House of Commons
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Speaker’s Statement
Mr Speaker
I remind colleagues that a deferred Division will take place today. Members should be aware that the timings have reverted to being between 11.30 am and 2 pm, though deferred Divisions will continue to take place in the Members’ Library. Members will cast their votes by placing a completed Division slip in one of the ballot boxes provided. If a Member has a proxy vote in operation, they must not vote in person in the deferred Division. The nominated proxy should vote on their behalf. I remind colleagues of the importance of social distancing during the deferred Division and ask them to pick up a Division slip from the Vote Office and fill it in before they reach the Library, if possible. The result will be announced in the Chamber at a convenient moment after the Division is over.
Oral Answers to Questions
(4 years ago)
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Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)
Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)
The Minister for Equalities (Kemi Badenoch)
The pandemic has affected all communities in our country. This Government have done their utmost to protect lives and livelihoods. We have targeted economic support at those who need it most. For example, rolling out unprecedented levels of economic support worth over £200 billion has provided a much needed lifeline for those working in shut-down sectors such as retail and hospitality, the workforces in which are disproportionately young, female and from a black, Asian or minority ethnic background. We have taken action to ensure that disabled people have access to disability benefits, financial support and employment support, such as the Work and Health programme, and we have extended the self-employment income support scheme, in which some ethnic minorities are disproportionately represented.
Rebecca Long Bailey [V]
Analysis of the labour force survey by the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that the shut-down sectors worst affected by the pandemic have a higher than average proportion of workers who are women, who are disabled and who are from BAME backgrounds. In Salford, where this economic picture is stark, the number of people claiming universal credit has more than doubled since January. Will the Minister, first, commit to demanding that the Chancellor strengthens support to those struggling, as advised by the Social Security Advisory Committee, such as protecting the £20 universal credit uplift and extending it to people on legacy benefits? Secondly, will she request bespoke financial support packages for the worst hit sectors?
Kemi Badenoch
The hon. Lady will be aware that the Chancellor will be announcing his spending review this afternoon, and I think she will find that many of the questions she is asking will be answered at that point. With respect to the sectors that have been shut down, as I said in my first answer, we recognise that those people who are on low incomes have been disproportionately affected, and those groups are the ones who have most benefited from the interventions that the Treasury has put in place.
Zarah Sultana
Nearly one in seven people in Coventry are now on universal credit. That is a 97% increase since March. Low earnings, higher rates of poverty and greater need mean that women, BAME communities and disabled people rely more on UC and the social security system. Fixing it, from scrapping the two-child limit and benefit cap to an uplift in payments, is a question of gender, racial and disability justice. What has the Minister done to push for these measures in today’s spending review, including keeping the £20 UC uplift from April 2021 and extending it to jobseeker’s allowance and employment support allowance?
Kemi Badenoch
I am afraid that, as I said in my earlier answer, questions about the spending review need to be asked to during the spending review, which will take place later this afternoon.
Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con) [V]
We know that we went into the pandemic with female employment at a record level and with the disability employment gap shrinking. Will my hon. Friend update the House on the work that she is undertaking with the Department for Work and Pensions to make sure that women, disabled people and BAME people are not disadvantaged when we come out of the pandemic?
Kemi Badenoch
As we discussed at the Women and Equalities Committee a few weeks ago, this is something that the Government Equalities Office is very much alive to. I am working with equalities Ministers across various Departments to see how the interventions that we are making are not going to impact on those groups who are most vulnerable, and I will continue to update her on that work.
Mr Speaker
I welcome Charlotte Nichols to her first outing at the Dispatch Box.
Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
There are over 600,000 people in work who are clinically extremely vulnerable. Current shielding guidance states that if they cannot work from home, they should not go to their usual place of work, but this does not entitle them to be furloughed. This means that many disabled people have had to ask their employer to put them on furlough in order to receive financial support. Where employers have refused to do so, an estimated 22% of disabled employees have had to choose between their lives and their livelihoods. Does the Minister think that this is fair?
Kemi Badenoch
As the hon. Lady will know, the pandemic has affected many different groups in very bad ways, and we have done everything we can to support them. Specifically on disabled people, we have done quite a lot in looking at the benefits that they have and providing support in many other ways, including employment support. These are the ways that we are protecting those people who are being disproportionately impacted. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work, who is also in the House today, is going to be answering more questions on our disabled strategy, and perhaps he will be able to provide more information specifically from a Department for Work and Pensions perspective.
Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)
Since the publication of research on pregnancy and maternity discrimination, the Government have worked with ACAS and published updated guidance to ensure that women and employers understand their rights and obligations, consulted on measures to extend redundancy protections and committed to introduce these in an employment Bill.
Mr Speaker
We are heading to Basingstoke—but maybe not yet, as we do not have Maria Miller, so I call Kerry McCarthy.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Rachel Maclean)
The rail to refuge scheme, as of 15 November 2020, has assisted 626 adults and 210 children in crisis.
Kerry McCarthy
I thank the Minister for her response. She will know that domestic abuse services have, sadly, seen a real surge in demand during the lockdown. Rail to refuge schemes, including the GWR scheme that serves my constituency, have helped more than 800 people to flee domestic abuse through the use of a free rail ticket. Can the Minister commit to funding these schemes in the future, because they are really important to people who need to get away?
Rachel Maclean
I thank the hon. Lady very much for her support for this scheme. She will know that over 63% of victims of domestic abuse accessing the support have stated that they would not have been able to access a journey at all if the scheme had not been in place. I am pleased that this vital scheme is extended until next March, and we keep all these schemes under review all the time.
Mr Speaker
We are now going back to Basingstoke, to Maria Miller with her supplementary question.
Mrs Miller [V]
In Germany, women who are pregnant or on maternity leave cannot be made redundant, to avoid any hidden discrimination. With one in four women who are pregnant during the pandemic experiencing discrimination here at home, is it not time for the UK to look carefully at adopting a similar approach to that taken in Germany?
Paul Scully
I thank my right hon. Friend for pushing her private Member’s Bill and for her concern in this area. I was pleased to meet her. Germany has a far more prescriptive labour market. We support the intention behind her Bill but, having undertaken a full consultation in 2019, we have decided on a different approach, working with the grain of our current regime and extending the existing protection afforded to a new mother on maternity leave into pregnancy and for a six-month return to work period. We will introduce these changes as soon as parliamentary time allows. I am more than happy to continue to work with my right hon. Friend in that regard.
Sir David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)
Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)
Christian Wakeford (Bury South) (Con)
Holly Mumby-Croft (Scunthorpe) (Con)
Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)
The Minister for Women and Equalities (Elizabeth Truss)
This Government are focused on levelling up. We are transforming our skills system so that everybody has a chance to train and retrain, and we are using important new data analysis from the Equality Hub to ensure that we are addressing where real inequality lies in the UK.
Sir David Evennett [V]
I welcome all the work my right hon. Friend is doing to promote social mobility. However, what assessment has she made of the needs of groups such as white working class children whose challenges have not had enough attention to date?
Elizabeth Truss
I strongly agree with my right hon. Friend. White British children who receive free school meals perform worse at GCSE than equivalent black and Asian children. We need to ensure that children from all backgrounds are succeeding in modern Britain, and that is going to be a major focus for the Equality Department, working with the Department for Education.
