of occupiers—paying no business rates at all.
Alongside that we have committed to a £435 million package to support ratepayers facing the steepest increases following the 2017 revaluation. Finally, we switched the annual indexation of business rates from the retail prices index to the consumer prices index, representing a cut in business rates every year for all ratepayers. That alone will save all businesses almost £6 billion over the next five years.
Rachael Maskell
I will be brief. Will the Minister commit to going back and scoping out the possibility of a turnover tax?
Mrs Wheeler
The hon. Lady is obviously prescient. When the Government concluded the last fundamental review of business rates, we decided to keep business rates as a property tax, following stakeholder responses. Respondents agreed that business rates are easy to collect, difficult to avoid, relatively stable and clearly linked with local authority spending. Some respondents suggested alternative tax bases. However, Select Committee members and others may wish to know that there was no consensus on an alternative base, and that even those respondents who put forward alternatives were clear that they were not without issues. To finish on business rates, the Government are committed to listening to views and will keep all taxes under review.
Helen Hayes
I will be extremely brief. This issue is killing businesses across the country now. I am afraid that saying the Government generally keep it under review, along with all other taxes, simply does not cut it for businesses in our town centres.
Mrs Wheeler
I have outlined how the Government are helping local businesses with many, many millions of pounds, and with £6 billion-worth of relief, so I think the hon. Lady is slightly over-egging it.
Another issue that has been highlighted is our undertaking a planning consultation on permitted development rights to help support change on the high street. Permitted development rights continue to play an important role in the planning system, supporting key Government agendas such as housing and high streets by providing more planning certainty while allowing for local consideration of key planning matters.
To put the hon. Member for Sheffield South East’s mind at rest on local plans and permitted development rights, where a local planning authority considers it necessary to protect a local amenity or the wellbeing of an area, it can consult the local community by removing a right by making an article 4 direction. Proposals for development can change, and a change of use would require a planning permission application.
Equally, on the point from the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) about poor quality homes being delivered through permitted development rights, permitted development rights have actually provided 46,000 really important homes that needed to be built. However, we are particularly keen to ensure that the quality of all new homes meets our ambitions, so in the spring statement we announced a review of permitted development rights for the conversion of buildings to residential properties, in respect of the quality and standard of homes.
Because the Government believe in the high street, we run the Great British High Street awards, with Visa, to celebrate the achievements of our communities and high streets. The awards are a great way of bringing together local players and focusing minds on high streets. In entering the awards, local authorities, businesses and communities work together and get local people talking about their high street, letting local leadership emerge. Last month, I was delighted to launch the 2019 competition in Crickhowell, the town that took the top prize in 2018. I am sure that Committee members will join me in wishing this year’s entrants the best of luck.
We encourage all those with an interest in high streets, particularly landlords and retailers, to consider how they can take the Committee’s recommendations on board in their own decision-making processes. We agree wholeheartedly with the Committee that the elements raised today form part of a bigger whole.
This is a package of interconnected measures to help local areas make their high streets and town centres fit for the future. The different elements will work together to have a real impact on high streets and town centres in adapting and evolving and in becoming vibrant hubs once again. I believe that the benefits of this will be felt more widely, helping to deliver local growth and real change in our communities. This growth will be shaped by the Government’s industrial strategy, which sets out the long- term plan to boost productivity by backing businesses to create good jobs and will increase the earning power of people throughout the UK with investment in skills, infrastructure and places. I once again congratulate the hon. Member for Sheffield South East on securing the debate, and I thank hon. Members for their speeches and questions and the Committee for its helpful recommendations.
My local high street in Swadlincote is thriving, my wonderful South Derbyshire District Council has no car parking charges in any of its council car parks, and we moved the market back down the high street, making it a vibrant place to be. I am sure that, as the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Douglas Chapman) said, we all have marvellous examples that show how our high streets can get back to being the best places that they can be. The challenge of rebalancing the functions of our high streets and town centres is a real priority for us across the nation. Having adapted successfully before to new demands, we believe that places can and will do so again.
Mr Betts
I thank all hon. Members for their contributions, and particularly members of the Select Committee, whom I also thank for agreeing this report unanimously. We did very well: it was 45 minutes before Brexit was mentioned and 70 minutes before Mike Ashley was mentioned.
We started off with failures of retail, whether British Home Stores, which is gone, or House of Fraser, which is restructuring, and we subsequently heard about Arcadia, Marks & Spencer and Debenhams closing stores and small businesses going out of business altogether. We looked at a situation that could get worse, with some high streets failing completely, but then we looked at the possibilities for the future. We recommend that all stake- holders get together, including local councils, Government, retailers and landlords. We can have a brighter future by changing the nature of the high street, with changing uses—coffee shops, leisure, open spaces, public services and residential—all being brought in, led by the local authorities with BIDs through their local planning processes, involving their local communities and businesses in a package.
We also said that there has to be a level playing field for retail, which will still be an important part of the high street. We held our inquiry after all the Government’s initiatives on business rates had been brought in, and no one who gave evidence said that they were sufficient. That is the reality. The Government simply have to go away and look again at the possibility of alternatives, such as an online sales tax. They should read the excellent report from Tesco that said how this could be done and how it could benefit the high street.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved
That this House has considered the Eleventh Report of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, High Streets and town centres in 2030, HC 1010, and the Government response, CP 84.
Jewish Community: Contribution to the UK
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the contribution of the Jewish Community to the UK.
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Sir David. I originally sought this debate following a conversation with my friend Marc Levy of the Jewish Leadership Council, and let me say at the outset what an excellent ambassador he is for the Jewish community. When we first discussed the idea, I was not keen on it; I did not see its relevance because when I look at people, it would not necessarily occur to me whether they were Jewish or not.
Let me give some examples, using my colleagues. I see that my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) is in her place. I know that she is Jewish, but when I think of her, I think of a woman who has been a friend of mine for 20 years, of somebody who is a trade unionist and primarily of somebody who has made a real contribution to and developed a real expertise in defence policy.
I knew that my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Dame Louise Ellman) was Jewish, but I think of her first as somebody who gave real leadership in local government for many years before she came here and gave leadership in the Select Committee on Transport. Whether she was Jewish or not was not a factor for me.
Let me mention some other colleagues. I was not even aware that my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) were Jewish until they started to receive antisemitic abuse. I was not aware, nor would it even have crossed my radar; I would not even have considered it. However, I would have considered my hon. Friend’s work on environmentalism and my right hon. Friend’s service not only as a Minister for many years, but as Chair of the Public Accounts Committee.
As Marc explained to me, there is a feeling among Jewish groups that too many headlines recently have been negative. Jewish groups understandably feel under threat, be it from a rising right-wing, nationalist and racist populism in eastern Europe, from President Putin talking about Jews controlling the world banking system, from President Trump’s failure to denounce protestors in the USA chanting, “Jews will not replace us,” or—let us be clear—from a sense and fears that my own party has elements that have expressed antisemitic remarks or statements and that complaints about those have not been dealt with sufficiently quickly or robustly.
However, instead of all the negative stories about Jewish people—negativity, I hasten to add, that they themselves are not responsible for—it was time to have a celebration of the contribution of the Jewish people and Jewish groups to our society; to reset the dial to the positive; to shine the spotlight on the positive news stories about things that go on every day but get squeezed out by the more unpleasant stuff; and to remind ourselves again not just of the quality or even the quantity of the Jewish contribution to the UK, but of the length of that contribution.
Obviously, I am not Jewish myself—I doubt there are many Jews whose first name is Christian. In fact, growing up in a Cheshire village, I had never knowingly met any Jewish people until I went to secondary school in Manchester, which has one of the largest Jewish populations outside London. I recall that at that school we had the Sieff theatre, named after Israel Sieff, a former chairman of Marks & Spencer, and paid for by his family. That was the first example of Jewish philanthropy that I had come across.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on the speech that he is making. He has mentioned the Jewish community in Manchester, so would he like to take the opportunity, with me, to celebrate the interfaith work of the Muslim Jewish Forum of Greater Manchester?
Christian Matheson
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. If she will permit me, I will return to that issue shortly.
The UK has a long-established Jewish community: the first record of Jewish settlement dates from 1070. There was a continual Jewish presence in the country until King Edward’s Edict of Expulsion, dated 1290. Sadly, therefore, we can also date UK antisemitism from around that period. Following the expulsion, there was no Jewish community apart from those who practised secretly.
Towards the middle of the 17th century, a considerable number of Marrano merchants settled in London and formed a secret congregation. That was until the time of Oliver Cromwell, who never officially re-admitted the Jewish community. However, a small colony was identified in 1656 and allowed to remain. In 1701, Bevis Marks Synagogue opened in London. It is the oldest continually used synagogue in London. The Board of Deputies of British Jews, the main Jewish representative body, was established in 1760.
In 1837, Queen Victoria knighted Moses Haim Montefiore. Four years later, Isaac Lyon Goldsmid was made a baronet; he was the first Jew to receive a hereditary title. The first Jewish Lord Mayor of London, Sir David Salomons, was elected in 1855. That was followed by the 1858 emancipation of the Jews. On 26 July 1858, Lionel de Rothschild was finally allowed to sit in the British House of Commons when the law restricting the oath of office to Christians was changed.
Owing to the lack of anti-Jewish violence in Britain in the 19th century, it acquired a reputation for religious tolerance and attracted significant immigration from eastern Europe. Of the eastern European Jewish emigrants, 1.9 million headed to the United States and about 140,000 to Britain. Some growing antisemitism during the 1930s was counterbalanced by strong support for British Jews in their local communities, leading to events such as the battle of Cable Street, where antisemitism was strongly resisted by Jews and their neighbours. They fought it out as a united community on the street against fascist elements.
Ruth Smeeth
As my hon. Friend is touching on the battle of Cable Street, I feel that I should put on the record my pride that my grandmother spent the 48 hours in the run-up to the battle of Cable Street—she lived in the east end of London—putting razor blades into tomatoes to throw at Nazis. I take a great deal of pleasure in being able to contribute to such an important debate, because the Jewish contribution to British life has had many different forms.
Christian Matheson
That contribution has had many different and, dare I say it, honourable forms when it comes to dealing with Nazis. I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention.
As we recall the 75th anniversary of D-day and the battle of Normandy, let us remember the more than 60,000 Jews who served in the British armed forces during the second world war; they included 14,000 in the Royal Air Force and 15,000 in the Royal Navy. Some 30,000 Jews from Palestine also served in the British military. Five Jewish soldiers have won the Victoria Cross. Some 4,000 took part in the D-day landings.
Today, there are about 290,000 Jewish people in the UK across all walks of life. According to the 2011 census, British Jewry is overwhelmingly English, with only about 5,900 Jews in Scotland, 2,100 in Wales and fewer than 200 in Northern Ireland. There are just 90 or so in my constituency. I am always pleased to tell the House that that equates roughly to the size of my majority when I was first elected, in 2015, leading some of my Jewish constituents to claim, misquoting The Sun, “It was the Jews wot won it.”
The majority of Jews in England and the UK live in and around London, with almost 160,000 in London alone and a further 21,000 in Hertfordshire. As hon. Members have heard, the next most significant population is in Greater Manchester; it is a community of slightly more than 25,000.
I am particularly proud of the role that Jews played in the growth of the trade union movement and the founding of the Labour party. The Jewish community was instrumental in setting up trade unions. The “Jewish Encyclopedia” of 1906 lists 39 Jewish unions set up between 1882 and 1902. The London Jewish Bakers’ Union was created in 1905 as the International Bakers’ Union—members came from Germany, Poland, Russia and elsewhere—and continued until 1970; it was the longest lived Jewish union. Poale Zion was the forerunner of today’s Jewish Labour Movement and was one of the early affiliates to my party in its nascent years.
The Jewish community is also loyal, despite what racists may claim. Every week at the synagogue, on the Sabbath, a prayer is said for the Queen. It begins:
“Our Sovereign Lady, Queen Elizabeth, Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Charles, Prince of Wales, and all the Royal Family. May the supreme King of kings in His mercy preserve the Queen in life, guard her and deliver her from all trouble and sorrow. May He bless and protect Her Majesty’s Armed Forces.”
As much as I used to enjoy going to the all-night Jewish bagel bakery in Brick Lane in London when I was a student years ago, it is worth recording that our national dish—fish and chips—is probably a Jewish import. It is thought that fried fish was first introduced into Britain by Jewish refugees from Portugal and Spain in the 16th century. The first fish and chip shop was opened by a Jewish immigrant, Joseph Malin, in Cleveland Street in London.
I wish to focus on two areas of Jewish life today: first, the contribution to and delivery of social policy. Reform Judaism has led policy development work on loneliness and isolation. It launched the programme with a conference in March 2018. Reform Judaism holds quarterly networking meetings with volunteers and staff to share ideas and best practice and to hear about innovative projects and practices in other communities and beyond. Inclusion and wellbeing are considered on all events, and Reform Judaism’s forthcoming conference will focus on mental health and wellbeing.
Reform communities deliver their own programmes and activities, which include many opportunities to combat loneliness and isolation. Most communities offer befriending schemes, welcoming new members and visitors to synagogue and buddying for people who might need support to join activities or services. Communities phone members at significant points of the year—Jewish holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, or at times of bereavement—and use that as a chance to foster links and bring people who might be lonely into the community.
Some communities are also able to offer transport, which can be a significant factor in social isolation. Lunch clubs, dementia cafés, afternoon teas, bereavement support groups and Jewish festivals are opportunities to bring people together and foster social links. Communities have intergenerational projects such as singing with toddlers and the elderly or teams teaching older people how to use technology. Such projects are across the UK at many Reform synagogues.
The Jewish Leadership Council has promoted social care activities undertaken by ex-members who work with the most vulnerable in society and create an environment in which the elderly in the Jewish community can live independently where appropriate.
Ruth Smeeth
Many different forms of support are given to the elderly within the Jewish community, primarily provided by Jewish Care, among others. Does my hon. Friend agree with me that the day centre in Hendon, which focuses on holocaust survivors in their final days, is a wonderful addition that would not be provided by the state? That shows the value of organisations such as Jewish Care.
Christian Matheson
I am most grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention. There is a strong culture of supporting the family and others within the Jewish community, but anything that helps to support holocaust survivors and also reminds us of what they and their families went through, so that we can remind future generations, is very important.
Over the past 12 months, the JLC has undertaken an elderly care review to look into all its social care organisations so that they can work with the elderly and see how, strategically as a community, they can create a cohesive and effective link between organisations and best enable them to be effective in their aims and missions.
Mitzvah Day is a body that promotes an inclusive day of social action. Its aim is to bring people together through Jewish-led social action, and its work contributes in various ways. Volunteering itself is a powerful way for people who are isolated or disconnected from others to come together. Taking part in Mitzvah Day is an easy and accessible way to join a group of volunteers to support local community projects and needs. It not only allows for volunteers to feel connected and useful, but for the beneficiaries to connect to local community volunteers and to establish friendships. Mitzvah Day has demonstrated a substantial repeat effect, with volunteers returning year on year to run Mitzvah Day projects, and with volunteers continuing to volunteer throughout the year.
The second area that I wish to look at—my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) touched on this—is community cohesion. I wish to refer specifically to the work of the Community Security Trust, which was set up to protect Jewish communities and Jewish groups from violence, attacks, intimidation and worse. The CST has spread out to use its expertise, developed over two decades, to support other community groups, including Muslim community groups who also face hatred, violence and threats.
CST co-runs several initiatives that encourage and improve community integration, including Stand Up! Education Against Discrimination, which aims to empower young people in mainstream schools to learn about and act against discrimination, racism, antisemitism and anti-Muslim hatred, while developing their social responsibility in the community. The project is led by Streetwise, a partnership between CST and Maccabi GB, another membership organisation, and is supported by Tell MAMA, Kick It Out and Galop. Given a 29% rise in the number of hate crimes in 2017 in the UK, including anti-Muslim hate and antisemitism, the interactive free-of-charge workshops aim to educate young people about tolerance and social responsibility, giving them skills to counter discrimination while ensuring their personal safety.
Framed within a broad conversation about the Equality Act 2010 and British values, Stand Up! currently employs two facilitators from Jewish and Muslim backgrounds, modelling a partnership of interfaith collaboration and demonstrating how groups that are often perceived as oppositional can work together successfully. The workshop combines Streetwise’s and Maccabi GB’s experience in delivering informal personal development sessions to tens of thousands of young people in schools nationwide with expertise in monitoring and recording antisemitic, anti-Muslim, racist, and LGBT+ hate incidents of the other partner organisations: the CST, Tell MAMA, Kick It Out and Galop. The Stand Up! project launched in January 2017 and has since gone from strength to strength, delivering sessions to more than 8,000 young people, and booking sessions in 48 schools and settings to date.
The Jewish community has a great story to tell.
Kate Green
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I sense he is moving on towards the end of his speech, but, before he does, I want to ask him to commend another interfaith initiative, Nisa-Nashim, which brings together Jewish and Muslim women across the country in social action, mutual learning and sharing of enjoyable leisure activities. I am sure he will agree that that repeats the message of the strength of the partnerships that the Jewish community forms with those of other faiths, and of no faith.
Christian Matheson
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We could be here all afternoon simply listing the different organisations and schemes that Jewish community groups run either on their own or with other community groups. Many of them slip under the radar, but none of them fails to have an impact.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and also for his excellent opening speech. If it had one fault, it was that it did not mention Newcastle, which I shall now do. I grew up in Newcastle, and, like him, I did so not understanding enough about the contribution of the Jewish community to a great city.
I was surprised and encouraged when I learned about of the contribution of Herbert Loebl, who, like me, was an electrical engineer. He came to Newcastle at the age of 16 in 1940 and built some of our great high-tech businesses, which still make a contribution to our economy today. Newcastle might have a small Jewish community, but it makes a brilliant and strong economic contribution to our city now, just as it did in the past.
Christian Matheson
I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for reminding us that the contributions of members of the Jewish community can be found everywhere and in every walk of life.
The Jewish community has a great story to tell. Far from being insular, it is integrated, as we have just heard, and is integral to our society. Its members are generous with time, spirit and philanthropic giving, but once again the Jewish community feels under threat. It seems that as soon as there is the first sign of society’s cohesion breaking down, antisemitism returns and is one of the first signs of that breakdown. We must deal with that racism head on, but we must also deal with it by remembering and welcoming the Jewish community’s massive, positive contribution, individually and through collective groups. I, for one, am grateful for their contribution to our nation.
Ruth Smeeth (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to participate in the debate under your chairmanship, Sir David. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson)—my friend and colleague—for calling the debate, and for his incredible speech, which outlined the contribution of my family and community.
It has been an interesting experience being a Jewish parliamentarian over the past three years, but I am reminded on a daily basis of the contribution that my family have made. I rarely get to say nice things about being Jewish in the United Kingdom, and typically have to say more horrible things, so perhaps the House will indulge me slightly as I tell my family story, and how we ended up here. Much of it was referenced by my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester.
I am the great-granddaughter of Jewish immigrants who arrived here from Russia and Poland, fleeing pogroms. They had fled persecution, but arrived as economic migrants in the east end of London—among the more than 140,000 that my hon. Friend mentioned. My great-grandfather started a Yiddish-speaking Jewish trade union branch, which is now part of Unite the union. They had a wonderful daughter, who became my grandmother. She desperately wanted my mother and me never to know anything she got up to as a young woman and political activist, because she did not want to give us ideas.
Ruth Smeeth
It did not work out well for her or anybody.
I learned much of this history only recently, because of events that have happened. Not only was my grandmother at the battle of Cable Street, including helping with preparations for it, but she taught me my first political song. When she was eight she participated in her first political campaign, going around the streets of the east end of London campaigning for Harry Gosling: “Vote, vote, vote for Harry Gosling.” At that point the Jewish community could not afford leaflets. No community could afford them. It was all done by children singing to get the vote out on polling day. It sounds much more appealing than my get-out-the-vote operation at a general election.
My grandmother was definitely a visionary, and ahead of her time. In 1936, as well as participating in Cable Street, she took food and socks and went to meet the Jarrow marchers when they arrived in London at the end of their march. That is not something necessarily to be expected of an immigrant Jewish woman living in poverty in central London. She was definitely our matriarch and instilled in our family everything that has led me here today. When my mother was a single mum, working full time, my grandmother was my carer. On a Wednesday afternoon all the little old ladies on her council estate in the east end of London would arrive at her flat, and she would feed everyone tea. She could read and write so well that they all arrived with their letters and she did what I would now call casework for them. She was extraordinary, and because of her my mother became the boss of my hon. Friends the Member for City of Chester and for York Central (Rachael Maskell); she became a trade union deputy general secretary. I feel that between the two of them I am very much in a family.
Our story, beyond the fact that, like many in this place I am a third-generation immigrant, could be told by many different people across my community, but it gave me my values. The extraordinary women in my family participated in the history that my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester talked about. They definitely cooked a great deal, but they got me here. Many in my family also served. My great uncle Bozzy died on D-day. My grandfather fought at Monte Cassino. We are British to our core, and have never been anything other than British until recent days when being Jewish became a secondary factor. I am grateful, as are my family, that we ended up here and not in America by accident. I am grateful for everything that this country has done, and every opportunity that has been afforded to my family and all the others who arrived.
There is someone else I want to mention. I am not the first Jewish Member of Parliament for my great city. Barnett Stross was the first Jewish Member of Parliament for Stoke-on-Trent. My hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester touched on the subject of Jewish philanthropy, and it was because of Barnett Stross that we helped to rebuild Lidice after the war. My city of miners helped to rebuild another city of miners. The Jewish community has made contributions to our country at every level, whether political or community, as has every other faith and immigrant community here. We are not special. We are just part of a wonderful society that I am grateful to represent in this place.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
There appears to be a little time, Sir David, and I am grateful to be able to make a short contribution. I particularly want to speak about the work of World Jewish Relief, because I spend quite a lot of time in Parliament looking at policy on, and support for, refugees and refugee projects. I commend the work of World Jewish Relief for refugees arriving in this country.
Many of us have learned a great deal about the importance of refugee welcome by listening to the stories of refugees from appalling attacks and persecution and, ultimately, the holocaust—still remembered by my parents’ generation. We have learned particularly poignantly from colleagues such as my noble Friend Lord Dubs, who has talked about his experience as a child refugee. That has enormously enriched the debates that we have today about the plight of modern refugees fleeing to our country. My interest in refugee policy is at the practical end; about what can be done to support people arriving here. World Jewish Relief offers an exemplary programme, to which I should like to draw the House’s attention.
The programme recognises that refugees are desperate to integrate and make their homes in the country that welcomes them: to become part of their community—their friends and neighbours. We all know that one of the most important places where we can integrate and become part of a community, and feel that we are playing our part as community members, is the workplace. That is why I want to draw the House’s attention in particular to World Jewish Relief projects to support refugees into employment. It is not easy for a refugee to move into employment. Although many arrive here highly skilled and qualified, the persecution and trauma that they have experienced may make their re-entry to employment difficult. They might have to learn a new language and requalify in a new system of professional qualifications or skills recognition. Of course, they also have to overcome and deal with the trauma that brought them to this country.
World Jewish Relief helps with all that. It helps people to learn English, if they need to, and to reskill. It helps them to obtain the necessary recognition of their qualifications and it helps to reintroduce them to the workplace. It recognises that different individuals will be at a different place on the journey and that, for some, a return to work in any foreseeable future is probably unimaginable; but it does not drop them. It continues to offer them support, care and encouragement. To date 250 refugees have been helped into employment. Sixty-six are receiving other forms of support through the specialist training and employment programme. The programme is supported and funded by a range of Jewish institutions and private donors and by a refugee taskforce that has been formed by a number of local, community and religious denominations that have wanted to support the work that World Jewish Relief does for refugees. That is supported by the Jewish Council for Racial Equality and it gives a much wider group of people the opportunity to participate in and support that worthwhile endeavour.
It is because I take a broad policy interest in refugee work that I have come to know about the work of World Jewish Relief, but in fact it is close on our doorsteps in the north of England. I particularly commend it for working with a group of people who present particular challenges as a result of the trauma and difficulties that they have experienced. I know that the friendships and relationships formed between the refugees and those supporting them will have enriched the lives of everyone involved. Once again, as we have heard from my hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) and for City of Chester (Christian Matheson), we hear of a Jewish community that is not inward-looking but outward-looking. It looks to the country that it is a part of: it looks to be a part of it, and to form and strengthen relations with all its friends and neighbours. We are all immensely lucky that it wants to behave in that way, and that it does so.
Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)
I begin by thanking and congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) on securing this debate. As he set out very eloquently, the Jewish community has been part of the United Kingdom for hundreds of years and is today represented in all walks of life.
There is no Jewish community of any size in my Wolverhampton South East constituency, although we do have a Jewish cemetery that was donated to the community by the Duke of Sutherland when there was nowhere proper for Jewish people who died in the city to be buried. The cemetery exists to this day. I have been working with the Board of Deputies to try to make sure that it is properly cared for and restored, because, of course, when cemeteries are no longer actively used, they can fall into disrepair.
We are here to emphasise the positives today and I concur with that, but I want to make a few remarks about the growth that we have seen in antisemitism and how I believe we need to respond to it. It affects people on the hard right of politics, and has done for a long time—it comes from people on the hard right of politics—but it is also now coming from people on the hard left. We have seen much of that in recent years, including some appalling and awful abuse directed at my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) and other Jewish MPs, both online and offline. It is simply unacceptable, it is deeply disturbing and we have to respond to it in the right way.
As someone who has been a member of the Labour party for 35 years, it is particularly disturbing for me to see antisemitism in the Labour party. We have always prided ourselves on being a party for people of all faiths and none—that is in the best of the Labour tradition—so it is very sad to see antisemitism in our party; there is no denying that it is there and has been there in recent years.
Some of it is wrapped up in a debate about the middle east and about Israel and Palestine and so on, but there is no need for it to be so. To state some obvious truths, the Israeli Prime Minister and the Israeli Government are not the same thing as Israeli society. There is an open and active debate in that country about policy, about settlements, about peace and about direction. Millions of Israeli citizens who take very contrasting views on those issues participate in that debate on a daily basis.
Ruth Smeeth
One of the most fascinating things about the debate in our party at the moment is that when we look at politics in the middle east, and specifically in Israel, my family who live in Israel campaign against Netanyahu day in, day out, and yet I am held responsible for his actions over here.
Mr McFadden
That is a very good illustration of my point. It is just the same as the fact that in this country we have a Government and a Prime Minister—perhaps a new one soon—and millions of our own citizens will disagree with the Government or the policies they pursue.
It is also the case that there are many people who care passionately about the Palestinian cause, who want to see a Palestinian state and who want to see a better deal for the Palestinian people. They can argue that case with passion and conviction, without being antisemitic. Many people do that on a daily basis. Caring about those issues does not mean that there is a need to engage in antisemitism.
We then have to ask ourselves a more difficult question. Where does this come from? What is really driving it? I believe that there is a further, wider problem, which is about an overall anti-western sentiment, which combines hostility to Israel with being anti-American, and which creates a fertile ground for the sentiments. I do not believe that that anti-western sentiment is part of the Labour tradition. It has never been part of the policy or the outlook of any Labour Government. I believe that if we really want to deal with the issue in our party and on the left, we have to reject that anti-western sentiment as well. These sentiments do not come from nowhere. We can do what we can about processes and complaints procedures and committees, but unless we are clear that our world view must not give rise to it, we will not really be able to deal with this issue.
I am disturbed by the antisemitism on the left. It is important that we stand strongly against it, that we do not accept any world view that gives rise to it, and that we state clearly that we are a party of all faiths and none. Britain’s great strength as a country is that it is a country for all faiths and none. That is why we have been a refuge for the oppressed from around the world for so many years. That is why we are recognised as such around the world.
So, there should be no hierarchy of victimhood. There should be no sense that only some people are victims of racism and other people cannot be victims of racism. We have to reject these things and appreciate that we are admired around the world precisely because we have been, for the most part, a refuge for people fleeing from persecution. We have given people a platform to build new lives. It is not a perfect story—it never is, and of course there have been times and episodes when that has not been the case—but it is largely true. Over the long arc of history, it is the story of how our society has developed up to today.
We should give thanks to the Jewish community for the contribution that has been made over hundreds of years, in all walks of life, to the United Kingdom, and resolve anew that we believe in equality and in a politics and a country that can be a good home for people of all faiths and none.
David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)
As always, it is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair and to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. As hon. Members have done, I pay tribute to the hon. Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) for securing and opening the debate. I have the pleasure of winding up on behalf of the Scottish National party. Although it has been a very short debate, and not a lot of hon. Members are present, we have made up in quality for what we do not have in quantity.
I have come to know the hon. Member for City of Chester through a standing engagement. It used to be a weekly engagement, but it has now moved to monthly—one of the longest-running Public Bill Committees in this Parliament. Over the last year or so, I have come to know the hon. Gentleman, and I would have expected nothing less than for him to pay a typically warm tribute to the Jewish community in the UK. He gave an absolutely outstanding history and chronology of the UK’s Jewish community. He was right to mention that there are around 5,900 Jewish people in Scotland. They are largely based in the constituency of the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Paul Masterton), who I know would want to be here today but cannot be. I pay tribute to the close relationship he has with the Jewish community there.
As always, the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) spoke very powerfully. She spoke about her family’s history as immigrants from Poland and Russia. It certainly sounds like her grandmother would be a fantastic person to spend time with, and the hon. Lady did her proud.
The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) is always a strong voice in this place for refugees, and she spoke about the work that World Jewish Relief does, particularly on moving people into employment.
The right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) made reference to the cemetery in his constituency. I, too, have a Jewish cemetery in my constituency. There is not much of a Jewish population in Glasgow East, but there is still a Jewish cemetery on Hallhill Road. Thankfully, it is kept very well. When driving down one of the more significant streets in my constituency, all those headstones with a Star of David on them are a reminder that Jews are such a massive part of the community. The right hon. Gentleman also spoke candidly about some of the challenges in the Labour party. I know that may not be an easy thing to do in the current climate. He was brave to raise how some of this antisemitism has come from the left.
I also want to put on record my enormous thanks to the Jewish community, particularly in Scotland, for its immense contribution to our country. We should be very proud of the diversity of modern Scotland, while never taking it for granted. The Scottish National party could not be clearer that Scotland’s Jewish community needs to be assured and feel safe, against a worrying backdrop of growing antisemitism across Europe and further afield.
Like anyone who calls Scotland home, Scotland’s Jewish communities have the right to feel comfortable as they go about daily life free from intolerance, and religious or antisemitic hatred. Following last year’s shocking attack in Pennsylvania, that is more important than ever. We utterly condemn without equivocation anyone who threatens the existence of Israel. Israel has a right to exist peacefully. The Israel-Palestine situation should not be used as some kind of justification for attacks on Jewish people or abuse towards Jewish people, as it seems to be now more than ever. Therefore, we condemn any attempt to do so and any expression of antisemitism.
Given the rise in reports of hate crimes and hate speech in the UK last June, and homophobic attacks, such as that in Orlando, as well as the antisemitic voices on the so-called alt-right, it is more important than ever to learn the lessons of the past. That is why we support work to tackle religious hatred and intolerance, including Scotland’s national commemoration of the holocaust and subsequent genocides, so that lessons are learned about what can happen if hatred and discrimination remain unchecked, and seep through into our society. The Scottish Government accept in full, without equivocation, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism. It is disappointing that it has taken quite a long time for people to get on board with that.
I want to come back to the wider issue of freedom of religion and belief, which is essential for any democratic, functioning society. Whether we are Christians, Jews or Muslims, bringing faith communities around the table is key to building a cohesive, respectful society. We still have a lot more to do on that, even in 2019. Scottish Interfaith Week is an excellent example of how Scottish communities are working together to improve dialogue with one another on matters of religious, national and civic importance.
I want to finish my remarks, as I normally do, by bringing the topic back home to Glasgow East, and referring to one of my predecessors in this House. A few years ago, I had the real pleasure of visiting Glasgow’s Garnethill Synagogue, to look at some of the Jewish archives. Shamefully, it was only then that I began to learn more about Myer Galpern, who was the MP for my constituency, then Glasgow Shettleston, from 1959 to 1979. He was Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons during his last term in office. Myer Galpern was not only the first Jewish Lord Provost of Glasgow but the first Jewish Provost in Scotland. Sadly, that is a little known fact, which we should do more to recognise and celebrate in Glasgow. I will pursue that with Glasgow City Council.
In conclusion, the Jewish community made an enormous contribution to Scotland long before Myer Galpern, and I look forward to its continuing to make an enormous contribution to the rich, tartan tapestry of Scotland for many more years to come.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I send my best wishes for a speedy recovery to my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah), who was due to respond to the debate. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) for securing the debate. We have known each other for a significant amount of time—a couple of decades—and I can testify to how committed he is not only to celebrating diversity, but to furthering the rights and opportunities of all in society. He has done so today eloquently for our Jewish friends across the United Kingdom.
I was particularly moved by the family story of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth), much of which I had not heard before. I have very fond memories of working with her mother, who was a tour de force in the trade union movement. My hon. Friend has proved to be that, too. Given the lineage from her grandmother, I can very much see where that comes from.
Today’s debate celebrates the incredible investment that the UK’s Jewish communities have made to our nation. If I may, for one moment I will highlight my own Jewish community in York. York’s Jewish community may be small, but it is fast-growing, and it is certainly growing in its impact on our city. Determined not to look back to the tragic massacre of Clifford’s Tower in 1190, the community is building a new story to be told in our city, marked by community action and an impressive contribution to York’s faith forum.
We heard earlier from the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) about the faith communities in Manchester and Glasgow, and the contribution that they can make to our communities. The work of the faith forum in York stands out across the country. This is not just about the Jewish community; the Muslim community is known for how they came out to greet the English Defence League with tea and biscuits when it marched in our city. They broke the anger and changed that situation, the like of which has not been seen in our city since.
Since I was elected, it has been a real honour to work with York’s Jewish community. In particular, Ben Rich has led significant dialogue in our city, not least when I approached him to provide training for our Labour party on antisemitism, and I was delighted that he accepted that. We have had positive feedback from the significant number of people who attended. I believe that again sets out best practice.
I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) for highlighting, in his usual eloquent style, the real discourse about the political debate on identity, culture and faith. He is absolutely right that even one incident of antisemitism must be a cause of great concern. We have to know our history to know how crucial it is to be on top of the issue and to address it as a matter of urgency.
While I am still giving thanks, I pass on my thanks to the Jewish Leadership Council, which does outstanding work, especially on advancing good practice and taking forward so many initiatives across our country, particularly with its work on care for the elderly. We are reminded of the importance of that work today. It is so important that we have a real understanding of the diversity, identity, culture and innovations that come from all communities across the UK, and that we celebrate them in their own right, whether through our culture, our economy, our society or personally.
