Baroness Anelay of St Johns
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty as follows:
“Most Gracious Sovereign—We, Your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled, beg leave to thank Your Majesty for the most gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament”.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Barran) (Con)
My Lords, the Queen’s Speech will deliver EU exit alongside an ambitious programme of domestic reform that delivers real change to the people of this country. It is my pleasure to update noble Lords on the Government’s plans for the next Session for the Department of Health and Social Care, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Education.
I turn first to the Department of Health and Social Care. In September, the Government announced the health infrastructure plan, the biggest and boldest hospital building programme in a generation. Six new hospital schemes will start immediately, and another 21 schemes have been given the green light to develop their plans. It was also announced in the Queen’s Speech that new laws will be taken forward to help implement the NHS long-term plan in England. The Government have already committed to a multi-year funding settlement that will see a £33.9 billion per annum increase in the NHS budget by 2023-24.
In September the NHS published a set of recommendations for legislation changes that would enable our health service to go faster and further in realising the ambitions set out in the long-term plan: to improve integration, reduce bureaucracy and promote collaboration. We are considering the recommendations made by the NHS thoroughly and we will bring forward detailed proposals shortly. In due course we will publish draft legislation that will accelerate the long-term plan for the NHS, transforming patient care and future-proofing our NHS.
Legislation will also be taken forward to establish the health service safety investigations body. This will be the world’s first such body, with powers to investigate incidents that occur during the provision of NHS services that have or may have implications for the safety of patients. Drawing on the approaches used in other safety-critical sectors, investigations by this new body will be independent and professionally led. This will transform the way that patient safety incidents in the NHS are investigated.
A medicines and medical devices Bill will capitalise on opportunities to ensure that our NHS and patients can have faster access to innovative medicines while supporting the growth of our domestic sector. The Bill will give powers to remove unnecessary bureaucracy for the lowest-risk clinical trials, encouraging the rapid introduction of new medicines, and it will ensure patient safety by implementing a scheme to combat counterfeit medicines entering supply chains and a registration scheme for online sellers. This will ensure that the UK remains at the forefront of the global life sciences industry after Brexit, giving patients faster access to innovative medicines and supporting the growth of our domestic sector.
We will also bring forward substantive proposals to fix the crisis in adult social care, giving people the dignity and security they deserve. Putting social care on a sustainable footing is one of the biggest long-term challenges facing society. The Government have given local authorities access to up to £3.9 billion more in dedicated funding for adult social care this year and made available a further £410 million for adults’ and children’s services. In the recent spending round, the Government announced that councils will be provided with access to an additional £1 billion next year for adults’ and children’s social care. The Government will consult on a 2% precept that will enable councils to access a further £500 million for adult social care. This funding will support local authorities to meet rising demand and will continue to stabilise the social care system.
We will continue to work to modernise and reform the Mental Health Act to ensure that people get the support they need and have a much greater say in their care. In 2017 we commissioned the independent review of the Mental Health Act to look at rising rates of detention, the disproportionate number of people from black and minority-ethnic groups detained under the Act and processes that are out of step with a modern mental health care system. The findings made it clear that we need to modernise the Mental Health Act to ensure that patients’ views are respected and that patients are not detained any more than is absolutely necessary. By the end of this year we will publish a White Paper setting out our response. This will pave the way for reform of the Mental Health Act and will tackle issues addressed by the review. We will ensure that people subject to the Act receive better care and have a much greater say in that care. Patient choice and autonomy will be improved—for example, by enabling patients to set out their preferences around care and treatment in advance. The process of detention, care and treatment while detained will be reformed, including by providing patients with the ability to challenge detention.
The Government also announced new legislation from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. This includes new legislation that will help accelerate the delivery of fast, reliable and secure broadband networks to millions of homes. We will roll out gigabit-capable broadband across the UK to achieve nationwide coverage as soon as possible, so that people can reap the huge benefits of the fastest, most secure and most resilient internet connections. Faster speeds will boost productivity, drive innovation in our public services and give people the fast connectivity they need to reap the benefits of the digital revolution.
The legislation will create a cheaper, faster, light-touch tribunal process for telecoms companies to obtain interim code rights or access rights for a period of up to 18 months. This will mean that they can install broadband connections where the landlord has failed to respond to repeated requests for access. Amendments to the Building Act 1984 will require all new-build developments to have the infrastructure to support gigabit-capable connections. There will be a requirement for developers to work with broadband companies to install gigabit-capable connections in virtually all new-build developments, up to a cost cap. As well as this, the Government have recently pledged £5 billion to support the rollout of gigabit-capable broadband in the hardest-to-reach 20% of the country.