Miriam Cates
Social mobility should not mean having to leave your community to go in search of opportunity: we need to spread opportunities across our towns and villages, including those in my constituency. The digital revolution should provide an opportunity to make this more achievable, but sadly, many adults, even in my constituency, do not have the digital work skills needed to take advantage of this. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the digital skills boot camps being established across the country, alongside the fantastic work of civil society organisations such as the Good Things Foundation in Sheffield, are vital to opening up the jobs of the future to people in all communities?
Elizabeth Truss
We know that digital skills are vital in the modern economy. We also know that this is a huge opportunity for us to level up our country. We know that take-up is particularly low among girls in areas such as computing, and that is why the digital skills boot camps are vital. They are being rolled out across the country in spring 2021 to ensure that everybody has the skills they need to succeed.
Christian Wakeford
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the lifetime skills guarantee is a landmark achievement in opening up opportunity for all, especially in left behind communities, such as Radcliffe, in my constituency?
Elizabeth Truss
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; too many people have been let down in the past by poor education. We want to make that right, through the lifetime skills guarantee, making sure that there is an entitlement to level 3 qualifications and access to four years of loan funding, for people to use over their life- time, so that everybody, right across the United Kingdom, has the skills they need to succeed.
Holly Mumby-Croft
My right hon. Friend will know that education is incredibly important when it comes to opportunity and social mobility. What steps are the Government taking to make sure that those who learn differently due to dyslexia are able to receive that crucial early diagnosis and support so that they can access those opportunities equally?
Elizabeth Truss
My hon. Friend makes a very good point; everybody needs access to a world-class education that sets them up for life. I am pleased to say that in early years 25% of children with special educational needs achieved a good level of development in 2019, which compares with a figure of only 14% in 2013, but we continue to do more to make sure that children with special educational needs have access to a good education, right across the country.
Alexander Stafford [V]
What steps is my right hon. Friend taking to ensure that mothers are supported in the return to work during this recovery?
Elizabeth Truss
It is very important that working mothers and working fathers have access to the childcare they need so that they are able to get into work during the coronavirus crisis. That is why it is so important that we keep our schools and nurseries open, and that we continue to give the support of the 30 hours a week of childcare for three and four-year-olds.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Justin Tomlinson)
The Government are committed to supporting disabled people affected by the covid-19 outbreak. We are ensuring that disabled people continue to have access to disability benefits and other financial support during it.
Patrick Grady
I wonder whether the Minister is aware that the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has shown that nearly half of people in poverty in the UK are either themselves disabled or live in a household with someone who is. As he says, covid has exacerbated that hardship, and the inequalities disabled people face will only be exacerbated by the fact that those who are on not on universal credit will not have benefited from the uplift of £20 that was applied to UC. So has he, or anyone else in the Government, carried out an equalities impact assessment on the decision not to extend the £20 uplift to legacy benefits?
Justin Tomlinson
Those on legacy benefits will have benefited from the 1.7% uplift as part of the annual upratings. Depending on individual circumstances, they may have also benefited from the changes to the local housing allowance; the increases in discretionary housing support; the various employment support schemes; and the additional discretionary support administered via local authorities. This year alone we anticipate expenditure on disability benefits to increase by nearly 5%.
Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP) [V]
The reason my Scottish National party colleagues and I, and others, have repeatedly called for this £20 uplift is that covid-19 costs people with disabilities significantly more money than it does most others, yet they have been completely ignored. Last week, a petition from the Disability Benefits Consortium calling for the £20 uplift, which had 119,000 signatures, was handed in to the Chancellor. As the Minister who represents the interests of people with disabilities, did he ask the Chancellor to do this in today’s spending review? If not, what did he ask for?
Justin Tomlinson
As I have already set out, we anticipate spending on disability benefits to increase by 4.6%; we are talking about close to £20 billion and that is targeted support for those who most need it.
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Justin Tomlinson)
The Government are committed to supporting disabled people affected by the covid-19 outbreak. We are ensuring that disabled people continue to have access to employment support, disability benefits, financial support, food, medicines, accessible communications and updated guidance.
Vicky Foxcroft [V]
Data published by Scope this week shows that the disability employment gap stands at a shocking 29.2% nationwide. Many are fearful that the gap will increase with the economic fallout of covid-19. We clearly need a long-term, multi-pronged approach to address this deeply entrenched issue, so will the Minister commit to examining Scope’s five policy asks and work with his Department for Work and Pensions colleagues to put them into practice?
Justin Tomlinson
I put on the record a tribute to the proactive and constructive work of Scope and many other organisations to support our efforts, which have resulted in record disability employment—up 1.3 million since 2010. Yes, these are unprecedented times, but we have made sure that all the schemes in our £30 billion plan for jobs have disability provision embedded. We will continue with our ambition to have 1 million more disabled people in work by 2027—nothing has changed.
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
The Minister for Equalities (Kemi Badenoch)
We are committed to a fairer society. In July, the Government set up the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, which is reviewing inequality in the UK, focusing on areas that include education, employment, health and the criminal justice system. The commission is looking at outcomes for the whole population and is due to report at the end of the year.
Wendy Chamberlain
This year, one of the issues about which I received the most correspondence was the Black Lives Matter movement and the death of George Floyd. A key thing that came across was that my constituents want to ensure that what we teach in schools is properly representative of the role that black Britons and other people of colour have played in our history. Today, the “Black Curriculum” report, led by Dr Jason Arday of Durham University, has concluded that the national curriculum in England
“systematically omits the contribution of Black British history”.
Will the Minister speak to the Secretary of State for Education, urge him to work with colleagues in the devolved Administrations, such as Kirsty Williams in Wales, and ensure that we have a truly reflective curriculum?
Kemi Badenoch
I have not seen the report that the hon. Lady refers to, but I will look at it with interest, decide, from an equalities perspective, whether I agree with the conclusions that have been made, and then speak to the Secretary of State for Education about it.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)
The Government are supporting childcare provision during the pandemic by funding the free childcare entitlement for two, three and four-year-olds with £3.6 billion in 2020-21. We are giving grants and loans to businesses and ensuring that childcare providers can access the coronavirus job retention scheme, where necessary.
Paul Blomfield [V]
The Prime Minister has urged everybody who can do so to work at home until April, and obviously many people have been doing that for the past eight months, but childcare responsibilities are still falling largely on women. As a result, recent data has shown that 67% of women with children—compared with just 16% of fathers—are likely to quit their job because they cannot balance childcare with work. The Minister talked about the action that the Government are taking, as did the Minister for Women and Equalities earlier, but it is clearly not working, so what more will the Government do to reset this imbalance?
Paul Scully
The Government have introduced 30 hours of free childcare for eligible working parents of three and four-year-olds. We have ensured that the childcare sector has been able to stay open to support parents to continue to work. We are investing £1 billion from 2021 to help to create more high-quality, wraparound and holiday childcare places, both before and after school, and we will continue to push the fact that childcare needs to be distributed equally between both parents.
Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)
The Minister for Women and Equalities (Elizabeth Truss)
As we recover from covid, I am determined that we ensure that everyone across Britain is treated equally and has equal opportunity. The Equality and Human Rights Commission is critical to delivering that. I am delighted that, alongside announcing Baroness Kishwer Falkner as my preferred chair, I have appointed four new commissioners with a diverse range of opinions and backgrounds—a leading tech entrepreneur, a leading thinker, a pioneering health expert and a business leader—who are all committed to equality.
Mary Robinson [V]
While the global focus has been on dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, other important issues also need our attention, particularly the rising rates of female genital mutilation. What measures is my right hon. Friend taking to tackle FGM internationally?
Elizabeth Truss
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. This is an issue of concern for the Government. According to the UN Population Fund, the covid-19 pandemic could disrupt efforts towards ending FGM. We cannot let that happen. That is why we are continuing with UK Aid supported programmes on FGM, which have already helped 10,000 communities.
Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab) [V]
Today is the international day for the elimination of violence against women. The latest Office for National Statistics figures show that 1.6 million women experienced domestic abuse last year. Since the pandemic began, domestic abuse has intensified and women have reported finding it harder to escape. Yet 10 years of sustained cuts to services have left just 4,000 beds available for women who are fleeing domestic violence. It is obvious that the funding provided so far is too little too late, so can the Minister say when the Government will adequately fund services and give women the confidence they need, so that they will be protected by this Government?
Elizabeth Truss
We are concerned about domestic abuse during the pandemic. That is why we have provided an extra £76 million to support vulnerable people, including domestic abuse victims, and we have recently made available a further £11 million to support domestic abuse services as they continue to manage the impacts of the pandemic.
Marsha De Cordova
The gender pay gap is still sitting at around 15%. At the current rate of progress, more than 8 million women working today will retire before they see equal pay. This sends a message to women that this Government are happy to turn back the clock on women’s equal pay. I am going to ask the Minister a straightforward question, yes or no: will she restart gender pay gap reporting in April next year?
Elizabeth Truss
Our focus is on making sure that we are helping women during the coronavirus crisis, through the furlough scheme, through making sure that there is flexible working and childcare support available and through making sure that we get more women into jobs. My view is that we need to address the causes of the gender pay gap, including getting more girls and women studying science, technology, engineering and maths subjects, so that they are able to earn higher amounts in their careers.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Justin Tomlinson)
I thank my hon. Friend who is a real champion for disability employment opportunities in his constituency. As part of our £30 billion plan for jobs, disability provision is embedded throughout our schemes, including in kick-start, the job entry targeted support scheme, sector-based academies, apprenticeships, the health and work programme, intensive personalised employment support and access to work. We remind employers that, under the Equality Act 2010, they must focus on ability, not health or disability.
Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab) [V]
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Kemi Badenoch)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. As I said in a recent debate on this topic, we do not accept the premise that the curriculum in this country is colonised. While I am always very interested in hearing the viewpoints about how we can improve the curriculum, there are certain premises that we simply will not accept.
Mrs Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con) [V]
Kemi Badenoch
Sexual and reproductive health services have remained open during the pandemic. Services are maintaining access during this time through scaling up of online services. Guidance from the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare sets out that local pathways for urgent referral for vulnerable groups, including via young people’s outreach, should be maintained.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Streatham) (Lab)
Elizabeth Truss
It is very important that we conduct equality impact assessments, but it is also important that they are kept confidential within the Government to ensure that there is not a chilling effect and we are able to have an honest debate about achieving equality across all Departments.
Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
Elizabeth Truss
First, I congratulate my right hon. Friend on her important work leading the early years healthy development review. I completely agree that we need to ensure that people are protected during the lockdown and that they are helped, as we recover from covid, to find better childcare options and better flexible working options. I am working closely with the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to achieve that.
Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)
The Prime Minister (Boris Johnson) [V]
Good morning, Mr Speaker. I hope very much that our connection works today. This is my last day of virtual meetings with ministerial colleagues and others before I come out of isolation. In addition to my virtual meetings and duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.
Mr Robertson [V]
Can the Prime Minister guarantee that in any agreement that he reaches with the European Union, British sovereignty will be protected for the whole United Kingdom and that the UK will exit the transition period on 31 December as a whole?
The Prime Minister
Yes, indeed; I can make that guarantee. Our position on fish has not changed. We will only be able to make progress if the EU accepts the reality that we must be able to control access to our waters. It is very important at this stage to emphasise that.
Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
Today is International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and Girls. On average, a woman is killed by a man every three days in this country. It is a shocking statistic; and, sadly, the pandemic has seen a significant increase in domestic abuse. I will join those marking this day, and I am sure that the whole House would agree that we need to do far more to end domestic violence.
The Prime Minister may remember that in August last year, he wrote the foreword to the ministerial code. It says:
“There must be no bullying…no harassment; no leaking… No misuse of taxpayer money…no actual or perceived conflicts of interest.”
That is five promises in two sentences. How many of those promises does the Prime Minister think his Ministers have kept?
The Prime Minister
I believe that the Ministers of this Government are working hard and overall doing an outstanding job in delivering the people’s priorities, and that is what we will continue to do. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman waits a little bit longer today, he will hear some of the ways in which this Government are going to take this country forward, with one of the most ambitious programmes of investment in infrastructure, schools and hospitals for generations. If he wants to make any particular allegations about individual Ministers or their conduct, he is welcome to do so. The floor is his.
Keir Starmer
I did not really hear an answer there, so why don’t we go through these commitments in turn, starting with bullying and harassment? The now former independent adviser on ministerial standards concluded that the Home Secretary’s behaviour was, in his words,
“in breach of the Ministerial Code”,
and, he said,
“can be described as bullying”,
which means:
“intimidating or insulting behaviour that makes an individual feel uncomfortable, frightened, less respected or put down.”
What message does the Prime Minister think it sends that the independent adviser on standards has resigned but the Home Secretary is still in post?
The Prime Minister
Sir Alex’s decisions are entirely a matter for him, but the Home Secretary has apologised for any way in which her conduct fell short. Frankly, I make no apology for sticking up for and standing by a Home Secretary who, as I said just now, is getting on with delivering on the people’s priorities: putting, already, 6,000 of the 20,000 more police out on the streets to fight crime and instituting, in the teeth of very considerable resistance, a new Australian-style points-based immigration system. She is getting on with delivering what I think the people of this country want. She is showing a steely determination, and I think that is probably why the Opposition continue to bash her.
Keir Starmer
The reality is that any other Prime Minister would have fired the Home Secretary and any other Home Secretary would have resigned, so I think we will chalk that up as one broken promise.
On to the next: no leaking. Over the summer, we saw repeated leaks about which areas would go into restrictions. The Prime Minister’s plans to go into a second national lockdown were leaked all over the national papers, resulting in a truly chaotic press conference, and we have seen more leaking in the past 24 hours. This serial leaking is causing huge anxiety to millions of people about what is going to happen next. I know there is supposed to be an inquiry under way, but can the Prime Minister tell us, is he any closer to working out who in his Government is leaking this vital information?