Many third-sector organisations, such as Jewish Care and Norwood, have made outstanding contributions to our country. I knew those organisations particularly well when I worked with them as a trade union official. Now, as a Member of Parliament, I work closely with the Holocaust Educational Trust as it leads the dialogue on remembering the past, addressing prejudice in society today and bringing the issue so close to home. It was a delight to hear from my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) about the incredible work that World Jewish Relief is doing with refugees. Again, that brings home the importance of the work across our communities, to welcome strangers and embrace all that they have to bring.
As a trade unionist—I refer hon. Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests—I have witnessed incredible contributions, not least from my hon. Friends, to advancing workers’ rights on behalf of the Jewish community. We are reminded of the important work contributed, across our trade union movement, towards anti-fascism. Like my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester, I highlight the amazing work that the Community Security Trust does in an interfaith context to ensure the safety and security of residents, particularly in the Jewish community.
On Mitzvah Day, people across the country make a phenomenal contribution: some 40,000 people from the Jewish community come out to serve their community. In York, that has expressed itself in recent years through tree planting to alleviate flooding issues, but that is just one of 1,000 projects to meet local needs in communities. I thank people for opening up their hearts and their doors to our communities and reaching out. While I am speaking about opening doors, I should also say that I have very much enjoyed visiting my local Jewish community on a number of occasions to share Shabbat and share fellowship with my friends in it.
It is not just a question of charity. Our economy thrives because of all that the Jewish community has contributed over time. The hard work and innovation of many people within the Jewish community has broadened our economic footprint in the UK and beyond. I enjoyed hearing my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester explain how fish and chips came to our country—I am sure that will feature in a future pub quiz. We also celebrate the Jewish community’s contribution to science, medicine, sport, literature and the arts in the UK. Whether they are Nobel prize winners or have simply made a contribution in their own right, we celebrate all who have participated in advancing our country.
As we mark the 75th anniversary of D-day, it is worth noting not only the 50,000 people from the Jewish community who served in our armed forces in the first world war, but the more than 60,000 who served in the second. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude.
I am thankful that many people from the Jewish community have served in this place. Our Labour party has been an important home to many from across the Jewish community over the years, with radical thinking about change and about how we want to shape and transform our society. We have supported the struggles that discrimination has brought and have stood in solidarity with those who face challenges. We are determined to rebuild that trust. It cannot be given; it must be demonstrated and earned.
At a time when we are seeing the rise of fascism across our nation, with people being othered because of their identity, culture or creed, it is vital that we unite and drive forward radical change across our communities to ensure that all feel safe and welcome in our nation. Together, we must celebrate the contributions that come clearly from the values that lie at the heart of the Jewish community in both culture and faith.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Rishi Sunak)
As always, Sir David, it is a privilege and a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I thank the hon. Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) for securing this important debate and granting us the opportunity to reflect on the significant social, political, cultural and economic contributions that the Jewish community makes to our great United Kingdom. We must also pay thanks to the Jewish Leadership Council and Lord Levy for planting the seed of this debate.
I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman for his first-rate opening speech. In a reasonably short time, he gave us an excellent overview of the full breadth and history of the Jewish community’s contribution to our country, and he should be commended for doing so with an incredibly positive and warm tone. I thank all other hon. Members who have participated in the debate; I will address the specific remarks made by the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) later in my speech.
I thank the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) for sharing her family story. I am glad that she did not take her grandmother’s advice, but has brought her ideas to this place. No one who has heard the hon. Lady speak on these issues, in this House or elsewhere, could fail to be struck by her force and passion. Our public discourse and debate in this place is the richer for her participation—and I am not sure that I will be able to look at tomatoes in the same way when I am at the supermarket this weekend.
I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) for his intelligent, thoughtful and powerful speech. He spoke not only with incredible bravery but with clarity and force—and without any notes, as far as I could tell. I look forward to re-reading his excellent speech.
Late in his life, the great writer and polemicist Christopher Hitchens discovered that his mother was Jewish and that, by extension, so was he. When he told his oldest friend, Martin Amis, Amis replied, “You know, I find I’m jealous.” How else could he feel, when the Jewish people have the one of the most enviable records of achievement of any demographic group in the United Kingdom’s history? Despite only ever forming a small percentage of the population, British Jews have shone in almost every field. They have inspired and entertained, created and innovated. They have become our doctors, our philosophers, our inventors, our musicians, our writers, our leaders, our role models, our parliamentarians and, indeed, one of our Prime Ministers.
It is only right that we celebrate the great achievements of the Jewish community, whose contributions have truly shaped our nation’s journey and identity. Before we do so, however, I must take note of the fact that a couple of hon. Members, including the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East, referred to ongoing incidents of prejudice, abuse and discrimination. It is deeply disappointing that that issue still arises in our society; it should be tackled unflinchingly where it occurs. Those who face such displays of bigotry should know that the British Government and everybody in this Chamber stand with them and support them.
I am always struck by the phenomenally strong community spirit that is shown by the Jewish community here in Britain. He will not thank me for saying it, and he did not insert it into my speech, but my private secretary, who is sitting a couple of rows behind me, is a shining example of that, as I discover whenever I glean what he has been up to in his weekend activity.
The community has social action at its heart. The very word for charity in Hebrew is derived from the word for justice. The biggest Jewish charity, Jewish Care, is one of the 100 largest charities in the UK. It provides care to more than 10,000 people a week and has 15 care homes, 13 community centres and four independent living communities. It is an inspiration to the rest of us, showing how much can be done within a community to support those in need.
Similarly, Norwood, which began in the 1700s as a hospital in the east end of London, has flourished and grown over the centuries to support people of all ages. It highlights just how generous the community is with its time and resources, with 500 volunteers and £12 million raised every year to maintain its amazing and precious programmes.
The community strives to look after the vulnerable—not only within it but in the wider world. The hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) gave the example of Mitzvah Day, when Jewish community groups and individuals up and down the country join forces with those of all faiths and none, volunteering their time to support those in need in their local community. That positive, collaborative social action is underpinned and inspired by the Jewish values of kindness, justice and shared responsibility. Last year, Mitzvah Day joined with Muslim Aid to launch a huge event to feed London’s homeless and vulnerable with that most famous of Jewish dishes—chicken soup.
The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston spoke about the amazing work of World Jewish Relief, a charity founded by a small Jewish group in London in the 1930s. It now co-ordinates important relief efforts all over the world and helps people of all denominations; it has recently helped refugees in the Rohingya humanitarian crisis in Myanmar and cyclone victims in Mozambique. Of course, it would be remiss of me not to join other hon. Members in mentioning the invaluable role of the Community Security Trust, which seeks to ensure the safety and security of Jewish communities and other communities across the United Kingdom.
Finally, no summary of the Jewish contribution to British public life would be complete without mention of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the national representative body of the UK’s Jewish community. As the longest-established religious minority in the UK, the Jewish people have led the way in demonstrating how to integrate fully and participate in our national life while retaining a distinct and proud identity, and that process has been led by the Board of Deputies. It has shown the way since 1760 in how to interact with the Government and fight for the rights of a group, while fostering good relations with those of other faiths and remaining perfectly integrated in wider society.
I will turn briefly from the community at large to the role of some individuals. It is no exaggeration at all to say that if I were merely to list every Jewish person who has achieved a record of note in UK society, we would be here for some weeks. However, I will give only a small sample, just a handful of those who have helped to shape our United Kingdom and what it is today. In the arts, I could mention Mike Leigh and Nicholas Hytner, Amy Winehouse and Yehudi Menuhin, Maureen Lipman and Sacha Baron Cohen; in academia, Simon Schama and Robert Winston; in the media, John Diamond and Jonathan Freedland; in art and design, Lucian Freud and Malcolm McLaren; Lord Neuberger, a President of the Supreme Court; Peter George Davis, the founder of the Special Boat Service; Jack Cohen, the founder of Tesco; and Ludwig Guttmann, the founder of the Paralympics.
I could mention many thousands of others who have founded the British businesses that we use every day and that provide employment for many, who have designed the technology that we use at work and at home, who have shaped the ideas that we follow, and who provide the entertainment we enjoy to rest and relax. I could speak for many hours, but in the interests of time we should press on.
I will end, therefore, by again thanking the hon. Member for City of Chester. He has done all of us a very valuable service. He has brought us together here today, to recognise, to celebrate and to be grateful for the invaluable contribution made by the Jewish community to the United Kingdom.
I stand here as someone who is the son of immigrants, and as someone who is proudly British, proudly Asian and proudly Hindu. I passionately believe that our society is richer for its diversity, and the Jewish community is a proud and shining testament to that.
Christian Matheson
That was an excellent speech by the Minister, and I thank him for it. As he said, this debate has been characterised by speeches that have been at once passionate, extremely thoughtful and thought-provoking.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) reminded us of her mum, who was indeed my boss and the boss of my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell). What the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North did not tell us, of course, was that her mum started off in a fairly lowly position, as a secretary, and simply through hard work and strength of character she rose to become deputy general secretary of our trade union. Hard work and strength of character are often qualities that we associate very much with the Jewish community.
I am most grateful to all hon. Members who have taken part in this debate and helped to celebrate the contribution of the Jewish community. I have to say that perhaps Thursday afternoon is not the best time to get the maximum attendance for a debate, but any time is the best time to celebrate and give thanks for that contribution and, once again, I am most grateful to all hon. Members who have assisted in that today.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the contribution of the Jewish Community to the UK.
Written Statements
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Local Industrial Strategies
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Greg Clark)
Our modern industrial strategy is a long-term plan to boost productivity and earning power for people throughout the country.
Since 2010, local leaders, working in partnership with Government, have delivered historic city deals with Greater Manchester. There have been multiple devolution agreements resulting in devolved new powers including bus reform, the adult education budget and growth deal funding of £633 million.
Building on these strong foundations, we set out in the modern industrial strategy to work in partnership with places to develop local industrial strategies. Local industrial strategies are central to our aim of creating prosperous communities across the country. They are being developed locally and agreed with government. They are long-term, based on clear evidence and aligned to the modern industrial strategy.
On 16 May we launched the first of these strategies, the West Midlands local industrial strategy. Today we are launching the Greater Manchester local industrial strategy. This has been developed locally by the Greater Manchester combined authority, led by Mayor Andy Burnham, and Sir Richard Leese, Leader of Manchester City Council, supported by the local enterprise partnership and Greater Manchester partners, and agreed with Government.
This ambitious strategy sets out how Greater Manchester will work in partnership with Government to:
Set Greater Manchester up to be a global leader on health and care innovation, creating new industries and jobs, improving population health and extending healthy life expectancy, and working to identify a home for a prospective international centre for healthy ageing;
Position Greater Manchester as a world leading region for innovative firms to experiment with, develop and adopt advanced materials in manufacturing, including University of Manchester work to establish “Graphene City” in the centre;
Build on Greater Manchester’s position as a leading European digital city-region, to maximise growing assets in cyber security;
Enable the digitalisation of all sectors, and capitalise on the links between digital and creative industries that feed internationally significant clusters in broadcasting, content creation and media;
Launch the UK’s first city-region clean growth mission to achieve carbon neutral living in Greater Manchester by 2038; and
Ensure that the education, skills and employment system allow everyone to reach their potential and employers have access to the skills required to deliver the Greater Manchester local industrial strategy.
Greater Manchester is a growing economy with a growing population of 2.8 million. Our shared national and local ambition is for the Greater Manchester local industrial strategy to boost productivity and people’s earning power through our collaborative national, regional and local leadership, recognising the economic strengths and potential of Greater Manchester.
A copy of the Greater Manchester local industrial strategy will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
[HCWS1616]
Boundary Commission for England
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Kevin Foster)
I should like to inform the House that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office has made the following appointments under schedule 1 to the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986 following a competition run in accordance with the governance code on public appointments:
Colin Byrne, appointed as a member of the Boundary Commission for England, effective
from 1 July 2019 until 30 June 2024; and
Sarah Hamilton, appointed as a member of the Boundary Commission for England, effective
from 1 July 2019 until 30 June 2024.
[HCWS1625]
UK Debt Management Office
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (John Glen)
The United Kingdom Debt Management Office (DMO) has today published its business plan for the financial year 2019-20. Copies have been deposited in the Libraries of both houses and are available on the DMO’s website, www.dmo.gov.uk.
[HCWS1622]
ECOFIN
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr Philip Hammond)
A meeting of the Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN) will be held in Luxembourg on 14 June 2019.
ECOFIN will be preceded by a morning meeting of the European Investment Bank (EIB) board of governors:
Annual EIB board of governors meeting
The meeting of the EIB board of governors will include: statements from the Chairman, President and Chairman of the Audit Committee: a governors discussion: a presentation on the annual report of the Audit Committee; and a vote for partial renewal of the Audit Committee. The UK will be represented by Mark Bowman (Director General, International Finance, HM Treasury).
Following this, EU Finance Ministers will discuss the following at ECOFIN:
Early morning session
The Eurogroup President will brief the Council on the outcomes of the 13 June meeting of the Eurogroup, and the European Commission will provide an update on the current economic situation in the EU.
Banking union
The Council will be invited to endorse a progress report on the Banking Union.
Financial transaction tax
Ministers will receive a progress update in relation to the enhanced co-operation in the area of financial transaction tax.
G20 follow-up
The Council presidency and Commission will present the main outcomes of the G20 meeting of Finance Ministers and central bank governors, which took place on 8-9 June in Fukuoka, Japan.
European semester
Ministers will discuss the draft 2019 Country Specific Recommendations (CSRs) and progress towards the Europe 2020 targets.
Stability and growth pact
Ministers will be invited to adopt Council decisions and recommendations on the implementation of the stability and growth pact.
Clean planet
Ministers will exchange views on a strategic long-term vision for a climate-neutral economy.
Non-performing loans
Under any other business, the commission will provide an update on the implementation of the action plan to tackle non-performing loans in Europe.
[HCWS1623]
News Media Merger
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Jeremy Wright)
My Department has today written to Lebedev Holdings Limited (LHL) and Independent Digital News and Media Limited (IDNM), the owners of the Evening Standard and The Independent, to inform them that I am minded to issue an intervention notice. This relates to concerns I have that there may be public interest considerations—as set out in section 58 of the Enterprise Act 2002—that are relevant to the recent acquisition of a 30% stake by the International Media Company (IMC) in LHL and the linked transaction involving the acquisition of a 30% stake by Scalable LP in IDNM and that these concerns warrant further investigation.
A “minded to” letter has therefore been issued to the parties on one public interest ground specified in section 58 of the Enterprise Act 2002:
(2A) The need for (a) accurate presentation of news; and (b) free expression of opinion.
It is important to note that I have not taken a final decision on intervention at this stage. In line with the statutory guidance on media mergers, the “minded to” letter invites further representations in writing from the parties and gives them until 5pm on Monday 17 June to respond. I plan to make my final decision, which needs to be made on a quasi-judicial basis, on whether to issue an intervention notice no later than the week commencing 24 June.
If I decide to issue an intervention notice, the next stage would be for Ofcom to assess and report to me on the public interest concerns and for the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to assess and report to me on whether a relevant merger situation has been created and any impact this may have on competition. Following these reports, I would need to decide whether to refer the matter for a more detailed investigation by the CMA under section 45 of the Enterprise Act 2002.
In view of the time it has taken to obtain sufficient information to reach this point I have asked the parties to agree to extend the statutory time limit to allow Ofcom and the Competitions and Markets Authority to report to me on the public interest issues raised by the transaction.
I will keep Parliament updated on progress with this media merger case.
[HCWS1624]
Agriculture and Fisheries Council
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr Robert Goodwill)
As the provisional agenda stands, the primary focus for fisheries policy will be on the regulation on the European maritime and fisheries fund (EMFF) for which a preliminary agreement on the proposal, a partial general approach (PGA), is sought in Council. It will constitute the Council’s mandate for negotiations with the European Parliament.
The European Commission will also present its communication on the state of play of the common fisheries policy (CFP) and consultation on the fishing opportunities for 2020, after which Ministers will exchange views.
In the field of agriculture the main focus will be on the post-2020 common agricultural policy (CAP) reform package for which the Romanian presidency has provided a progress report on the negotiations during their presidency. The progress report will be discussed at Council. The reform package covers the three legislative proposals: regulation on CAP strategic plans, regulation on financing, management and monitoring of the CAP, and regulation on common market organisation (CMO) of agricultural products.
There are currently no items scheduled for discussion under “any other business”.
[HCWS1619]
Foreign Affairs Council
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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The Minister for Europe and the Americas (Sir Alan Duncan)
The Foreign Affairs Council (FAC) will take place in Luxembourg on 17 June. It will be chaired by the High Representative of the European Union (EU) for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (HRVP), Federica Mogherini.
The FAC will discuss current affairs, the effectiveness of the EU common foreign and security partnership (CFSP) as well as the EU’s global strategy, Sudan, and over lunch with the Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, the middle east peace process.
Current affairs
We expect HRVP Mogherini to debrief Ministers on her trip to the horn of Africa and the developing political situation in the region. HRVP Mogherini will also provide an update on recent developments in Venezuela, including on the international contact group and Lima group ministerial meeting held in New York on 3 June. We expect Iran to be raised following Iran’s announcement to partially cease meeting commitments under the Iran nuclear deal and given the upcoming 60-day deadline. We expect HRVP Mogherini and Ministers to consider next steps as we seek to avoid further escalation.
CFSP effectiveness and the EU global strategy
Foreign Ministers will consider how the EU can improve its approach to foreign and security policy. Defence Ministers will join Foreign Ministers for a strategic debate on the EU’s global strategy and how it works internationally. They will consider the EU’s role on security, burden sharing and coherence among defence initiatives.
Sudan
Following the UK’s request, Ministers will discuss the situation in Sudan, taking stock of recent political events, including the Sudanese security forces’ use of violence on civilians, and consider how the EU should respond to support the African Union in ensuring a transition to civilian rule.
Lunch on MEPP with the Jordanian Foreign Minister
The Jordanian Foreign Minister is expected to join EU Ministers to discuss the middle east peace process, prior to the EU-Jordan Association Council. Ahead of the publication of the Kushner plan, the UK will reiterate its support for a two state solution and encourage all parties to keep an open mind once the plan is published. The UK will note the importance of HM King Abdullah II’s role as custodian of the Christian and Muslim holy sites, and reiterate our long-standing position on Jerusalem.
Council conclusions
The Council is expected to adopt conclusions on effective multilateralism; security and defence; central Asia strategy; the EU’s engagement in the Black sea region; strengthening the ban on anti-personnel mines; and human rights guidelines on safe drinking water and sanitation.
[HCWS1620]
Fortification of Flour
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Seema Kennedy)
Further to the Government’s announcement on 23 October 2018 of the intention to consult on the issue of mandatory fortification of flour with folic acid to help prevent neural tube defects in foetuses, I wish to inform the House that the consultation will launch today and will run for 12 weeks.
Neural tube defects are birth defects of the brain, spine, or spinal cord. They happen in the first few weeks of pregnancy, often before a woman even knows that she is pregnant. The two most common neural tube defects are spina bifida and anencephaly. These can be devastating conditions and the Government are fully aware of the effect these have on the individuals themselves and their families.
There is strong evidence that many neural tube defects can be prevented by increasing women’s intake of folic acid.
Unless you are pregnant or thinking of having a baby, you should be able to get all the folate (the natural form of folic acid) you need by eating a varied and balanced diet. Existing pregnancy advice to women who are trying to conceive or who are likely to become pregnant is that they are advised to take a daily supplement of 400 micrograms of folic acid until the 12th week of pregnancy. They are also advised to increase their daily intake of folate by eating more folate-rich foods, for example spinach and broccoli, and foods voluntarily fortified with folic acid such a wide range of breakfast cereals.
However, we know that in the UK around half of pregnancies are unplanned. In those which are planned, it has been estimated that only half of all mothers took folic acid supplements or modified their diet to increase folate intake. This has led to calls for mandatory fortification of flour with folic acid, so women can get it from dietary sources other than foods that naturally contain it.
The Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) has recommended mandatory folic acid fortification of flour to improve the folate status of women most at risk of neural tube defect-affected pregnancies. Further detail on this is in the consultation document.
We are now opening a consultation to seek views on this proposed change and we hope that members of the public as well as industry and the scientific community respond so we can accurately consider this proposal.
I have agreed with the Governments of Scotland and Wales, and the permanent secretary of Northern Ireland that this will be a joint consultation between the devolved Administrations and England. This is because any resulting decisions would need to be taken on a whole-UK basis to minimise impact on trade and for industry to comply. Similarly, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has been closely involved as flour falls within its remit.
[HCWS1618]
Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr David Gauke)
I am pleased to announce that the Government are today introducing in the House of Commons the Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill. This legislation follows the Government’s response to the consultation on reform of the legal requirements for divorce in England and Wales. I previously laid this response before Parliament [Official Report, 9 April 2019 Vol. 658 c.8WS].
Marriage and family have long been vitally important to our functioning as a society. Where a marriage or civil partnership regrettably breaks down and is beyond repair, the law must deal with that reality with the minimum of acrimony by creating the conditions for people to move forward and agree arrangements for the future in an orderly and constructive way. Above all, the legal process should not exacerbate conflict between parents, as this is especially damaging for children. The process must better support and encourage parents to co-operate in bringing up their children.
The evidence is clear that the current legal requirements can needlessly rake up the past to justify the legal ending of a relationship that is no longer a beneficial and functioning one. The requirement for one person to blame the other—if it is not practical for them to have separated for at least two years—can introduce or worsen conflict at the outset of the process, conflict that may continue long after the legal process has concluded. Allegations about a spouse’s conduct may bear no relation to the real cause of the breakdown. Such allegations do not serve the interests of society or help family relationships to heal. Instead, they can be damaging to any prospects for couples to reconcile or to agree practical arrangements for the future. In the extremely difficult circumstances of divorce, the law should allow couples, where reconciliation is not possible, to move on constructively.
The Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill will change or remove conflict flashpoints. It will align the law with the non-confrontational approach that Parliament has enacted in other areas of family law. Among its measures, the Bill will replace the requirement to prove spousal conduct or for the couple to have been separated for at least two years with the requirement to file a statement of irretrievable breakdown of the marriage or civil partnership. It will introduce a new minimum period of 20 weeks between the start of proceedings and confirmation to the court that the conditional order should be made. This will make the period before the conditional order is granted longer for most people, and so allow better opportunity for reflecting on the decision to divorce and, where this is inevitable, agreeing practical arrangements for the future.
This is an important piece of legislation that will bring long overdue reform. It is not about making the decision to divorce or to dissolve a civil partnership easier. That will remain one of the hardest decisions anyone can take. It is about reforming those elements of the current legal process that can exacerbate conflict and cause unnecessary distress at an already difficult time, and better supporting agreement about arrangements for the future. I know that hon. and right hon. Members will take great interest in this opportunity to make a positive impact on the lives of the many families who sadly find themselves affected by breakdown. My Ministerial colleagues and I look forward to working with them through the passage of the Bill.
[HCWS1621]
Justice and Home Affairs Council
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr David Gauke)
The final Justice and Home Affairs Council of the Romanian EU presidency recently took place in Luxembourg. I attended on 6 June for justice day, and Sir Tim Barrow, Permanent Representative of the UK to the EU, and Chris Jones, Director of the Europe Directorate at the Home Office, attended on interior day on 7 June.
Justice day began with a discussion on the regulation on the assignment of claims, which has far-reaching implications for financial markets, including the ability of small businesses to access credit. It was agreed that work in this area will need to continue under the Finnish presidency.
The Council then discussed digitalisation of judicial co-operation, where the presidency considered the UK’s position that a thorough cost-benefit analysis was needed before proceeding, along with plenty of time for member states to implement this measure effectively. In general, however, member states supported a mandatory and de-centralised approach to digitalisation in the interests of speed and efficiency of justice systems.
Ministers then discussed the future direction of substantive criminal law co-operation. Member states were clear that implementation of existing criminal law measures should be prioritised before considering new legislation and a thorough analysis of the benefits of these measures would be needed before further harmonisation. Nonetheless, momentum began to form around the harmonisation of criminal law on environmental crime, identity theft, and manipulation of elections.
After a working lunch discussing the use of judicial training to foster mutual trust, there was a policy debate on mutual recognition in criminal matters. Discussions focused on facilitating the practical application of existing legal instruments, including by means of judicial training, rather than on new legislative proposals. The Commission stressed the importance of fundamental rights, and an independent judiciary to enable mutual recognition tools, like the European arrest warrant (EAW), to operate. The UK underlined our commitment to continued co-operation in this field and several members states supported the idea of common guidelines on this. Some advocated EU legislation on the transfer of criminal proceedings to close loopholes, particularly where suspected criminals cannot—for whatever reason—be surrendered under the EAW.
The Council then adopted mandates for negotiations with the United States, and in the Council of Europe (Budapest convention), on cross-border access to e-evidence. The Commission noted its intention to insist that the United States agree to an EU-wide approach which would apply to all member states without discrimination, including at the EU-US ministerial meeting in Bucharest later this month. Formal negotiations will not begin until finalisation of internal EU legislation on e-evidence. The UK has not opted into either the internal EU legislation on e-evidence, or the mandates for negotiations with the US, and in the Council of Europe, and will not be bound by those mandates.
Council adopted conclusions which encourage Eurojust and the networks established in the area of judicial co-operation in criminal matters to further develop the co-ordination and synergies between them. The UK supported these conclusions as we support the work of Eurojust, and agrees that better co-ordination between networks hosted by Eurojust would be helpful for criminal justice co-operation.
The Council also adopted conclusions on the retention of data for the purpose of fighting crime, which proposed further exploration of options for lawful regimes in member states. The UK believes the appropriate retention of telecommunications data for law enforcement purposes is an important element of an effective law enforcement system and supported these conclusions. The Commission provided an update on the planned preparatory steps to make the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) operational by the end of 2020. The UK has not opted into EPPO.
The Council adopted an implementing decision confirming that the UK could connect to the Prüm automated system for exchanging DNA data between law enforcement authorities in EU member states.
Interior day began with a discussion on the future of EU law enforcement. Ministers agreed that further co-operation on approaches to law enforcement would make for more effective cross-border law enforcement. The Council supported effective implementation of existing legislation, especially interoperability of databases, and recognised the need to address the impacts of technological advancements on law enforcement, supporting Europol’s role in pooling expertise and providing technological and analytical support. The UK Permanent Representative to the EU intervened to support this work and welcome the intent to work together, co-ordinate methods and approaches and support the proposal for a Europol innovation hub. In this context, the UK intervention additionally highlighted UK work to tackle online harms through the UK White Paper.
Under AOB, the Council CT co-ordinator (Gilles de Kerchove) presented on the implications on law enforcement of the move to 5G. The CT co-ordinator focused on the need for the EU to influence 5G standards, to ensure a dialogue with service providers on this issue, and to consider EU legislation to avoid fragmentation of member state approaches. The Commissioner for the Security Union (Sir Julian King) noted the Commission’s intent to develop an EU risk assessment and toolbox of options to mitigate risks by the end of 2019.
The chair of the counter-terrorism group, a non-EU grouping of European states intelligence agencies, attended to update the JHA Council on the general terrorist threat and the challenges and opportunities from new tools and technologies. The CTG chair also updated on discussions on co-operation with Europol on strategic and technical issues, noting that operational intelligence work remained the sole responsibility of member states.
Over lunch and in the afternoon session, Ministers discussed migration, with a focus on issues of solidarity and redistribution of migrants. Member states remain split on the EU’s approach to these issues. The UK intervention focused on our extensive support upstream which ranges from tackling organised immigration crime and the use of strategic communications to building partnerships and capability with source and transit countries to jointly address the drivers of migration.
The Council agreed a partial general approach on the draft directive on common standards and procedures in member states for returning illegally staying third-country nationals, recast, with the exception of article 22 on the border procedure and the related recitals. The UK has not opted into this measure.
The Council also agreed partial general approaches on draft regulations establishing the integrated border management fund, establishing the asylum and migration fund, and establishing the internal security fund. These are subject to wider negotiations on the overall multi-annual financial framework. The UK will not participate in any of these funds.
[HCWS1626]
Transport Council
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Transport (Chris Grayling)
The Transport Council took place in Luxembourg on Thursday 6 June. This was the only Transport Council under the Romanian presidency (the presidency). The UK was represented by the UK’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the EU, Katrina Williams.
The Council reached a general approach on the third tranche of the “mobility package” for a legal framework for the electronic communication of freight transport information. The UK welcomed the work that the presidency had done to achieve compromises on this text, as did a number of other member states.
The presidency gave a progress report on the proposal from the third tranche of the “mobility package” to streamline planning and approval processes for projects on the trans-European transport network (TEN-T). Some delegations took the opportunity to flag outstanding concerns including scope, the role of the single competent authority and the duration of the permit granting process.
There was also a progress report on the proposal from the first tranche of the “mobility package” hired vehicles directive, although discussion illustrated that there are still outstanding issues to be resolved.
The Council was also given a progress report on the proposal from the first tranche of the “mobility package” to revise the current directive on Eurovignette (road charging). The UK intervened to highlight the need for flexibility in determining national charging schemes, a view shared by a number of other member states.
Over lunch, Ministers from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and the Ukraine along with representatives from the World Bank, the European Investment Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development participated in a joint discussion with the Council and Commissioners Bulc and Hahn on the progress made by the eastern area partnership (EaP) in developing the external dimension of the TEN-T policy. Welcoming the progress made in relation to road safety, TEN-T connectivity and planning for future investment in transport infrastructure, the Council endorsed the joint EU-EaP declaration as a road map for future co-operation.
Later, the Council was given a further progress report on negotiations on the proposals to revise the regulation on rail passengers’ rights and obligations.
Finally, there were several information points from member states, the presidency and Commissioner Bulc under any other business. Several member states supported Luxembourg’s call for consideration of aviation taxation as an additional means to tackle emissions reduction. The presidency gave information on discussions in other Councils on “A clean planet for all”, the Commission’s long-term climate strategy. On addressing airspace capacity, Commissioner Bulc noted the recent publications of the airspace architecture study and the wise person’s report on the future of air traffic management. The Commission noted the first findings of its study on sustainable transport infrastructure charging and the internalisation of transport externalities, which was published on the day of the Council, and updated the Council on the connectivity outcomes of the EU-China summit. The presidency provided an update on current legislative proposals and the Polish delegation provided information on the conference on “Benefits for regions resulting from the implementation of the route Via Carpatia”. Finally, Finland presented transport plans for its forthcoming presidency of the Council of the European Union.
[HCWS1617]
House of Lords
Northern Ireland: Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Empey
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the request from the head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service to introduce measures to compensate the victims of Historical Institutional Abuse, as recommended by the Report of the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry in January 2017.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Northern Ireland Office and Scotland Office (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)
The head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service wrote to the Secretary of State on 2 May, providing her with the historical institutional abuse consultation report, draft legislation and a document that set out the key issues that require ministerial decision. The Secretary of State asked the Northern Ireland political parties to consider these important policy questions and to seek a consensus. She has now received their recommendations and will consider them as a matter of urgency. She is determined to do everything in her power to ensure the victims and survivors get the redress they deserve as quickly as possible.
Lord Empey (UUP)
The Minister will be aware that, in addition to the head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, as he said, all parties at Stormont have asked his right honourable friend to legislate to implement the Hart report, which came out in January 2017. Since this Parliament is effectively lying idle for the next six weeks, could I implore my noble friend to prevail on the Secretary of State to immediately introduce this legislation on humanitarian grounds? Why should these victims suffer all over again because of unnecessary delay? Thirty-one victims have died since the report was published in January 2017. Why should any more go to their graves without receiving justice?
Lord Duncan of Springbank
The noble Lord makes an important point. This is about victims and redress. The issue we face is that the original draft diverges significantly from the consensus reached by the political parties. This will therefore take time to redraft. That is what is being taken forward right now in Northern Ireland by the authorities. Once that is done, it will return to us and we will take it through both Houses as expeditiously as possible.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, this all sounds a little delaying. I trust the noble Lord’s judgment implicitly on this, but it is over two years since the inquiry report. We have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Empey, that this delay comes at a very high price for the people of Northern Ireland and the survivors of abuse. Obviously, the preferred option would be a devolved Administration, but I put on record again, because this is not the only example like this, that the Government are not doing enough to ensure the devolved institutions are up and running. I have said that perhaps if the noble Lord was Secretary of State we might see greater progress, which we would welcome. The political parties all blame each other for it not happening. Meanwhile, we have cases such as this where people are dying and struggling through lack of action. There is a moral duty to act. The noble Lord said that work is ongoing. Can he give a commitment to bring back that legislation to this House in this parliamentary Session before any Prorogation, whenever that might be?
Lord Duncan of Springbank
The challenge we face is that, had the political parties in reaching their consensus broadly affirmed the Hart report and all its elements, we could have been taking it forward right now. Unfortunately, there were 13 substantive areas of change that the political parties wished to take forward. These require some time. I cannot give the commitment the noble Baroness would like to hear, but I can say that once we work through those things with the relevant authorities in Northern Ireland we will take it forward as quickly as this House and the other place will allow.
Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Empey, is to be credited for his persistence on this issue. I concur with him that neither this House nor the other is preoccupied at the moment. I hear what the Minister says, but people have waited far too long. There is time to do things quickly and effectively when all the political parties are on side. Will he take that on board? Northern Ireland needs a positive gesture right now. Is this not the right time to deliver this, and not delay it any further?
Lord Duncan of Springbank
The important thing to stress is that, were we in receipt of the draft legislation, this House could take it forward very quickly indeed, but we are not. The challenge right now is for the authorities in Northern Ireland that are responsible for this to work through each of the aspects raised by the political parties, to ensure that this can be brought forward in draft. The moment it arrives here we will be able to take this forward very quickly indeed.
Lord Cormack (Con)
Would my noble friend accept that there are other victims too? We have discussed in this House those who were brutally treated during the Troubles, many of whom were maimed. Many have died in the last few years. They deserve the same sort of recompense; my noble friend has acknowledged that on the Floor of this House. Will he try to bring legislation that includes them as well?
Lord Duncan of Springbank
I would not wish to see these two elements entwined, because they are quite distinct. However, the issue to which my noble friend refers is very important. I have given an assurance before and repeat today that we must make progress on victims’ pensions. He has my word that we will take that forward as quickly as we possibly can.
Lord Morrow (DUP)
My Lords, I certainly agree with the Minister when he says that these are two separate, different issues, which are both extremely important. From his reply to the noble Lord, Lord Empey, do I take it that the settled position of the Government is that, since all the obstacles are out of the way and all the political parties are on board, they will now take the necessary action, bearing in mind that some of the institutions have a big role to play here and must not be allowed to get away scot free? I urge the Government to give a clear, unambiguous, unequivocal reply that they will take this issue forward and that this is their settled position, irrespective of what is happening in Northern Ireland and since all the political parties in Northern Ireland agree that it should be taken forward.
Lord Duncan of Springbank
I can give the noble Lord that assurance. We will do just that.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
Is the Minister telling us that the only reason we are not able to consider this is because of a delay in drafting the legislation? The Minister knows that I have a great respect for him. Could he not go back to the officials to say that this House, indeed the whole Parliament, is ready to consider this legislation and put a rocket under them so that it comes here as quickly as possible?