The Government also announced that Ministers will continue to develop proposals to improve internet safety. Britain is leading the world in developing a comprehensive regulatory regime to keep people safe online, protect children and other vulnerable users and ensure that there are no safe spaces for terrorists online. The Online Harms White Paper published in April set out the Government’s plan for world-leading legislation to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online.
The proposals as set out in the White Paper include a new duty of care on companies towards their users, with an independent regulator to oversee this framework. We want to keep people safe online but to do so in a proportionate way, ensuring that freedom of expression is upheld and promoted online and that businesses do not face undue burdens. We are seeking to do this by ensuring that companies have the right processes and systems in place to fulfil their obligations, rather than penalising them for individual instances of unacceptable content. A public consultation on this has closed and we are analysing the responses and considering the issues raised. We are working closely with a variety of stakeholders, including technology companies and civil society groups, to understand their views.
Turning to the Department for Education, we will ensure that all young people have access to excellent education, unlocking their full potential and preparing them for the world of work. We are giving schools a multibillion-pound boost, investing a total of £14 billion over three years, so that the annual core schools budget is £7.1 billion higher by 2022-23. The IFS has said that this investment will restore schools funding to previous levels in real terms per pupil, also by 2022-23. We will level up minimum per pupil funding for primary schools to £4,000 and for secondary schools to £5,000, while making sure per pupil funding for all schools can rise at least with inflation.
We are also spending around £3.5 billion on early education entitlements this year alone, and next year we are planning to spend more than £3.6 billion. Our focus in this area is on delivering positive results. A record proportion of children are starting year one with a good level of development. More than 1.4 million children are taking advantage of funded early education in 2019. Over 850,000 disadvantaged two year-olds have benefited from a 15 hours early education place since the programme began.
We also have a world-class university sector. We are home to nearly half of the top 10 universities in the world. Since 2012, total income for universities in England has increased by around £6 billion and we have frozen the maximum tuition fees rate and increased the threshold for repayments, now worth up to £425 a year for graduates.
Looking ahead, T-levels will represent a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reform technical education in this country, put it on a par with the best in the world and offer young people a real choice of high-quality training that is equal in esteem to traditional academic routes. We are on track for the first teaching of three T-levels in 2020; a further seven will be rolled out in 2021, and all 25 courses by 2023.
Finally, I would like to talk about the work the Government are doing on employment and pensions, in particular the Pensions Schemes Bill. The purpose of the Bill is to support pension saving in the 21st century and to help people plan for the future. It provides a framework for the establishment, operation and regulation of collective money purchase schemes, commonly known as collective defined contribution pensions. These schemes will provide more options for employers and offer members a target benefit level. The Bill will protect people’s savings for later life by strengthening the powers of the Pensions Regulator to tackle irresponsible management of private pension schemes. This will include introducing new criminal offences, with the most serious carrying a maximum sentence of seven years’ imprisonment and a civil penalty of up to £1 million. It will also create a legislative framework for the introduction of pensions dashboards. With record numbers of people saving for retirement, it is more important than ever that they can easily access information about their pensions. Pensions dashboards will mean that for the first time, people will be able to view online in one place all their pension information.
As the Prime Minister said last week, this is a programme that will set our country on a new upwards trajectory. At its heart is a new vision for Britain, a vision of a country happy and confident about its future, a vision of the country that we all love. The mission of this Government is nothing less than to make our country the greatest place on earth, the greatest place to live, work and do business, and this Queen’s Speech will set us firmly on that course.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford) (Con)
My Lords, I am honoured to close this final day of debate in support of the gracious Speech. As ever, debate has been robust, largely courteous, but underpinned by the extensive expertise of this House. In this age of partisan rancour, our debate has been informed by a deeply held belief that in this place, regardless of political persuasion, we are bound together by a collective responsibility to use our roles here to improve the lives of our fellow citizens. That is something to be proud of.