The Prime Minister
I have already told you, Mr Speaker, that as soon as we have any information about anybody leaking, we will bring it to the House. But I may say that I think the right hon. and learned Gentleman is really concentrating on trivia when what the people of this country want is to see his support, and the support of politicians across the House, for the tough measures that we are putting in to defeat coronavirus. He makes various attacks on, I think, my leadership and handling of the ministerial code. I would take them a lot more seriously, frankly, if the Leader of the Opposition could explain why the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) is still a member of the Labour party. Does he support the right hon. Gentleman’s continued membership of the Labour party—yes or no? Why doesn’t he answer that question?
Mr Speaker
I think I will just answer that with the fact that it is actually Prime Minister’s questions, not Leader of the Opposition’s questions.
Mr Speaker
I think I will make that decision, Prime Minister. Thankfully we have got the sound—we do not want to lose it. [Laughter.]
Keir Starmer
Thank you, Mr Speaker. The difference, of course, is that I am tackling the issues in my party and the Prime Minister is running away from the issues in his. I take it from his answer that he has no idea who is leaking from his Government, so I think we will put that as another one in the “no” column.
Moving on, to perhaps the most serious of the promises under the code: no misuse of taxpayers’ money. For weeks, I have raised concerns about the Government’s spraying taxpayers’ money on contracts that do not deliver. The problem is even worse than we thought. This week, a Cabinet Office response suggests that the Government purchased not 50 million unusable items of protective equipment but 180 million, and a new report this morning by the National Audit Office identifies a further set of orders totalling £240 million for face masks for the NHS that it cannot use. So will the Prime Minister come clean: how many hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money has been wasted on equipment that cannot be used?
The Prime Minister
Actually, to answer the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s question directly, 99.5% of the 32 billion items of personal protective equipment that this country secured conformed entirely to our clinical needs, once we had checked it. Of all the pathetic lines of attack that we have heard so far, this is the feeblest, because if you remember, Mr Speaker, we were faced with a national pandemic on a scale that we had not seen before and the Government were being attacked by the Labour party for not moving fast enough to secure PPE. I remember the right hon. and learned Gentleman saying that we needed to unblock the blockages in the system and that we needed to shift heaven and earth to get it done. That is what he said at the beginning of the pandemic. Then he complained that we moved too slow. Now he is saying that we moved too fast. He has got to make up his mind what his attack is.
Keir Starmer
It is obvious that either the Prime Minister does not know how much taxpayers’ money has been wasted, or he does not care. So far, we have bullying, harassment, leaking and the misuse of taxpayers’ money. I must say to the Prime Minister that it is not looking good so far, but let us press on. The next one is
“no actual or perceived conflict of interest”.
Where do I start on this one? Last week, we learned that suppliers with political connections were 10 times more likely to be awarded Government contracts, and this week The Sunday Times reports that the Health Secretary appointed one of his closest friends to a key advisory role. This friend also is a major shareholder, as it happens, in a firm that specialises in lobbying the Government on behalf of its clients, and some of those clients have secured tens of millions of pounds of Government contracts during the pandemic. Was the Prime Minister aware of this apparent conflict of interest?
The Prime Minister
In so far as there are any conflicts of interest, they will be evident from the publication of all the details of all the contracts. Again, the right hon. and learned Gentleman just seems to be attacking the Government for shifting heaven and earth, as we did, to get the medicines, the PPE, the equipment and the treatments that this country needed. What it reveals really is a deep underlying Labour hatred of the private sector, and it is actually thanks to the private sector and the Government working with the private sector that the UK was able to produce the world’s first usable treatment for the disease in dexamethasone and has worked hard to secure huge numbers of doses of the world’s first usable room-temperature vaccine. That is the private sector working to deliver for the people of this country and it is this common-sense Conservative Government working with the private sector, rather than abominating it and relying exclusively on some deranged form of state control. How else does he think we could possibly have done it?
Keir Starmer
No one is knocking the private sector; the Government are knocking the taxpayer, and that is not trivial. So I think it is a clean sweep: bullying, harassment, leaking, wasting public money and obvious conflicts of interest. It is the same old story: one rule for the British public and another for the Prime Minister and his friends. Just look at the contrast between his attitude to spraying public money at contracts that do not deliver and his attitude to pay rises for the key workers who kept the country going during this pandemic. If you have a hotline to Ministers, you get a blank cheque, but if you are on the frontline tackling covid, you are picking up the bill. Will the Prime Minister finally get his priorities right, stop wasting taxpayers’ money and give police officers, firefighters, care workers and other key workers the pay rise they so obviously deserve?
The Prime Minister
It is this party and this Government who have given key workers and public sector workers above-inflation pay rises this year, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman knows, whether that is the police, the Army or nurses, who are now getting 12.6% more than they were three years ago. It is this Government who will continue to increase the living wage, as he will discover if he can just contain his impatience for a few minutes.
Indeed, it is this Government who have not only delivered free school meals and a vast increase in spending on development around the world but have looked after the poorest and the neediest. One of the most important facts about the £200 billion coronavirus package of support that the Chancellor has devised for lives and livelihoods across the country is that the benefits overwhelmingly prioritise the poorest and neediest in the country. The reason we can do that is because we have a Government who understand how to run a strong economy and who ensure that they take the tough decisions now that will allow our economy to bounce back—that is what this Government are doing.
Laura Trott (Sevenoaks) (Con)
The Prime Minister
Yes, indeed. That is why we have allocated an additional £560 million this year for essential maintenance and upgrades in the school estate, on top of more than £1.4 billion. In Kent, £20 million is going to the local authority, including for West Kingsdown Church of England Primary School, and nearly £6 million is going to Kemnal Academies Trust. I encourage my hon. Friend to continue her excellent campaign.
Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP) [V]
Protecting the foreign aid budget has long been a source of unity and agreement across this House and across the four nations of the United Kingdom. At the last general election, every major party recommitted to that moral mission of helping the world’s poorest and most vulnerable. Indeed, a senior Government Minister said that it
“paved the way for Britain to meet the UN target of spending 0.7% of national income on aid…and that remains our commitment.”—[Official Report, 16 June 2020; Vol. 677, c. 667.]
Does the Prime Minister agree with that senior Government Minister?
The Prime Minister
Mr Speaker, listening to Opposition Members talking about the 0.7% commitment, you would think that they invented it. It was a Conservative Government who instituted it, and this country can be incredibly proud of what we have delivered for the poorest and neediest people in the world. That will continue. On any view, this country is one of the biggest investors or donors overseas in all its forms—I think we are the second biggest in the G7—whether in percentage terms or cash terms, and that will continue. We have seen a massive increase, as the House will know, in spending on our collective overseas commitments. By the way, as the right hon. Gentleman will know, that is also of huge benefit to Scotland, where there are people in East Kilbride who do a fantastic job in development overseas.
Ian Blackford
I am glad that the Prime Minister seemed to agree with the quote, because the words I quoted were his—it is exactly what he told the House of Commons less than six months ago. I take it that the briefing that has gone on is not true and that the 0.7% commitment will remain in place.