Lord Rogan (UUP)
My Lords, the victims of these crimes and their relatives are grieving. The grief is deep. They simply cannot understand why the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Karen Bradley, has not taken a decision more quickly. There must be no more delays. I welcome the Minister’s comments today that he will expedite this matter so that it is dealt with in the quickest possible time.
Lord Duncan of Springbank
We can afford no more delays, so the moment we have this material here, we will move it forward quickly. We will see that justice is served and redress is achieved.
Brexit: European Union’s No-deal Continuity Arrangements
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Lilley
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what announcements the European Union has made regarding continuity arrangements for (1) air travel, (2) haulage, (3) visas, and (4) safety certificates, should the United Kingdom leave the European Union without a deal; and what steps they have taken to give reciprocal assurances.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Vere of Norbiton) (Con)
My Lords, the EU has adopted time-limited regulations covering the aviation market access and safety certificates, as well as road haulage and international rail. The EU has also announced visa-free travel for UK nationals travelling to the EU for short stays after exit. The Government have given reciprocal assurances in each of these four areas, which will provide certainty to businesses and citizens should the UK leave the EU without a deal.
Lord Lilley (Con)
I thank my noble friend for her reply. Since Britain may well leave the EU with no withdrawal agreement, is it not reassuring that these reciprocal mini-deals, and many others, mean that planes will fly, hauliers will operate, Airbus wings will be exported and visa-free travel will continue? Will she also confirm that HMRC plans no extra checks at Dover and will prioritise flow over compliance, while France is so determined not to lose trade to Belgian and Dutch ports that it has installed multiple extra lorry lanes at Calais, located inspection points away from the ports and installed equipment to scan moving trains, so that the likelihood of congestion and delays has vastly diminished, to the obvious disappointment of the Liberal Democrat Benches?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton
The noble Lord is right in that the mini-deals make any potential exit from the EU without a deal less difficult. But they are, as I have said, time-limited and there will need to be further negotiations when they expire. With regard to Dover, the Government are working to enable cross-channel traffic and goods to continue to move as freely as possible. Government departments have designed customs and additional control arrangements at the UK border, in a way which ensures that goods will be able to flow into and out of the country, and will not be delayed by additional controls. It is true that on the other side of the channel, the French customs authorities have pulled their finger out and installed additional control points. These mean that delays on this side of the channel will be less; however, they will not disappear completely and we therefore cannot expect trade to continue precisely as it did before.
Lord Rosser (Lab)
What will be the consequences for air and road haulage traffic between the UK and the EU under no deal if further arrangements beyond the time-limited period are not agreed with the EU, perhaps because we have, for example, declined to pay the £39 billion currently provided for on our departure from the EU?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton
The noble Lord is quite right that there are multiple mini-deals. They expire at different times and we will look to the EU to extend them. It is in the EU’s gift to decide whether to extend them, as it is in our gift to decide whether to reciprocate. Any elements of the arrangements surrounding our withdrawal will, I believe, impact on our ability to negotiate these agreements.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
Will the Minister confirm that these are not mini-deals but basic contingency measures, as the Commission itself has defined them? Some will require continuing legislative reciprocity from the UK, which we have not put on the statute book at the moment. They will cover a period of only six months and, as the Commission said, provide for only “basic connectivity” and,
“mitigate to some extent the impact of withdrawal, without however guaranteeing the continuation of all existing air transport services under the same terms as they are supplied today”.
Is it not an outrage that some candidates to be our Prime Minister will receive votes today from Conservative MPs while proposing to enforce this by suspending Parliament, if Parliament does not agree that some of these measures are not in the best interests of our haulage or aviation sectors?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton
The noble Lord can call these deals what he likes—he mentioned mini-deals—but I would call them the EU air connectivity regulation and EU regulation 2019/501, the basic road freight connectivity regulation. He said that they would mean that transport cannot continue as it does now but the key point, looking at the detail of the deal, is that it is substantially as it is now. However, he is quite right that were these regulations to fall away, which they do on varying dates for various forms of transport, it will be necessary to look hard at what we do thereafter.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)
My Lords, does the Minister recall the Government’s Written Answer to me on 6 February this year, which said that if we end up trading on normal WTO most favoured nation terms, EU exporters will pay us £14 billion per annum, while ours will pay Brussels only £6 billion per annum? Might some of that £8 billion annual profit not be useful in subsidising any unforeseen costs arising from leaving the EU without a deal, with billions to spare for other national priorities?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton
Unfortunately, I do not recall the Government’s response to the noble Lord of 6 February. Discussions of tariffs are slightly beyond the original scope of the Question, but we expect the EU’s most favoured nation tariff regime to apply to the UK if the UK leaves the EU without a deal. Noble Lords are also aware that this will result in the introduction of tariffs on 60% of current UK exports to the EU.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
My Lords, given that all the leading contenders for the leadership of the Conservative Party have made clear that it is important the European Union understands that we are prepared to leave without a deal if we cannot get a sensible agreement, would it not be sensible for the Government to publish, for each department, what plans are in place, how they need to operate and what future additions will be required?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton
As my noble friend mentioned, I am sure the EU fully understands that the UK is willing to leave without a deal. Indeed, it is the legal default and it may be that we have no option. The Government are also undergoing extensive contingency planning in the event that we leave with no deal. Further details of that will be available shortly.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, said that the intention was to “prioritise flow over compliance”. I refer to my interests in the register on these matters. Does that mean the Government are prepared to tolerate unsafe goods, those that violate intellectual property laws and everything else coming into this country, simply to facilitate the mantra of no deal?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton
The Government will certainly not tolerate that. That is why we have designed customs and additional control arrangements to make sure that appropriate checks are made.
Music Licensing
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Smith of Hindhead
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what recent discussions they have had with Phonographic Performance Limited regarding that body’s increasing of the tariff for their Specially Featured Entertainment licence from July 2019.
Lord Smith of Hindhead (Con)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In so doing, I make reference to my interests set out in the register.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lord Henley) (Con)
My Lords, the Government have had no discussions with Phonographic Performance Limited about this tariff. Collecting societies are private commercial organisations, and the Government play no role in setting their licence tariffs. However, dissatisfied businesses may have recourse to the Copyright Tribunal, a specialised court that adjudicates on the price and terms of copyright licences. I understand that the British Beer and Pub Association and UKHospitality intend to make reference to the Copyright Tribunal on this issue.
Lord Smith of Hindhead
I thank the Minister for his reply, and I am pleased that this matter has been referred to the Copyright Tribunal since my Question was tabled. It is estimated that the proposed new tariff will cost the hospitality industry an additional £49 million each year—an increase that is simply unaffordable for many operators. PPL collected £250 million last year and raked off £35 million in admin fees, paying its CEO over £750,000. Does the Minister agree that a better way to provide increased payments to copyright holders is for PPL to cut its own expenditure?
Lord Henley
My Lords, it is not for me to comment on the pay of the CEO of PPL; this must be a matter for the members of that organisation. However, I think all agree it is important that PPL, and PRS for that matter, get the best deal for all its members—performers, composers and others who own a copyright—and make sure they get the appropriate amount of money they are owed for us hearing their music.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that there is a major danger of misunderstanding what is proposed and what is involved here? The new tariff does not apply to grass-roots live music venues. It is designed to be fairer to small venues using recorded music. It will be phased in for other places and the beneficiaries will be many currently underpaid performers and artists.
Lord Henley
My Lords, the noble Lord makes a very useful contribution. I stress that this is about ensuring that those artists, performers and others receive the appropriate reward for their work.
Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)
My Lords, I am sure this House will agree that artists, especially the less well-known ones, should be paid fairly if their music is played in public. What, if any, are the expected consequences following the delay in implementing the new specially featured entertainment tariff—SFE—which was meant to be implemented on 1 July? Does he know when the subsequent independent review by the Copyright Tribunal will be completed?
Lord Henley
My Lords, I am not going to comment on a case that is about to be before the Copyright Tribunal; that would not be right or proper. Nor can I help the noble Lord on the first part of his question. As I made clear earlier, it is important that these collective management organisations—CMOs—provide the best possible service for their members and negotiate in a proper and fair way with the hospitality organisations that want to use their music.
Unpaid Carers: Support
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Brinton
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that unpaid carers receive the support to which they are entitled.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford) (Con)
My Lords, we are committed to supporting carers to provide care in ways that protect and preserve their own health and well-being. Last June, we published the Carers Action Plan, a cross-government programme of targeted work. This included a £5 million carers innovation fund, to encourage innovative and creative ways of supporting carers. We are also working with local government on a sector-led improvement programme of work focused on implementing the carers Act duties for carers.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
I thank the Minister for her Answer. As Carers Week draws to a close, I point out that we owe a great debt of gratitude to the 6.5 million carers in the country who save us more than £100 billion a year, given the costs that we would otherwise have to bear. The problem is that nearly three-quarters of those carers say that they suffer mental health stress as a result of their caring duties, and over 60% say that they have physical health problems. Will the overdue Green Paper on social care put sustainable funding in place to properly provide support for carers and ensure speedy access to health services for them?
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
I thank the noble Baroness for her important Question. I suspect that the majority of noble Lords have not only been carers themselves but have benefited from caring. I would not be standing here myself were it not for the caring support of my own family. We should pay tribute to carers up and down the country, without whom we would not have a sustainable health and care system. I assure the noble Baroness that proposals for putting in place sustainable funding to support carers, and considering their employment status, are part of the work that is going on in implementing the long-term plan and preparing the social care Green Paper. I hope that reassures her.
Baroness Wheeler (Lab)
My Lords, a growing number of older people are providing unpaid care while trying to manage their own health and care needs, in many cases co-caring for each other with partners, adults or children with learning difficulties. In particular, there is an alarming increase in the number of carers aged 85 and over, who are more likely than other carers to be caring round the clock, be suffering anxiety and be in poor health themselves. What are the Government doing to ensure that these carers are getting the vital social and community help they need? Are they still the priority, as was promised in the NHS five-year forward view?
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
I thank the noble Baroness for her question. She is absolutely right that we need to ensure that we target support at those who need it most, but that we also identify those who are carers within the community, because of the burden that we know caring can impose on the health of those who are caring. That is why the Carers Trust has been undertaking research into best practice in identifying carers and targeting support. It is also why the Department of Health and Social Care has been working with local government on a sector-led improvement programme of work focused on the implementation of the carers Act duty for carers. We have just begun phase 1 of this and we are implementing phase 2 to ensure that best practice is disseminated across the system, so we can deliver on the commitments we made within the carers plan.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, I am sure that we all want to encourage stronger family and community life, which is the very bedrock of healthy societies, but there is one group in particular that needs help and that is the 166,000 underage carers in England. Research by the Children’s Society suggests that that is just the tip of the iceberg—indeed, a huge underestimate. Many of these young people do not realise that they classify as carers: it is just what they have had to deal with. In many cases it is affecting their schooling and mental health. What are Her Majesty’s Government able to do to help and support underage carers in particular?
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
The right reverend Prelate is quite right to identify this as a crucial issue. The Government believe that children should be protected from inappropriate and excessive caring responsibilities. We changed the law to improve the way that young carers are identified, and we are supporting schools to support carers and working with the Carers Trust to identify and spread best practice. Just today, working with the Children’s Society, which he rightly says has led this project to identify and disseminate best practice, guidance and resources will be published to enable young adult carers to make positive transitions between the ages of 16 and 24. We hope that this will improve the outcomes that young carers experience.
Baroness Manzoor (Con)
My Lords, I am delighted by the Carers Action Plan, which is a very important piece of work for many thousands of carers in the country. Can my noble friend say exactly what progress is being made in implementing this plan and how success will be measured?
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
I thank my noble friend for this important question. The Carers Action Plan was a real step in the right direction. It has 64 action points and good progress has been made. There will be a progress report in July. Some key steps in it are promoting best practice for local authorities, clinical commissioning groups and other providers in order to give carers much-needed breaks and respite care, which can be the difference between coping and not coping; and providing carer-confident benchmarks for employers who can identify carers within their systems and give them the support they need. Of course, there is also the work I have already mentioned: the £5 million carers innovation fund to find more creative and innovative ways to support carers, who are so crucial to our health and care system.
Lord Patel (CB)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that any future proposals for the funding of social care need to be sustainable? Any proposal that requires the burden to fall on those who need social care or their families will not be sustainable and will therefore require contributions from wider society.
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
I completely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Patel, who is absolutely right that we must ensure that we sustainably fund social care. The Government have provided £3.9 billion more in dedicated social care funding, but we recognise that there is a need for a sustainable financial footing for social care as a whole, which is what we are working towards with the spending review. Nevertheless, carers will continue to play an important part in our healthcare system, as they do within our society. Many people consider that they are making a rewarding and important contribution within their family and community, and we must be grateful to them for that.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, the implication of what the noble Baroness has just said is that the work around the Green Paper on a sustainable mechanism for funding long-term care is focused on the medium and long term. If that is so—and I think the Minister could say something about the actual remit of the work—the question then arises, what about the short term? We know that the money she talked about is a drop in the ocean compared to the money that has been taken away from social care, alongside the increasing demographic pressures. Can she tell me whether, as part of the spending review, which I assume will occur at some point, the immediate pressures are also going to be taken care of?
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
The noble Lord will know that the spending review has not yet started, so I cannot tell him what is happening in the negotiations. What I can tell him about is the work that has already gone on to improve social care funding: giving local authorities access to around £10 billion more in dedicated funding for social care from 2017-18 to 2019-20; an additional £410 million of new money to improve social care for older people, people with disabilities and children; and £240 million more for winter pressures. However, the noble Lord is absolutely right that it is no good improving the medium to long-term outlook for social care if we do not ensure that we also address the immediate challenges that it faces.
Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)
My Lords, the right reverend Prelate mentioned one group of carers. I would like to ask about those from the BME community, many of whom do not know about the benefits to which they would be entitled—the carer’s allowance, for example, and even the national insurance waivers that come with it. What are the Government proactively doing to support them?
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
This is a really important question, because the carer’s allowance has increased and is available as a non-means-tested support. I can reveal today that one of the key issues that is being looked at as part of the social care Green Paper is ensuring that financial support and employment status for carers are clearer, so that they can access all the support they are entitled to, but also to try to make things simpler.
Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)
I declare an interest as a former Mental Health Act commissioner. While we are talking about carers, there is a considerable number of people who are caring for members of their family who have been suffering from mental illness and are now in the community. Would my noble friend not agree that we should be more concerned to give assistance there as well, rather than merely to those who care for people with physical ailments?
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
The burden of ill health, anxiety and depression is an important issue that has been clearly identified, and it can be caused by caring for a loved one. There is specific evidence about the threshold at which the number of hours spent caring causes such challenges. My noble friend is right that we should not only identify those who are caring but signpost them clearly to the support available for carers and make sure that they can access that care easily.
Business of the House
(4 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
That the debate on the motion in the name of Lord Dubs set down for today shall be limited to three hours and that in the name of Lord Foulkes of Cumnock to two hours.
Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 Committee
The Senior Deputy Speaker
That a Select Committee be appointed to consider post-legislative scrutiny of the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013, and to make recommendations; and that, as proposed by the Committee of Selection, the following members be appointed to the Committee:
Campbell-Savours, L; Dykes, L; Eaton, B; Hayward, L; Janvrin, L; Lexden, L; Mallalieu, B; Morris of Aberavon, L; Pidding, B; Shutt of Greetland, L. (Chairman); Suttie, B; Wills, L.
That the Committee have power to appoint specialist advisers;
That the Committee have power to send for persons, papers and records;
That the Committee have power to adjourn from place to place;
That the evidence taken by the Committee be published, if the Committee so wishes;
That the Committee do report by 31 March 2020;
That the report of the Committee be printed, regardless of any adjournment of the House.
Social and Economic Impact of the Gambling Industry Committee
The Senior Deputy Speaker
That a Select Committee be appointed to consider the social and economic impact of the gambling industry, and to make recommendations; and that, as proposed by the Committee of Selection, the following members be appointed to the Committee:
Armstrong of Hill Top, B; Butler of Brockwell, L; Filkin, L; Foster of Bath, L; Grade of Yarmouth, L. (Chairman); Layard, L; Meyer, B; Smith of Hindhead, L; St Albans, Bp; Thornhill, B; Trevethin and Oaksey, L; Watts, L; Wyld, B.
That the Committee have power to appoint specialist advisers;
That the Committee have power to send for persons, papers and records;
That the Committee have power to adjourn from place to place;
That the evidence taken by the Committee be published, if the Committee so wishes;
That the Committee do report by 31 March 2020;
That the report of the Committee be printed, regardless of any adjournment of the House.
Democracy and Digital Technologies Committee
The Senior Deputy Speaker
That a Select Committee be appointed to consider democracy and digital technologies, and to make recommendations; and that, as proposed by the Committee of Selection, the following members be appointed to the Committee:
Black of Brentwood, L; Dobbs, L; German, L; Harris of Haringey, L; Holmes of Richmond, L; Kidron, B; Knight of Weymouth, L; Lipsey, L; Lucas, L; Mitchell, L; Morris of Yardley, B; Puttnam, L. (Chairman); Scriven, L.
That the Committee have power to appoint specialist advisers;
That the Committee have power to send for persons, papers and records;
That the Committee have power to adjourn from place to place;
That the evidence taken by the Committee be published, if the Committee so wishes;
That the Committee do report by 31 March 2020;
That the report of the Committee be printed, regardless of any adjournment of the House.
Food, Poverty, Health and the Environment Committee
The Senior Deputy Speaker
That a Select Committee be appointed to consider the links between inequality, public health and food sustainability; and that, as proposed by the Committee of Selection, the following members be appointed to the Committee:
Boycott, B; Caithness, E; Empey, L; Janke, B; Jay of Paddington, B; Krebs, L. (Chairman); Osamor, B; Parminter, B; Redfern, B; Rooker, L; Sater, B; Whitty, L.
That the Committee have power to appoint specialist advisers;
That the Committee have power to send for persons, papers and records;
That the Committee have power to adjourn from place to place;
That the evidence taken by the Committee be published, if the Committee so wishes;
That the Committee do report by 31 March 2020;
That the report of the Committee be printed, regardless of any adjournment of the House.
Inequalities
Lord Dubs
That this House takes note of inequalities in income, wealth and living standards in the United Kingdom since the 2008 financial crisis; and further takes note of the work of the Institute for Fiscal Studies Deaton Review, Inequalities in the 21st Century, and the report of the United Nation’s Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights on his visit to the United Kingdom, published on 22 May.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, it is a privilege to open this debate, and I am grateful to the many Members of the House who are down to take part in it. As I prepared for the debate, I was almost overwhelmed by the mass of statistics on the subject of the level of inequality and poverty in the UK, but the one thing that all the figures show is that that level is far too high. There can be no dispute about that. There may be an argument as to whether things have got worse over the past two or three years. That is not necessarily my contention, but clearly the austerity policies introduced in 2010 have had a damaging effect on the people affected by poverty. I believe that the evidence shows that there is a great deal of inequality in the country, and this is having a damaging effect on many people here.
The question for Ministers and other politicians, therefore, is whether this is the price we have to pay for our present overall relatively high living standards. I am totally opposed to that: I do not believe it is a price we have to pay or a price we should pay, and we should reject any policies that continue to further those levels of inequality and poverty.
Many people are simply not comfortable living in a country where the differences between the rich and the majority are so wide. It gives me an uncomfortable feeling when I see poor people in the streets, when I am aware of the figures and the poverty. Frankly, I would not want to be the Minister answering this debate. It is a really tough call for her, but I suppose that goes with the job description. It is not as if the subject has not been debated frequently over many years. It is still vivid in my memory from when I was in the House of Commons seeing Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister asserting, to quote her for memory, that a rising tide lifts all boats. She made a hand gesture to show that if the tide lifted the higher boats, the lower ones would also rise. I was amazed to hear that at the time: it was not true then and it has not been true since. The problem is that a rising tide has lifted some boats but not those at the bottom.
I think it is generally understood that, second only to the United States, the UK has the highest level of inequality of any advanced democracy. Without a redistributive tax and welfare system the situation would be much worse, so it is rather surprising that a contender for the Conservative leadership contest has committed to reducing tax on people earning more than £50,000 a year. I find that deeply shocking. They are hardly the most impoverished group in society, and I hope that the Minister will reject the proposal on the Government’s behalf before there are any changes in the leadership at the end of July.
A great deal of the evidence for this debate comes from the recently published introduction to the Deaton review, Inequalities in the Twenty-first Century. That includes some close statistics on the problem and will seek to tackle the issues over a further five-year study, so there will be more information to come. Launching the review, Sir Angus Deaton asked a key question:
“There’s a real question about whether democratic capitalism is working, when it’s only working for part of the population”.
That is the quote which underlies this debate. If people say that poverty and inequality is a price worth paying, some of us will reject that totally.
There has been an even more critical United Nations report on the impact of austerity on human rights in the UK. It predicts that close to 40% of children will be living in poverty two years from now. I know that the Government have vehemently rejected that report, but it has quite a lot of evidence to sustain it. Another report from a very authoritative source confirms the high levels of child poverty. Professor Russell Viner, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, a very reputable body indeed, said:
“The impact of poverty on children can be devastating—not only to their physical health in terms of increased risk of malnutrition, respiratory problems from poor housing and infection—but also their mental health”.
Those impacts are stark. Children living in poverty are more likely to die before the age of one, become overweight, have tooth decay or die in an accident. They are more likely to have poor cognitive, social and behavioural outcomes, and are at greater risk of developing long-term conditions, particularly respiratory conditions, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and mental health problems. That is a pretty tough indictment of policies that result in child poverty.
In its recently published report, The State of Child Health: Two Years On, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health highlighted its grave concern that no progress has been made towards reducing child poverty and inequality in the UK since the original report, The State of Child Health, was published in 2017. The president of the college commented:
“This latest research serves to highlight the importance of tackling poverty if the relatively poor outcomes for child health in the UK are to improve. That means measures such as binding national targets to reduce child poverty backed by a national child poverty strategy, the reversal of cuts to universal credit and the reversal of public health cuts”.
Those are policy points. That is a whole policy agenda coming from an extremely reputable source; I will come on to more ideas about that later.
Meanwhile, millions of people in jobs depend on various forms of charity. We know that there has been an enormous rise in the use of food banks all over the country. Of course, all of us, not only those who arrive here via Westminster Tube station, see rough sleepers in our streets. I always feel deeply shocked and uncomfortable when I see so many people sleeping on our streets and using food banks, and when I see buckets in supermarkets asking people to donate food for the poor.
We have seen a runaway rise in incomes, with those in the richest households almost tripling their salaries in the past four decades. In 2017, pay among FTSE 100 CEOs was, on average, 145 times that of the average worker, compared with just 47 times in 1998. Frankly, 47 times is already a bit excessive, but I do not know how businesses operate when the people at the bottom of the scale realise that the pay of the CEO coming in—although they probably never see him or her; it is usually a him, though—is vast compared with what they get. In addition, real wages are still below the pre-crisis level. In the financial year ending 2018, the wealthiest fifth of individuals in the UK saw a 4.7% increase in their disposable income, compared with a 1.6% decline for the poorest fifth. That is why I challenge what Margaret Thatcher said many years ago. It had no truth then and has no truth today.
Let me refer to a specific group of people, with whom I have been fairly closely associated, who are doing things for virtually no money: the people volunteering for NGOs working with refugees, especially child refugees, in northern France and Greece, particularly the Greek islands. I have had the privilege of meeting these people. While the newspapers talk about bankers fighting for an extra million or two in their bonus, these people are working for pretty much nothing. They give a year or two of their lives to help and support some of the most vulnerable child refugees. We as a country should be proud that we have such wonderful young people—they are not exclusively from this country, but many of them are British—willing to serve their fellow human beings. Of course, many other people volunteer in our society and do things for their fellow human beings despite the backdrop of the large amounts of money that some people are getting.
Of course, there are other income inequalities, impacting variously on women, the young—with a knock-on effect on their life chances within the housing market—older people, the black and ethnic-minority population, and those with disabilities, with the latter perhaps suffering more than most. We hear a great deal about the gender pay gap, for example.
I want to repeat a proposal that I have made before, which I believe would help significantly: that all tax returns should be in the public domain. Therefore, we would know about incomes and we would be able to see them. This works well in some Scandinavian countries. We would be able to see what people are earning and judge the extent of pay discrimination as it affects women, older people, the black and ethnic-minority population and disability. I should make it clear that when I previously made this proposal, the Government’s response was quite unenthusiastic. Nevertheless, I still believe that the day will come when these things will be in the public domain and we shall all know more. It will be better for the whole of society. After all, people know what others earn in the Civil Service and indeed there are various areas of our country where we know what the incomes are and that does not have a damaging effect. Why not put these things into the public domain?
I turn now to housing. It is quite shocking that there are virtually no opportunities for young people to enter the housing market, whether to buy or to rent. Older people managed to buy their homes many years ago and are sitting pretty on houses that have greatly increased in value, while on the other hand there are still too many pensioners who are in dire poverty. However, it seems that we are giving young people very little chance in life. Their incomes are too low to enter the housing market—not just in London and the south-east, although we are particularly aware of this issue locally.
Inequality is not only about income. As the Deaton report makes clear, there is a divergence in life expectancy between deprived and affluent areas in our country and a growing burden of poor mental health among disadvantaged groups. There is also a geographical divergence between our successful cities and our former industrial towns and coastal areas, a problem which successive Governments have not done enough to tackle.
Danny Dorling, a professor of geography at the University of Oxford, has linked the fall in life expectancy to government policy:
“‘Something began having an influence shortly after 2010’, he said. ‘Older age mortality rose as services for the elderly were massively cut, social services in particular that were aimed to help those living on their own’”.
Let us take one topical example. A male child born in Kensington in Liverpool can now expect to live 18 years less than a child born in Kensington and Chelsea in London. That is a shocking difference and it is not acceptable. How can we live in a country where this goes on?
I know that some people on the other side of the Chamber do not like trade unions, but when we are talking about achieving more equality, trade unions have a significant part to play. The Deaton report said that stronger trade unions can tip power towards employees. In the Nordic countries, between 52% and 86% of all employees belong to a trade union compared to the UK figure of a little over 25%. Having workers on company boards, which is mandatory in Germany, can have a similar effect, curbing inequalities within firms, if not between firms. If workers are given a say in how companies are run, they might help resist downward pressure on wages, press for better working conditions and rein in executive pay at the top.
Inequality cannot be reduced to one dimension, stemming as it does from many forms of privilege and disadvantage. The real question is whether the immorality of increased inequalities in our country is sustainable or whether they should be condemned. I am very much of the latter view, and it is good to see my party bringing forward imaginative and costed solutions which I shall mention very briefly. They include a national transformation fund aimed at rebalancing the economy and a national investment bank with regional arms. I also welcome plans for tackling tax avoidance and evasion, increased corporation tax and a hike in the living wage, with the latter including a more equitable system that benefits younger workers.
As it stands, we on this side of the House are not yet the party of government and a general election may happen later this year, but it could be as far off as the early summer of 2022. I hope, therefore, that the Minister responding to this debate will give some indication of what her party plans to do to reverse the current depressing trends. They are a challenge to us all and to the Government. We have to tackle these problems and I hope that we will do it quickly.
Baroness Goldie (Con)
My Lords, we are very tight for time in this important debate, so when the clock shows five minutes I expect the Member to sit down, otherwise I may have to stand up.
Lord Wallace of Saltire (LD)
My Lords, I half agree with the Deaton review’s opening declaration that:
“Discussion of inequalities increasingly defines economic and political debate”.
That ought to be one of the central issues of British politics rather than the endless preoccupation with Brexit, sovereignty and making Britain great again, let alone cutting taxes for the rich and cutting services and benefits for the poor, as Boris Johnson is proposing to the apparent delight of Conservative Party members. I noted the article in the Telegraph last week by Daniel Hannan MEP, one of the Conservative Party’s leading ideologues. It dismissed the idea of poverty in Britain as being in reality about only inequality, and furthermore argued that inequality is not rising very much and, in any case, does not matter.
Successive analysts of open and democratic societies have argued for centuries that too great a gap between the rich and the poor is incompatible with a peaceful and mutually tolerant national community. The whole idea of a democratic national community requires a shared sense of commitment; a social contract shared by all citizens and between citizens and the state. Too wide a gap between the privileged and the underprivileged, between the very rich and the very poor, undermines this common citizenship. Liberals in the late 19th century and early 20th century invested public finances in state education, pensions and welfare in order to bring the poorest Britons into our national community.
The wildest Chicago School economists have denied the necessity of concessions to democracy in their pursuit of the free market, as we saw in their support for Pinochet’s economic experiments and political repression in Chile. Illiberal democracy offers citizens grievances against foreigners and myths about national history as a distraction, while oligarchs and billionaires use their money to buy influence and distort the political debate. We see illiberal democracy, or populism, played out by rich and privileged men pretending to be men of the people, spreading across the democratic world and now across the Conservative Party in Britain.
I regret that the sometimes intemperate language of Philip Alston’s UN human rights report has allowed the UK Government to dismiss the argument that he makes. It would have been more powerful as a restrained analysis than as the case for the prosecution he has made it. The detailed studies on which it is based, from universities, reputable think tanks and government agencies, are powerful enough on their own. Like the Deaton review, it emphasises the multiple dimensions of poverty and inequality, and the interaction of disadvantages in child care and early years support, education, housing, access to jobs and public transport with low wages and benefits. I welcome the accumulation of data-based studies, including those from the Resolution Foundation and the Social Metrics Commission.
I see inequality and deprivation on the ground in Bradford and West Yorkshire. The most deprived wards in Bradford, whether predominantly ethnic white or Asian, also have the highest rates of crime and violence, the largest number of children growing up in single-parent households, the least access to playing fields and open spaces, and the lowest ranking schools. Last summer, I was driven round a former council estate by one of our local councillors. We saw no representatives of authority—police numbers had been cut and community police teams disbanded—and we saw social housing that had been sold off now rented out for multiple occupancy by private landlords. We saw children who should have been at school playing in the street, and teenagers who looked as if they were dealing drugs. The prospects for social cohesion, let alone social mobility, in such circumstances are dire.
We should also note the regional dimension of inequality in England and welcome the first report of the UK2070 Commission, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake. It notes,
“the historic concentration of public investment in London and the wider south-east”,
under successive Governments—Labour, coalition and Conservative—and its link to the concentration of political power in London.
Let us admit that all parties have contributed, over two decades and more, to the problems we now face. However, the Conservative’s determination to shrink public spending to 35% of national income, against the 40% which was the agreed coalition target, is making economic inequality and social alienation much worse. We could do a great deal to solve such problems with 3% to 5% of our national income, instead of demanding more and more tax cuts for those already well off.
I heard a member of the Cabinet yesterday refer to our “broken social contract”. He is right to use such stark language. If not fixed, a broken social contract will threaten to break our liberal and democratic national community.
Baroness Stroud (Con)
My Lords, I thank my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, for tabling this important debate. I have huge respect for his work, particularly in the area of refugees.
Whenever the subjects of poverty and inequality are debated in this House, emotions rightly run high. It is for this reason that I founded the Social Metrics Commission—to create robust measurements of poverty to help inform policymakers and provide clear and accurate metrics that all of us, regardless of our political persuasion, can use with confidence to drive improved outcomes for those in poverty. I wanted to bring to an end the battle that has characterised the measurement of poverty and move the debate on to what can be done. I was therefore delighted when the UN special rapporteur chose to use the Social Metrics Commission measure in his final report, and I thank Philip Alston for his recommendation that the metrics be adopted as the UK’s official measure of poverty. Further, I thank the Government for their commitment to taking these new measures forward as experimental stats and look forward to working with them towards them becoming official statistics.
My first point in response to the report is that we need to work together for the sake of building an effective strategy that will change lives. If the work of the Social Metrics Commission taught commissioners anything, it was to believe the best of one another. We had a guiding principle that, wherever we came from politically, we would believe that we all cared about the outcomes for those in poverty. So, while I am delighted that the UN special rapporteur chose to use the data of the Social Metrics Commission in his report, the tone and accuracy of the report does not match the consensus and accuracy that underpins all that the commission is trying to achieve. If we are to make real progress, we need to believe that we are all committed to the task ahead and that we all want to see that progress.
The second lesson of the commission was to be really careful about what the data is actually saying. The argument that poverty has dramatically increased since the financial crisis cannot be argued from the statistics the UN special rapporteur has chosen to use. It is incorrect to argue from the SMC data that the number of people in poverty has risen since 2008. Despite headlines, in reality the poverty level today is broadly similar to what it was prior to the financial crisis and before austerity policies. What is more, where the HBAI measure showed poverty falling throughout the financial crisis, which always felt counterintuitive, and rising since, the SMC shows that the rate of poverty rose, as one would expect, over the financial crisis, and has remained stable at its pre-financial crisis level. If we want to focus on the real tragedy of the past 20 years, it is that poverty levels have largely been stubbornly consistent, standing between 21% and 24% throughout this period. In fact, the SMC report shows that since 2001, under successive Governments —Labour, the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition and Conservative—while the composition of who is poor may have changed, the number of people in poverty has remained tragically consistent. It is too easy for us in this Chamber and in the other place in debate to say that 200,000 people have moved from one side of the poverty line to the other. However, there are 7.7 million people in persistent poverty who have been so generationally. If we are honest, none of us has really seen the sort of breakthrough here that we long for, and we cannot allow this to be the reality of this generation.
The good news that could have been highlighted is that there are fewer pensioners living in poverty than previously thought. This is a tribute to the hard work done to improve the lives of pensioners over the past two decades by Governments of all colours and shows that concerted policy action can really make a difference. The real value for the UN rapporteur in using the SMC measure would have been to better identify who is in poverty, with a full measurement framework that captures depth, persistence and the lived experience. Much of the inequality that the IFS will focus on in its five-year review is in this space, such as the inequality of mental health outcomes, education outcomes and employment opportunities for those in poverty compared with those who are not, among others. These are among the lived-experience indicators of the SMC measure, and the Deaton review is right to focus here. The UN rapporteur had an opportunity to highlight what has been left out of historical approaches to poverty measurement, particularly disability and full- time work.
Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Dubs said in his opening remarks that it was a privilege to open this debate; I am sure the House will agree that it is always a privilege to listen to him. I pay tribute to him for securing this important debate and for the way in which he introduced it.
I intend to address my remarks to the issue of inequality. The levels of inequality in this country are shameful. The detailed evidence of that is to be found not only in the Deaton review and the research that underpins the special rapporteur’s report but, interestingly, in the speech made by the Prime Minister when she took over at No. 10 on 13 July 2016. People can read the detail for themselves, but she made a speech of about 650 words, of which she devoted more than half to describing the challenges she was inheriting from her predecessor, David Cameron; she described him as a “great modern Prime Minister”, whose “true legacy” was “about social justice”. In contradiction to that description, the country she described in half of her speech was one of burning injustices and inequality, and she restricted herself then to only nine examples; there are many more. I am certain that other noble Lords will deal—and have dealt to a degree—with the evidence in detail. But, in my limited time, I intend to assume that their contributions will comprehensively prove the case for urgent action, as the previous speaker did.