The topics we have debated today—education, work and pensions, culture and health—make more difference than any others to the lived experience of people across this country. That is why the past seven hours have flown by for me as I have listened with pleasure to the important contributions of 61 noble Lords. It is because of the importance of these issues and the consensus on the need for action that the Prime Minister and his Government have prioritised them over recent months and, of course, in the gracious Speech, investing £14 billion in schools over the next three years, supporting the modernisation of pensions, accelerating access to broadband—perhaps even to the home of the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare—and three new health Bills, with a commitment to work towards a further two. It is an ambitious agenda and has been fully reflected in today’s wide-ranging debate.
I will now do my best to respond to the many important points raised today, but it will be necessary, I am afraid, that the relevant Minister might have to write on a few issues that I am not able to cover in the time that is available. I begin by focusing on education. I know that the whole House is passionate about supporting investment in education and the importance of ensuring, as the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, so clearly put forward, that all children, no matter their background, can benefit from an outstanding education. As the noble Lords, Lord Storey and Lord Berkeley, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Bull and Lady McIntosh, noted, there should be a broad and varied education. As a former musician myself, noble Lords are preaching to the choir when they emphasise the value of creativity to society and its role in preparing children for the future—even its role in preparing a recalcitrant Health Minister.
As has been mentioned, the Government have announced welcomed investment in schools. I can confirm to the noble Lord, Lord Watson, that, following the funding allocation statements issued by DfE last week, all schools will be better off in three years’ time.
The noble Lord, Lord Addington, raised very important issues around special educational needs, and the Government have announced an additional £770 million of investment in 2021 for SEND education. But the whole House will appreciate that providing the best possible education is not just about money. That is why the DfE has commissioned a review of SEND education to assess what further we need to do in order to support pupils with special educational needs, so I will put forward the specific points that he raised in order to ensure they are properly considered.
The Government have also set up a cross-government hub for all disability issues in the Cabinet Office to draw together a catalysed, more effective cross-government action on these points. The DWP has increased the size of Access to Work grants by £15,000 in the last year, driving forward a 7% increase in the volume of grants made in recognition of their importance. This will support those with disabilities and special educational needs in the workplace.
A wide range of noble Lords noted the critical role of further education, with my noble friends Lord Lingfield and Lord O’Shaughnessy, and the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Blackstone and Lady Garden, all drawing attention to it. Further education is at the heart of the Government’s plans for an education system that works for everyone. That is why we have announced—as has been noted—an additional £400 million of funding and a focus on improving not only the quality of teaching and learning but also its status.
Many noble Lords have welcomed an investment as well of £290 million in 20 institutes of technology to deliver higher technical education as a clear route to high-skilled, high-wage employment, but they also sought more clarity on how this will work in practice. I shall ask for those points to receive an individual response as I cannot get through all of those right now.
The noble Lord, Lord Storey, and others also raised the response to the Augar review, which is awaited. I confirm that Ministers are considering this very carefully and will respond shortly. This is a policy area that would clearly benefit from close attention in the spending review that is coming up next year.
On essay mills, I can confirm that, in the first instance, the Office for Students will engage the sector in order to eliminate the use of such organisations, but the Government do not rule out further action.
Clearly, more progress needs to be made on apprenticeships, but much progress has been made: over 1.8 million apprenticeships have started since 2015, investment annually is over £2.5 billion and over 60% of apprenticeships are of the highest industry-desired standards. I recognise the need for progress, and we are working hard on it. That is why the Secretary of State has taken the portfolio of apprenticeships as his personal responsibility, in response to the point made earlier.
I turn to work and pensions. The noble Baronesses, Lady Donaghy, Lady Watkins and Lady Sherlock, and the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, all raised universal credit and concerns about in-work poverty. I think there is a consensus that work should always pay. Universal credit is a welfare system designed to help people into work, to support those who need help and to be fair to everyone who pays for it. The DWP recognises, however, the need to continually review and improve universal credit. This year alone, the DWP has committed to running a pilot on moving to universal credit to ensure the further and safe rollout of the advantages of universal credit. I noted the question about an update on that progress and I will ensure that a note comes to the noble Baroness about that. The department has announced that it will reduce the maximum single sanction that a claimant can face from three years to six months, and the number of those sanctions has also fallen. The department has instructed work coaches to use the flexible support fund to support parents with childcare costs. It is also providing £3 billion to support transitional arrangements for claimants moving over from other benefits. Noble Lords also raised concerns about the benefits freeze being extended. I can confirm now that it will come to an end by 2020.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bryan, and a number of noble Lords mentioned the pensions Bill. I genuinely feel that pensions is an area where there has been positive progress over the past decade. The Bill now goes a step further to improve both the options available to employers and accessibility for employees, so that they can track their pension as they would their bank account.