We need to recognise that covid-19 is a global pandemic, and while we are all in the same storm, some nations have better life rafts. The World Bank estimates that the pandemic will push 88 million to 150 million people into extreme poverty. In the world’s poorest countries, hunger and cases of malaria are rising, and the UN projects that as many as 11 million girls may never return to education after school closures. The UK Government cannot eradicate the threat of covid-19 if there is still a threat around the world. Does the Prime Minister agree that keeping the 0.7% commitment is not only the right thing to do morally but is the sensible thing to do in helping with the eradication of covid-19?
The Prime Minister
Of course I agree that the UK should be playing a leading role in eradicating covid-19 around the world. That is why one of the wonderful features of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine, if it is approved, is that it is going to be sold at cost to partners around the world. I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman knows quite how much the UK has already given to COVAX—to the global Vaccine Alliance. I can tell him. It is more than virtually any other country in the world. We should be proud in this country of what we are doing: I think about the $800 million to support COVAX, to say nothing of what we are doing with Gavi and CEPI—the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations—and other organisations. We are in the lead in promoting and in inventing vaccines, but also in making sure that the poorest and neediest around the world get those vaccines. I think the people of this country should be very proud of what they are doing—what you are doing.
Kate Griffiths (Burton) (Con) [V]
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is dead right. What we are going to do is use the new freedoms we have after leaving the common agricultural policy to support farmers to beautify the landscape to make it less prone to flooding, and we are putting £640 million from the nature for climate fund into helping to support the planting of 30,000 hectares of trees by 2025—every year by 2025.
Ed Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)
Three weeks ago, I asked the Prime Minister to support unpaid carers, who are facing extreme hardship during covid, by raising carer’s allowance by £20 a week. It is very disappointing that Ministers have not found that money for carers, but have found hundreds of millions for contracts handed out to Conservative party cronies. It is Carers Rights Day tomorrow, so can I ask the Prime Minister again: will he raise carer’s allowance by £20 a week, as Liberal Democrats are campaigning for, or will he explain why Conservatives think unpaid carers do not deserve extra help?
The Prime Minister
I would be happy to look at that specific grant again, but I have to say that if the right hon. Gentleman looks at what we have done so far with supporting universal credit and the substantial increases in the living wage, we are doing our best to support families who are the neediest across the whole of the UK. As I say, one of the stunning and one of the most remarkable features of the package that we have given to support lives and livelihoods is that the benefits do fall disproportionately, and quite rightly, on the poorest and the neediest.
Dehenna Davison (Bishop Auckland) (Con)
The Prime Minister
Yes, I do agree with that, and that is why we have frozen ministerial salaries this year, as indeed they have been frozen by successive Conservative Governments since 2010. I know that the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority will have heard my hon. Friend and I would encourage it not to proceed.
Stephen Farry (North Down) (Alliance) [V]
The Prime Minister
Of course we are not going to extend the transition period, but we want to make practical arrangements to help businesses in Northern Ireland. We have agreed, for instance, a one-year adjustment period so there is no disruption to the flow of medicines, and we have already launched a £200 million trader support service to help agrifood businesses and others. More details will be announced shortly.
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
The Prime Minister
I have deep sympathy for Ickford in my hon. Friend’s constituency and the flooding it has suffered; I know Ickford. It is very important that local authorities follow the rules in making their planning decisions, as I am sure he would agree, and we are making a huge investment—£5.2 billion—in flood defences to protect the 300,000 homes at risk across the country.
Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab)
The Prime Minister
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I will study the plan he proposes with care, although I should tell him that a massive infrastructure programme is already under way, as the Chancellor will shortly announce, and it may be that in due time the scheme the hon. Gentleman proposes could benefit from those investments.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
The Prime Minister
I have high regard for my hon. Friend, and he is right to call attention to the dangers and damage that lockdowns can do. Of course, they have to be weighed against the damage to health caused by a wave of coronavirus that drives out all other patients from our hospitals and affects the health of non-covid patients as well so very badly. We will of course be setting out an analysis of the health, economic and social impacts of the tiered approach and the data that supports the tiering decisions, as we have done in the past.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
The Prime Minister
The hon. Member is right to call attention to the difficulties many people are facing because of the EWS1 form, and I sympathise very much with them. Mortgage companies should realise that they are not necessary for buildings of under 18 metres; it is absolutely vital that they understand that while we get on with the work of removing cladding from all the buildings we can, and that is what this Government are continuing to do.
Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend asks an excellent question, and we are developing a national bus strategy that will look at the needs and how to get more people to use our buses. In addition to championing green zero-carbon or low-carbon buses, we are providing £20 million for a rural mobility fund to support demand in rural areas.
Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
The Prime Minister
The hon. Lady is right to value key workers and the amazing job that they do—particularly teachers and teaching assistants, who have done fantastic work in getting our kids back into school over the last few months and continue to do an amazing job. I am proud not just of the work we have done to increase public sector pay, with an inflation-busting package in July for the third year running, but of what we are doing to support the record increases in the living wage—delivered by a Conservative Government, invented by a Conservative Government. Conservative Governments can do these things because we understand how to run a strong economy.
Gareth Davies (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)
The Prime Minister
Absolutely. I thank my hon. Friend for the campaigns that he is running to support veterans. We support schemes such as that run by Gerry Hill and his team at Hire a Hero, and we are encouraging businesses to hire veterans with a new national insurance tax break for businesses that do so and, of course, making it easier for veterans to join the civil service.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
The Prime Minister
As the hon. Lady knows, the Government are committed to the 10-point plan for a green industrial revolution, which will generate 250,000 jobs across the country just in the immediate term. I hope very much that BioYorkshire will be among the beneficiaries, and I cannot see any reason why it should not be.
Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)
The Prime Minister
Yes, indeed. How typical of Labour politicians locally to oppose what they call for nationally. I am proud that we are going ahead with a brand new state-of-the-art hospital to be built in Sutton, with most services staying put in modernised buildings at Epsom and St Helier. The new hospital will come as part of the Government’s commitment, as I say, to build 48 hospitals by 2030 in the biggest hospital building programme of a generation.
Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab) [V]
In the summer, we stood on our doorsteps and clapped for all our key workers; today, they will be hit once again with a real-terms cut to their wages by the Chancellor’s pay freeze. I really do wonder, does the Prime Minister actually realise that claps do not pay the bills?
The Prime Minister
The hon. Lady will recognise, at a time when the private sector—when the UK economy—has been so badly hit, and when private sector workers have seen falls in their income, that it is right that we should be responsible in our approach to public finances, and that is what we are going to be. She should be in no doubt that the commitments we have made have been outstanding so far: above-inflation increases for public sector workers just in July; a 12.6% increase for nurses over the past three years; the biggest ever increase in the living wage—and more to come in just a minute if she will contain herself.
Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)
The Prime Minister
It is quite uncanny; it is as though Miss Twitchett and her class were standing over my shoulder as I wrote the 10-point plan, and I thank them for their telepathic inspiration. I passionately agree that that is the right way forward for our country. It will mobilise about £12 billion of Government investment and possibly three times more from the private sector, and create 250,000 to 300,000 jobs. It is a fantastic way forward for our country.
Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)
I am sure that the Prime Minister will share the pleasure that we all have in the great engineering skills that are displayed in our country, especially in the north, and agree that one of the great jewels in the crown are the engineers at Rolls-Royce. Is he aware that Rolls-Royce is about to offshore 350 jobs from the north of England? That will be a devastating blow to that part of the country and remove part of our national industrial infrastructure. Does he agree with the workforce, who are campaigning, that it is in the national interest to retain those jobs in our country? Finally, will he use everything in his power to ensure that that offshoring does not take place?
The Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman is so right to support Rolls-Royce, one of the great companies in our country. Obviously, at the moment Rolls-Royce is suffering from the problems in the aerospace sector—the fact that no one is flying. When a company makes a lot of its money from servicing aero engines, as Rolls-Royce does, it is a very difficult time at the moment. We are keen to work with Rolls-Royce to ensure that that company has a long-term future as a great, great British company. He makes an excellent point, and I can assure him that the Government are on it.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
I am aware that there are obviously no perfect options at the moment, but may I raise with the Prime Minister the issue of pubs and bars that will be affected by the tier 2 restrictions? Many, such as Yorkshire Ales in Snaith in my constituency, have invested considerable amounts of money in being covid-secure, and are now to be denied access to their valuable pre-Christmas trade. Will the Prime Minister look again at those tier 2 restrictions, and if not, look at what other financial support can be offered to those bars and pubs that cannot provide a substantial food offering during this period?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is completely right about the need to support local business, particularly in the hospitality sector. He should know that, in addition to the £3,000 grant for businesses that are forced to close, we have another grant of £2,100 a month for businesses that are in the hospitality and accommodation sector. That is on top of the support that we have given via furlough, obviously, and via business rates and the cuts in VAT, which were intended to support the hospitality sector as well. I am keenly aware of how difficult it is for those pubs, bars, restaurants and hotels that will face a tough time in the tiers as we come out next week. We will do our level best to support them. I should say that we are also giving £1.1 billion to local councils to help them support businesses that are facing difficulties.
I just want to say one thing to the House. As we come out of the lockdown, the way forward is not just through the vaccine, which we hope we will be able to start rolling out in the course of the next few weeks and months, but through the prospect of mass community testing. I pay tribute to the people of Liverpool, who have really stepped up in huge numbers. Hundreds of thousands of people in Liverpool have been tested and that seems to have helped to drive the virus down in Liverpool. We want to see that type of collective action—stepping up to squeeze the disease—happening across the country. That, I think, is a real way forward that will enable the hospitality, accommodation and hotel sector to come out of the restrictive measures quicker than has been currently and recently possible. We have two new very important scientific developments—
Mr Speaker
I think you have managed to answer the question, Prime Minister. I am very pleased that the House of Commons has been able to help to deliver an improvement to the sound and vision from No. 10 today, but we would like our kit back this afternoon, Prime Minister! [Laughter.]
In order to allow the safe exit of hon. Members participating in this item of business and the safe arrival of those participating in the next, I am suspending the House for three minutes.
Petition
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
I rise to present a petition from the residents of Kilmarnock and Loudoun regarding the sub-postmasters who keep our post offices open. We all know that post offices are often the lifeblood of communities, even more so with the closure of banks in so many communities across the UK.
The petition states:
The petition of residents of Kilmarnock and Loudoun,
Declares that sub postmasters and their staff carry out valuable work daily to support their local communities; further declares that they provide financial services that ensure the physical and psychological wellbeing of vulnerable people; and further declares that all sub postmasters should be commended for their efforts and their role should be preserved by a UK Government commitment to the Post Office network.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to ensure the extension of the Post Office subsidy beyond 2021; and make a formal statement on the integral role that sub postmasters play in supporting their communities.
And the petitioners remain, etc
[P002630]
Spending Review 2020 and OBR Forecast
(4 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Speaker
Before the Chancellor of the Exchequer addresses the Chamber, I would like to point out that British Sign Language interpretation of the statement is available to watch on parliamentlive.tv.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Rishi Sunak)
Mr Speaker, today’s spending review delivers on the priorities of the British people. Our health emergency is not yet over and our economic emergency has only just begun, so our immediate priority is to protect people’s lives and livelihoods. But today’s spending review also delivers stronger public services, paying for new hospitals, better schools and safer streets, and it delivers a once-in-a-generation investment in infrastructure, creating jobs, growing the economy and increasing pride in the places we call home.
Our immediate priority is to protect people’s lives and livelihoods, so let me begin by updating the House on our response to coronavirus. We are prioritising jobs, businesses and public services through the furlough scheme, support for the self-employed, loans, grants, tax cuts and deferrals, as well as extra funding for schools, councils, the NHS, charities, culture and sport. Today’s figures confirm that, taken together, we are providing £280 billion to get our country through coronavirus. Next year, to fund our programmes on testing, personal protective equipment and vaccines, we are allocating an initial £18 billion. To protect the public services most affected by coronavirus, we are also providing: £3 billion to support NHS recovery, allowing it to carry out up to a million checks, scans and operations; over £2 billion to keep our transport arteries open, subsidising our rail network; more than £3 billion to local councils; and an extra £250 million to help end rough sleeping. Although much of our coronavirus response is UK-wide, the Government are also providing £2.6 billion to support the devolved Administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Taken together, next year, public services funding to tackle coronavirus will total £55 billion.
Let me turn to the Office for Budget Responsibility’s economic forecasts. I thank the new chair, Richard Hughes, and his whole team for their work. The OBR forecasts that the economy will contract this year by 11.3%, the largest fall in output for more than 300 years. As the restrictions are eased, it expects the economy to start recovering and growing by 5.5% next year, 6.6% in 2022 and then 2.3%, 1.7% and 1.8% in the following years. Even with growth returning, our economic output is not expected to return to pre-crisis levels until the fourth quarter of 2022. The economic damage is likely to be lasting. Long-term scarring means in 2025, the economy will be around 3% smaller than expected in the March Budget.
The economic impact of coronavirus and the action we have taken in response means that there has been a significant but necessary increase in our borrowing and debt. The UK is forecast to borrow a total of £394 billion this year, equivalent to 19% of GDP—the highest recorded level of borrowing in our peacetime history. Borrowing falls to £164 billion next year and to £105 billion in ’22-’23, then remains at around £100 billion, or 4% of GDP, for the remainder of the forecast. Underlying debt, after removing the temporary effect of the Bank of England’s asset purchases, is forecast to be 91.9% of GDP this year. Due to elevated borrowing levels and a forecast persistent current deficit, underlying debt is forecast to continue rising in every year, reaching 97.5% of GDP in ’25-’26.
High as these costs are, the costs of inaction would have been far higher. But this situation is clearly unsustainable over the medium term. We could only act in the way we have because we came into this crisis with strong public finances. We have a responsibility, once the economy recovers, to return to a sustainable fiscal position.
This is an economic emergency. That is why we have taken, and continue to take, extraordinary measures to protect people’s jobs and incomes. It is clear that those measures are making a difference. The OBR now states, as the Bank of England and the International Monetary Fund already have, that our economic response has protected jobs, supported incomes and helped businesses to stay afloat. It has said today that business insolvencies have fallen compared with last year, and the latest data shows the UK’s unemployment rate is lower than that of Italy, France, Spain, Canada and the United States.