To add to our shame, we know how to deal with these inequalities. I have picked a few solutions at random. On life expectancy, where the disparity between rich and poor is growing, access to healthcare services and education is crucial. Spending on public health has fallen since 2016 and education spending is flatlining. Deprivation is the driver of inequality more broadly, but benefit cuts have continued to be rolled out, and food bank use and homelessness have continued to rise since the summer of 2016. We now have an audit of race disparity in the criminal justice system but, as the deputy director of the race equality think tank the Runnymede Trust said:
“Highlighting the gaps doesn’t address the gaps”.
We need action, and we have known that we need action for a long time. Social mobility has been virtually stagnant for four years and requires the implementation of at least some of the recommendations of the Social Mobility Commission. On the gender pay gap, women on average still earn 18% less than men; progress is far too slow.
In 2010, we had in place much of the necessary infrastructure to support the programmes needed to address many of these challenges. These public programmes are being pared down, bit by bit. Institutions that protected vulnerable people are being closed, social care services are at breaking point and local government and devolved institutions are stretched far too thinly as more and more responsibility for this is given to them by central government. The social safety net that once provided a guarantee of security against the most extreme level of poverty and deprivation has systematically been eroded to focus austerity on the poorest while giving tax cuts to the privileged few.
In responding to this debate, I hope, as my noble friend Lord Dubs does, that the Minister will engage with these and other solutions, and confirm that a Government still led by a Prime Minister who promised to make a country that works,
“not for a privileged few, but for every one of us”,
will increase investment in them. Why is it that the Chancellor’s £26 billion reserve, taken from the poor by austerity, is being referred to as a “Brexit war chest”? I have to say to the Minister that I fear disappointment, but I caution her to avoid the responses her colleagues have deployed against the increasing evidence of inequality. She should avoid the Chancellor’s inclination to deny the existence of the scale of poverty and inequality; apparently, he does not see it, yet, as my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, pointed out, the evidence on the streets of the communities that we live in is there for us all to see.
Secondly, I welcome the increase in employment, but it is not a panacea for poverty. A shocking 2.8 million people are in poverty who are in families where all the adults are working, and one in six food bank users is working. In particular, will the Minister avoid the response deployed by the Prime Minister at PMQs on 22 May? When faced with the evidence of inequality set against the obscenity that the wealth of the 1,000 richest people had increased by £50 billion in the preceding 12 months, she stated that in every year under the Conservatives the richest had paid more tax. Does she not realise that this response provides evidence of growing inequality, not the opposite? Is she proud of the fact that the richest have increasingly monopolised both the wealth and the income of this country?
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, on securing this important debate, which gives us the opportunity to welcome among other things the Deaton review of inequalities.
Sir Angus promises that he and his expert panel will think about inequalities broadly, determine the right mix of policies to tackle them and not be confined to traditional economic measures of income and wealth. Unusually for this country, the review will also explore how family structures drive inequalities. I suspect that this is due largely to the fact that Deaton’s academic career was forged in the United States, where academics and respected commentators are able to study and discuss family structure in a way that problematises family breakdown instead of simply accepting it.
Rightly, the IFS introduction to the review describes family as one of the most important aspects of life. Yet the UK Government and academic research community seem remarkably unconcerned that about one in six children—a significant proportion—is born into a household with no father present. This is a considerably higher proportion than in most of Europe and is heavily concentrated among those with less income and education. At least four in five of these children will live in a poor household while they are very young. Almost one-third of their mothers have no educational qualifications.
The Deaton review has promised to determine how living in fractured family settings affects economic, social, emotional and health outcomes for the children and adults involved, and the long-term ramifications. The panel has much existing work to draw from: since 2006 the Centre for Social Justice has been calling out the relationship between family breakdown and poverty and has had the courage to say that we can and must do something to try to prevent family breakdown.
The centre’s most recent research, which controlled for factors such as socioeconomic grade and ethnicity, found that those who experience family breakdown in their childhood or youth are more than twice as likely to experience homelessness, to be in trouble with the police or to spend time in prison. They are almost twice as likely to experience educational underachievement and not raise their own children with the other parent—in other words, repeating the cycle that their own parents went through. They are close to twice as likely to experience alcoholism, teen pregnancy and mental health issues, and 1.6 times as likely to be in debt and on benefits.
This is not rocket science. Indeed, it is blatantly obvious to more than 80% of British adults, who say that stronger families are important in addressing Britain’s social problems—as do an almost identical percentage of divorced people. Does the Minister agree that politicians do not need an unblemished track record in their own family matters to recognise this urgent issue and to do something about it? I am not, of course, thinking about anyone in particular who has—shall we say?—a particularly colourful family life.
Deaton and his team have promised to look at whether growing rates of parental separation and single parenthood are due to changes in either cultural or social norms or to a cluster of disadvantages such as a decline in good working-class jobs and secure incomes—or to some combination of the two. His open-mindedness in the area of underlying causes is to be applauded, as is his willingness to open up the subject of family structure to much-needed scrutiny in the UK policy and research context. I trust that Professor Deaton will follow through and give this neglected driver of inequality the urgent attention it deserves.
Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, has helpfully defined what particular inequalities he is focusing on: income, wealth and living standards. It is well known that families with a disabled person are among the poorest in the UK. I am glad that the Government have now accepted the Social Metrics Commission’s definition, with its figure of 6.9 million people who are in families where a person has a disability. That person is more likely to be unemployed or in insecure employment and to have been hardest hit by austerity measures. The Equality and Human Rights Commission published a report last year which criticised how the benefits system operates for disabled people, particularly vulnerable claimants who have experienced difficulties with UC, PIP assessments and the benefits sanctions regime, which, it says, have had no tangible positive effect on moving disabled people closer to paid work.
As we have heard, the Government have dismissed the highly critical report of the UN special rapporteur by saying, roughly, “How dare he?” Yet disabled people told him repeatedly about benefit assessments that were,
“superficial, dismissive, and contradicted the advice of their doctor”.
The report goes on to say, tellingly:
“Those with disabilities are also highly vulnerable to cuts in local government services, particularly within social care, which has left them shouldering more of the costs of their care. This has driven many families with a person with a disability to breaking point”.
The Deaton report must surely look at problems faced by disabled people and their families, because the figures are stark. The charity Scope says that disabled people face extra costs of between £583 and £1,000 a month. A particularly large amount goes on energy costs.
In the limited time available, I want to turn to what the Government could do to help disabled people in the benefits system, which is an absolute lifeline for them. First, the implementation of universal credit is sadly and unnecessarily turning into a nightmare for many people. There are reports from all over the country of how it is not helping vulnerable claimants. Even in relatively prosperous places such as Winchester, I hear from Citizens Advice about a lack of care and flexibility in how such claimants are dealt with. This apparent heartlessness would not be imposed by the staff unless it was built into the whole system.
MPs’ postbags and CAB caseloads are full most of all with problems with PIP. Here is a typical example. A constituent of my MP colleague has heavy callipers on her legs due to a congenital hip condition and has had a Motability car for some years. However, on reassessment, she was told that, as she is able to drive, she must be able to walk, so she was refused enough points for the car. When the MP intervened, the car was restored, but just for two years,
“in case your legs get better”.
This level of ignorance is unforgivable, but it is not unique.
Citizens Advice in Mole Valley, Surrey, is particularly concerned about mandatory reconsideration, meaning that decision-makers have to examine a claim before a possible appeal. This is still far too much of a rubber-stamping exercise. At the end of January 2019, 81 % of new claims and 76% of reassessment decisions reviewed at MR were overturned on appeal. Clearly, therefore, it is not working. It causes delays, stress to claimants and is confusing and poorly understood. Some 73% of cases are overturned by tribunals. We clearly need an assessment of the cumulative impact of welfare policies on disabled people and a levelling of the playing field.
Lord Ravensdale (CB) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, it is a great honour to address your Lordships’ House for the first time, after some weeks of observing and learning. In one of my first, very hesitant forays into the Chamber, I was told by one of the doorkeepers, “You are a Peer of the realm, my Lord. You should bowl in there like you own the place”. I hope I am now entering somewhat more confidently—if not quite “bowling in” yet—but what hits me still as I enter this amazing place are the echoes of history and the many great things that have been achieved and accomplished within these walls.
I thank noble Lords from across the House and all the officials and staff for the very warm welcome that I have received. In particular, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Cork and Orrery, and the noble Lord, Lord Vaux of Harrowden, for all the help that they have given me in settling into the House. It has been a rather daunting but incredible experience.
I will tell noble Lords a bit about myself. I am a chartered engineer; I work for an engineering consultancy firm in Derby with a particular focus on nuclear energy. I am a project director and technical lead, leading teams to deliver aspects of the nuclear steam-raising plant for the Royal Navy fleet and deterrent submarines. I am very proud to work on these critical national programmes. I look forward to bringing my experience in engineering, defence and energy to the work of the House.
Turning to the subject before us, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, for initiating this vital debate on a matter that I am passionate about. Arguably, there is no more pressing issue in our society today than the inequalities that exist and the means of addressing them. When we look at all the upheavals in western society over the past decade—Brexit, the gilet jaunes, Trump—all of these can be traced back to the tear that is emerging in our societies between the haves and the have-nots. In the spirit of maiden speeches remaining relatively uncontroversial, I will keep my remarks much more general and measured than they might otherwise have been and avoid, I hope, provoking too much outrage.
Today, I will focus specifically on the effects that globalisation has had on inequality in the UK and the regions. In this, we must not lose sight of one central fact: when viewed at a global level, income inequality has continually reduced over the past three decades, principally brought about by the lifting of millions—if not billions—out of poverty in India and China. More than anything else, this shows the immense power of capitalism and globalisation to transform lives for the better and transform the world for the better.
There are, however, dark sides to this. One is the effect that globalisation has had on many workers in the West, including in many sectors of the UK. Too often, globalisation is presented by politicians and economists as an unalloyed good, when in fact it has caused huge disruption, many job losses and wage reductions in many sectors of western economies, including that of the UK. It is those at the lower end of the income scale who have suffered most from this. What, therefore, should be done? We should not abandon free trade, raise tariff barriers or protect failing national industries. What we really need is a globalisation that works for all in the economy. I will raise several points here.
First, public discussion must be much more open, as there are costs as well as benefits to globalisation. Secondly, training and reskilling the workforce is going to become ever more important as changing global markets continue to affect old industries. Thirdly, there needs to be much more of a focus on areas outside the metropolis. The Deaton report makes it clear that London has experienced much higher growth than other regions—as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace—such as the Midlands, where I am from, and the north. This is partly due to the hollowing out of old industries. Much more must be done to encourage clusters of new industries to be set up outside the capital and to renew the infrastructure in those places. That is why initiatives such as the northern powerhouse and the Midlands engine are so important. They must get the focus they deserve.
I finish with a question for the Minister: can she assure us that renewed focus will be given to revitalising areas outside the capital and, importantly, that the Midlands will not be excluded from these initiatives? With interest rates at record lows, the Government should seize the opportunity.
The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, it is a signal honour to follow my noble friend Lord Ravensdale’s excellent maiden speech. He lives in the Midlands and his wife is a secondary school teacher in, I think, an inner-city school. He is an engineer and an expert in nuclear physics. His experience and expertise will clearly be invaluable to your Lordships’ House. I am sure your Lordships will join me in hoping that we might have many future occasions to hear him take part in our debates and discussions.
I also join in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, for calling this important and timely debate. I am reminded of the work that the Labour Government did in introducing Sure Start and Every Child Matters—very important measures to improve the life chances of our vulnerable children. The noble Lord referred to the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health’s briefing, which is very important. It highlights that two years ago the rates of child infant mortality began to rise in this country. For a second successive year, the rates of childhood mortality have been rising after 100 years of decline.
I will speak briefly about housing. I pay tribute to the Prime Minister for her statement of commitment to “just managing” families, particularly her bravery in speaking to her party about the need for social housing. I especially welcome the lifting of the restriction on local authorities borrowing to build social housing. Some 130,000 children in this country, many of them young children, are living with their parents in bed-and-breakfast and hostel accommodation, and in houses in multiple occupation, as has been described—the highest level since 2003. I hope that, whatever changes take place in the next months, the Prime Minister’s commitment to social housing will be carried through. I turn to the Government’s Back Benches for support in doing that.
On inequality, the royal college highlights that, compared with similar nations, we have higher rates of infant mortality, lower rates of breastfeeding and higher rates of child obesity. Information from the charity Best Beginnings highlights that if you are from a black or minority ethnic community you are 80% more likely to die in infancy than if you are not. Much of this, as the briefing highlights, arises from poverty.
I join in the call from the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, to think again about the cuts in welfare. I especially emphasise the introduction of the cuts to benefits for people who have more than two children. This results in a cut in their incomes for each additional child of I think £2,850 per year. This is most harmful. I cannot think of any other country that does this—maybe a few states in the United States do. This really needs to be rolled back.
I emphasise the need to care better for our caring professionals. As a parliamentary officer of the children’s group, I have seen that the cuts have resulted in the wholesale reduction of early intervention to support families. There are great initiatives such as the Government’s troubled families programme, but underlying all this are huge cuts to the early intervention that stops children and families falling into disrepair. Professionals—particularly social workers, but also those working in schools—are having to field families and children who are more and more troubled and disturbed.
We need to recommit, particularly to health visitors, a crucial group of professionals. I have visited with health visitors on several occasions over the last 20 years and have seen that they can get into houses when a child is very young, giving excellent advice to parents and helping those children and families get to children’s centres and other settings. However, one in four health visitors has been lost recently. In some areas, only 10% of health visitors can make their early visits at eight weeks. In others, that figure is 90%.
I visited a Leatherhead clinic recently. Speaking to health visitors, I hear the pressure they are under, but all professionals in this area need additional support. I ask the Minister if she can look at what can be done to support health visitors. I look forward to hearing from her; perhaps she might write to me on what will be done about this very important matter. I join in lamenting the situation we are currently in. It will require work from all sides to make good the harm that has come to our most vulnerable families in recent years.
Lord Hain (Lab)
My Lords, I strongly agree with the excellent points made by the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, on globalisation. I share his passion for engineering. In fact, I started studying engineering and then switched to political science and economics. It has been downhill for me ever since.
The report by the UN special rapporteur and the launch of the Deaton review should have been warning shots across the bow of the ship of state, demanding a radical change of course. The new annual report into living standards, poverty and inequality from the Institute for Fiscal Studies will, I am sure, be another volley in the same vein. However, so far, the only response from the Government has been to sound “steady as she goes” and plough on.
Ministers are in denial. They refuse to admit the stark reality of deprivation in Britain today, and they reject any responsibility for making it worse through their austerity policy. Two facts stand out: one charting the startling spread of dire need, the other showing how years of austerity have forced local authorities to take desperate measures to the detriment of their communities.
First, consider the number of food banks in the UK run by the Trussell Trust. There were 80 in 2011 and 400 in 2013. Today, there are more than 1,200—that is just those run by the Trussell Trust. Seven years ago, a third of a million people received at least three days’ emergency food from the Trussell Trust food banks. Last year, that figure reached a record level of 1.6 million. This is incontrovertible evidence of a land haunted by hunger, yet the Chancellor denies that vast numbers of people face dire poverty in Britain today. It is obvious that, sadly, he and his Cabinet colleagues have not got a clue about the misery experienced by millions of families and individuals, many of whom are in work.
My second fact speaks for itself. Since 2010, more than 700 council football pitches have been lost due to council funding being slashed. This is in addition to the sell-off of school playing fields. We keep hearing that exercise is the nearest thing to a magic bullet for promoting health and improved opportunity, but government cuts are undermining the very ground on which we stand, walk and run. In a sane world, Tory leadership candidates would now be unveiling plans for reducing poverty and inequality, but Brexit fever has them in its grasp, so poverty and inequality have played no part.
The Chancellor claims that the UK has started its journey out of austerity, but the fiscal squeeze that George Osborne used to boast about is set to continue remorselessly. The Office for Budget Responsibility has confirmed that the 10-year Tory budget cuts remain in place, a fiscal squeeze that will have taken over £150 billion of spending out of the economy in tax rises and public spending cuts by 2020. This squeeze has led the economy to grow more slowly than in the previous year for four consecutive years, with no improvement in prospect, entrenching massive inequality. The gap between rich and poor is now greater than ever before, in modern times at least.
To my astonishment, I recently read in the Times and the Financial Times that a Tory think tank called Onward had called for the next Tory leader to spend nearly £200 billion more over the next four years, by bringing national debt down more slowly. The author, Tory MP Neil O’Brien, a former adviser to George Osborne, said,
“it’s time to turn on all the taps and make sure that poorer families and poorer areas really feel the benefit of a growing economy”.
Those words deserve to be taken seriously but they are being lost in the Tory leadership contest, where everything, including poverty and inequality, plays second fiddle to Brexit or to unaffordable, opportunistic tax cuts for the well-off. Those will simply widen inequality, all the time deepening the Government’s scandalous indifference to the shocking crisis in elderly care and affordable housing.
Baroness Finn (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, on securing this hugely important debate and for his commitment and hard work over very many years, especially on behalf of refugees. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, on his excellent and insightful maiden speech.
This is an enormously broad debate and we have only a few minutes, so I will limit my remarks to the review that Sir Angus Deaton is undertaking for the IFS. This helpful and serious review will enable us to examine exactly where we face challenges of inequality and what might be done to ensure that everyone has the same opportunity. Inequality, perhaps even more than poverty, is a very politically charged topic. The idea of people being left behind—whether that is the poorest being left behind by the wealthy, the older generation left behind by the younger, women left behind men or people left behind due to a lack of education—is, understandably and rightly, of huge concern to us as a nation. The idea that inequality may be increasing, and that people may be slipping further and further behind, has rightly been the subject of debate in this place and further afield.
However, there are some facts within the Angus Deaton review that it is helpful to highlight in this debate. First, inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient has remained broadly unchanged since the early 1990s. Despite the conversations happening around inequality, in reality the Gini coefficient, which is most usually used to measure inequality, has remained broadly unchanged since the early 1990s. If we look at a 90:10 ratio, measuring the people at the top of the income field next to those at the bottom, inequality has actually fallen from the early 1990s. Household incomes are more evenly distributed across society than they were in the 1990s. Far from the story of dramatic increases, inequality has actually stayed flat.
Secondly, according to the IFS, overall income inequality has remained stable, as incomes have been topped up by the Government. If we hone in on just incomes, the story is interesting. It is true that there has been a rise in incomes in the top households, with the average high-earning household earning around 40% more than it did in the 1990s, compared to stagnation in the lowest-earning households and smaller uplifts in the middle. The salaries of FTSE 100 CEOs are now a staggering 145 times the salary of an average worker, compared with 47 times higher in 1998. However, due to government policy, for example by expanding tax credits in the 1990s, overall income inequality has remained stable, as incomes have been topped up by the Government. After taxes and benefits, household incomes across the distribution have kept pace, and the poverty rate has remained stable since the late 1990s. However, we all know that money earned from work comes with dignity and security, and that people care about where that money comes from. This is why providing a true living wage to ensure that work really provides for families is key.
It is worth shining a light on other areas where inequality is playing a role in people’s lives. One such example is where those on lower incomes experience higher levels of family breakdown. Some 16% of children in the UK are born into households with no father; we know that this has significant impacts on poverty, with single families experiencing a much higher rate of poverty than two-parent households, and on the stability of children’s lives, which can trap people in a cycle of generational poverty. Policies which support families and ensure that this support is at the heart of government thinking will potentially make a huge difference to how the next generation grows up.
The Deaton review will provide a fascinating insight into the nature of inequality in today’s society. In terms of income inequality and the structure of society, the picture has remained very flat. However, it is vital to understand and unpack fully the social issues related to inequality and the lived experience of poverty and inequality. Only by doing so properly can we ensure policy interventions are able to target most effectively the places where they can make a real difference.
Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)
My Lords, I first congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, on his maiden speech. Although I cannot support the electoral method by which he has arrived with us in the Lords, I am pleased he is here, because he is young and we are all too old. We need to hear more younger voices in this House.
It is futile to argue about the conflicting statistics on whether inequality and poverty are getting worse or better. The reality is that more than 20% of people in this country suffer grinding poverty every day. They suffer anxiety about money and work, and endure real impacts on their health and that of their children. The burden falls most on children and the disabled, and those in regions where real unemployment is highest or the available jobs are low paid.
Most of us can have no concept of what it is to deal with daily grinding poverty. I lived and was brought up in a basic working-class Scottish rural household, and we did not have much money. But in my teens I read Walter Greenwood’s novel Love on the Dole, which absolutely makes real the degrading effects of poverty on individuals, families and communities. It had a profound impact on me, opening my eyes to the horrors of real poverty. So I was very pleased to see the debate in the name of my noble friend Lord Dubs, as it gives us the opportunity to explore something that, for the last couple of years, I simply could not understand: why, when we allegedly have the lowest levels of unemployment for 45 years, is the Trussell Trust reporting that food bank use has increased by 75% over the last five years, and has reached 1.6 million visits annually to March 2019? Other noble Lords have highlighted this. I could not get these conflicting statistics to compute.
The growth of food bank use in this country is frankly unacceptable for an advanced economy, but the employment statistics also need to be challenged. They ignore the 750,000 people on zero-hours contracts, which count as work but, in many cases, do not provide an adequate income and lack job security. They may suit some people, but only some. A Sheffield Hallam University report has also identified that an additional 1 million people do not appear in the unemployment figures, as they are hidden in the weakest economies or parked on incapacity benefits, and that the real rate of unemployment could be higher than at any time since 1997. Please can the Government stop telling us that the unemployment figures show us that we have never had it so good? Can we have more transparency about what actually constitutes employment and whether it really brings people out of poverty? The Resolution Foundation has reported that,
“the majority of people in poverty now live in a household in which someone works”.
Can the Minister assure us that the Government accept that poverty and inequality are not being adequately addressed? We do not want a response that is a war of competing statistics; we want a recognition that long-term poverty exists and needs tackling. Can the Minister assure us that benefit payments need to reflect the true cost of living and that the flaws in universal credit, such as the five-week wait, the two-child limit, the freeze on child payments and the advance loan system need to be fixed? Will the Minister assure us that work needs to be secure and genuinely reflect a living wage; that genuinely affordable housing—not the Mickey Mouse definition, which is far from affordable for people on low income—would help; and that the programme of work on regional disparities needs to be addressed with more vigour? I hope the Minister can satisfy the House on these issues.
I hope the Minister will also take this opportunity to dissociate herself from the appalling announcements by candidates for the Tory party leadership. I looked at the work of the Resolution Foundation—not exactly a left-wing, Trotskyist organisation—which has calculated that 83% of Boris’s tax reductions for people earning over £50,000 a year would accrue to the richest 10%, particularly to richer pensioners such as me. I do not want this tax cut; I want it to go to people living in genuine poverty. The announcements that are part of this campaign do not give confidence that the Conservative Party is intent on tackling the crying shame of poverty and inequality in this country. I hope the Minister can reverse that impression.
Lord Adonis (Lab)
My Lords, a bedrock of modern civic equalities is good-quality public services. The recent development doing most to sap the bonds that tie us together as a national community is the declining quality of our public services, which have been reducing in quality for the first time in a generation. Reversing that, in practical terms, service by service, should be the work of Ministers and Governments over the period ahead. I hope the Minister can give the House some practical, concrete instances of what the Government will do to turn back the impact of austerity policies since 2010. It is no good willing the ends without willing the means. Looked at public service by public service, there have been sustained and serious cuts in quality.
One thing I am proudest of the previous Labour Government for doing is substantially increasing spending on state education, including real-terms, year-on-year, per-pupil increases and a significant increase in school capital spending. Unless pupils have decent quality buildings to be educated in, they will not get a decent education. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, rightly referred to Sure Start, nurseries and centres for under-fives. These have been systematically closed and cut back since 2010 and that simply needs to be reversed. It is not warm words that we need from Ministers, but concrete policies to bring back Sure Start centres, open under-fives centres that have been closed, reverse the cuts in the school capital programme and have year-on-year increases in per-student funding. Average fees at the school which the next Prime Minister may well come from are £39,000 a year, while we have seen year-on-year cuts in the real-terms funding for students attending state schools.
The figures speak for themselves. Total spending per pupil in English state schools, at this year’s prices, has been reduced by £500 in the last eight years from £6,378 to £5,872. The school capital programme, which 10 years ago was driving the Building Schools for the Future programme, aiming to rebuild or modernise every secondary school in the country and all primary schools that were short of places, has fallen from £8.8 billion in the last year of the Labour Government to £5.2 billion this year—a 41% drop. As the noble Earl said, the number of Sure Start centres has been dramatically slashed. Large parts of the country have no under-fives service whatever. One of the greatest cross-party achievements over the past 25 years was regarding services for under-fives as every bit as much a part of the education system as conventional schools.
Closures of GP surgeries are reaching an alarming level. The number of GPs per 100,000 people shrank last year, for the first time since the 1960s, after 40 years of sustained increases. Last year, 138 doctors’ surgeries closed—a record number in recent decades. The inequity in life chances and opportunities between students who go to university at the age of 18 and those who go into apprenticeships has been a long-running problem in our society. That, too, has got worse over the past 10 years. Funding for universities has been protected, albeit through increases in fees, while the number of apprenticeships has dramatically fallen. Last year, the number of apprenticeship starts, at 375,000, was 26% lower than three years before. Despite the introduction of an apprenticeship levy, the actual number of apprenticeships has fallen dramatically.
Public transport in local communities, so vital to the life chances of poorer people in particular, has suffered really serious cuts in the last 10 years, particularly to bus networks. For young people seeking to establish themselves in local communities up and down the country, bus services matter more than anything. Local bus fares have increased in real terms by 36% over the last 13 years and many services have got worse. They have worsened everywhere except London, which started with the best services and has managed to maintain them.
Libraries are dear to the hearts of many noble Lords. The level of library closures has been scandalous: 737 have closed since 2010 and over 500 more are kept open only by volunteers. Warm words are not enough. Unless we systematically reverse these cuts in public services—with a real-terms increase in education spending, an end to cuts in GP surgeries, a cap on bus fares outside London and guarantees, which I think must come through new regulations, that services will not be cut—inequality will get steadily worse in our society.
Lord Freeman (Con)
My Lords I am very pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, particularly his remarks about transport. He and I have a lot in common in our support, and the relevance of transport to this debate is well accepted. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, on initiating this debate. It has been very important so far, and the quality of the debate and the quality of advice have been much appreciated.
I want to comment briefly on inequities in the United Kingdom, which are often inherited. It is the duty of any politician—anyone speaking in public—to address that inequality. We should be encouraging our young people, in particular, to aim for the stars and not be put off or offended by what they see as the difficulty of making progress in their careers or in their education. The first concern is: are families discharging their duties properly, encouraging their children to go for proper qualifications, whether at school, university or in experience in public life, so that they can make a real contribution to society and ensure that their contribution is listened to properly? Families have a real responsibility in making sure that inherited disabilities, in terms of promotion, property and education, are diminished.
Secondly, schoolteachers have a specific responsibility. We must encourage teachers to identify which of the children under their guidance are likely to be discouraged simply because of inherited perceived disadvantage. Thirdly, individuals like us sometimes do not applaud enough the achievements made by our children, our grandchildren and others we know, to ensure that discrimination in terms of promotion and achievement in life are nullified. We as individuals have a real responsibility to encourage ambition and make sure that there are few roadblocks to a successful career.
Role models have a real responsibility, certainly on television. They must lead in guidance and example to children, those in education and those in employment so they are determined to make a success of themselves and provide leading models to society.
Finally, we parliamentarians have an especially great responsibility. I am glad that in your Lordships’ House we see schoolchildren regularly enjoying visits to Parliament. That is one way of making sure that we can do something about inherited inequities—we do not want schoolchildren in particular to think that your Lordships’ House and those in authority somehow have an unnecessary advantage and domination over their lives. I very much welcome those in the Galleries, not only in your Lordships’ House but also in the other place, listening to this debate. I hope they will gain something from it and be reassured that we as a House are absolutely determined to make sure that inherited disadvantages are put behind us.
Baroness Bryan of Partick (Lab)
My Lords, I sincerely thank my noble friend Lord Dubs for enabling this debate, which tackles a burning issue that is not getting enough attention due to the current political climate. As he said, there is so much to say on this issue that it is necessary to concentrate on just one thing.
The Deaton review refers to the gap in life expectancy between affluent and deprived areas. This gap has widened significantly over the last 15 years. In 2001, women born in the most affluent areas lived on average 6.1 years longer than women born in the most deprived areas. In 2016, this gap had grown to 7.9 years.
My own home city of Glasgow has the unenviable reputation of having the lowest life expectancy for men in the UK, but it is not just cities versus suburbs. In East Dunbartonshire, an affluent suburb, women have the longest life expectancy in Scotland. Right next door in West Dunbartonshire, which includes areas of deprivation, they have the lowest. Until recently, we could at least say that, while there was still a gap, most people of all backgrounds were living longer, but these improvements have stalled and for the first time in 35 years we are seeing some reverse.
This information on the differences in life expectancy is not new. The issue of socially and economically determined health inequalities has been on the agendas of different Governments for decades. Resources have been put into tackling smoking, poor diet and lack of exercise, but the gap continues to widen.
The Deaton review also refers to deaths relating to drugs, suicide and alcohol. He uses the term “deaths of despair”. This type of death has been rising in the UK and affecting people in middle age. While deaths from cancer and heart disease fell among men and women aged between 45 and 55, deaths from despair increased. Add to that the incidents of mental illness. The joint strategic needs assessment publication in August 2017 pointed out that:
“Stable and rewarding employment is a protective factor for mental health and can be a vital element of recovery from mental health problems. Unemployment and unstable employment are risk factors for mental health problems”.
The trade union leader Jimmy Reid, who is still held in great esteem in Scotland, used his inaugural speech as rector of Glasgow University to describe:
“The feeling of despair and hopelessness that pervades people who feel with justification that they have no real say in shaping … their own destinies”.
The lack of skilled, well-paid and permanent jobs and the nightmare of surviving on disability or jobseeker’s allowance have contributed to deaths of despair.
Does the Minister accept that austerity has contributed to increasing the gap in life expectancy, and does she agree that it is misleading for the Government to claim success in job creation if someone is going into a job that is precarious, low-paid and lacking dignity and could ultimately end in a death of despair?
Lord Liddle (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Bryan on her speech. Although we come from different Labour traditions, on this issue we share common aims and values. I also thank my noble friend Lord Dubs for introducing this debate. He is one of my heroes: not only do I aspire to his longevity, I aspire to remain as committed to politics and helping to improve people’s lives as he continues to do in the second half of his 80s. I also congratulate the Cross-Bench contributions of the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, in an excellent maiden speech, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, who always makes a moving contribution in this House.
We have had a lot of analysis and a lot of numbers. I should like to focus on some things that ought to be done, rather like my noble friend Lord Adonis, who talked about public services.
First, the Government must reverse the cuts to benefits for children and disability payments which have occurred under universal credit. There is nothing wrong in principle with the idea of universal credit, but the fact that for working-age people benefits have been held below inflation, while my benefits as a pensioner have continued to rise above inflation, is a scandal and must be reversed. This should be a top priority for any Government of any colour. Secondly, we must look at our system of taxation of property and wealth. Council tax is unfair. It does not tax property in an egalitarian way and we need to look at the taxation of wealth as a whole because of the enormous inflation in wealth that has occurred, partly as a result of quantitative easing. We must have new systems of tax to pay for the improvements in public services of which my noble friend Lord Adonis spoke. Thirdly, we must tackle the scandal of executive remuneration. There is a lot of talk about this. Business says that it wants to act, but we need radical corporate governance reform to deal with this problem, about which there has been far too much talk and far too little action.
Most importantly, we must recognise that the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, who is not in his place today, chaired the UK2070 Commission, which has done an excellent analysis of the flaws in the economic model in the United Kingdom and what is contributing to poverty and inequality in our country. The driving force of this, in my view, is the problem of regional inequality and the disparities that it causes. In the past 10 years, the rate of growth in London has been 3%; the rate of growth in the north has been 1%. If this continues, we will have a very divided country indeed. It results in impossible pressures. Young people who are on lower wages than they were in London are forced to pay very high rents to live and do their jobs here. Their incomes after housing costs present a real problem. Obviously there must be radical reform of the housing market.
In terms of action on the north and the regions, part of the answer is infrastructure investment, which has been mentioned, and part is trying to move out of London some of the sources of energy in our economy in culture, research, enterprise and innovation. A crucial point is that made by my noble friend Lord Adonis about education. Now, 60% of children in London have a chance of going to university. In my county, it is 30% to 35%. We must establish a political consensus that those problems need tackling, and I fear that I do not see that happening in the Conservative Party at the moment.
Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)
My Lords, I add my congratulations to my noble friend Lord Dubs. He always thinks very carefully before he takes any initiative in this Chamber and regularly brings to our attention some of the moral issues which lie behind the decisions we take and the work that the Government do. That is an extremely valuable contribution, as was his speech today. I agree with an awful lot of what he said, not least what is in my view the moral obloquy of cutting taxes at a time when we are reducing spending on vital public services such as social care, the NHS and, as my noble friend Lord Adonis just explained, education.
It is important to be rigorous in a debate such as this, and we must distinguish clearly between the two subjects of inequality and poverty, which too easily get mixed up. They are in fact very different concepts and can well contradict each other, or there can be trade-offs between them. A policy designed to cut inequality may well produce more poverty. For example, tax rises may have that effect. On the other hand, a policy designed to reduce poverty—for example, tax cuts—may actually increase inequality. One must be careful what one is doing here.
The second proposition I put to the House is that there is no way in which you can intervene directly on inequality. It would be a nice idea if you could, but actually you cannot. You cannot have the state laying down people’s income or how much capital they should be allowed to possess. I do not think anyone is seriously suggesting such a thing. You could of course introduce something like a Cuban revolution, or a Chinese revolution, when people appeared to become more equal but at the expense of starvation. I do not think anyone is likely to be tempted by that approach.
Equally, you cannot increase levels of taxation unreasonably, because people will just go abroad—they will disappear and take their businesses with them. My eldest son, who is the only member of my family who pays tax at a 50% marginal rate, tells me that there is something very psychological about that rate. His employers are very keen for him to relocate to the United States and he would gain considerably from doing that. He does not want to do that, but he feels—and he speaks for a lot of people, because he has contemporaries who are similarly fortunate in their incomes—that people have a psychological barrier about 50% and if you go beyond that, you get some very counter-productive effects. One must be very careful about not making that sort of elementary mistake.