Our debate on DCMS was particularly robust, it is fair to say. I begin with broadband rollout, which was mentioned by the noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Aberdare. The Government have been clear in their commitment to delivering nationwide, gigabit-capable, reliable and resilient broadband—that is not easy to say at the end of a long debate—as soon as possible. That is why the gracious Speech included the telecommunications Bill, to ensure that millions of leaseholders are not left behind as we upgrade our communications network. I am conscious of the time but I am also aware that the Second Reading is imminent, so I am sure that many of the points made by your Lordships will be answered in letter form and that there will be ample time for detailed debate and robust scrutiny, which I am sure this House will provide.
The noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Griffiths, and a range of Peers noted the challenge of online harms and how to regulate and respond to digital technologies that can change and evolve rapidly. The online harms White Paper was published in April. It set out the Government’s plan for world-leading legislation to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online. The public consultation has closed and the Government’s response will be published in the coming months. We will then publish a draft Bill for pre-legislative scrutiny. Let me be clear: the Government recognise that this is one of the fundamental challenges facing our society in the coming years and they are determined to address it.
I want explicitly to recognise the strength of feeling expressed by the noble Baronesses, Lady Benjamin and Lady Howe, the noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord McNally, and other noble Lords on the issue of age verification and the pace of reform. I will confer that back to the department. The Government are clear that protecting children is at the heart of our online reform agenda and is key to wider government priorities. The issue here is making sure that those reforms are as effective as possible and do the job that they are intended to do.
Moving on to health and social care, my department was delighted to begin the year by publishing the clinically led NHS long-term plan and by securing £33.9 billion to support its implementation. On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Smith, the plan focuses not on funnelling ever-greater funding into the health service but on ensuring sustainable and substantive reform that can support what we all want to see in the health service. As my noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy noted, there are delicate balances to be struck on integration versus accountability, which the upcoming NHS long-term plan Bill is intended to address. That has also been clinically and NHS-led.
I follow the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, who is not in his place—
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
Sorry, he is in a different place. I follow the noble Lord in paying tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Patel, and his colleagues on the Long-Term Sustainability of the NHS Committee, which he chaired, because many of its proposals were replicated in the long-term plan.
The noble Baronesses, Lady Greengross, Lady Walmsley and Lady Massey, and my noble friend Lord Young raised the importance of prevention, primary care and tackling inequalities. These are all important agendas for the Government and for my department, which is why the Government have committed more than £4.5 billion of additional funding to support GP services and will recruit an additional 20,000 staff to work in practices.
It is also why the Government have published their prevention vision, which sets out an ambitious agenda in order to put public health at the heart of everything the department and the NHS do, including aggressive action to tackle obesity such as the sugar tax, which has proved to be a great success. I am happy to reassure my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham that this will continue to be right at the heart of our agenda. Moreover, the department is addressing the real and valid concerns about health inequalities. We have just recently finished consulting on how to improve the health of people living in the poorest communities. Reducing inequalities is a key part of the long-term plan and will be a requirement as part of our PCMs.
We have also worked closely with Defra on the introduction of the clean air strategy, which was noted by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and on antimicrobial resistance, which no one noted but I do so now, and with Henry Dimbleby on his food strategy. On this last point, while I cannot commit the Leader of the Opposition to continuing commitment on this agenda, I can certainly reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, of the Government’s ongoing commitment and I thank her for both her expertise and her work on this agenda because it is essential.
The noble Baronesses, Lady Greengross, Lady Meacher, Lady Hollins, Lady Watkins, Lady Sherlock, Lady Campbell, Lady Wheeler and Lady Bakewell, along with my noble friend Lord Young, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London also raised the critical issue of social care. As my noble friend Lord Willetts said, we must just get on with it, and I do not think that I can improve on what the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, said: “Ageing is not an option”, and nor is substantial reform in this area.