We are doing more to build on our plan for jobs. I am announcing today nearly £3 billion for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to deliver a new three-year restart programme to help over a million people who have been unemployed for over a year to find new work. But I have always said: we cannot protect every job. Despite the extraordinary support we have provided, the OBR expects unemployment to rise to a peak, in the second quarter of next year, of 7.5%— 2.6 million people. Unemployment is then forecast to fall in every year, reaching 4.4% by the end of 2024.
Today’s statistics remind us of something else. Coronavirus has deepened the disparity between public and private sector wages. In the six months to September, private sector wages fell by nearly 1% compared with last year. Over the same period, public sector wages rose by nearly 4%. Unlike workers in the private sector, who have lost jobs, been furloughed, and seen wages cut and hours reduced, the public sector has not. In such a difficult context for the private sector, especially for those people working in sectors such as retail, hospitality and leisure, I cannot justify a significant across-the-board pay increase for all public sector workers.
Instead, we are targeting our resources at those who need it most. To protect public sector jobs at this time of crisis, and to ensure fairness between the public and private sectors, I am taking three steps today. First, taking account of the pay review bodies’ advice, we will provide a pay rise to over a million nurses, doctors and others working in the NHS. Secondly, to protect jobs, pay rises in the rest of the public sector will be paused next year. But, thirdly, we will protect those on lower incomes; the 2.1 million public sector workers who earn below the median wage of £24,000 will be guaranteed a pay rise of at least £250. What this means is that while the Government are making the difficult decision to control public sector pay, the majority of public sector workers will see their pay increase next year.
And we want to do more for the lowest paid. We are accepting in full the recommendations of the Low Pay Commission to increase the national living wage by 2.2% to £8.91 an hour; to extend this rate to those aged 23 and over; and to increase the national minimum wage rates as well. Taken together, these minimum wage increases will likely benefit around 2 million people. A full-time worker on the national living wage will see their annual earnings increase by £345 next year—compared with the position in 2016, when the policy was first introduced, that is a pay rise of over £4,000.
These are difficult and uncertain economic times, so it is right that our immediate priority is to protect people’s health and their jobs, but we need to look beyond. Today’s spending review delivers stronger public services—our second priority. Before I turn to the details, let me thank the whole Treasury team, and especially my right hon. the Chief Secretary, for their dedication and hard work in preparing today’s spending review. Next year, total departmental spending will be £540 billion. Over this year and next, day-to-day departmental spending will rise, in real terms, by 3.8%—that is the fastest growth rate in 15 years. In cash terms, day-to-day departmental budgets will increase next year by £14.8 billion.
And this is a spending review for the whole United Kingdom. Through the Barnett formula, today’s decisions increase Scottish Government funding by £2.4 billion, Welsh Government funding by £1.3 billion and Northern Ireland Executive funding by £0.9 billion. The whole of the United Kingdom will benefit from the UK shared prosperity fund, and over time we will ramp up funding so that total domestic UK-wide funding will at least match EU receipts, on average, reaching around £1.5 billion a year. To help local areas prepare for the introduction of the UKSPF, next year we will provide funding for communities to pilot programmes and new approaches. And we will accelerate four city and growth deals in Scotland, helping Tay Cities, Borderlands, Moray and the Scottish islands create jobs and prosperity in their areas.
Our public spending plans deliver on the priorities of the British people. Today’s spending review honours our historic, multi-year commitment to the NHS. Next year, the core health budget will grow by £6.6 billion, allowing us to deliver 50,000 more nurses and 50 million more general practice appointments. We are increasing capital investment by £2.3 billion: to invest in new technologies; to improve the patient and staff experience; to replace ageing diagnostic machines such as MRI and CT scanners; and to fund the biggest hospital building programme in a generation, building 40 new hospitals and upgrading 70 more. We are investing in social care, too. Today’s settlement allows local authorities to increase their core spending power by 4.5%. Local authorities will have extra flexibility on council tax and the adult social care precept, which, together with £300 million of new grant funding, gives them access to an extra £1 billion to fund social care—and this is on top of the extra £1 billion social care grant we provided this year, which I can confirm will be maintained.
To provide a better education for our children, we are also getting on with our three-year investment plan for schools. We will increase the schools budget next year by £2.2 billion, so we are well on the way to delivering our commitment of an extra £7.1 billion by 2022-23.
Every pupil in the country will see a year-on-year funding increase of at least 2%, and we are funding the Prime Minister’s commitment to rebuild 500 schools over the next decade. We are also committed to boosting skills, with £291 million to pay for more young people to go into further education, £1.5 billion to rebuild colleges, £375 million to deliver the Prime Minister’s lifetime skills guarantee and extend traineeships, sector-based work academies and the National Careers Service, as well as improving the way the apprenticeships system works for businesses.
We are also making our streets safer. Next year, funding for the criminal justice system will increase by over £1 billion. We are providing more than £400 million to recruit 6,000 new police officers—well on track to recruit 20,000—and £4 billion over four years to provide 18,000 new prison places. New hospitals, better schools, safer streets—the British people’s priorities are this Government’s priorities.
Today’s spending review strengthens the United Kingdom’s place in the world. This country has always been and will always be open and outward-looking, leading in solving the world’s toughest problems. But during a domestic fiscal emergency, when we need to prioritise our limited resources on jobs and public services, sticking rigidly to spending 0.7% of our national income on overseas aid is difficult to justify to the British people, especially when we are seeing the highest peacetime levels of borrowing on record. I have listened with great respect to those who have argued passionately to retain this target, but at a time of unprecedented crisis, Government must make tough choices. I want to reassure the House that we will continue to protect the world’s poorest, spending the equivalent of 0.5% of our national income on overseas aid in 2021, allocating £10 billion at this spending review. Our intention is to return to 0.7% when the fiscal situation allows. Based on the latest OECD data, the UK would remain the second highest aid donor in the G7—higher than France, Italy, Japan, Canada and the United States. And 0.5% is also considerably more than the 29 countries on the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee, which average just 0.38%.
Overseas aid is, of course, only one of the ways we play our role in the world. The Prime Minister has announced over £24 billion of investment in defence over the next four years—the biggest sustained increase in 30 years—allowing us to provide security not just for our country, but around the world. We are investing more in our extensive diplomatic network, already one of the largest in the world, and providing more funding for new trade deals. We should, however, judge our standing in the world not just by the money we spend, but by the causes we advance and the values we defend.
If this spending review’s first priority was getting the country through coronavirus and its second was stronger public services, then our final priority is to deliver our record investment plans in infrastructure. Capital spending next year will total £100 billion— £27 billion more in real terms than last year. Our plans deliver the highest sustained level of public investment in more than 40 years —once-in-a-generation plans to deliver once-in-a-generation returns for our country.
To build housing, we are introducing a £7.1 billion national home building fund, on top of our £12.2 billion affordable homes programme. We will deliver faster broadband for over 5 million premises across the UK, better mobile connectivity with 4G coverage across 95% of the country by 2025, the biggest ever investment in new roads, upgraded railways, new cycle lanes and over 800 zero-emission buses. Our capital plans will invest in the greener future we promised, delivering the Prime Minister’s 10-point plan for climate change. We are making this country a scientific superpower, with almost £15 billion of funding for research and development, and we are publishing today a comprehensive new national infrastructure strategy. To help finance our plans, I can also announce that we will establish a new UK infrastructure bank. Headquartered in the north of England, the bank will work with the private sector to finance major new investment projects across the United Kingdom, starting this spring.