The fact that you cannot really deal with inequality directly is perhaps not so tragic, because I do not think that inequality is anything like as important as poverty. Some people will immediately think that that is just my personal normative preference. I hope that I can persuade the House that it is rather more than that; that it is rather more objective.
The fact is that if most human beings were as concerned—let alone more concerned—about where they stood in a relative table of income and wealth as they are about the absolute purchasing power and wealth they enjoy, they would logically be as satisfied with the thought that some wealth or income had been taken away from somebody else as they would be by knowing that they were themselves going to be made richer in absolute terms. That is such an absolute absurdity that I do not think anyone would seriously contemplate the idea. It would also be a threat to the whole concept of human rationality, so I do not think that we need fear saying that it is poverty, or the reciprocal of poverty—wealth, the purchasing power of individuals—that concerns people most. Nobody cares very much if someone else has a Lamborghini, but I do not think I speak only for myself when I say that I would be very upset if someone took away my modest motor car. I have absolutely no desire whatever to have a Lamborghini; I would not know what to do with it if I did.
Pursuing that view, we must maximise growth and therefore be more able in future to deal with the demands of both our public services and our private aspirations. If we do that, we will almost certainly increase inequality. That has always been the case. There is a sound economic reason for that: growth requires investment, which requires taking risks—some of which are very high—but no one will take those risks unless commensurate rewards, which can be very high, are available. So, in a period of successful growth, people become disproportionately rich. That has been the case throughout the economic history of the world. Of course, it is equally true in India or China as it is here or in the United States. We just have to live with that.
In those circumstances, the best policies that we can pursue are the indirect ones. I agree totally with my noble friend Lord Dubs about transparency, workers’ directives and publishing individuals’ income and tax statements. I believe very much in workers’ directives being on the remuneration committee agenda in public companies. Private companies and private equity firms should take the same responsibility for disclosing their profit and loss account, cash flow and balance sheet. Moreover, we should continue in line with the Labour Party’s glorious record—such as on education—especially in passing the Equality Act, which made life so much easier for people. Last week’s news that 60% of Oxford and Cambridge entrants now come from state schools is a return on the investment we made 10 years ago.
Baroness Verma (Con)
My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, for securing this incredibly important debate. As he and other noble Lords have said, this issue is incredibly complex. Inequalities come in all shapes and sizes.
I want to focus on something that brought this issue home to me. During the recent mayoral elections in Leicester, I came across a large part of my city’s population that cannot read and write in English or speak it. For that very reason, they are unable to engage some of the services that may be available to them. I saw this predominantly among communities where women, in particular, were at home and did not know what social care or healthcare they could access. It was really worrying. Today, in the 21st century, every single person in this country should be able to communicate for themselves if they require something so that they can engage socially or communicate if they fear something. Coming across a large population of such people in my home city worried me.
Next Saturday, my mother will celebrate her 80th birthday. She has been in this country for nearly 60 years; she came here when I was a baby of nine months, so work that one out. She was determined to be part of the society that she had come to because it offered her so many options for liberal living. When I was campaigning in Leicester, I was concerned at the huge population not taking advantage of that liberal living. They did not have the ability to go out and access jobs or engage with their children’s school lives because they could not communicate. These are all barriers to equality and opportunity; I know that we have also spoken a lot about austerity today.
Lord Davies of Stamford
I agree with every word the noble Baroness says. Is not part of the solution that FE colleges in cities should be obliged to provide teaching of English as a foreign language?
Baroness Verma
If you are a citizen of this country, you should have access to learning English. If you do not come into this country with English skills, you should be able to access them.
I am deeply worried that cultural discrimination already exists in some communities; I put my south Asian community at the forefront of this issue. We reinforce it by not enabling people to break out; they do not know where to go or how to fight the inequalities that they face both internally and, no doubt, externally. I mentioned my mother because my dad was a typical conservative Sikh; he did not want my mum to learn to drive or go out on her own to night school. When he passed away very suddenly 12 years ago, my mother had to cope. Thank God, she did exactly what good mothers should do: ignore what their husband says. She went out, learned to drive, learned English and was able to communicate. Today, 12 years on, my mother can toddle off and do what she wants when and how she wants, and nobody can stop her. However, I fear that isolation and inability will stop too many people across the country, particularly from my community, when they find themselves having to learn to cope. I fear for my community.
To finish, I hope that my noble friend the Minister will encourage colleagues across government to ensure that the discussion around the need for English to be learned in this country is made relevant.
Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)
My Lords, in the time available, I want to give the IFS a very big tick for the quality of its scoping study. I very much look forward to the four-year cycle coming to a conclusion.
In the 1970s, I was a member of the Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income and Wealth, chaired by Lord Diamond, who some people may remember from Harold Wilson’s Government. We were very keen to make sure that people understood that we needed a parallel data system for wealth, alongside that for income. Wealth is characterised by land, one of the three factors of production; the others are labour and capital. Indeed, in macroeconomic terms and in terms of Treasury public accounts, getting more from land is one way to do a lot of the things that Members here have said should be done without putting up everyone’s rates of income tax and other taxes.
I remind colleagues of the brilliant exposé on land ownership in Britain published in the Guardian only three or four weeks ago. Now, land creeps into the nature of our economy in a different way. A lot of companies used to borrow money from the banks for investment; now, more than 50% of banks go into land-related lending. We can see this characteristic in Britain where we are reinforcing inequality. The Guardian piece shows that little has changed over the past 1,000 years. Many members of the aristocracy and the landed gentry are descendants of the Norman barons. You had to be a friend of someone in the family of the Duke of Normandy—this was the Norman conquest—to own a lot of land in Britain, and that is true today. It is the same people. Some 17% of English land is not registered with the Land Registry while more than 50% is inherited and has never been bought or sold. Half of England is owned by less than 1% of the population. The home owners’ share adds up to just 5%, so a few thousand dukes, baronets and country squires own far more land than all of Middle England put together. I thought that this House might be the place to put that on the record because I have not noticed any of the hereditary Peers making that point.
The scope of the IFS review is important in another way. It talks about trade unions and collective bargaining, and of course I declare an interest. People have to acknowledge that you need a balance in the labour market and the capital market, which can come about only if you recognise that initiatives such as workers’ representatives on remuneration committees would do a lot to change the tone of the virtue signalling in boards of directors, so that it is not just about short-term share prices. The IFS mentioned this in its synopsis. The country may be going to the dogs, but one thing which must be done to avoid that is to look carefully at the imbalance of incentives in how our economy works.
I turn to education. Yes, I am of the school of thought which says that if you say Eton costs £40,000 a year—I do not know whether that is right—you are investing £200,000 and you get a return on that capital. There is no doubt about that—they are not in the business of philanthropy. They are taking away other people’s playing fields. They want a return on capital to protect their difference. That is what investment in public schools is all about.
I am very pleased that most of these points are covered by the IFS review and I look forward to realising the ambition of the synopsis. We are not reaching any conclusions today; we are just saying that extra things can be added to it. We will see what it concludes at the end of the next four years.
Baroness Prashar (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, for securing this very important debate and I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, on his insightful maiden speech.
The fact that the IFS Deaton review was set up to understand inequalities and identify the right mix of policies to tackle them is a powerful indication of how dire the situation is. It rightly says that we need a coherent approach to respond to inequalities and not one that is fragmented and piecemeal. The United Nations report paints a very bleak picture of life for many of our citizens. The report also shows that the costs of austerity have fallen disproportionately on the poor, women, racial and ethnic minorities, children, single parents and people with disabilities. It is a grim picture for a country that is the world’s fifth-largest economy.
We have to ask ourselves: are we comfortable with the kind of society we are becoming—a society where we are witnessing extreme hardship, the normalisation of food banks, homelessness and child poverty, and growing divisions in health, wealth, life chances, family environment, regions, political influence and so on? Austerity measures, cuts in public expenditure, particularly at the local level, and changes to the benefits system are causing extreme hardship and destroying the very fabric and cohesion of our society. Libraries, youth clubs and other public spaces, some of which are the glue for social cohesion, have either shrunk or gone. The consequences are evident for all to see.
Universal credit is a case in point. The UN report notes that the Government are taking an experimental “test and learn” approach to universal credit. This has led to the devolved Administrations and local authorities having to set up contingency measures to protect claimants and off-set the worst consequences of its features. The UN rapporteur said that he was struck by how much of their mobilisation resembled the sort of activity one might expect for an impending natural disaster or health epidemic. Now that the benefits are all rolled into one, it leaves claimants who are trying to keep a roof over their heads and make ends meet vulnerable to high costs.
Delays in paying benefits are turning people to desperate measures. The knock-on effects of these are manifold on family life, working life, health and so on. The strange phenomenon of poverty is that it increases costs. The poverty premium effect means that people on low incomes pay more for the things they need as they are unable to pay up front or use a direct debit. Saving costs and improving or streamlining systems are laudable objectives, but if they end up having a detrimental effect on those they are trying to help and causing more hardship for the most vulnerable, we need to take stock. Can the Minister tell the House what steps are being taking to improve the universal credit system and to remedy the shortcomings highlighted by many, including in the UN report? Furthermore, the prevalence of inequalities and division is all too evident. Rather than denying or repudiating the facts, should we not be channelling our energies into developing a deliverable agenda to tackle these divisions and inequalities?
Lord Morris of Handsworth (Lab)
My Lords, this is a timely debate because the Government regularly deny claims of poverty on the grounds that employment is rising. In his statement on poverty in the UK, Professor Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, described that response from Ministers as an “endlessly repeated” mantra. He said that they have overlooked the fact that 14 million people, a fifth of the population, are living in poverty and that the levels of child poverty are,
“not just a disgrace, but a social calamity and an economic disaster”.
Ministers have described the report as “barely believable”. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has said that she would lodge a formal complaint with the UN. The denial is based on rising employment figures, but last year the Joseph Rowntree Foundation reported that the number of people with a job but living below the poverty line has risen faster than employment.
Another concern set out in the report is the Government’s embrace of technology and automation. The digital-by-default feature of universal credit excludes people without internet access or, indeed, the basic skills. Professor Alston said:
“We are witnessing the gradual disappearance of the postwar British welfare state behind a webpage and an algorithm”.
Applicants for universal credit are referred to libraries if they do not have any technology of their own, but first you must find your library. Statistics from the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy show that since 2010 at least 478 libraries have closed, 8,000 librarians have lost their jobs and council spending on libraries fell by £66 million last year. Yet libraries provide access to computer resources for those who have none, schoolchildren living in crowded conditions find peace to do their homework, and rough sleepers and elderly people can read a newspaper to keep in touch and—for some—keep warm. They provide a community resource for meetings. Libraries are as much a social service as a source of knowledge or to serve a love of reading.
During his visit to British cities, Professor Alston coined the expression—which he took back to the United States—that food banks, which Ministers have often dismissed as nothing to do with austerity measures, represent a new turn in poverty. The Trussell Trust reports that in the year ending March 2019, 1.6 million three-day emergency food parcels were given to people in crisis, an 18.8% increase on the previous year. Professor Alston reminded us that the UK is the fifth-largest economy in the world, yet the Joseph Rowntree Foundation reports that 14 million people—a fifth of the population—live in poverty, while 1.5 million are destitute and unable to afford basic essentials.
We have now moved to a point where we are beginning to have a debate on and a real appreciation of the issues. I cannot begin to understand how this Government can ignore Professor Alston’s report. We read and hear daily examples of what he reports and we witness them every day, not least, as we were told earlier, as we walk from the Underground into this building and pass people who are homeless and destitute. This is not fake news—it is the reality for millions of our citizens and we can take no pride in it.
Viscount Hanworth (Lab)
My Lords, a stark appraisal of the state of the nation was provided in November 2018 by the report of the Australian economist Philip Alston, in his role as the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. His critique was met with surprise and disbelief by leading Conservative politicians, who were unable to recognise the truth of his assertion that our inequalities are dividing Britain as never before and that current social policies are causing widespread misery and distress. Given that the measure of average per capita real income has been increasing throughout most post-war years, it was unimaginable to these politicians that the hiatus in the growth of the economy that we have been witnessing since the financial crisis could have driven so many into poverty.
The dismissal of Alston’s findings was all the more startling for coming from the politicians responsible for years of unnecessary austerity, who have made savage cuts to the welfare budget in the process of imposing the so-called regime of universal credit. However, among European nations, Britain has one of the highest levels of inequality. As measured by its Gini coefficient, its inequality is exceeded only by that of Romania, Bulgaria and Lithuania, all countries with high levels of rural poverty.
As has been mentioned, it has been revealed that 14 million people, a fifth of the population, live in poverty. Four million of these are more than 50% below the official poverty line and 1.5 million are destitute and unable to afford basic essentials. Local authorities, which have traditionally played a major role in providing housing and sustaining the welfare of our citizens, have been starved of resources by destructive government policies.
The social divisiveness that characterises contemporary British society is the antithesis of the solidarity that characterised the wartime years and the early post-war years, which is still in the memory of many of us. That solidarity was gradually eroded over a quarter of a century, partly in consequence of perpetual industrial strife. When Margaret Thatcher came to power at the end of the 1970s, she was able to declare war on the unions that had been a major factor in maintaining the incomes of working people. It was during this period that the inequalities in income that we see today began to emerge. The large reduction in taxes of high-income earners that were a feature of the Lawson budgets of 1986, 1987 and 1988 were factors in a rapidly increasing inequality which occurred at a time when the wages of working people were stagnant.
The defeat of the unions was assisted by the process of deindustrialisation that proceeded throughout the Conservatives’ period in office. It was hastened by the insistence on maintaining a high value of the pound, which made it unprofitable to export manufactured goods and made imported goods cheaper and more attractive. The deregulation of Britain’s financial markets in 1986 at the end of the second Thatcher Administration began the process of a rapid divestment of Britain’s ownership of its commercial and industrial assets, from which our financial sector continues to profit. This process was responsible for elevating the value of the pound, which was further to the detriment of British industry. It also sowed the seeds of the financial crisis of 2008, the dire effects of which still dominate our economy and society.
British workers have been denied gainful employment while the richest members of society, who reside mainly in the financial sector, have seen runaway growth in their incomes. The present-day Conservatives have adopted the social and economic nostrums that prevailed during the Thatcher Administration. They have continued to place public services in private hands and sought to address the crisis in housing with help-to-buy measures that serve only to raise house prices and enrich construction companies. The help has been aimed at young, middle-class families of a kind who might comprise the sons and daughters of Conservative politicians. At the other end of the income spectrum, they have imposed the so-called bedroom tax, aimed at increasing occupancy of the wholly inadequate supply of social housing.
At present we do not have the high levels of unemployment that beset the middle years of the Thatcher Administration. Instead, large numbers are employed in the low paid, insecure and demeaning jobs of the trickle-down economy, also described as the gig economy.
The absurdities of Brexit pose a further threat to the livelihoods of working people. If a hard Brexit materialises, the foreign owners of British industry will curtail their investments, if they do not cease their operations altogether. The effect will be a further impoverishment of a large proportion of our population and an increase in inequality in Britain to an extent not seen since the early years of the 20th century.
Baroness Osamor (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, and congratulate him on his maiden speech.
This debate is timely given the recent promises by a Tory leadership candidate to cut taxes for the richest in our society and for large corporations. He clearly had not read the Deaton report and/or had not recognised, as the IFS and Professor Deaton have highlighted, that we are at a moment of crisis for democratic capitalism.
I am from Tottenham in Haringey. Once upon a time in Tottenham it was the minorities and the working classes who were marginalised, but today it feels as though everybody is cut off, due to government cuts, apart from the very few with access to unearned income through sizeable property or shareholdings.
Given that we have only a short time to speak in this debate, I would like to highlight three key issues for the Government to respond to. The first concerns the regulating of international markets. Most expert commentators agree that the US is the least equal country in the world. The Deaton review refers specifically to a healthcare system that creates monopolies and delivers huge profits to private health providers while also creating significant public health issues, such as the tragic levels of opiate addiction across poorer communities in the USA.
Why, then, have the Government in recent weeks been trumpeting the idea of a trade deal with the US, a deal which many commentators are saying would simply entrench the monopoly position of superstar businesses and place an even greater premium on shareholder value? Will the Minister explain what consideration, if any, has gone into the questions posed by the Deaton report about the need to ensure that the private sector is not just taking without making? I am talking specifically about new taxes on unearned income, new incentives for longer term investment and new regulations to control private sector monopolies. Should not any policy-maker who is interested in tackling inequality be focused instead on continuing to support the good work of our colleagues in Brussels to develop incentives for longer term investment and to tame private sector monopolies?
My second issue is income disparity. Most of us in this Chamber will be aware of the Prime Minister’s high-profile commitment to tackling race and inter- generational income disparities. This is an issue that the IFS Deaton report will be picking up over the next five years, and which I raised on 11 March at the UK Voluntary National Review parliamentary event concerning the UK’s annual sustainable development goals report to the UN. I am particularly keen to ensure that we in this Chamber are updated on what the Government are doing to understand and address the extreme variations in attainment when broken down by ethnicity and region; what effect, if any, the Equality Act 2010 has had on reducing race income disparities in the workplace; and the current status of the SDG report.
My third issue is reforms to the social contract. Last November, Professor Philip Alston commented:
“British compassion for those who are suffering has been replaced by a punitive, mean-spirited, and often callous approach … elevating the goal of enforcing blind compliance over a genuine concern to improve the well-being of those at the lowest levels of British society”.
At the time, the Government rejected Professor Alston’s findings and said that they would lodge a complaint with the UN. Will the Minister update us on the status of that complaint and the ongoing discussions between the Government and the UN in relation to Professor Alston’s report?
I shall close on a positive note. The Deaton report reminds us that 200 years ago, democratic capitalism faced a similar crisis. Salaries, life expectancy and living standards were falling for everyone other than the landowning classes and the large industrialists. By the end of the 19th century, Parliament had passed a series of reforms to ensure greater democracy, improve the rights of workers and place restrictions on wealthy landowners and industrialists. These reforms also paved the way for the establishment of the welfare state under the Attlee Government. Let me be clear: our challenges now are quite different from those of the 19th century. Never before have we had a system which enables such vast wealth to be accumulated so quickly by so few people, and never before have we had a system that threatens the very existence of humans through global environmental destruction. I hope that this Chamber will pick up the baton from those previous incumbents of the two Houses. I implore us to establish a working group to work with Professor Alston and Professor Deaton so that we can take urgent action to initiate debate and legislation as their research develops.
Lord Sawyer (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Dubs on initiating this very important debate at a crucial time in our nation’s development. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, on his excellent maiden speech. I am sure we will hear a lot more from him in future. I am pleased to see my noble friend Lord Brookman in his place. He has spent a lifetime fighting poverty, but he does not speak a lot.
I have read some of the important papers that are being discussed today and have listened carefully to the debate in the House. There have been some very powerful, riveting speeches by Members on this side including my noble friends Lord Hain, Lord Adonis, Lord Morris of Handsworth and many more. They made a powerful case against the Government’s policies. I think it will be almost impossible for the Minister to give an adequate reply, but I know she will have a good try.
From my perspective, it is interesting that on the other side of the House, there has been no real acceptance of the unequal society that we on this side see. The response has been very muted and not much has been said. There have been a few contributions about the family, which is understandable from that side of the House, but it has not responded in the way that we have to the terrible dilemma we are in. The divisions around this policy are deep and, in a sense, they reflect the divisions in society. We are fractured and broken in many ways. This debate shows exactly where we are.
I always seem to get stuck at the end of these debates when all the good points have been made, so I try to think about whether I can say anything of interest or whether I should sit down—I do not really mean that. We ought to look at the situation more carefully. Members opposite should look more carefully at the other side as well.
We should look more carefully at the Scandinavian countries—which are not all Labour; there are conservatives as well—and the way they approach this kind of problem. In the Netherlands and in Scandinavian countries, deliberate action is being taken by central government to intervene against poverty and inequality. In Finland, there is a much more articulate response to the well-being of the whole population, with strong interventions, particularly in education and housing. Finland tops the World Happiness Report—surely, there is something that politicians on the other side can learn from that. Similarly, the New Zealand Government are focusing on their well-being agenda. Interestingly, it seeks to change people’s mindset regarding the importance of well-being and of GDP. Governments here could look at that carefully. Closer to home, we have the Welsh Government’s Well-Being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, which many people, including me, have spoken about in this House. It is already making big advances for the people of Wales. We need public bodies to take into account the social impact of their decisions, not just the economic impact. It is very important that we try to change that pattern. Perhaps the Minister will say something about that.
The language around this debate is often very angry and polarised. That is completely understandable, but I take a different angle. We need to find a shared language and shared goals, as they have been able to do in the Nordic countries. We could start to look at them. I know we are not heading there—we are just debating the Conservative Party. I wanted to say this because it needs to be said. We could start to see the elimination of power, not just as a set of policy proposals but as a central value in society around which other things can be built.
Lord Judd (Lab)
My Lords, we all want to put on record our appreciation of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, for once more having challenged us with this important debate, and for the effective and sensitive way in which he introduced it. He of course mentioned refugees and asylum seekers, and we must never forget that they are a real priority in this area. There is another group about whom we do not talk often enough in this House and who have special needs, and that is the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community. We perhaps need a debate on that issue.
What have we learned from this debate as we near its conclusion? There are too many depressing realities: close to 40% of children predicted to be living in poverty in two years’ time; too many people over 65 living in relative poverty; millions of people who are in work dependent upon various forms of charity to survive, and much of the work in which they are involved degrading and dehumanising every day. We have heard about food banks, rough sleeping, falling life expectancy for some, decimation of legal aid, denial of benefits to severely disabled people, and difficulties for others in accessing benefits. We have heard about the whole issue of loneliness and failing transport, which particularly affects the rural poor, and the impoverishment of single mothers and those with mental health problems. I am glad that we have also heard about the impact on poverty of shrinking library services.
Surely these realities raise the fundamental question of what kind of society we want to be. Surely we should get back to the ideal that every single child, wherever and of whomever they are born, should have the right and opportunity to discover his or her talents and develop them to the full. This is not only about preparing them to fit into the economic machine but helping them to live, for example through education as distinct from just training. Training is of course crucial, but so is education. Why should everyone not be able to appreciate Mozart or Beethoven, rather than this being reserved as a right only for some?
We clearly need to see a reassertion of the importance of dignity and self-respect in employment; here I believe the reassertion of the role of trade unions is vital. We need a multidimensional approach, covering education, health services, mental health support, quality of employment, youth and community services, and decent, attractive environments. People need space around them in their immediate living situations in which to play and recreate. Surely we want a society based upon solidarity and inclusiveness rather than the one we have, which is too often based upon self-assertiveness, acquisitive selfishness and greed.
Baroness Janke (LD)
My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, for securing this debate, and for highlighting the very unequal treatment of refugees and asylum seekers, particularly children.
It is shocking to many British people that, in the 21st century, we should have 14 million people in poverty. The fact is that, as the fifth largest economy in the world and a leading centre of global finance with record low levels of employment, one-fifth of the UK population is in poverty, and 4 million people are more than 50% below the poverty line.
Historically, the UK has had a proud record regarding its strong social security safety net, yet this has been systematically eroded. My noble friend Lord Wallace spoke about the social contract between the state and the citizen, where people in former times found a resource base to support them when they were afflicted by one of life’s major catastrophes, as many of us have been, or will be, in our lives. Now, people find that there is little more than the support of volunteers and charities with limited resources to provide for their basic needs. How can a country such as ours not be shamed by such a state of affairs, with our benefits service likened to the 19th-century workhouse made infamous by Dickens? As the noble Lord, Lord Morris, said, there is no pride in it at all.
I very much value the work done by the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, particularly her cross-party work on the Social Metrics Commission, and, as she said, I hope we will work together to take action. The noble Baroness said that poverty is persistent. That is right; it is very difficult to get rid of poverty altogether. However, it is clear from many reports that recent policies have undermined the poorest, the most underprivileged and indeed the most vulnerable people. Not only the reports mentioned here but reports by Human Rights Watch, the Joseph Rowntree Trust, the Resolution Foundation and the Child Poverty Action Group all testify to this.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bryan, highlighted the vulnerability of women, who have been put at particular risk by many of these recent policies. Women earn on average 17.9% less per hour than men and make up 60% of workers receiving low pay. Single-parent families, of whom 90% are women, are more than twice as likely to experience poverty as any other group. Half of the total number of children in one-parent families are in poverty. The noble Lord, Lord Farmer, talked about family structure and repeating cycles, which are very much a feature of poverty unless help can be provided to enable people to escape that harsh situation.
Policies such as the benefit cap and freeze, the two-child limit and the introduction of full job-seeking requirements for single parents of children as young as three have had a stark impact according to the Alston report. In August 2018, two-thirds of those who had benefits capped were single parents; single parents in the bottom 20% of income will have lost 25% of their 2010 income by 2021-22.
As my noble friend Lady Thomas has said, disabled people are disproportionately affected. Nearly half of those in poverty—6.9 million—are from families in which someone has a disability. They have also been some of the hardest hit by austerity measures. Changes to benefits and taxes mean that some families are projected to lose £11,000 by 2021-22—more than 30% of their income.
I very much appreciated the thoughtful contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, on people in work and the transparency of employment statistics. It is incomprehensible to me that, with a low unemployment rate, 4 million workers live in poverty, and that 60% of people in poverty live in a household where at least one parent works. Some 2.8 million people live in poverty in a household where both adults work. So I join the noble Baroness in calling for more transparency and analysis of what is going on with low pay, insecure employment, tech industries and zero-hours contracts,
The noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, and the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, drew attention to the fact that local services have been dramatically cut. I believe that this has contributed greatly to the misery of the poor in our communities. Support services that used to be the lifeline for those in poverty have been almost completely removed, including youth and community services, social care and debt counselling. Libraries have been closed in record numbers, as the noble Lord, Lord Judd, mentioned.
Children, too, are disproportionately affected. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, mentioned that cuts to public health, early intervention and early education are putting many children at a severe disadvantage. Equally, schools often have to fill a gap by providing food for hungry children. Often clothes, toiletries and even basic equipment are provided by teachers out of their own pockets.
The number of food banks, as many noble Lords said—the noble Lord, Lord Hain, in particular drew attention to this—has massively increased. Reasons given for this include incomes not covering the costs of essentials, benefit delays and benefit changes.
I am particularly concerned that we in this Chamber take these matters very seriously, and I urge the Government to take action, particularly with revitalisations outside London, as the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, said in his maiden speech. The noble Lords, Lord Wallace and Lord Liddle, contrasted the differences in the welfare of people in different parts of the country.
I also believe that it is essential that the forthcoming comprehensive spending review takes full account of the desperate situation for so many of our citizens and recognises that urgent action is needed. The priorities must be to rebuild an effective social safety net and to restore services in the community so that needs can be assessed locally and support provided to people where and when it is needed. We must also make work pay by ensuring that working people are paid enough to be independent and self-sufficient and not suffer the humiliation and desperation of grinding poverty.
Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)
My Lords, this has been an excellent debate, led by a superb opening speech from my noble friend Lord Dubs, whom I congratulate on securing this important debate on such a significant subject. Of course, we all enjoyed the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale. He will know that there is a limited number of engineers in the House and we are very pleased to see him supplement their number. There is no doubt that he will get a warm welcome from them, and from all of us who recognise that a great need of the British economy, if it is to improve, is to see engineers in positions where they play a more significant part in companies than many of them do now.
We should also recognise the significance to this debate of the work of the IFS—not only what it is promising to do in the long term but its reports thus far, which have identified that among the wealthier nations the United Kingdom is second only to the United States in economic inequality. One would think that it would be a priority for a Government to address that, yet we have to recognise that over the past decade, far from making it a priority, the Government have exacerbated the situation. My noble friend Lord Hain emphasised how much the policy of austerity was born not just of seeking to create a more secure economy but of the ideology of a Conservative Government: the belief in a smaller state.
Just at a time when the Government need to make a contribution to the welfare of society, we have had a decade of massive reduction in the power of public authorities. Even the Conservative authority of Northamptonshire has been brought almost to bankruptcy. There could not be a clearer case of not recognising the crucial role that local authorities are destined to play in our welfare.
Of course, there have been a number of contributions in this debate on health and education matters, in particular the collapse of Sure Start, and on services that local authorities can no longer provide. This, of course, has increased the pressure on less well-off families.
That is against a background where less well-off families are facing two big problems. One is that there has been an effective wage freeze for more than a decade, so that while it is true, as noble Lords have pointed out in great abundance in this debate, that the chief executives of the top FTSE companies have seen a massive increase in their resources, wages have effectively been frozen. Is it surprising, therefore, that there is enormous anxiety and concern among so many people?
In addition, there has been a sustained onslaught on benefits. My noble friend Lord Liddle identified universal credit as something that has caused great concern. My goodness, the Government have been seeking for several years to introduce fully universal credit, and they are still struggling with the fact that the premise on which it is founded has crucial weaknesses. The cost is borne by people with limited resources, so is it surprising that people find it extraordinary that the Government think that they can take a five-week delay in the payment of necessary benefits and not be in considerable distress? We know that the Government are rethinking aspects of that most important benefit, which has contributed significantly to the demoralisation of so many people.
Even the Government’s proudest boast, which is that unemployment is at a historically very low level, masks the fact that a large percentage of people in employment are in the gig economy, where their jobs are not permanent and the number of hours they can work in a week—and therefore their earning power—is limited. But they have the great merit of depressing the unemployment figures, so the Government can congratulate themselves on that. However, it has little to do with the welfare of society.
As for Brexit, we already know that the Government have committed considerable resources to a no-deal outcome. They had to, because it was easy to identify some of the immediate consequences of leaving Europe without a deal. It looks increasingly likely that that is the future for this country, and the Government will have to think again about substantial additional resources to cope with the many problems that are bound to occur if we leave Europe without a deal. We must all hope that proves not to be the case, because all our leading politicians express that hope, but they do not give us great encouragement that the hope will be translated into reality.
Our society is broken in that respect. There is a lack of trust between the people and those whom they elect; there is a lack of trust, too, between the people and those who sit in all kinds of positions of authority over them in circumstances where failure stalks the stage.
I am grateful that this debate has ranged widely. A number of contributions have been thoughtful and have not concentrated too much on government policy. However, from this Dispatch Box, I can discharge my duty as spokesperson for Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition only by identifying the last decade, for which this Government bear responsibility for, as having created the circumstances that are causing so much anxiety, distress and unhappiness among the British people.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, and echo noble Lords’ gratitude to him for introducing this debate, which has undoubtedly stimulated an interesting and important discussion in your Lordships’ House. I shall do my best in the time available to me, which I appreciate is a great deal longer than that available to your Lordships, to respond to as many of the points raised as possible. I hope noble Lords will forgive me if I have to write on some of them. I also thank the team from the UN for taking the time to visit our country last November and for speaking to individuals who face very difficult situations. I thank, too, the Nuffield Foundation and the researchers at the Institute for Fiscal Studies for the ambitious and important research agenda they are undertaking. We look forward to receiving the Deaton review and hope it yields findings that will enable us to continue our progress in this area.
I also join other noble Lords in welcoming to his place the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, and congratulating him on his maiden speech, which brought an elegant combination of expertise and humility. It was doubly impressive as there were apparently no notes—a great skill.
As we have heard from several noble Lords, the UN special rapporteur’s report was highly critical of both levels of poverty and the policy intentions of this Government. I must refute the impression given in the report that there has ever been an intention to impose policies that damage the prospects of the poorest of our citizens. This Government introduced the national living wage, supporting the wages of the lowest-paid to grow by 8% above inflation between April 2015 and April 2018. The percentage of jobs that are currently low paid, just below 18%, represents the lowest level for 20 years.
We take poverty and inequality very seriously and are committed to improving the living standards of all in our society. However, as my noble friends Lady Stroud and Lady Finn and other noble Lords explained, when we look at the data it is striking how little overall inequality, be it absolute, relative or among children, has changed during the past 20 years. I thank in particular my noble friend Lady Stroud and her colleagues on the Social Metrics Commission for introducing metrics that reflect the way we live: we have income; we have assets; and we have expenditure. For disabled people in particular, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, pointed out, we need to recognise that there are fixed costs that go with disability. That is an important and helpful way forward, as is the commission’s focus on persistent poverty—the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, would probably agree with that.
That poverty and inequality are stuck is in spite of the efforts of Governments of every hue to change it. I share the view expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, and the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, about the unacceptability of the levels of inequality; I just wanted to note that it is very hard to shift.
In common with other EU countries, we recognise that we face major challenges. The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, referred to real wages. While they have grown every month for the past 13 months, we all know that they remain at a similar level to 10 years ago. Whatever the overall statistics on inequality may or may not tell us, there are clearly groups in our society struggling to make ends meet, including some single parents and many with a disability.
Equally, we should not ignore the findings of the world happiness survey, which puts the UK at 15th in the world. As noble Lords pointed out, that is somewhat behind Finland but it is very helpful to refer to the concept of well-being.
A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Ravensdale and Lord Wallace of Saltaire, and my noble friend Lord Freeman, talked about the importance of strengthening the social contract, having a sense of aspiration and believing that we and our children have opportunities. The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, referred to his experience and that of refugees. As the daughter of a refugee, I can certainly vouch for the importance of being brought up to believe that anything is possible.
As noble Lords know, this Government believe that the best way out of poverty is through work and we are rightly proud of our record since 2010, with 3.6 million more people in work and a seven percentage point increase in the employment rate for the poorest 20% of the workforce. We have supported this increase in employment by increasing minimum wages and the personal allowance. That means that a person working 35 hours a week on the minimum wage takes home £13,700, an increase of £4,500 on 2010.
I shall now try to answer some of the questions raised by noble Lords and finally set out some of the important actions initiated by government that we hope will help to address some of the structural issues that contribute to both inequality and poverty. I want first to defend the Government’s stance in seeing employment as a critical component in resolving these issues, because it goes not just to the financial rewards that employment can bring but to a sense of social glue, connection, well-being and aspiration, which I think all your Lordships agree are critical.
The employment rate today is at a record high. The female employment rate is also at a record high of 72%. Since 2010, the employment rate of lone parents has increased by more than 10 percentage points and is now at 69.5%. Over the same period, youth unemployment has almost halved and a number of your Lordships, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Young of Old Scone and Lady Bryan of Partick—she and I were introduced on the same day, so it is a delight to be in a debate with her—talked about zero-hours contracts. Some 2.6% of all people in employment were employed on zero-hours contracts as their main job between October and December 2018.
As I touched on already, real wage growth has been flat over the past 10 years. The noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, referred to the impact of globalisation. My noble friend Lady Verma is, I point out—if I have done the maths right—almost a perfect age; it sounds very similar to my own. She talked about barriers to accessing employment for people from black and minority-ethnic communities and those without English as a first language. We fully fund all adults to take English and maths to level 2 and from 2020 we will fund them for basic physical skills which, I know she will agree, are a critical factor. There has also been a disproportionate increase, compared to history, in employment of people from black and minority-ethnic communities, particularly in the high-skilled roles. I am sure your Lordships will share my pleasure in that.