The Prime Minister was clear on the steps of Downing Street about this Government’s determination to fix the crisis in social care to ensure that every older person has dignity and security and that no one needs to sell their home to fund their care. He wants this to be a bold, once-in-a-generation reform and I can reassure the House that officials across government are working, probably at this moment, on developing ambitious proposals on top of the £17.1 billion invested in the past financial year. However, I will strongly reiterate to the Secretary of State and to the Prime Minister, as I often do, the very strong mood in this House that the time for action is now. I will also confirm that the department will consider carefully the recommendations set out by the Independent Living Strategy Group, led by the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, and those of the Intergenerational Fairness Committee, of which the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, is a member, as part of those considerations.
The noble Baronesses, Lady Jolly, Lady Donaghy, Lady Janke and Lady Watkins, along with the noble Lord, Lord Patel, raised the issue of NHS staffing. Having the right staff is crucial to delivering the aims and objectives of the long-term plan. To address this, we are recruiting more staff than ever before with, for example, a 25% increase in training places for medical students. We have also given a significant pay rise to more than 1 million staff and my noble friend Lady Harding is currently preparing for publication the people plan, which will set out a range of ambitious options for what more we can do to improve the situation. In answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Watkins, this will specifically consider the whole range of potential financial incentives which could support recruitment and retention. At this point I will follow other noble Lords in putting on the record my department’s deep appreciation of the noble Baroness, Lady Emerton, for her wonderful work as a champion of the nursing profession.
The noble Baronesses, Lady Jolly, Lady Hollins, Lady Sherlock, Lady Featherstone, and Lady Tyler, and my noble friends Lady Verma and Lord Kirkhope, along with the noble Lord, Lord Watson, noted the importance of getting mental health right, the reform of the Mental Health Act and the care of those with disabilities. This is not only a crucial issue but a complex area, so it is important that we get the reform right. I recognise the impatience of noble Lords to go further faster, but there is real progress to report. The Government have already accepted a number of the recommendations made in the independent review. We will publish a White Paper by the end of the year and we will set out in detail our legislative and non-legislative response. To address the immediate service challenges, the Government are also investing record amounts in NHS mental health care as well as in care for those with learning disabilities and autism. I can also report that capital will not be overlooked. Since 2017, we have recruited more than 3,000 additional staff to put in place a wide range of measures to ensure that care is provided closer to home.
The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, and my noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy raised Brexit and the health service. In any Brexit scenario my department is committed to maintaining the very highest standards of regulation and I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, and my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham that we will remain a world leader in the regulation of tobacco and of prevention, as we have laid out in our prevention vision. Our preference remains close co-operation with the EMA as well as with our other long-term friends and partners such as the Commonwealth, as my noble friend Lord Howell mentioned.
The importance of patient safety was also raised by a number of Peers in relation to the upcoming Health Service Safety Investigations Bill. I am very much looking forward to its Second Reading next week, when I am sure we will have plenty of time to debate it and I will be held to account in every possible way—so I shall not go into detail on that now.
I will say just a word about innovation, raised by the noble Lords, Lord Patel, Lord Kakkar and Lord Bassam, who raised the importance of life sciences and innovation. We have a very strong record in this area. I am afraid I do not recognise the picture presented in the IPPR’s recent report. Turnover and employment in UK life sciences have grown notably over the last decade, and the life sciences strategy sets out a powerful vision for action, which we are delivering against assiduously. This has included £1 billion of government investment and £3 billion of leveraged industry investment. We now have substantially better partnership between the NHS, academia, government and industry, but I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, that we have to improve on our rate of progress between ideation and adoption. Part of that is better working between all those agencies engaged in trying to deliver against that objective.
I also noted strong support from the noble Lord, Lord Patel, and others on the fast-track visa for top scientists. I will take away the sensible suggestion from the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, that this be expanded to include the cultural and creative sectors.
Finally, the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, raised the storage of gametes. I agree on the importance of this, as I think she knows, and have continued to push this matter within my department. To that end, I hope to have a positive update in the coming weeks.
I am mindful that I have only a short amount of time and the clock is counting down. In closing, I reiterate my thanks to noble Lords for their many and varied insightful contributions. Responding to a debate such as this is a challenge, given the breadth of issues we have covered, but it is also a pleasure, giving me the opportunity to engage on many issues that I do not regularly come across in my brief. As has been pointed out, we debate the gracious Speech in unprecedented political times, but my commitment to this place on behalf of the Government and the departments for whom I speak today is that we will continue to strive day in, day out to improve the lives of and the services available to people right across the United Kingdom. I know that is an ambition to which all your Lordships here today will join me in being committed.