The noble Lords, Lord Hain, Lord Browne and Lord Adonis, talked about cuts in public spending. I will cover this in more detail, but I just remind your Lordships that this Government inherited a uniquely difficult fiscal situation in 2010. However, the Chancellor has reaffirmed the five-year public spending plan, which has resource budgets growing at an average of 1.2% above inflation from 2019-20 compared with real cuts of 3% a year in the 2010 spending review.
Several noble Lords—the noble Baronesses, Lady Thomas, Lady Prashar and Lady Janke, the noble Lords, Lord Liddle and Lord Judd, and the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth—talked about universal credit. We continue to spend more than £220 billion on the benefit system, and we are spending an additional £1.7 billion a year on universal credit, increasing by £1,000 the amount that 2.4 million households can earn each year before their UC begins to be withdrawn. The noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, asked for examples in which we are changing, reviewing or improving on the system. I will highlight two things: we are starting to test the system of more frequent payments following feedback from claimants and then will roll out more widely what works. I stress the really critical role of the work coaches, who are now receiving training on how to spot people who might be particularly vulnerable and do everything they can to make sure that they get the support that they need.
The noble Lords, Lord Hain and Lord Morris, and several others talked about the usage of food banks. Noble Lords will be aware that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has acknowledged that there were problems early on with the rollout of UC but now more than 85% of payments are made on time, which compares very favourably with the legacy system. We believe that there is need for more robust data on trends in food insecurity and we are working with experts at the Office for National Statistics and the Scottish Government to introduce a new set of food security questions in the family resources survey from April this year. Obviously, we in this House look forward to the report next year from the ad hoc committee that has just been established on food poverty.
I turn to child poverty, a subject raised by several of your Lordships, including the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Baroness, Lady Janke. A child is five times less likely to be in poverty in a household where all adults are working. Today there are 665,000 fewer children living in workless households. In 2018, the Government announced an extra £1.7 billion for work allowances, which directly helps children living in the poorest households. We are also making investments, as your Lordships know, in the NHS, childcare and other areas which—if time permits—I will touch on.
My noble friend Lady Verma and the noble Baronesses, Lady Bryan and Lady Janke, talked about women and the gender pay gap as well as the role of women in the workforce. We should recognise that the gender pay gap brings visibility to the problem that we are facing: it shows unacceptable growth in the pay gap over time, but currently, at 8.6%, the gender pay gap is the lowest that it has ever been and we are determined to see it come down further.
My noble friends Lord Farmer and Lady Finn stressed the importance of family life and focused particularly on the importance of both parents playing a positive role in a child’s life. As he knows better than I do, there is so much research now on the impact of sustained stress on the development of a child’s brain and what that does to their life chances, particularly in the first 1,000 days. This is absolutely critical. We know that children living in single-parent households are almost twice as likely to be in poverty as those in couple households. There is not a sudden increase in this rate, but we are doing a number of things both directly and financially, as I have already touched on. More broadly, we published the domestic abuse Bill, which we hope will help address the experience of not only victims of domestic abuse but of their children. Our commitment to increasing mental health expenditure, our work on drug and alcohol and our support for free childcare are also crucial.
I am running rapidly out of time, but I want to touch on the concerns raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, about the PIP awards for disabled people. I hear the concerns that she raises, but I note that a greater proportion of people are receiving the highest level of PIP awards today compared to its predecessor, the disability living allowance. I am not able to do justice to all the other areas that have been mentioned, so I will make my closing remarks and then write to your Lordships with the rest of the answers to the important points that have been raised.
As many noble Lords pointed out, reducing inequality and poverty is about not just supporting living standards today but building and investing for the future. I wondered whether the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, had caught sight of my speech when he made a similar point. We want to build an economy that enables individuals to reach their potential tomorrow.
I will touch briefly on three areas where our investment today will help to build a more equal society. As I just mentioned, the data show that where a child is growing up with one parent or just one parent working they are more likely to be in poverty. That is why we have introduced 15 hours of free childcare for disadvantaged two year-olds and doubled the hours of free childcare for working parents of three and four year-olds. In 2019-20 we spent almost £6 billion on childcare support, which is a record amount, and more than 700,000 disadvantaged two year-olds have benefited from the free education places we introduced in 2013.
The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and others criticised our record on education. We have committed to spending an additional £900 million in our schools in 2019-20 and have protected the pupil premium. The crucial thing is that the investment is starting to pay off. The gap between disadvantaged pupils and others has closed by about 13% at key stage 2 and nearly 10% at GCSE since 2011. We know that higher qualifications translate into higher-paid work—not a quick win, but an important one.
A number of noble Lords raised secure and affordable housing, which is at the root of a sustainable standard of living. The Government have committed more than £9 billion in this spending review period to the affordable homes programme to deliver 250,000 new affordable homes of a wide range of tenure, including social rent. The Prime Minister has also announced a further £2 billion of new funding in the affordable homes programme.
Finally, the NHS has always been the country’s most beloved public service, there to provide outstanding care whenever it is needed. The Government have introduced a long-term plan backed by the biggest cash boost in the history of the NHS, providing it with the certainty to plan for the next decade. These reforms might not show up in the inequality and poverty statistics today, but they are laying the foundation for an economy and society that delivers a higher standard of living for everyone—an aspiration that I know every single noble Lord who has spoken in the debate shares with me.
Lord Dubs
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who played a part in this debate. I am bound to say that I found their contributions interesting and thoughtful. I will reflect even more on the subject when I have had a chance to read them again in Hansard. I thank the Minister for the way she responded to the debate, even if I did not agree with her about everything.
I feel that there was a broad measure of agreement that the situation is not good regarding inequality and poverty. Nobody dissented from that, but the prescriptions for dealing with it are where we differ. All I say is this: the test of the debate lies not in the quality of the speeches, good though they were, but in whether it will have made a difference. I hope it will. It is up to the Government to do something about it.
Referendums
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Soley
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the increased use of referendums on the functioning of representative democracy in the United Kingdom.
The Earl of Courtown (Con)
My Lords, before the start of the short debate, I remind noble Lords that Back-Bench speeches are limited to three minutes, so when three minutes is shown on the Clock you have gone on too long.
Lord Soley (Lab)
My Lords, I seek to put this Question before the House on the use of referendums in the British constitution because it is a very important issue. I know that we are time-limited, as we have just been reminded. I will try to keep my remarks very tight.
I have been increasingly concerned over the use of referendums in the United Kingdom. I do not like referendums. I think we do much better under Edmund Burke’s representative democracy, where MPs and Governments can be thrown out if the electorate do not like them. Perhaps it is easy for me to say that because I was never thrown out, although the Minister did try on one or two occasions in my neighbouring area to organise that, just as I tried to organise his. It was a joint project.
By and large, referendums do more harm than good. There are, of course, exceptions. If you have a position where maybe you want to reinforce a constitutional change that has been widely discussed and then largely agreed it can make sense, but it is always worth reminding people, as many have, that dictators often use referendums to reinforce their position. Fortunately, we have not been in that position and I do not think we will be.
We know that the other problem with referendums, which really lies underneath my debate, is that they can be incredibly divisive. The mess we are in on Brexit is because a referendum was called on an issue that, frankly, had not been one of the top political issues in the United Kingdom until it was called. There was no alternative policy to put if the referendum was lost, which it was. Although I thought that we would vote remain and I did myself, I was not surprised that it was lost, because the Brexiteers’ strapline of “Take back control” is very powerful. I do not take the view that people who voted leave did so because they had not thought it through, because the arguments were weak or dishonest or because of immigration. It was much more basic: that strapline went to the heart of what many British people felt about being able to make their own laws and to sack their own Governments.
One can argue the toss about that, but one thing we cannot argue about is the fact that the Brexit referendum, three years ago now, has done enormous damage to this country, both in the United Kingdom and overseas. It has damaged us politically and economically. I noticed that the retiring Foreign Office official in Singapore made that point today about the damage it has done to us. The problem is that, even if it was discussed well—people will argue the toss about that—it is a very complex issue to decide in a referendum. Although you can argue that it was a simple question, it was on a very complex argument that had many different strands to it, which made it very difficult for people to decide. My view is, as I have said already, that if MPs are able to debate widely and come to a conclusion, the public make their views known if they do not like the outcome that MPs have come to, just as they have made their views very well known about the House of Commons and its behaviour over the last three years.
The other point that is very important in the context of the Brexit debate is that the two main referendums on this issue, in 1974 under the Harold Wilson Government about membership of the European Community and the more recent one on the European Union, were called not because there was a great demand for it in the country—there was a demand, but not a great one—but because the political parties in government were divided and could not deliver an outcome themselves. What the second one did, which the first did not, was aggravate the division, so the divisions in the country now run not just between political parties, organisations and companies but within families. You get arguments in families, particularly younger people tending to argue that we should stay in and the older generation tending to argue that we should come out. There are many variations of that and I am not claiming that it is a hard and fast rule, but it is an important point.
One of the things this indicates is that there is no sure-fire answer to the question, “Will we hold another one?” I have tended to the view that we should not, but I am driven to the position that, because of the mess we are in, we might have to hold one to get us out of it. But I would add this caution: I am by no means convinced that the answer you will get if you hold another referendum in the reasonably near future will be very different. It might come to the same conclusion, or conclude that we should stay in, or go back in, perhaps by an equally small margin. If that happens, the split in the United Kingdom stays.
Moving that argument forward to one that has concerned me deeply from the beginning of this, what happens in Scotland? The Scottish referendum was really well debated and there was a great deal of information. Everybody agreed that the debate was really good and the case for an independent Scotland was lost with a big majority. Did that mean that the argument went away? No, it did not. It has come right back and the same argument will happen again. With referendums such as this, in the way they have been called, the danger is that we go on having referendums without having a solution to the problems that led to them.
Again, I argue very strongly that we should not use referendums when we can use the representative democracy system, which is better. Without going into it, I would simply say that in the case of the United Kingdom, if you think that coming out of the European Union has been a problem, think of how much more difficult it will be if Scotland chooses to come out of the United Kingdom, to which about 80% of its exports go. Imagine if that was somehow decided on a narrow majority either way. It would be a disastrous situation for Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom, so we should not think of going there. I will not go into it now, but there is a much stronger case for the United Kingdom to develop a more federal structure. In a way, we had that with the Acts of Union, but it was limited to courts, religion and one or two other issues. We could develop a modern federal system which might solve the problem rather better than referendums, which deliver an outcome which might be on a knife edge either way.
I commend the very good Library paper on this debate to Members. It pinpoints a number of the arguments raised by the Select Committees of both Houses and the independent review of referendums carried out in July last year. Those arguments are very strong. I do not wish to lay them out; they are in the excellent Library paper and I would rather draw people’s attention to that, so that people can look at it and decide what to do. The Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 lays down a number of conditions in which a referendum could take place, for example, on constitutional issues. One of the points made on a number of occasions was that it ought to be a clear issue where the argument would be very clear either way. That was one of the conclusions of the independent review of referendums.
What troubles me is that there has not been a significant discussion in all of this about whether there should always, or in most cases, have to be a certain percentage of the vote cast in order to make it a legitimate referendum. Think what happens if you have a referendum on an issue such as Scottish independence or Brexit and the numbers turning out are only 20% or 30% of the electorate. Think also what happens—this troubles me greatly—if there is not a clear majority. If there had been a clear majority with the EU referendum in 2016—by that, I mean a majority of 3 million or more, with 55% or 60% of the electorate voting either way—we would have far fewer problems than we have now. I hope the Constitution Committee will want to look at this again. If they do, I hope they will look at those questions of a minimum turnout and whether there should be a maximum.
This debate is very important. I am sorry about the time limits; I have attempted to be as brief as I can. We cannot leave this matter for long. We will have to return to it, so I make a plea for the British system to be used, with representative democracy and MPs and others being thrown out if they get it wrong. That seems to be a tried-and-tested procedure.
Lord Norton of Louth (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Soley, on raising this important issue. I wish to raise two problems with referendums.
The noble Lord raised the issue in the context of representative democracy. In a representative democracy, electors choose those who will govern on their behalf and can then hold them to account for their actions. The problem with a referendum is that there is no accountability. Electors cannot hold themselves to account for the outcome of a referendum. A referendum is thus, strictly speaking, an irresponsible act.
Once a decision is taken, it is left to others to implement. This leads to the second problem. We know how people vote in a referendum, as there is a formal, recorded outcome. We do not know definitively why they voted as they did. Politicians may think they know. The EU referendum is a case in point. We hear politicians claim that people did not vote for a hard or a soft Brexit, when what they mean is that they think electors voted in a way that aligns with their preference. They cannot prove it.
The result is that it leaves those who are responsible for acting on the outcome in a difficult, if not impossible, situation. I have previously likened the UK’s membership of the European Union to a marriage, a marriage of convenience, arranged late when the previous preferred relationship was not proving fruitful. Now electors have voted for a divorce. That is the starting point. How do you divide the assets? Who gets custody of the children? Those responsible for negotiating the terms of the divorce know definitively only that a divorce has been agreed.
I have previously expressed opposition to referendums on grounds of principle, but we are now faced with referendums as a part of our constitutional architecture. We cannot undo their use, but we need to think through how we handle them in future, as the noble Lord, Lord Soley, indicated. We need to learn from not just the EU referendum but earlier ones as well. Will the Minister tell us what thought has been given to a generic referendums Bill? We need such a measure before we embark on another referendum.
Lord Adonis (Lab)
My Lords, unlike the noble Lord, Lord Norton, I am not against referendums in principle. If you look at different systems of democracy around the world, some are excellent with referendums, and some are excellent without them. Arguably, two of the best-governed countries in Europe are Germany and Switzerland. Germany has a ban on referendums in its federal constitution, while Switzerland has referendums as a part of its everyday democracy.
Switzerland is arguably the most successful of all European countries in terms of peace and prosperity. It has had 306 referendums over the 170 years and that has not been a problem. Reconciling the Government and the governed, and direct and representative democracy, is a constant issue in democracy and Switzerland wrestles with those issues. However, it has managed to do so successfully.
Therefore, in my view, the issue is not one of principle. As a country, we are moving towards a midway point between Germany and Switzerland. We are making referendums a normal part of the machinery for amending our constitution but not a part of our ordinary system of government, in the way that Switzerland has. That is a perfectly defensible proposition in principle. The issue on which I completely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Norton, and my noble friend Lord Soley is that we need to take stock, in light of experience, to ensure that this is done successfully.
The three key elements which need to be in place, and which we need to learn from the European referendum, are: first, that referendums must be on clear and viable propositions; secondly, that they must be regulated properly; and, thirdly, that you must have a competent Government to respond to the referendum and seek, as competently as possible, to find a way forward thereafter. We are in this elongated car crash in respect of the EU referendum because there was no clear and defined proposition on the table; the referendum was terribly regulated, indeed barely regulated at all; and we have had the most incompetent Government in post-war British history seeking to wrestle with the referendum result.
My strong advice to the Government is that they become competent, regulate referendums properly and put only viable propositions before the people. I know the Minister will agree with all three of those propositions.
Lord Pendry (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate my colleague and noble friend Lord Soley on introducing this debate, but it is unfortunate that it is such a limited one. I have said in earlier debates on this issue that I am not a general supporter of referenda. Nevertheless, as a student I was fascinated by the views of Voltaire, Bentham, Locke and Hume, but in particular by Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s concept of direct democracy in the canton states—specifically, the notion that messages from the electorate should be communicated directly to the elected. This concept dimmed in its attractiveness, however, when one realised that, at the time of Rousseau’s writing, his ideas on democracy related to cities such as Bern with a population of 8,000, Basel with 12,000 and Geneva with 17,000—and they hardly relate to the kind of referendum that we had in 2016. Still, at university I was fortunate enough to attend seminars at All Souls by Sir Isaiah Berlin after his launch of Two Concepts of Liberty. As I result, I think I got a more rounded picture of the questions of sovereignty and democracy.
What has become clear to me in the three years following the 2016 referendum is that if a referendum is to be held, it must offer a choice between options that are clear, and it must be debated sufficiently and truthfully so that the electorate can make an informed decision. The 2016 referendum involved neither of these things, which has left us in a democratic crisis. The population was offered a binary choice on what was effectively an open-ended question, with the option to leave the EU given without stipulating in what manner. As a result, the information available to the electorate to inform their choice was deeply flawed, and in the past three years the whole fabric of what was on offer in 2016 has been shown to be a sham. An obvious example is of course Boris’s bus, but we will not go into that.
There was also talk in that campaign about the EU commissioners as faceless bureaucrats. This neglected to mention the positive role that UK commissioners have played in the Commission since 1973, including Lord Soames, Lord Jenkins, the noble Lords, Lord Tugendhat and Lord Patten, my noble friend Lord Kinnock, the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, and others. Does anyone really believe that they were working against the best interests of the people in this country?
Finally, it is clear that there needs to be another referendum to get us out of this mess. After all, democracy is the only way in which we can rectify this by democratic means. As my time is up, I say this: remember that there are 2 million youngsters who were not allowed to vote in the last referendum. But they can now and the future of this country is about them, not us.
Lord Robathan (Con)
My Lords, by chance we had the Swiss ambassador in front of our committee today to discuss various things. Switzerland indeed has frequent referendums, but with a very different system from ours. It has a devolved, federalist system of cantons, and it works very well; we have parliamentary representative democracy. I think that those who want referendums are generally misguided. I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Soley, who said that occasionally we may need them, but generally they are not at all a good idea—in fact, they are a shocking idea.
Luckily, I was not here in 2015 when the referendum Bill came forward, so I claim no responsibility—although I cannot quite remember whether I may have been able to vote on one amendment at the end. Those who ask for a second referendum must have taken leave of their senses. The poison that was injected into the body politic in 2016, and is still there, would be exacerbated yet further and more poison would be injected. Moreover, what would be the result? If it went the other way and people voted to remain, there would be uproar and accusations of “We was robbed” by those who voted to leave the first time round. Personally, I think it would be more likely to go the same way and that people would vote to leave again, which begs the question: what would the question be?
When I asked the noble Lord, Lord Newby, the leader of the Liberal Democrats in this House, what the question would be, answer came there none. I am afraid that the Liberal Democrats have form on this. In 2008, Mr Nick Clegg started a petition, saying,
“It’s time for a REAL REFERENDUM ON EUROPE … Only a real referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU will let the people decide our country’s future”.
Let the people decide, he said. Various Members who are currently here will remember that, on 26 February that year, some 50 Liberal Democrat MPs stormed out of the Commons in a frankly risible stunt to protest that they were not allowed to discuss having a referendum on the Lisbon treaty.
I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, will remember that the Liberal Democrat manifesto 2010 said they were,
“committed to an in-out referendum the next time”,
there is “fundamental change”. In 2016, Sir Vince Cable, who I believe is still the leader of the Liberal Democrats, said:
“The public have voted … it’s seriously disrespectful—and politically utterly counter-productive—to say ‘Sorry guys, you got it wrong, you’ve got to try again’”.
Very unusually, I agree with what Nick said in 2008 about respecting the people’s decision. Very unusually, I agree with Vince Cable about respecting the people’s decision. Politics gets a very bad press, and probably the main reason is that the public do not believe that politicians tell the truth or are consistent. I will leave it at that and hope that the Liberal Democrat speaker—my former colleague in the Ministry of Defence, with whom I got on very well—will dwell seriously on those comments.
Lord Parekh (Lab)
My Lords, we have had 13 referendums so far; three were national and 10 regional. This means that referendums have become an accepted practice and anyone who wants one from now on cannot be denied it on the grounds that it is inconsistent with parliamentary democracy. It is an established constitutional fact. In addition, there are several good reasons why a referendum has a place in a democracy. In a liberal democracy, the political class tends to be self-contained and it is quite important that people should be able to speak directly, unmediated by any institution. In that sense, a referendum serves as a safety valve in a liberal democracy. It also vitalises parliamentary democracy because from time to time, when the people speak and assert their sovereignty, parliamentary institutions are made accountable.
My good friend the noble Lord, Lord Norton, said that the difficulty with a referendum is who the people are accountable to. In a parliamentary democracy, parliamentarians are accountable to the people, but who are the people accountable to? Ultimately, there is an absolute premise for that authority. If I said that they were accountable to themselves, because they have to pay the price for the decisions they make, that answer should be sufficient. As Aristotle said, the wearer knows where the shoe pinches, so there is no responsibility beyond the people’s experience.
Given that, in short, a referendum is a part of our political life, the question is: what can we do to regulate it, so that we know when to implement it and on what issues, how great a majority should be required on that issue and what the preconditions are for a sensible referendum? All our referendums so far, bar one, have been noncontroversial. The EU referendum of 2016 became controversial, partly because its outcome is inconsistent with what the liberals and parliamentarians expected. That kind of clash between Parliament and the people had not happened on any of the earlier referendums.
Now that it has become controversial, it is very important that we should think in terms of a constitutional convention. That convention cannot be drafted by Parliament because it would be seen as a party—Parliament deciding its own future. The convention has to be done by Parliament in collaboration with the people. That is the kind of convention that the Scots had. Here, it is important to bear a simple point in mind. With a referendum, you create a kind of political system in which the country is ruled by Parliament in collaboration with the people. Just as we have the collaboration of Parliament and the sovereign, governing the country together, the situation would be that Parliament and the people govern the country. The people would express their views through a referendum, and Parliament through other ways. A referendum can therefore never be entirely advisory, nor can it be totally binding. There are ways in which its position can be defined, but I should have thought that one way in which we can look at the outcome of a referendum is where it is neither binding nor entirely advisory.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
I am also grateful to my noble friend Lord Soley for introducing this debate. It is a great pity we have so little time. One of the reasons for that is that we do not organise business democratically in this House. Maybe others will have the guts to try to turn it over, and maybe we will use a form of referendum to determine what we should be talking about, our priorities, on which days we should speak on them and for how long. If we can do that for ourselves, we should then be prepared to trust the people out there and do it for them. Much wisdom was spoken by my noble friend Lord Parekh about what we need to do.
The first big change we should make for any future referendum comes back to the accountability of individuals; they should be required to show publicly how they voted, as we do here. That would be a major move towards getting people to start acting responsibly and playing a part. We have to move on this because, make no mistake, this was not the last referendum. There will be many more demands for other ways to be involved in parliamentary activities, and we should not be afraid of this.
Representative democracy itself is at risk, because so many MPs now act like delegates rather than the representatives they used to be. If they are doing that, they are not playing their former roles. Instead, we should be looking for a participative democracy, because we now have the technology, which is being used in many different ways and will develop even further. The public out there will use it. Millions vote every Saturday evening in entertainment programmes. We may not be involved, but they are doing it; they want their say.
Some 6 million people signed a petition to revoke Article 50 and we have totally ignored it, yet they were moved to do it. A host of changes are being made to how people participate in society and through social media. Parliamentarians and the parties are way behind. People should look at what Tony Blair said on this recently, as he is on the cusp of the coming change. If we do not move with it, we will be swept away by it. The people will take it and then we will have real trouble.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, I entirely agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, said at the beginning of his brief speech. He said it is ridiculous that we have such a short time to debate such a major subject. It is important that we try to take a grip of the parliamentary timetable. The House will rise at about 6 pm today; there is no reason at all why we should not rise at 7 pm or 7.30 pm, so that people have a proper opportunity to discuss this most important subject. We are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Soley, for bringing it up.
I want to make one real point and it is this: referendums are inimical to representative democracy, but we have to accept, as the noble Lord, Lord Soley, and my noble friend Lord Norton, said, that they are now part of our system. We need a referendum Bill, becoming a referendum Act, to regulate how they are held. We should first specify that there has to be a certain turnout for a referendum to be valid. Secondly, there has to be an agreed threshold before the referendum can take effect. We had that in 1979 with Scotland. When I came out of Lincoln Cathedral on the morning after the referendum in 2016, one of my fellow congregants said to me, “Even in my golf club we need a two-thirds majority to change the constitution”. We are all, individually and collectively, at fault for not doing that before the 2016 referendum. In any referendum Act, we should certainly do that.
There should be a final provision in such an Act to say that, when an issue has been decided, it cannot be brought before the people again for a specified time. That might be three, five or 10 years, but it would be ridiculous to create a situation in which you could have a referendum at the whim of a group of people. On that issue, I therefore agree with my noble friend Lord Robathan; that is why I have not supported a second referendum. It would be confusion worse confounded to have one. But I believe in parliamentary democracy. Parliament’s will should prevail. Where there is a referendum, it should be carefully determined and regulated. Most of the referenda that we have had in this country have, in effect, been to ratify a decision already taken in Parliament.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, I agree with the noble Lords, Lord Cormack and Lord Soley. In my view, referenda are incompatible with our parliamentary democracy. I have always been against them. As other noble Lords have said, we have always associated referenda with Switzerland, which has an entirely different constitution from ours. The Swiss are the experts on them.
In 2018, the Swiss held 10 national referendums on a range of issues, including financial regulation and agricultural policy, so they are the real experts. In April, however, the Swiss supreme court took a historic step, overturning a nationwide referendum result and ordering a re-run, for the first time ever, on the basis that the information given to voters was insufficient. The court concluded:
“Given the tight outcome of the vote and the seriousness of the irregularities, it is possible that the result of the ballot would have been different”.
Even Switzerland, the country that relies more on referenda than any other, recognised that basic danger of irregularities—insufficient information and unreliable results. Natural justice says to put the question again.
Since our 2016 referendum, there has been massive evidence of wrongdoing in how the campaign was conducted. The official leave group has been fined by the Electoral Commission and is being investigated by the Metropolitan Police. There have also been allegations of overspending and, of course, Russian involvement. The multiple falsehoods on which the leave campaign was based are now beyond doubt. There is no rational or democratic reason why a 52:48 vote, in these circumstances and on a constitutional issue, should be treated as the last word. The 1979 Scottish referendum had exactly the same result, 52% to 48%, but it was not binding or brought in because there was a threshold in that referendum. It was decided that the constitution could not be changed because of the threshold, yet it was probably less important than the EU referendum.
As I said, I am no fan of the use of referendums. They should be kept out of our constitution as far as possible. However, if there is to be another, more powers and sanctions should be given to the Electoral Commission to regulate them and ensure that they are conducted properly. I agree with noble Lords who have suggested there should be a Bill. If constitutional issues are at stake, thresholds should be put in place.
Finally, I recommend that we take account of the recommendations of the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe. It has provided a framework to ensure that referenda are consistent with our democratic system. It covers everything including the age of voters, funding, the role of the media and thresholds. If these guidelines are followed by the Electoral Commission, it would help to ensure that future referenda are carried out to the highest possible standard and in accordance with the law. To uphold our democratic principles, we need to learn from the disgraceful events of 2016 and ensure that they do not happen again.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, that I was never a fan of my party’s behaviour on referendums. They require a great deal of care. I entirely support what has been said about the need to define much more tightly how and in which circumstances referendums are used.
We are now in an awful mess. We have an institutionalised two-party system, in which both parties appear to be irrevocably split, so it does not work. We have a number of people saying that the referendum has given us the will of the people, but we are a representative democracy. We have had three years in which those who led the leave campaign—Liam Fox, David Davis and Boris Johnson—were given responsible positions to try to implement the will of the people, and have failed to. So we are stuck. What we need, therefore, is a debate on our constitution and a concern for how to educate our masters, in a society that has failed over generations to have political education in schools or any sense of civic responsibility, so that we understand that democracy is a dialogue in which the people and the political elite hold each other to account.
That leaves us all with the requirement to talk about how we understand the British constitution. As has often been said, our constitution requires government by good chaps. When we have a large number of people in our political elite who are not exactly good chaps—I make no reference to any particular contenders for the Conservative leadership—it becomes difficult to make the constitution work or to maintain its conventions when they are challenged. The fact that we are three years away from a referendum campaign which was fought on the principle of restoring parliamentary sovereignty and we now have contenders for the Conservative leadership outbidding each other in their determination to dissolve Parliament, or at least to suspend or prorogue us so that executive authority can be used to drive through a hard Brexit, demonstrates what a mess we are in.
Democracy is a dialogue between citizens and the political establishment. That requires responsible political leadership. It also requires checks and balances which we only have in a conventional form in Britain, unlike the written constitutions of the United States, France, Germany or other countries. It requires responsible parties, and that has clearly broken down. It requires the re-establishment of a relationship between the public and the political elite which re-establishes trust. We all understand how that has broken down. After this very short debate we need to address, publicly, the issues of how we reshape and re-explain the British constitution.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Norton, suggested, in contrast to an election, where a political party stands on a manifesto and then has responsibility to implement it, with a referendum, there is no responsibility on those proposing change either to offer something viable—in the words of my noble friend Lord Adonis—or to take the reins afterwards and implement the decision. Yet the public expect a referendum to be implemented. But when proponents of change make unachievable promises, such as Boris Johnson’s,
“There will continue to be free trade”,
after we leave, or David Davis’ UK-German deal including,
“free access for their cars … in exchange for a deal on everything else”,
and then wash their hands of how to fulfil those promises, even when appointed to do so, we are in trouble.
Worse, Boris Johnson is now threatening not even to pay the money we owe—although he agreed to it when he was in Cabinet—and says that he would take us out on 31 October, deal or no deal, whatever the cost to our economy, to our citizens across the EU or, indeed, to peace in Northern Ireland. All this is on the excuse that the promises he made in 2016 were blessed by the public so must be honoured. That is a bad example of taking a decision by referendum. As the House has heard, these are highly complex, non-binary issues: not just whether to leave, but how to leave; whether to retain a competitive, non-protectionist economy based on environmental, worker and consumer protection or to move to an unrestrained, low-standard economy of the Trump variety. The referendum never discussed the “how” question, with the range of options, and the time needed to plan and adjust. That is partly the nature of the beast of a referendum, but it is partly due to the dishonesty—I have to use the word—of one side, which either misled the public and pretended it was easy or were too thoughtless or stupid to find out or care.
This particular referendum, on a complex economic, political, diplomatic and security issue, is testimony to the clash with our normal parliamentary democracy, where normally Governments are responsible for implementing the promises that they made in a general election. In this case, the costs to the economy are enormous. The uncertainty for business is costing billions. Reduced investment and preparations for no deal are costing hundreds of millions. Manufacturing representatives said today that a no-deal Brexit would be “commercial suicide”. The Cabinet has been warned that we are unprepared for a crash out. There is bewilderment among the CBI, BCC and Federation of Small Businesses at home and, as we have heard, Governments across the globe.
This referendum, and government incompetence, could lay waste to our economy. It is hardly a good advertisement for governing by referendum.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Soley, my constituency neighbour in another place for many years, on securing this debate. He has chosen a highly topical subject, the tension between parliamentary democracy on the one hand and referendums on the other, a subject which will engage the attention of my noble friend Lord Norton’s politics students at Hull for generations to come. I commend the noble Lord’s opening speech and the contributions of all noble Lords who have taken part in this brief but high-quality debate.
To answer the question the noble Lord posed, I refreshed my memory of the two- and-a-half-hour debate held in this House on 19 July last year, not just to remind myself of my views on the matter but to pick out some of the key messages. I was struck by what the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark said:
“Binary questions do not resolve complex matters of public policy”.—[Official Report, 19/7/18; col. 1352.]
My noble friend Lord Norton also spoke in that debate, using words which seem identical to those he used today:
“referendums are in conflict with responsible government … Decision-making through referendum is, strictly speaking, irresponsible”.—[Official Report, 19/7/18; col. 1356.]
I was struck by what the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, said. He contrasted the Good Friday referendum, when everyone knew exactly what was proposed, with the EU one, when they did not. The latter point was made today by the noble Lords, Lord Adonis and Lord Pendry. A point made in that debate, re-emphasised just now by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, was that democracy is a conversation, a dialogue between Parliament and people, not an instruction from one to the other. Many noble Lords suggested then, as my noble friend Lord Cormack did today, that referendums should be a final step not the first step. If it is the first step, it should be advisory.
I do not know if any noble Lords listened, as I did, to Lord Sumption’s insightful Reith Lectures on law and the decline of politics. His assessment of the question posed by the noble Lord, Lord Soley, is well worth quoting:
“A referendum is a device for bypassing the ordinary political process. It takes decision making out of the hands of politicians, whose interest is generally to accommodate the widest possible range of opinion, and places it in the hands of individual electors who have no reason to consider any opinion but their own”.
He went on to say that:
“A referendum obstructs compromise by producing a result in which 52% of voters feel entitled to speak for the whole nation and 48% don’t matter at all”,
and that this was,
“the authentic language of totalitarianism”.
The noble Lord, Lord Soley, mentioned the role of dictators in referendums.
I do not go as far as Lord Sumption and, as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and many noble Lords have argued; I believe that there is a role for referendums in our democracy. What is crucial is the relationship between the two—a point just raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter. It was interesting that half the speakers in today’s debate served in another place and are well able to judge and comment on this tension. I believe, as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said, that there is a valid case for referendums on certain issues, for example on self-determination—whether people want to stay under the jurisdiction of this Parliament. A recent example of this includes the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence, or, if it were ever called, a referendum in Northern Ireland on a united Ireland.
More generally, in a representative democracy it is important that citizens are engaged in politics. We rely on citizens to vote for their elected representatives in Parliament, Assemblies and councils. Referendums can take this engagement with citizens to a higher level. Citizens can directly vote on matters and see that their participation has real policy implications. They can see direct changes on issues that matter to them. Referendums can indicate public support for policy decisions and, if well-managed, can maintain the public’s faith in democracy. If less well-managed, they can have the opposite effect. The noble Lord, Lord Soley, mentioned the damage to our reputation overseas and to our cohesion domestically. The noble Lord, Lord Parekh, said that referendums can be a safety valve, but they can be the opposite if they are not well managed.
Turning to the 2016 EU referendum, the subject of the noble Lord’s speech, I note with interest that recent statistics show that public support for referendums has fallen from 76% before the 2016 referendum to 55% now, possibly because referendums, as the report from UCL published in July last year concluded,
“cannot replace the institutions of representative democracy. Citizens do not have the time or the resources to participate in all the policy decisions necessary for the functioning of a complex modern democracy”.
Many noble Lords have this afternoon displayed their discontent with referendums, and about the one in 2016. There have been accusations of “wrongdoing”, to quote the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, and that the referendum was “ill-informed” or “irresponsible”. My own view is that there was in fact a case for the EU referendum and I believe the result was valid.
This important constitutional issue of our membership of the EU has divided our two main parties and our nation for 45 years and, in the two most recent elections for the European Parliament, the party that won wanted us to leave. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Soley, pointed out, none of the major parties at general elections have provided an outlet for that view, so seeking to resolve it through a referendum seemed eminently sensible, and Parliament agreed. The European Union Referendum Act 2015 was fully debated and approved by both the House of Commons and your Lordships’ House. There was a high level of engagement from the public, with a 72% turnout. My criticism of David Cameron is not that he called the referendum, but that he did not win it. As a foot soldier, I accept some responsibility for the outcome, but I say in passing that under any other Labour leader the result might have been different.
What has subsequently happened has shown the risk of running referendums alongside parliamentary democracy, as Parliament, as the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, pointed out, has so far been unable to convert the referendum result into actually leaving the EU. A majority remain Parliament finds itself at odds with a predominantly leave country, possibly because, as my noble friend Lord Norton implied, there is a debate about why exactly people voted as they did. On this impasse, I refer again to the report from UCL’s independent commission on referendums. This highlights that referendums must be used as supplementary tools alongside the institutions of representative democracy; they should not bypass or replace the democratic institutions that exist in our representative democracy.
That committee went on to argue, as many noble Lords have argued this afternoon, that there must be appropriate time for debate and political discourse, and the questions put to the public should be carefully considered. The UCL report suggests, as noble Lords have done, that referendums should be held at the end of the decision-making process, so that eligible voters can choose between developed alternatives. This seems to me a sensible ideal, even if it is not always possible to achieve and certainly did not happen with the EU referendum.
I was interested to read the conclusions of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee in the other place:
“Confusion as to the possible consequences of a referendum result serves only to heighten the potential tensions between referendums and representative democracy and risks increasing the public’s disenchantment with politics”.
I think that provides a useful one-sentence response to the question posed by the noble Lord at the beginning of our debate.
A number of noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Cormack and the noble Lords, Lord Foulkes and Lord Soley, asked why a supermajority was not required in the EU referendum. The referendum did not include a threshold requirement or a supermajority requirement and although I was not in the House at the time, I understand that no amendments for such requirements were debated during the passage of the Bill. That was in keeping with previous referendums in the UK, the only exception being the 1979 referendum on devolution. Without going into great detail, I draw the attention of the House to the UCL’s report on referendums, which set out in more detail why such thresholds are not necessarily a good idea.
A number of noble Lords asked for a referendum Bill before we embark on any further referendums. There will of course be an opportunity to scrutinise a referendum Bill before any future referendum, because any referendum requires a new Act of Parliament. This Government have made it clear that they have no plans for any more referendums—though the policy of the Opposition on that subject remains as yet unclear—but I say in conclusion that should any future Government think of holding a referendum, today’s debate will have provided food for thought before they finally push the button.
Older Persons: Provision of Public Services
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
That this House takes note of the case for the provision of free public transport and television licences for older persons as a means to alleviate loneliness and isolation and of the case for maintaining well-funded public services to support care for the elderly.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, I am particularly grateful to my noble friends in the Labour group in the Lords for agreeing to bring this topic forward and for asking me to speak to it. It is a really important issue, as is indicated by both the number of Peers wishing to speak and indeed by the distinguished nature of those who have put their names down for the debate—I said that to ensure their support.
The subject is one I care very deeply about. I have had a long-standing interest, as some colleagues know, in age-related issues, dating back to the 1970s, when I was director of Age Concern Scotland. I should also declare an interest, not because I have manifestly got more of a vested interest in age-related issues, but because I am the current chair of Age Scotland, an office of which I am particularly proud.
The scourge of loneliness throughout society is widespread and until relatively recently was not often talked about. There is now an increasing awareness, however, illustrated by the fact that next week marks the third annual Loneliness Awareness Week. Older people are especially vulnerable to loneliness and social isolation. People can become socially isolated for a variety of reasons, such as decreased social mobility, families moving on, leaving the security of the workplace, the deaths of spouses and friends, or simply through disability or illness. Whatever the cause, feeling alone and vulnerable can lead to other, more serious issues, such as depression and a serious decline in physical as well as mental health and well-being.
According to research carried out by the Office for National Statistics, more than half of all 75 year-olds live alone and 10% of 65 year-olds say that they are always or often lonely. That equates to more than a million people saying that they are always or often lonely. The research also found that older people are far less likely to let it be known that that they suffer from loneliness. A particular urgency and immediacy have been given to this debate by the frankly appalling news that the universal right of over-75s to a free television licence is to be ended. This has been greeted with widespread dismay. Indeed, the Age UK petition calling on the Government to reverse this decision was sitting at 433,000 this afternoon, after just a few days. If this policy is carried through, it will add substantially to the problem we are discussing today, that of loneliness among elderly people.
Since 2000, anyone aged 75 and over has been entitled to a concessionary TV licence. This was a progressive Labour policy, introduced by then Chancellor, Gordon Brown, which has increasingly become a vital benefit for older people, particularly poorer older people. However, in 2015 this Government, opposed by Labour, decided to transfer the costs of the concessionary licence to the BBC as part of a wider agreement regarding the licence fee. On Monday, following what it says was its largest ever consultation, the BBC decided to end this benefit unless the person was receiving pension credit. I doubt that any of those directly affected supported this outcome. Indeed, 48% of those consulted supported the status quo—nearly half did not want any change at all and the rest put forward various forms of change.
For those living alone, the TV is often their main companion—their window to the outside world. Research by Age UK sadly found that over a million people say that the TV is their main source of company. One in four over-75s views the TV as their main source of companionship.
The Conservative Party agreed and pledged to protect free TV licences for over-75s in its 2017 election manifesto—on page 66 to be precise, if the Minister wants to double-check that. The corporation has estimated that over 3 million people will lose the free TV licence under these proposals. Those who receive pension credit equate to only a little more than 800,000, or 15% of those currently eligible. The people who will be hardest hit are those who just fall short of qualifying for pension credit, but who can by no stretch of the imagination be described as wealthy. Indeed, by being over that limit, they are already no longer entitled to help with spectacles, teeth and extra heating, so they will be quadrupally disadvantaged by this proposal. The £154.50 which to noble Lords in this place may not seem a lot is absolutely crucial to the survival of these pensioners. It is the difference, in some cases, between heating and eating. They are counting every penny, and now have this additional blow.
Let us be clear—and I am glad that my noble friend Lord Bragg is speaking in this debate—that the Government cannot blame the betrayal of that commitment on the BBC. It was not the BBC that published the manifesto; it was the Conservative Party. It now has an absolute moral obligation to ensure that the promise is fulfilled. On Tuesday I asked the Minister who is replying to the debate today, since the legislation transferring responsibility to the BBC was passed before the 2017 election, how the Conservatives, when they decided to include in their manifesto that they would maintain free TV licences for those aged 75 and over, expected to be able to implement that promise. I look forward to hearing that in the reply; I will jump up if I do not get it. He was not able to give a satisfactory answer on Tuesday, so I look forward to it this evening.
No. 10 issued an astonishing, hypocritical statement, saying that it, the head of the Government, expected the BBC to continue the concession and pointed towards the large salaries of senior BBC staff. These are two separate issues. Whatever one thinks about BBC salaries, they are a drop in the ocean compared to the £745 million—a fifth of the BBC’s budget—that this would cost. This is a social welfare issue. The BBC is not the Department for Work and Pensions, and the Government must answer the straightforward question of why they are breaking their manifesto commitment to more than 3 million older people.
I will return to the general theme of this debate. The work carried out by many charities to mitigate government policies is absolutely crucial. A key part of the strategy of charities has been to focus on loneliness—we have had that in Age Scotland and Age UK in the past year. A number of essential services have been set up: friendship groups which bring people together, allowing them to socialise; and women have been getting together more, but now through Men’s Sheds men are getting together to use their skills to help society as a whole. There are also helplines that provide free and confidential help, as well as benefit and other advice, specifically for the elderly. One helpline, getting around 10,500 calls every week from lonely and isolated older people, says that 53% of the callers say they have no one else to speak to. That is why they are phoning. It should also be said that the handling of these calls is often carried out by great volunteers, some of whom I have seen at Age Scotland.
While every such initiative is crucial and should be encouraged, they do not address the scale of the issue. The Jo Cox Commission on Loneliness, set up following the death of the wonderful former MP who campaigned tirelessly on this issue, found that while government cannot solve loneliness alone—of course it cannot—it could bring together the key actors and develop a clear strategy. That led to £20 million in extra funding to address the issue—which, frankly, is a drop in the ocean—as well as widening the role of a DCMS Minister to include this area and lead cross-government strategy. But it was not the creation of a Minister for Loneliness, as some in government and the media have claimed.
These are all welcome steps, but they take place before the backdrop of massive government cuts in social care for older people. The LGA has estimated that there will be a £1.5 billion funding gap by 2019-20 for local authorities, rising to £3.5 billion by 2024-25. How can we expect there to be any chance of those concerned with the welfare of older people overcoming all these challenges?
This brings me to free and concessionary bus passes, which are also of great importance. They allow for accessible travel and interaction with other people, making loneliness less likely. I have been really keen on this, as I know the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, was when she worked with Age Concern England. They get all the people out and about, to mix, keep active and become less reliant on health and social services, and save money as a result. In rural areas especially, they are also crucial for getting older people to medical appointments, banks and post offices. In 2017-18, there were 8.5 million passes in England for older people. It is estimated that 71% of eligible women and 67% of eligible men have a pass.
But the LGA estimates that there is a £652 million funding gap, with local authorities having to fund the costs out of their hard-pressed resources. The SNP cutbacks are affecting local government in Scotland as well. There have been suggestions, including, regrettably, by some Peers, of means testing for free bus passes. However, research by Age UK has pointed to the dangers of this. Better-off people are far less likely to obtain and use a bus pass, so the savings through means testing would be modest and the administration costs great. Take-up is higher among those from lower-income groups, and it is they who will be deterred from applying if means testing is introduced. However, the free and concessionary travel on buses for older people also helps keep these vital bus services viable to be used by the rest of the population. They would not exist if they did not have older people using their passes on them.
This brings me to the recent report by the Select Committee on Intergenerational Fairness and Provision. It has made some positive recommendations on intergenerational provision, which are welcome, but I disagree with its specific recommendations 33, 34, 35 and 36. These relate to age-related benefits, removing the triple lock on the state pension, phasing out free TV licences and raising the age that you start receiving certain benefits. It made these recommendations on the basis that younger households are sadly now relatively poorer than older households. However, that is not an argument for reducing the hard-earned entitlements of older people. Nor does it represent a general truth. There are millions of older people struggling to make ends meet and suffering from loneliness at the same time.
What is important is the inequality between the richest and the poorest in society, as we heard in my noble friend Lord Dubs’s debate earlier today. Surely that is the division in society we should seek to address, rather than playing off poorer younger households against poorer older households. Some 21% of wealth in the UK is held by 1% of the population. Over 40% is held by 5% of the population. It is they who should help the poor of every generation.
The first aim of this debate is to emphasise the sheer scale of the problem we are dealing with. Loneliness may be out of sight and out of mind, almost by definition, but it is the daily experience of millions and poor reward for the contributions they have made to society through their active lifetimes. Those noble Lords who watched, as I did, the D-day celebrations will have seen those veterans. Were they not fantastic? Were their statements not great? When you think of the contributions that they have made, why should they and others of their generation suffer?
We need to support and encourage the many admirable initiatives which exist. However, the role of government cannot be overstated. Even if a particular measure does not include the word “loneliness”, it may well have a huge negative impact on those who are already enduring that condition and seeing their few lifelines of human contact under threat.
Free travel and free TV licences are two particularly powerful examples of how we can help—there are many others. An awareness of this issue and the unhappiness it creates must run through government as a whole to influence policies to ensure no further damage, but instead an enhancement of essential services and the quality of life that they underpin.
Sadly, the threat to TV licences shows how quickly progress can be reversed and the promises from Ministers rendered meaningless. An immediate reversal of this disgraceful decision would be the best illustration that the Government understand the problem and are listening.
Lord Haselhurst (Con)
My Lords, my age and appearance compel me to declare an interest in the subject matter of this debate.
For most of my political life, it has been a given that we should provide ever-increasing support for the elderly, but it is interesting that we have now, seemingly, reached the point at which serious debate arises about the balance of support between the young and the elderly. Why else did your Lordships’ House set up the Intergenerational Fairness and Provision Committee, to which the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, has just referred?
Today’s Motion relates only to the elderly, specifying loneliness and isolation. It is further narrowed by reference to the twin issues of free public transport and TV licences. As we are not making any final executive decision today, I wonder whether those methods are the only or the best means to tackle loneliness, isolation and the general welfare of elderly people. After all, the NHS and social services are for ever needing more resources, so anything in that direction tends disproportionately—rightly—to help the elderly. One goal that the Government set themselves in their cross-departmental strategy to tackle loneliness was a commitment to improve the evidence base. I certainly support that, because it seems to me that there may be many more ways in which loneliness could be approached than simply the two suggestions in the Motion before the House today.
I certainly recognise, as the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, said, that TV is a main companion for many people, but with only four minutes at my disposal I do not want to go into the argument about funding. I just want to make two points. First, looking ahead, surely broadband is more important to be in every home—particularly in rural areas, but also everywhere—because it is a means which allows local and family connectivity. The fact is that a growing proportion of the elderly community will be computer-savvy. Secondly, are we absolutely sure that broadcasting in the way that we have known it will continue indefinitely, or will other means bring news and entertainment into people’s homes?
I have had the honour to represent two constituencies in the House of Commons, and in both of them I have been a witness to how the intergenerational family structure has been weakened, inevitably leaving more for the state to do. In the constituency of Middleton and Prestwich, overspill housing attached to Middleton as part of the solution to Manchester’s slum clearance programme meant that the young people growing up could not live on the same estate as their parents, because Manchester had 95% of the re-lets. They had to live in another part of town and, in those early days, 40 or 50 years ago, public transport was still a problem for them.
In the much more rural constituency of Saffron Walden, there was hostility building up to new homes, with people seemingly not caring that young people growing up would be forced to move away because they could not afford to live in the area of their birth. I am not saying that mobility can or should be arrested, but virtually forcing families to move apart seems to me distinctly unhelpful.
A growing proportion of the elderly cohort will also be car drivers and, having worked longer, may have more disposable income to support independent living. Through my knowledge of council for voluntary services work, I became aware of many great local initiatives to enrich the lives of elderly people. This sector deserves more support for what it can do. Instead of running half-empty buses in rural areas, I should like more development of schemes of community transport—even the formation of a rural Uber and, ultimately, driverless pods. Some people in old age prefer to be on their own; most of us probably prefer company.
My conclusion is that we need a wider, ongoing debate about how we satisfy a variety of needs. It needs fresh thinking combined with compassion, convenience and a great dose of ingenuity.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, for raising this subject. For once, I remember that, in your Lordships’ House, I am still quite young—but only in your Lordships’ House. There were two things that he raised to illustrate loneliness and the problems of isolation and, only one speech down, the point has already been made that they are not the only considerations. Free travel for people when they get older will stop them being isolated. As the noble Lord, Lord, Lord Haselhurst, pointed out, how it is delivered in future may well change, but it will be beneficial to groups. As he also pointed out, car ownership may well have its limitations. People’s reflexes and eyesight go as they get older, so that may well not be the answer. We have to look at that in certain ways in the future.
However, I intend to address most of my remarks to TV licensing. The noble Lord, Lord Haselhurst, beat me to the punch because, as I did when we discussed this issue on Tuesday, he made the obvious point that the BBC is not a benefits agency. It is designed to deliver programmes online, on terrestrial TV and on radio that are supposed to be accessible to all of us and of a high standard. The BBC is part of Britain’s soft power; it extends our reach. We may well need it in future.
When the over-75s policy was brought in two decades ago, it was designed for the elderly. Stepping into that gap is, shall we say, an example of sleight of hand, or double dipping. You name it—it is about pulling a fast one. This time, it has been spotted. The BBC may have given way in the past, but we have to stand up on this. We should not expect something designed to do something different to take on the job of the Department for Work and Pensions and the activities of the Treasury. That should not happen; in no way should we consider that, or even tolerate it. We cannot go down that route. Just think of where else it goes. Which other agencies that get government money should be expected to subsidise somewhere else? What will we not take our hands off? We must make sure that we respect people for doing the jobs they are told to do, and make sure that people with other responsibilities are taking them on. We cannot allow this in perpetuity. If we do, will we grant these people powers to tax and to elect people to their council? That is the other route we can go down, but I do not think that anybody is in a busting hurry for that sort of solution.
If we accept that the BBC is a general good—and one that must be paid for—and want to help a certain group, we must look at the overall structure. If we are to give away free licences for the hardest up—that is probably a good thing; remember, they support online benefits—higher earners might have to pay for licences when others do not. Of course, there is an assessment cost there, but let us at least open up that possibility. We cannot just allow this double counting. If we do, we open Pandora’s box just a little wider—indeed, we probably pull open the fire escapes as well. We cannot allow this to happen. We must defend the BBC’s right to do what it is supposed to, and that is produce programme content.
Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Foulkes for giving us the opportunity to discuss this important issue, which, thanks to the BBC, has become very topical in the past few days.
If it is true that a society’s degree of civilisation can be measured in how it treats its most helpless—the youngest and oldest citizens—I am afraid that the UK does not score enough to be at the top of any league table. All of us could enumerate the shortcomings in how we provide for our youngest citizens but, in this debate, we turn to the other end of the life cycle: our oldest citizens. Where better to do that than in this House, where nearly all of us have some experience of the main issues?
For our oldest citizens, our performance is lamentable. Masses of statistics, too numerous to mention in the short time we have, have been provided by many respected organisations from across the UK, including Age UK, Age Scotland and many more. They demonstrate what we have all seen with our own eyes and what we all know from personal experience: social care for our elderly and needy is dismal. Social care provisions are, at best, perfunctory and, at worst, non-existent or unacceptable. The blight of loneliness is increasing and deadly, making long life a misery instead of a blessing.
The latest blow is the BBC announcement that free TV licences for over-75s will be linked to pension credit—that is, means tested. Research from the House of Commons Library finds that 3,037,950 households will lose the free TV licence if that happens. I do not blame the BBC for this; noble Lords may agree with me. In a proper, decent society, the Government take responsibility for social welfare; it is monstrous for a Government to ditch their responsibilities like this and put them on a broadcasting service, private or public. Given that our old age pensions are among the lowest in Europe, using any measure, how can means testing TV licences or any such benefit for our elderly be justified?
I leave noble Lords with two questions that arose in the discussions on the Urgent Question asked on Tuesday in another place by the shadow Culture Secretary, the right honourable Tom Watson. First, how can you means test loneliness? Secondly, how can you means test social isolation? The answer to both is that you cannot—indeed, you ought not even try to do so.
Baroness Greengross (CB)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, for giving us the opportunity to debate such an important issue. I have enjoyed working and sharing interests with him over many years. I declare my interests as set out in the register, including at the ILCUK. In my remarks, I will refer to the wide-ranging recommendations of the Select Committee on Intergenerational Fairness and Provision, of which I was a member. Although the media reporting focused on the recommendations on age-related tax and benefits, I remind the House that the committee also made recommendations on housing, training, employment and local communities to promote intergenerational fairness. This is important because there are beginning to be rumblings from younger people who feel that their generation is not being treated fairly compared with their parents’ generation. We must avoid intergenerational conflict or even resentment. Today’s older generations want to make sure that their children and grandchildren have better opportunities in life than they had, but sadly this is not the case.
Loneliness, as Age UK has pointed out, is a long-standing problem. It should be of great concern to us all that the number of lonely older people may rise from 1.4 million to 2 million very soon. Next week, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Dementia, which I co-chair, will publish a report on disability and dementia. Its central theme is that dementia is a disability recognised in both UK law and international conventions. The report makes a number of recommendations, including on transport, where it points out that any changes to bus and community transport services should be reviewed in the context of the public sector equality duty, which I strongly support. We need to think about how that might be expanded somewhat. Access to public transport is a lifeline for many older and disabled people—to visit friends and family, and to get to GP and hospital appointments. That is why I support free local travel for pensioners.
I am also proud to be an ambassador for the Silver Line charity, which does so much to try to reverse the trend towards increased loneliness and isolation. Last year, the ILC with the Just Group awarded an innovation prize to the Chatty Cafe scheme. It encourages cafes to have a “chatter and natter” table so that customers who want to engage with other people can do so. We need to get people to talk to each other because it is very important.
The Government’s loneliness strategy, published in October 2018, is therefore a welcome policy response to a very big problem. Among its specific recommendations was a greater focus on the role and importance of social prescribing. Only last month I spoke at an Arts 4 Dementia conference about social prescribing and last year the ILCUK, with the support of the Utley Foundation, produced a report on the importance of music to guard against isolation. I therefore hope that the Government strategy will successfully embed tackling loneliness and isolation across government departments and that the evidence base on how we do so is improved by all stakeholders.
I turn now to age-related benefits. I have long believed that we need to redefine old age. It was why, when I set up the ILCUK, a think tank looking at the implications of an ageing society throughout the life course, we understood that age is no longer a good proxy for policy-making. People differ enormously in their capacity to work, to volunteer and to be more or less active throughout their older lives, which can now span 30 or 40 years, making generalisations meaningless. It would be like making policy for everyone aged from birth to 40 as though they were one homogenous group. That really would be a bit silly. We now have comprehensive age discrimination legislation, which covers not only work but the provision of goods and services. This ought to protect older people. Many are very experienced and senior workers, which is why I believe people should be defined by their circumstances, not by their age. If an older person is working, they should be seen not as a pensioner but as a worker, and an experienced worker at that.
The intergenerational fairness Select Committee made some sensible and pragmatic recommendations, seeking to strike a balance between the generations while at the same time taking account of rising longevity and the increasing number of older people. On the TV licence, we recommended that free licences based on age alone should be phased out. Rather than passing the decision to the BBC, it should be for the Government to decide. I regret that the BBC has been put in this invidious position. We also suggested that free bus passes and the winter fuel payment should be available only five years after state pension age from 2048.
We need to do things differently. Tomorrow’s older people will be older in a very different society from that of today or the recent past. We also need to keep in mind that isolation and loneliness are not age-related per se, and it is our fault as a society if people remain a huge problem because they are old. We must tackle it—it is a responsibility we all share.
Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Foulkes on his introduction of the debate. I thank him for his remarks and for his consistent advocacy for the interests of older people, as I consider that I am one.
He has left us with very little to add; I am persuaded by his arguments. The Minister is in a relatively easy position because he has been a Minister since 2014 in his department and he must have dealt with at least some of the debate on the television licence since 2015. I am sure he will be able to answer in some detail.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Ashton of Hyde) (Con)
It was 2016, I am afraid.
Lord Browne of Ladyton
I apologise to the Minister. I will tell my officials that his CV is incorrect. However, in any event, I am sure he is ready to answer the best question of the day posed by my noble friend Lord Foulkes: how did the Government, post 2015, go into the 2017 election with a manifesto pledge on not only TV licences but free travel without working out how they were going to deliver it? It is the Government’s responsibility to deliver that manifesto commitment and to look after the needs of old and vulnerable people. Jointly, I am sure they have figured out in the past 24 hours how they will solve this problem. I have seldom seen a Secretary of State more discomfited at the Dispatch Box in the other place than the Minister’s was when he was questioned by one of his predecessors two days ago.
I am glad to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross. She told us that she was a member of the Select Committee that tackled intergenerational fairness. Of all its members who recommended that free TV licences be phased out, she is the only one who has come here to own that recommendation and she deserves credit for that. I share her disappointment that none of the other interesting discussions and recommendations in the report have attracted any attention, other than the age-related benefits.
However, what did the committee expect? The nature of those recommendations was such that it was unlikely that anyone would go beyond them and look at anything else. The presentation of the report by its chairman, the noble Lord, Lord True—I am disappointed he is not in his place to answer some of my questions—led to a great deal of publicity, given that it contains sentences such as, “The Government needs to get a grip of these particular benefits”. The argument he put forward—that this type of benefit will lead to conflict between generations in the long term—is nowhere in the report. I do not believe that. I do not think that anyone of the younger generation resents the few things in these benefits that some older people are given to make their lives better, particularly those who are lonely or vulnerable.
If the Minister thinks that in the report of the Select Committee he will find arguments to deploy here that will protect the decisions that the Government have made, or allow them to revise their view of their manifesto commitment, he will be disappointed. He will see that the argumentation of this is one-sided. It concentrates on witnesses who gave evidence to the committee who were utterly predictable in what they said about these benefits.
Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, we live in a fractured society. Our twin cults of individualism and the market have tended to diminish our sensitivity to each other’s needs, untie our social bonds and induce extensive anomie and depression. In our wealthy and crowded country, social isolation and loneliness are endemic, particularly among people on low incomes. Age UK reports that 1.2 million people are chronically lonely, and loneliness impairs their mental and physical health. Figures from the NHS yesterday told us that there are 454,000 people diagnosed with dementia and perhaps another 220,000 living with undiagnosed dementia. We should try to imagine the loneliness of those people and of far too many of their carers.
The Marmot review argued that social participation leads to a healthier life expectancy. We are told that perhaps one-quarter of GP appointments are sought by people who do not have a diagnosable clinical condition but who are living in isolation. I very much admire the response to this challenge by the present Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Matt Hancock. His speech to the King’s Fund in November and his long-term plan for the NHS place prevention at the centre of healthcare strategy, social prescribing at the centre of prevention, and the arts and culture at the centre of social prescribing. He has also endorsed the three key messages of Creative Health, the report of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing, which I co-chair with Ed Vaizey. These messages are that the arts and culture can help keep us well, aid our recovery and support us to enjoy longer lives better lived; help the NHS and social care meet major challenges such as ageing, long-term conditions, loneliness and mental health; and help save money for health and social care.
There is much evidence that engagement with the arts, whether through choirs, painting clubs, dancing, drama or reading groups, improves social connectedness and the ability to make relationships and confers benefits for health. There are a number of case studies in Creative Health which illuminate that. A randomised control trial assessing the benefits of Sing For Your Life, a project running singing groups for old people in Kent, found measurable improvements in their quality of life. The Staying Well project in Calderdale, which enables older people to have opportunities to paint, draw or sing, showed demonstrable reductions in loneliness and improvements in health. That project has been extended three times. The Campaign to End Loneliness, developed by Age UK Oxfordshire, Independent Age, Sense, Manchester City Council and the WRVS and funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, is using arts strategies to improve social connectedness, including intergenerational connectedness, and to empower older people.
Age UK’s 2018 document Creative and Cultural Activities and Wellbeing in Later Life points to problems with access to transport as a significant barrier to cultural participation. In Northern Ireland, the Arts and Older People Strategy has identified isolation and loneliness as the first of six key themes. The Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the Baring Foundation and the Public Health Agency are using the arts to improve social inclusion, and they too point to the significance of barriers to transport. Similarly, the strategy for older people in Wales acknowledges a disparity of opportunity between younger and older people in regard to public transport and access to cultural or recreational facilities. The cultural strategy for Scotland, which is out for consultation, sees an important role for culture in reducing social isolation and loneliness.
In England, we should learn not only from the other nations of the United Kingdom but from New Zealand, where the recent budget of Jacinda Ardern’s Government has reframed progress in that country in terms of well-being, not GDP. In England, however, the Government have no strategy for ageing. The Local Government Association recognises the role of the arts in connecting isolated and lonely older people with the wider community, including different generations, and I pay tribute to Councillor Izzi Seccombe for her role as chair of the Community Wellbeing Board of the LGA. But what is the strategy in Whitehall? The DCMS leads on the Government’s loneliness strategy. That is very good, but it does not go far enough. In England, we need not just piecemeal initiatives but a coherent strategy to support an ageing population. I thank my noble friend from Scotland for putting us in England on the spot in that regard.
Baroness Redfern (Con)
My Lords, I too welcome this most timely debate on an important issue and thank the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, for tabling the Motion.
Taking part in this debate enables me to speak on behalf of those thousands of over-75s who will not now be entitled to a free TV licence from next year; this action cannot be justified and is simply unfair. It follows a consultation that shows just how much older people value their TV, with one in four of those aged over 65 saying that it is their main form of companionship. Under the new plans, 3.7 million pensioners will now have to pay and 1.5 million households will be ineligible for a free licence; some will struggle to apply and lots more will feel embarrassed about needing help.
Another issue I wish to raise is that many older people have struggled throughout their working lives to save a little extra for their retirement, but that small pot of savings for a rainy day means that they will not qualify for means-tested benefits. We know that half of all those aged over 75 are living with high levels of ill health, including heart disease, stroke, mental illness and other disabilities. These people are likely to have lower disposable incomes after meeting essential disability-related costs, including paying for care and support, so they rely much more on their TV for companionship, entertainment and keeping up to date with news. More generally, we underestimate how many elderly people living on their own rely on their TV to keep them company; as they age, they find human company harder to come by and many do not have access to the internet.
You simply cannot means test for, or quantify, social isolation. Loneliness intensifies as the years go by and can affect anyone anywhere; it would be unfair for those with incomes just above the threshold to be penalised. Loneliness as we grow older has been acknowledged as one of the greatest public health challenges; three-quarters of GPs surveyed said that they see between one and five people per day suffering with loneliness. Doctors of course encourage patients and refer them to art groups, cookery classes and so on, as we heard earlier, which is very much valued. Older people in rural areas who can use local transport, do so to keep in touch with friends, as well as to keep medical appointments or go to the bank or post office. They find local transport invaluable.
While in the past loneliness was sometimes viewed as a trivial matter, it is increasingly understood to be a serious condition which can affect people’s mental and physical health and well-being, and for local authorities it is now a major public policy issue. Engaging in various activities is all well and good, but during those long, dark winter months, when the evenings draw in, going out is not an option; that is when the television comes into play, making people feel connected and lifting their mood. The corporation’s response to 80 and 90 year-olds dependent on their cherished TVs is that it has made a difficult decision. I would go further and say that it has made a fatal mistake, which will not only damage its reputation but undermine its long standing as a public service broadcaster.
I do not know how it can be said that the over-75s should pay to plug this deficit, but it is refreshing to hear the general public say that they would be willing to step up to the plate and give a little more to help salvage and keep that much-prized, universal benefit for older people. Free public transport and television licences are the creative means to alleviate loneliness and isolation, stimulate well-being and keep older people connected to the world.
Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)
My Lords, I too congratulate my noble friend, including on his timing, and acknowledge his long commitment to the cause of support for older people.
I could not agree more with his calls for free TV licences, transport and so on, and I agree that the problem of loneliness in older people is acute. Nowhere is this seen more starkly than among carers who are themselves often elderly while caring for older people. The Carers UK survey published this week for Carers Week told us that carers—especially if they receive no practical support—are eight times more likely to report that they are lonely than the general population. So any practical or psychological support is welcome for the growing number of carers.
I endorse all that has been said about the need for well-funded services. I have to say, with the greatest respect, that without these well-funded services, including those provided by the voluntary sector, any discussion about social care is simply moving deckchairs on the “Titanic”. We have to tackle the wider issue of how to provide social care for an ageing population—how it will be funded and how it will be organised.
I have been in your Lordships’ House for 22 years and I have lost track of the number of times I have led or participated in debates on social care. Of course, when we do this our speeches are assiduously collected by the doorkeepers and returned to us—and some of us are sad enough to keep the hard copies as well as the electronic ones. I looked through the large pile of mine and I can tell noble Lords that they make pretty depressing reading—as do the Hansard records.
This is certainly not to criticise the quality of your Lordships’ speeches in those debates, which were fine, perceptive and innovative. What is depressing is that we have kept making the same arguments over and over again: in fact, I could have stood here and made the same speech for the past 10 years. We all know that social care is underfunded; that it is as important as healthcare but has never been accorded the same status; that people do not understand the system and do not realise that social care is means tested; and that no one plans ahead for their care.
The arguments are familiar, as are all the attempts to deal with the issue: the royal commission, the Wanless review, the Barker review and the Dilnot commission. Occasionally we have a ray of light. One party commits to a policy and it is labelled a “death tax”—that was my party. The party retreats in confusion. Another party—the party opposite—commits to something that is labelled a “dementia tax”. More retreat in confusion. We did get as far as passing legislation on the Dilnot report, but it was never enacted.
In the last Queen’s Speech—can anyone remember that far back?—we were told that there would be a consultation on social care. Even the promise of a Green Paper got us excited. But where is it? Is anything happening? How important do the candidates in the Tory leadership race think this pressing problem is? I do not have much hope that they will take my advice, but I will give it anyway.
I have just two pieces of advice. First, be honest. No Government of whatever colour or combination have ever made it crystal clear to the public that responsibility for paying for care and for arranging it rests with individuals and their families, and that public funding is available only for those with the least money and the very highest needs. As a consequence, no one prepares or plans for care. We must rethink this and be honest. In addition, we have grown up with the idea that savings and the considerable assets now contained in property can be passed on to one’s family without being touched. We must rethink that.
My second piece of advice is: be bold. Every independent review of the past 20 years has recommended that the future funding of social care as well as healthcare should come from public, not private finance. The needs of individuals cannot be divided neatly into either health or social care needs—as those of us who have tried to fathom the difference between a “health bath” and a “social care bath” have long acknowledged. We must embark on a frank and open debate on how to fund health and social care on a sustainable basis into the future, and remind everyone that such a debate will not be settled in a single Parliament—so we need to secure cross-party support.
The Government’s usual response is to say that no more money is available. However, as Andrew Dilnot often says, it is a case not of “can’t afford” but of “won’t afford”. Our GDP shows that we are five times better off than we were in 1948, and time and again we find that social care, properly delivered and of good quality, with an emphasis on prevention, is a better way of caring for frail, elderly or disabled people than healthcare, especially in expensive hospitals. If we pool the risk—after all, only one in five of us will ever need the more expensive types of care—and prioritise this, we can afford it. It is a matter of priorities. Surely it is not asking too much to call for some commitment and vision on this most pressing problem for our society.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to contribute to this debate. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, whose timing is always politically immaculate and who makes this subject more apposite today than it was last week.
It is an important subject. Both of these concessions form an important part of the network of social protection that the country has embedded in its social security set-up. I have a question which may sound technical—but that does not mean that I do not concur with all the powerful and emotional speeches that have been made.
My noble friend Lord Addington made a point about the BBC not being the DWP. This is passporting that it is getting involved in, with pension credit guarantee; it is passporting undertaken by a non-government department. Passporting cannot be done all that efficiently by government departments; they are struggling to make passporting work with universal credit and still trying to find solutions to some of those problems. It may be premature to ask some of these questions, but can I have an absolute assurance that, if this unfortunate plan proceeds, the Government will cross-examine the BBC on how they are going to do it?
Means-tested benefits always involve cliff edges; they involve disincentives to saving in this case, and they are difficult to administer. We already know that pension credit take-up for 2016-17 was only 60%. If we are looking for extra money and there is a shortfall in take-up of pension credit of that dimension, surely the answer is to get more people to claim what they are entitled to. Then we will all have more money and do not have to start doing the strange, untoward things being contemplated now.
There are 1.2 million entitled non-recipients of pension credit. A question that might occur to people is: what is happening to them? There is an unclaimed amount of £3 billion for 2016-17, and that has been on the books for some time. What is the administrative framework for how this works? The whole question of enforcement comes to mind. Working with households of 75 year-olds often means dealing with advisers and family members, so implicit consent will be necessary to make this work. There will be appeal and verification processes. What happens when one reaches the “can’t pay, won’t pay” brigade? Are we seriously saying that the BBC will take some of these people to court to get the money back? It is deeply concerning that it is assumed that the pension credit link will solve the problem. It will be very difficult. I wish the BBC well, but I do not think it will work as easily as it thinks.
My next point will not please the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, but sometimes I do not. Sir David Clementi, the BBC chairman, has said:
“The Government could of course choose to step in and close the gap from their own resources”.
My personal view—it is not a party view—is that if the upcoming spending review is looking at the triple lock, which is guaranteed only until 2020 anyway, restricting the triple lock to a link with earnings for valorising pensions in future would produce a significant sum of money, which could certainly pay for all this and probably more. It is time to start looking at such things. If my preferred method of raising money, which is increasing the uptake of pension credit, does not work, it is worth looking at the triple lock to find some extra resources to help Sir David out of his difficulty.
The final thing to say, as everybody before me has, is that this is the Government’s responsibility. It lies squarely at the Government’s door. If the Minister thinks that he will get away with shuffling off the blame politically to the BBC in the elections and doorstep discussions that we will all have in the future, he is wrong. This will stick. It has happened on his watch, and his Government will have to answer for it in the fullness of time.
Lord Bragg (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, for his stirring and comprehensive opening and for this debate. I declare a couple of interests: I work for BBC Radio and for Sky Arts.
This debate has covered a wide and impressive canvas, but I am going to stick to the BBC licence fee, an issue which is current and of great importance in my world and many of our worlds, including those of many of the elderly in this country.
The BBC’s decision to limit free licence fees to those over 75 who receive pension credit and to take the £0.25 billion-a-year hit from its own funds—i.e. from us, the licence fee payers—seems to me to be a difficult solution, arrived at with a great deal of pain, to a problem not of its own making. A lifeline has been thrown to the poorest in our society, which shows how the BBC, out of our funds, is taking on a government job.
When several years ago the Government steamrollered the BBC into accepting responsibility for giving the licence fee free to all pensioners, it was seen as something that just happened under the yoke of government austerity at that time. Like many others, I thought it was a bad idea. The BBC licence fee is there to support BBC programmes; it is the responsibility of the state to support pensioners. This has been said again and again, from the beginning of this debate and throughout. This move by the Government crossed a boundary. It was a mean snatch-and-grab raid which the BBC board at the time could summon up neither the wit nor the nerve to resist, which it was its duty to do.
The BBC’s independence from government is an essential pillar of its constitution, still admired throughout the world—unlike, sadly, our own current constitutional antics. Yet the BBC, with its 347 million viewers around the world each week, along with the 91% of the adult population of this country who use it every day, is still the gold standard in broadcasting globally, domestically and locally. My own view remains the same: the BBC should not have to shoulder the Government’s social policy. It is already shouldering four times more television channels, twice as many national radio stations and new web services for 24% less in real terms than 20 years ago because of the clamping down on the licence fee. Had the BBC continued to accept the diktat and given everyone over 75 a free licence, when it is widely proved that many pensioners are very willing and able—more able, often, than the younger population—to pay that £3 a week fee, that tax would soon soar to £1 billion a year, resulting in the loss of channels and numerous programmes that are vital to the lives of many, especially those who live on their own and find in television and radio programmes entertainment, solace, companionship and conversation.
The BBC has woven together a tapestry, a niche in minority programmes, unlike anything else in the world. The armada coming over from America will do nothing about that; nothing to help that; nothing to replace that. It is unique in this country and unique to this country. We need all the evidence that we can muster to show that we in this country are still capable of making things that are universally valuable, widely available and richly rewarding. That is what the BBC does. It can continue to do that if the Government stop penalising it, begin to cherish it and see it for what it is: something great that we have. It does not need the Government to undermine it.
Lord Glasman (Lab)
My Lords, I also thank my noble friend Lord Foulkes not just for initiating this debate but for his lifetime commitment to this issue. I honour and respect it. Looking at the programming, it is not really a surprise to see—if I may dissent—that the BBC is now part of the Department for Work and Pensions. There is a decline in autonomous civic institutions that run independently of government. It is sad to see how few Conservatives are here, but this used to be a pillar of conservatism—there was a body politic with autonomous institutions that made their own decisions. This is therefore part of the general problem with our politics.
I really appreciated the speech by my noble friend Lord Howarth. There is a general malaise in a society based on individualism and an economy in which, if you really want to get on in life, you have to come to London. I cannot count the number of people I have spoken to who are distressed to be separated from their elderly parents and cannot care for them. We have to look at that issue in the context of regional policy and the economy. These are really huge issues. Obviously, I agree with my noble friend Lord Foulkes and others who have spoken. The noble Baroness, Lady Redfern, spoke extremely eloquently, saying that television and radio are a crucial part of people’s lives. As I say to my children all the time, “The friends you’ve got on Facebook aren’t your friends”. Nothing can beat relationships and real contact.
We sometimes ignore the beauty of this House. What amazed me in the first year I was here was that it is an institution where older people have power and responsibility, and they do work. If you go anywhere else in our kingdom, it is so rare to see vital, alive and engaged older people. To rephrase a somewhat tarnished ex-Prime Minister, I believe that we are at our best when we are at our oldest.
I will put forward three things we can think about, because I hope the Chamber takes responsibility for the debate and thinks about the role of older people in a sustained way. First, it is very typical that there is an initiative called Teach First. I do not know whether noble Lords have heard of it. Young, bright people go into schools—as if they know anything. What about “teach last”? What about getting older people into schools? What about getting them in front of classrooms? What about genuinely showing honour and respect, and giving some power to older people?
I am the Lord of Stoke Newington and Stamford Hill. In the Orthodox community in Stamford Hill, at Yesodey Hatorah School, every single student is paired with an older person who has been widowed or widowered. They visit them every day. They are a part of their lives. When I took that to Hackney Council it said, “Can’t do it—health and safety”, and so on. We have to think of relational ways to integrate older people into the joys of life, such as birthdays. That is what they are excluded from. They are not part of that.
Thirdly, it is now clear that we have to rethink vocational training and skills. How about getting retired workers in as teachers in vocational colleges? There are so many ways in which we can honour older people. I do not think that we should be greedy and keep the privilege of participating in public life strictly for the House of Lords. We should make the argument for it and extend it, because the key aspects of health and life are loving, stable relationships, a sense of dignity, empowerment and participation. That is the key to our treatment of older people.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
My Lords, I am afraid timings have become very tight for this debate. When the Clock reaches four minutes, speakers are advised to conclude their remarks, otherwise we cut further into the Minister’s time.
Baroness Masham of Ilton (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, for giving your Lordships the chance to discuss some of the ways to alleviate loneliness. I shall use my few minutes to concentrate on elderly people with disabilities. What concerns me is that it seems to be the most vulnerable in our society who are selected to have their facilities cut or reduced, causing extra hardship and anxiety on top of challenging situations.
Several years ago my late husband was watching cricket on television when he had a stroke, and he developed diabetes and Parkinson’s. One of his enjoyments continued to be watching cricket on television. Without that, he would have been deprived of his passion.
There are many disabled people living over the age of 75 who have several complex disabilities, many of whom are living alone, having lost a partner or having always been single. Loneliness is a danger.
Disability is expensive. Because of social care being in crisis, many people have to buy in much-needed vital services. One case I know of was a young woman with a child who was stabbed in the neck, rendering her tetraplegic, paralysed from the neck. Now she is older her hands have got contracted. She desperately needs physiotherapy and occupational therapy to stop her hands stiffening completely. Her elderly mother has to pay for this privately as the hospital can no longer supply it.
I agree that for millions of people aged over 75, the TV is their window on the world and their main form of company. Television plays a central role in their lives. If the right to a free TV licence is taken away, the most vulnerable people in our society will suffer. These are the elderly, lonely people with disabilities and long-term conditions such as dementia. I believe many people, hearing about the removal of this benefit of free TV licences for the over-75s, are disgusted. I am pleased that there is such strong support for the elderly people in this country. I hope the Government and the BBC will think again.
Lord Maxton (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Foulkes, who has been my good friend and colleague for over 40 years now, for obtaining this debate and introducing it so ably. I should perhaps say at the outset that I am elderly—I could have claimed the free TV licence for the last eight years, but I have not done so—and I am not lonely. I have probably saved the Government about £1,000.
Much of what I want to say has already been said, particularly the points about the transfer of the free TV licence from the Government to the BBC, which I think is wrong. Will the Minister publish in full all the discussions that took place between the BBC and the Government on this issue? That is very important. If he believes that the TV licence will be abolished somehow or other, was that part of the discussion? Did he tell the BBC to take it or leave it—that it was either this or the Government would abolish the TV licence now? I am sorry; the Minister is indicating that he was not part of that discussion. Does he expect the licence to still be in existence 10 years from now? If not, what will replace it for the elderly people who watch TV and to whom it is their one connection?
If the licence does survive, is it not time that we had different rates of payment for that licence? I probably have at least 10 devices in the house, plus two in the car, so it is unfair that I pay exactly the same sum of money for one TV licence as an old age pensioner living on her own with one television in her house. That cannot be right or fair. This tax was introduced right at the beginning of broadcasting by the Government of the time, in 1926 I think, when having just one radio in the house was enough, and was all people had. Now people have a variety of different devices, so should we not have different TV licences based on the number of pieces of equipment people have? I do not know how that would be paid for, but we could have that system, rather than having one TV licence for all, and that being the norm which is expected from everybody. I can afford to pay more, so surely I should pay more, while those who cannot afford the licence should pay considerably less, or it should be free for them. I ask the Government to take that into account when looking at this.
Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan (Lab)
My Lords, in the last 12 months, I have spent rather more time watching television than has been my usual habit. I very quickly began to lose the will to live with the extensive coverage of Brexit, so I took refuge in some of the Freeview channels. They will not necessarily win a Palme d’Or for their westerns or adventure films, which relive the days of my youth in the 1950s. The fact is that throughout all these programmes of the non-BBC kind on Freeview there were interminable adverts for funeral plans, so these stations are obviously watched by the elderly. To take up the point that my noble friend Lord Maxton was developing, perhaps we ought to look at whether it could be arranged so that some of the Freeview channels make their contribution to the funding of the licence.
Looking at the intergenerational fairness report, there is an assumption that if the benefits given to the elderly are preserved and the benefits to the young are undermined by austerity-driven meanness, then the answer is to extend that meanness to the elderly. This is a fundamental flaw in the argument advanced by a group of people who I would not normally have credited with this degree of stupidity.
I want to finish on this point, as I know that we do not have a lot of time. Several benefits such as the winter fuel payment, the free bus pass and the television licence are seen as benefits which the elderly get at the expense of the rest of us. I was an MP from 1979, throughout the Thatcher years. One thing which struck me at that time was the concept of genteel poverty, when there were people who were frightened to claim the benefits. Nowadays there are people who take advantage of the bus pass and winter fuel allowance, as it helps to pay for the Christmas presents for their family. These people do not always have the money to subsidise their heating costs but this gives them that bit of independence and enhances their integrity. Very often, it compensates for their loneliness.
This is a mean-minded, dispiriting measure for which the Government, either by design or intent, have correctly ended up getting the blame. They have within their capability the means of finding solutions. The solutions should come early because, if they do not come soon, the general election which will follow will see them being punished. If there is one thing that the elderly will not do, it is to forget who is responsible for their increasing misery.
Lord Suri (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, for securing the time for this debate, which raises a tricky question: how far should we go to help the elderly at the expense of others? We should discuss the key recent development, namely the decision of the BBC to withdraw free TV licences.
I was not in this place in 2001 when free licences were brought in, but the rationale was clearer then. Pensioner poverty was a very real and substantial evil, and this was one reasonable measure to tame it. The BBC was a hegemonic force, with few private sector competitors; much has changed since then. The BBC has to compete with a multiplicity of online competitors, some of which produce exceptional content at far lower rates, and whose subscriptions are not coerced by criminal enforcement. The BBC’s viewership has dropped every year, while the average age of a BBC viewer is now 62—some 20 years above the national average.
Can it be fair for younger viewers to subsidise wholly every elderly person? It would not seem an equitable state of affairs. Many in this place, including myself, could pay for the licence fee, and it seems unjustifiable that we should get it for free. The eventual compromise which keeps licences free for some is a reasonable one that reflects the increasing burden of the measure, and deflects it from being a liability on the young.
Non-payment should be decriminalised to reflect the potential for hardship, and as it is plainly better suited to being a civil offence. I hope this measure sparks some debate and discussion about the scope for pensioner benefits in this economy. A number of benefits were brought in during the last Labour Administration which may need to be stripped of their universality. Put bluntly, they have worked and served their useful purpose. Pensioner poverty has halved in the years since 1997 and continues to stay low. This is primarily because the rocketing cost of housing is less of a problem for pensioners, more of whom own their homes.
It is a major regret of the 2017 campaign that a serious discussion about intergenerational fairness was halted by a poorly communicated social care policy. It was not a well thought out move and was unlikely to work in practice, but it was an important step in addressing how, nowadays, the old tend to be richer than the young but cost the state far more in triple-locked pensions, the winter fuel allowance and free transport.
The cost of social care and healthcare for the elderly is another rocketing cost to the public purse and, at some point, a serious discussion will need to be had about how we can recover some of the cost from the estates of those who can afford to pay more. I should be clear that I do not wish to see the vulnerable suffer; pensioner poverty still exists, and is a scourge on a decent society, but these benefits should not be universal. Means testing, as the BBC has in effect chosen to do, offers a sensible compromise. It will enable us to target our support to the people who need it. The continuing rollout of universal credit allows us to start thinking seriously about what can realistically be justified at this time to keep harmony between the generations.
Lord Hussain (LD)
My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the gap. I will make only a couple of points.
The provision of free public transport and television licences for the elderly are important issues. I would like the Government to issue centralised passes for all elderly people across the country, rather than leaving it to local authorities. We have experienced how, when certain provisions are on the other side of a local authority, and there are administrative problems from time to time, elderly people will suffer from a delay in passes being issued. Hospitals, dentists and doctors may be on the other side of the local geographical boundary, or perhaps a sports club they are a member of or want to spend their time in; bus passes for the elderly should be a centralised issue.
Off-peak provision also has to be looked at. What about appointments that elderly people have early in the morning at hospitals, dentists and other places? They have to attend them, so we should look at taking away only the off-peak provision and give them passes across the day.
Means-testing is another point. Organisations such as Age UK have told us that administrative costs would be higher with means-testing, so we should take it out and offer these services to all elderly people, as well as free television licences. The point was made very well in this Chamber earlier that many elderly people suffer from loneliness, and it would help for television provision to be given to them free of charge.
Baroness Janke (LD)
My Lords, the BBC’s announcement that it will stop free licences for all but the most needy over-75s was greeted with shock, disbelief and outrage by pensioners, politicians and public alike, not just those affected. It seems a petty and miserable reneging on a principle and, given that these are the oldest pensioners, another assault on the people least able to fight back. It makes these pensioners pawns in a stately dance of death between the BBC and the Government, who are trying to shrug off their responsibilities. I support the speakers today who have said that this should be the responsibility of the Government, not the BBC. The information I have been given tells me that the BBC has a total of £5 billion, including £1 billion from overseas sales. Sky has £7 billion to spend on programming. Netflix will have $13 billion to spend on programmes. The current provision for pensioners will eventually cost £1 billion. As all noble Lords have said today, we value our national broadcasting company, the BBC, and all that it stands for. How can it possibly cope with this level of responsibility for pensioners’ concessions?
The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, spoke eloquently and made the case for keeping licences and bus passes. He talked about the “scourge of loneliness”. There are so many vulnerable pensioners. Many of the oldest are in social isolation and have depression and mental health issues. More than half of over-75s live alone. This is an absolutely awful reneging on a commitment that the Government gave to these pensioners. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, and the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, about the rather disturbing narrative that pensioners are all well off and do not need benefits. This may be true of some pensioners but it falls short of reality for many, particularly the most elderly, and is very divisive. As the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, said, there need to be good relationships between the young and the old and, by and large, there are.
Experience in my city showed me that many pensioners are living on shrinking resources but not qualifying for benefits. They are unable to afford entertainment so rely on their televisions to provide them with entertainment, news, stimulation and a sense of being part of a bigger world. Many pensioners in rented accommodation, particularly in urban settings, live in communities where there is no support network. They are in flats in places where other people do little more than sleep. Bus services, and a bus pass, and community transport are essential for them. Many noble Lords have spoken about the nature of prevention and how we need to keep people active. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, spoke eloquently about areas of good cultural practice and gave many examples. We need to build on local experience and enable those. When I was leader of a city council, I tried to get budgets to combine. Budgets are compartmentalised, both in central government and across the NHS. We need to work much harder in that area. There is a lot of social prescribing now, but it tends to be about solving problems of illness rather than trying to prevent it.
Many in this Chamber support these benefits and believe they are essential. However, not all pensioners require them. The report of the Select Committee on intergenerational fairness raised a number of issues about them. I am sure we all know people who say that, though they are retired and are pensioners, they do not really need the winter fuel allowance. Most enjoy the bus pass, but perhaps sometimes feel that the money could be put to better use. If we want to keep these universal benefits, we have to consider exactly how we will pay for them. There are other ways of providing them.
The noble Lord, Lord Haselhurst, spoke about broadband, but unfortunately broadband is not available over wide stretches of the country. I know that in my city there are Wii sports competitions between pensioners in retirement homes and this is a really important feature. Certainly, the internet can provide lots of facilities for people. In some homes I know of, the internet has replaced the television in the room and the pensioners have a much more social experience. They watch television together rather than independently. So there are more ways of making pensioners’ lives happier and healthier, and of fighting social isolation.
The noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, addressed the issue of the very different capacities of different groups of elderly people, and we need to recognise that. Good practice in many cities has pensioners delivering services to other pensioners and building on the strength of volunteering. Despite the need, in my view, to keep these universal benefits, we can build on good practice. We can look at cities and rural areas and see how good practice can be financed. People often have really good ideas and can do excellent things but just cannot raise the money to do them. Cuts to local councils have made services even rarer. I support keeping the universality of these benefits; on the other hand, a number of ways of financing them have been raised in the Chamber today.
My noble friend Lord Kirkwood spoke in a personal capacity about such things as the triple lock. The report mentions means testing, which I do not favour because of the cliff edge and the people who fall just short. However, there is an idea that the people in tax could be taxed on the value of some of these benefits; that is an area we could look at.
I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, for bringing this debate to the House and I very much hope that it will not be something that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, said, we do again and again. I certainly support her call for a proper strategy on social care. I hope that some of these ideas might be taken up by the Government and that we might make progress by taking the report of the Select Committee on intergenerational fairness into account in doing so.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)
My Lords, we owe a great debt of thanks to my noble friend Lord Foulkes for his perspicacity in spotting this issue and timing the debate in the way he has, but also for how he framed his Motion, allowing him to focus on two political nuggets of some depth that are quite hard to deal with in the context of a much wider debate on the question of loneliness. We have done a very good job today in covering the full range of issues that have come up. I think it is fair to say that this is one of the wicked issues—it is very hard for the Government to deal with such a broad range of things covering so many departments. Within our very wide-ranging discussion, the boundaries of the debate came from four or five main contributions; that is not in any sense to devalue others, but these are the ones that set us in the right place.
The noble Baroness, Lady Masham, made sure that in addition to discussing poverty, we did not lose the specificity of those who have a disability in the issues we are talking about. The noble Baroness, Lady Ramsay, had a concern, which she expressed very well, that we are in danger of making long life a misery, not a blessing. The noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, made the interesting suggestion that we are getting hung up on age, which is probably a very bad basis for making policy; it is a point we need to think about. My noble friend Lord Howarth reminded us of the evidence on how effective creative work and creative partnerships are in combating loneliness. My noble friend Lord Bragg and others stressed that we should not risk the magnificent job that the BBC does for us day in, day out and year in, year out by asking it to do jobs that it is not properly constituted to do. My noble friend Lady Pitkeathley made a plea for sanity regarding our failure still to resolve the question of social policy: a policy merry-go-round has prevented us making progress in the way we should for far too long. That needs to be addressed and sorted. All speakers have been stressing how crucial a holistic approach must be to this whole question. Loneliness is the end product in a lot of a different areas.
Having said that, we should pay tribute to the Government for having grasped the nettle, as it were, of the policy on loneliness that needs to be addressed here. They are following up on the report by the Jo Cox Commission on Loneliness and coming forward with a strategy which, although it may need a lot more work now and in the future, certainly sets out the ambition, which is a good thing. Good specific proposals have been announced, such as expanding social prescribing, adding loneliness to ministerial portfolios and incorporating loneliness into ongoing policy decisions. These are important issues; the criticisms we have heard today should not be used to dismantle what the Government have done here, and we should listen to the Minister when he comes to respond on that. There is also a cross-departmental ministerial committee; that should be doing some work as well.
However, we need a bit more from the Government on the evidence regarding the impact of different initiatives. We do not really know what works here. Some research has been published but I think the Government are doing more; perhaps the Minister could update us on that. We need appropriate indicators of loneliness across all ages so that the Office for National Statistics can measure it properly. It is all very well talking about happiness and well-being in relation to GDP; we measure GDP and estimate the rest. Unless we have some hard figures, we will never be able to get to the bottom of this important issue. At the end of the day we also need reports, and I am sure that we are due one shortly. Can the Minister remind us when that is likely to happen?
Several noble Lords have pointed out that we make a mistake if we try to narrow this down to particular issues—strategies, tactics and who is responsible for what. The austerity agenda has been the context here, and the cuts to local government have not been discussed enough today: the closure of 428 day centres, 1,000 children’s centres, 600 youth centres and 478 public libraries; and cuts in funding for countless lunch clubs, befriending services, local voluntary groups and community centres. This all has a cost regarding what our society can do as a whole for those who suffer, and the capacity of organisations up and down the country to provide something of value.
That leads neatly into the question of bus services and public transport more generally. The bus figures are absolutely astonishing. The elderly have been particularly impacted by the cuts to bus services. Statistics reveal that since 2010, fares have risen faster than wages and passenger numbers have plummeted, and new research shows that average fares are likely to be 53% higher in 2022 than they were in 2010. This is not the way to make sure that people travel and meet people, and to go forward.
The biggest policy issue we have been discussing off and on throughout this whole debate is the BBC licence fee. This is both a direct attack on those who benefit from the services—in a way that has been described so well by noble Lords—and an example of the impact that austerity measures dressed up as public policy can have on our society. We now know that the BBC will charge all those not on pension credit the full licence fee, which raises the spectre of criminal penalties for those who are unable or unwilling to pay.
I have some questions about this, some of which were touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood. First, does the Minister agree that pensioner poverty, which halved between 1997 and 2010, is now on the rise again, from 1.6 million three years ago to 1.9 million now? It is forecast to pass 2 million by 2022. Does he accept also the figures quoted earlier in the debate that over-75s are almost 50% more likely to be in poverty than the 65 to 75 age group? What does that mean for public policy?
Secondly, have the Government considered how they will authorise the BBC to means test pensioners for their eligibility for the free licences? Does the legal power exist for the DWP to open up its records and allow BBC officials to access private information on the finances of the over-75s? If so, where is that power enacted, and can he give us the reference? If not, what legislative vehicle will be considered for this, as I presume under the GDPR it will require primary legislation? Who is paying the £72 million that it is estimated it will cost simply to administer this system?
Thirdly, what are the constitutional implications? Does it mean that the BBC, a private company established by royal charter, has become a taxing authority, with all that that implies? Can he confirm that the licence fee will still be decided by the Government and agreed by statutory instrument under the affirmative procedure, and therefore subject to a vote in Parliament? Does he agree with his right honourable friend Mr Damian Green, who pointed out in the other place that roughly one-third of pensioners eligible for pension credit do not claim it, which saves the Government about £3 billion a year? If even half of those eligible for pension credit now start claiming it to retain the free BBC licence, it seems that the Government will have shot themselves in the foot, because the net outcome will be a lot more expensive than maintaining the existing free provision.
Why are they continuing with this ridiculous policy? Is it, as my noble friend Lord Bragg said, just another attack by the hard right from the BBC under the guise of austerity? In the other place, the Secretary of State acknowledged that retaining the free licence fee concession would require primary legislation and implied that it would be hard to find parliamentary time for it. Given that we have virtually no legislation at the moment and are unlikely to have any for the rest of the Session, that is a pretty weak excuse.
As others have said, for the party opposite, nothing, least of all promises made in manifestoes, seems sacrosanct at the moment. Making a commitment about a major policy issue cannot be written off as a mistake. When it was discovered, trying to persuade the BBC to bail them out is a disgraceful way to behave.
This issue is a test of honour, integrity and truthfulness. Decisions such as this will sully the reputation of the party opposite for years to come. The Government should sort it out with a simple amendment to the Digital Economy Act—in a three-line Bill, if that is what it takes. The Minister would have the support of these Benches if he chose to do that.
Lord Ashton of Hyde
My Lords, I start, with slightly less time than I should have, by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, for calling this debate and all the contributions. I cannot say that it has been an altogether comfortable way to spend the past two hours.
The Government are committed to ensuring economic security for people at every stage of their life, including when they reach retirement, so I am pleased to say that relative poverty rates have halved since 1990. I am glad that incomes for over-75 households have increased much faster than average. The average income for all households between 1999-2000 and 2016-17 improved by 71%, but for households containing someone 75 or over, average weekly incomes more than doubled. The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, mentioned some other statistics which I do not have in front of me, but I will get back to him on that and his other 15 questions later, and copy the answer to all noble Lords.
We want to maintain the achievement of raising average income for the elderly. We forecast to spend more than £120 billion on benefits for pensioners in 2019-20 and are committed to the triple lock for the duration of this Parliament, guaranteeing that both the basic and the new state pension, excluding protected payments, will rise by the highest of average earnings growth, price inflation or 2.5%.
The Government recognise loneliness as one of our biggest public health challenges. It is estimated that between 5% and 18% of all UK adults are always or often lonely. Frequently, feeling lonely is linked to early death. It is associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease, stroke, depression and Alzheimer’s. We know that loneliness can affect people of all ages. As Jo Cox said, young or old, loneliness does not discriminate. We are working to help people of all ages to have meaningful social relationships and to avoid loneliness. We are the first Government in the world to appoint a Minister to lead work on tackling loneliness; I appreciate the comments of several noble Lords who acknowledged that.
Last year, we published the world’s first government strategy on loneliness, as well as securing £20 million of new grant funding for projects run by charities and community groups to bring people together. As the Motion suggests, the causes of loneliness and its solutions are many and varied. I much appreciated the ideas of the noble Lord, Lord Glasman, on that with respect to the elderly. I agree with him and other noble Lords that a debate on the wider aspects of this problem would be useful.
The loneliness strategy contains more than 60 policy commitments covering many aspects of people’s lives, from transport and health to education. For example, the Government are improving and expanding social prescribing across England. That will change the way in which patients experiencing loneliness are treated, connecting them to community groups and services through the support of link workers; 1,000 new, trained social prescribing link workers will be in place by 2020 and 900,000 will be referred to social prescribing by 2023-24. The strategy also announced the creation of a network of employers to take action on loneliness. More than 30 leading organisations, including Sainsbury’s, the Co-op, Transport for London and the British Red Cross, have signed up to this network, pledging to support their employees to avoid loneliness. We are also embedding loneliness into relationship education classes so that children can learn about it and the value of social relationships.
We agree that transport is vital to building and maintaining people’s social connections; it is therefore integral to the Government’s loneliness strategy. We have invested significantly in transport infrastructure, providing more than £61 billion in the five years up to 2020. That underpins much of what the Government can do to help people remain connected. We are also providing support to local bus services, community transport and community rail services.
For some people, a free local bus service can be a lifeline, providing access to healthcare and other essential services as well as allowing them to visit family and friends. To support this lifeline, the Government support council spending of around £1 billion a year so that older and disabled people can travel on buses for free. The Government remain committed to preserving the current statutory entitlement to concessionary bus fares. Therefore, last April, we announced a change in legislation to protect the concessionary travel scheme in its current form. However, we must recognise that providing free transport alone will not solve the problem of loneliness. Inclusive transport is key to our approach to the current transport network.
Lord O’Neill of Clackmannan
Can the Minister tell us why we should believe what he says about buses when the Government betrayed the trust they sought from the British electorate at the last election? They clearly broke their manifesto pledge there, so why should this promise be worth any more than the previous one?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
If the noble Lord is referring to TV licences, I will come on to them later. I hope that I will answer his question then. Of course, the fundamental difference there is that the power to do that was with the Government, not another organisation.
As I said, inclusive transport is part of our inclusive transport strategy, which was published last July, and our future of urban mobility strategy, which was published in March.
Turning to TV licences, I acknowledge and recognise the important role of the BBC in our national conversation and as a constant companion for everyone across the country, especially older people. From impartial news and current affairs coverage to its wide-ranging radio content, it provides something for everyone every day. We know the importance of providing such services, which is why we guaranteed the over-75 licence fee concession until June 2020. We know that television, radio and online services are powerful tools in combating loneliness and isolation.
The noble Lord, Lord Maxton, asked whether the scheme will continue in its present form. In the consultation, the public said that they want that; however, I accept that many changes in the competition and the provision of these services are coming. At the moment, the current charter arrangements say that the current licence will continue in its present form for the 11-year period. I do not know what exactly was said five or six Secretaries of State ago when this was agreed, but I know what was agreed and I will come on to that.
I stress to the noble Lord, Lord Addington, that when we agreed the five-year licence fee funded settlement with the BBC in 2015, the corporation was well funded to provide vital public services. We phased in the cost by providing £468 million in 2018-19 and £247 million in 2019-20, as agreed with the BBC. That is why, as I have said before in the House, the director-general said that the overall deal provided “financial stability”, in his words, and that the Government’s decision to put the cost of the over-75s on to the BBC had been more than matched by the deal coming back for the BBC. It was an agreement.
The licence fee income underpins the BBC’s important role in making sure that everyone can access the content that educates, informs and entertains. I noted earlier this week in the House that the Government did commit to maintaining the current licence fee—I mentioned that to the noble Lord, Lord Maxton. As part of that deal we unfroze the licence fee for the first time since 2010 by guaranteeing that it will rise each year in line with inflation. The BBC received over £3.8 billion in licence fee income, more than ever before. In return, we agreed that responsibility for the over-75 licence fee concession would transfer to the BBC in June 2020. Parliament consented to that and delivered it as part of the Digital Economy Act 2017. That is why we are disappointed that the BBC will not protect free television licences for all viewers aged 75 and over. Of the number of proposals on the table, the BBC has taken the most narrowly defined reform option.
Let me address directly the question put by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes: why did we promise free licences for the duration of this Parliament when we cannot guarantee that the BBC will keep them free from 2020? That is because, as I have said, we agreed with the BBC at the 2015 funding settlement that responsibility for the concession will transfer to the BBC in 2020. That future concession was therefore a decision for the BBC. That was agreed by Parliament in the Digital Economy Act. The Secretary of State has said repeatedly that he expected the BBC to honour that agreement, and that is why we are disappointed. The BBC has acknowledged that the most vulnerable--the poorest pensioners who receive pension credit--will get the over-75 concession. Of course, as many noble Lords have said, there is a possibility that with the help of the BBC in making this available, an extra 600,000 people could receive pension credit because although they are eligible for it, they do not claim it. That would be a good thing and that is what the Government would like to see happen.
Lord Browne of Ladyton
Before the Minister moves on from this issue, is the agreement with the BBC enforceable? If so, do the Government intend to enforce it so that they can keep their word to the nation?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
The agreement with the BBC, which is in the Digital Economy Act, is what has happened. The BBC has the power and the responsibility to make a decision. It has made a decision and it is not a question of enforcing it. That is what is in the Digital Economy Act and that is what the BBC has done. It is its decision to do that because it is what Parliament gave it.
Lord Browne of Ladyton
I am sorry to take the Minister’s time, but what right does anyone have to be disappointed if there was no expectation? It is either an agreement or it is not an agreement. If it is a legal agreement that is enforceable, surely the Government have a responsibility for the third parties who are being affected by this to enforce the agreement.
Lord Ashton of Hyde
The agreement put into law in the Digital Economy Act was the power for the BBC to make the decision, so the BBC has done what it is entitled to do and what we gave it responsibility for. What I said was that the Secretary of State expected that because this was part of the agreement reached in 2015, the BBC would do what it said it would do. Oh, I am sorry, that is not true. It said it would do that part of the deal when it was made with the Secretary of State in 2015. The BBC made its decision, which it was entitled to do, and that is the situation.
I do not have much time because I want to allow a little for the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes.
On public services generally, to support care for the elderly the Government have given councils access to around £10 billion of additional dedicated funding for social care over the spending review period, including a £240 million adult social care winter fund for 2018 and 2019 to alleviate pressures on the NHS. This is the biggest injection of funding for winter programmes that councils have ever received. The investment in social care services allowed 65% of local authorities to increase home care provision in 2017 as a direct result of the £2 billion funding boost announced in 2017.
In the medium term, social care funding will be settled in the spending review, when the overall approach to funding local government will be considered in the round. The noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley—who has not given up after 22 years, I am glad to say—mentioned that we will bring forward at the earliest opportunity a Green Paper that will set out our plans to deliver a more sustainable social care system. She asked about the various candidates for leadership. The present Secretary of State, who I used to work with, takes this seriously and is keen to produce it as soon as he can. It will cover care and support for adults of all ages and will bring forward ideas for including an element of risk pooling into the system, which will help to protect people from the highest costs.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, that the Government have an important role in working with charities, businesses, councils and other organisations which are already doing great work in bringing people together. We also have to create an economy which allows the ever-increasing expenditure that the noble Lord desires, otherwise we will simply transfer the problems to our children and grandchildren, which is not what we want.
We expect to publish the first annual report on loneliness later this year.
There are a number of questions that noble Lords have asked but, in the interests of time, I hope they will allow me to write to them and copy other noble Lords in on the answers.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for giving me a couple of minutes. It has been an exceptional debate. My only regret is that it has not been at prime time, when more Members would have been here to hear the wonderful eloquence of the noble Baroness, Lady Redfern; the plea for art and culture from my noble friend Lord Howarth; the speech of my noble friend Lord O’Neill, who I welcome back from his hospital bed; and the contributions of all those noble Lords I have not mentioned. It has been a tremendous debate.
However, the Minister answered many questions on loneliness—he was helpful on that and other matters—but he has not answered the crucial question even though my noble friend Lord Browne put him under tremendous pressure. There were questions about the practicability of the BBC running this scheme—it will be impractical—and, on enforceability, whether the Government have the ability to make the BBC do what it apparently promised. I can assure the Minister that, as far as the TV licence issue is concerned, we will return to it again and again until we get a proper answer and action.
These older people, who have given so much to society, depend on TV for contact, news, entertainment and information. They deserve more from us and more from the Government, and we will return to this issue again and again until we get proper answers from the Government.