I have one further announcement to make. For many people, the most powerful barometer of economic success is the change they see and the pride they feel in the places we call home. People want to be able to look around their towns and villages, and say, “Yes, our community—this place—is better off than it was five years ago.” For too long our funding approach has been complex and ineffective, and I want to change that. Today I am announcing a new levelling-up fund worth £4 billion. Any local area will be able to bid directly to fund local projects.
The fund will be managed jointly between the Treasury, the Department for Transport and the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government, taking a new, holistic, place-based approach to the needs of local areas. Projects must have real impact, they must be delivered within this Parliament and they must command local support, including from their Member of Parliament. This is about funding the infrastructure of everyday life: a new bypass; upgraded railway stations; less traffic; more libraries, museums and galleries; better high streets and town centres. This Government are funding the things that people want and places need.
Today I have announced huge investment in jobs, public services and infrastructure, yet I cannot deny that numbers alone can ring hollow. They stand testament to our commitment to create a better nation, but on their own they are not enough to create one. When asked what our vision for the future of this country is, we cannot point to a shopping list of announcements and feel that the job is done. So as we invest billions in research and development, we are also introducing a new immigration system, ensuring that the best and brightest from around the world come here to learn, innovate and create. As we invest billions in the building of new homes, we are also simplifying our planning system to ensure that beautiful homes are built where they are needed most. As we invest billions in the security of this country, we are also defending free speech and democratic rule, proving that our values are more than just words. And as we invest billions in public services, we are also protecting the wages of those on the lowest incomes and supporting jobs, because good work remains the most rewarding and sustainable path to prosperity.
The spending review announced today sets us on a path to deal with the material matters of Government and it is a clear statement of our priorities, but encouraging the individual and community brilliance on which a thriving society depends remains, as ever, a work unfinished. We in government can set the direction. Better schools, more homes, stronger defence, safer streets, green energy, technological development, improved rail and enhanced roads: all investments that will create jobs and give every person in this country the chance to meet their potential. But it is the individual, the family and the community that must become stronger, healthier and happier as a result. This is the true measure of our success. The spending announced today is secondary to the courage, wisdom, kindness and creativity it unleashes. These are the incalculable but essential parts of our future, and they cannot be mandated or distributed by Government. These things must come from each of us, and be shared freely, because the future—this better country—is a common endeavour.
Today, Government have funded the priorities of the British people, and now the job of delivering them begins. Mr Speaker, I commend this statement to the House.
Mr Speaker
This is an important statement, which is why it has run much longer than usual, but that was agreed with the Chancellor. Obviously, I have divided up the time to give an increase to the other parties as well. I call the shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)
Thank you, Mr Speaker. This spending review was a moment for the Chancellor to take the responsible choices that our country needs. It was an opportunity to protect key workers, secure the economy and recover jobs in every part of our country.
During this crisis, we have seen who has taken responsibility: community health workers working round the clock to keep us all safe; the teachers who kept working so that key workers could too; the delivery drivers and shop staff who made sure that we had critical food supplies. Earlier this year, the Chancellor stood on his doorstep and clapped for key workers. Today, his Government institute a pay freeze for many of them. This takes a sledgehammer to consumer confidence. Firefighters, police officers and teachers will know that their spending power is going down, so they will spend less in our small businesses and on our high streets; they will spend less in our private sector. Many key workers, who willingly took on so much responsibility during this crisis, are now being forced to tighten their belts now; not in the medium term to which the Chancellor refers, but now.
In contrast, there has been a bonanza for those who have won contracts from this Government. Companies with political connections have been 10 times more likely to win Government contracts. So many businesses have worked tirelessly through the pandemic to support local communities, to keep critical supplies going and to produce drugs and vaccines—at cost price in AstraZeneca’s case—working with some of our country’s best scientists. But in their response to this pandemic, the Conservative Government have wasted and mismanaged public finances on an industrial scale: £130 million to a Conservative donor for testing kits that were unsafe; £150 million for face masks and £700 million on coveralls that could not be used; a £12 billion hit to our economy because the more effective, shorter, circuit breaker was blocked and a lengthier, more expensive lockdown put in place instead; £12 billion so far spent on a test and trace system that is still not working; and, today, news of £10 billion in additional costs for personal protective equipment, which was at least partly down to the Conservatives’ lack of pre-pandemic planning.
This waste and mismanagement is part of a longer-term pattern, showing that claims today around levelling up simply do not match the evidence: hospitals in Liverpool and Sandwell left unbuilt, over deadline by years and over budget by hundreds of millions of pounds; not a single starter home built, despite almost £200 million being spent; Northern Powerhouse Rail still not even approved six years after being announced; the courts modernisation programme three years behind schedule, letting victims down up and down the country; and people in the north more likely to have been made redundant during this crisis holding everything else equal.
Photo calls are not enough. We need delivery like the promotion of green manufacturing in the west midlands by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) and the work of Labour Mayors and councils across the country. We need a Government in Westminster who take their responsibility towards all four nations seriously. That means informing the Finance Minister of Northern Ireland about the shorter timescale for this spending review ahead of time and fulfilling the “New Decade, New Approach” commitments. It means doing the right thing by the people of Wales to repair flood damage and make safe legacy coal tips. It means ending the barney between Westminster and Holyrood and instead working together in partnership to protect jobs and livelihoods.
It means a shared prosperity fund that is effective because it is delivered not on the whim of Conservative Ministers but from our devolved Governments and our regions. The levelling-up fund that the Chancellor just announced—his rabbit out of the hat—yet again, just as with the Beeching reopening programme, involves MPs going to Ministers and begging for support for their areas, rather than that change being driven from local communities. So much for taking back control! This is about the centre handing over support in a very top-down manner.
Labour has been clear about the responsible choices that we wanted the Chancellor to make today to recover jobs, retrain workers and rebuild businesses. To recover jobs, Labour called for £30 billion of capital spending accelerated over the next 18 months, focused on green initiatives, supporting 400,000 jobs and bringing us in line with countries such as France and Germany. This Government’s ambition is for half that number of new jobs. To retrain workers, we needed an emergency programme to support people back into work, but kick- start has been slow to get started, and the skills offer for those over 25 will not start until April. The Chancellor said at the beginning of his speech that our economic emergency “has only just begun”—try telling that to people who have been out of work since March.
Restart, announced today, must meet three key tests to be effective. It should help people who need it most, not cherry-pick. It should be up and running as soon as possible, yet it appears that only a fraction of Restart funding will be available next year. And it must involve local actors who know their communities, not be imposed from Whitehall. Of course, job search support ultimately only works if sufficient new jobs actually exist. That is why we needed ambitious action to boost our economy and to support our businesses.
To rebuild business, we called for a national investment bank. I welcome the announcement of a new UK infrastructure bank, given that valuable years have been lost since the Green Investment Bank was sold off. Now the Chancellor must boost its firepower, and he must deliver on his Department’s responsibility for the drive to net zero. We have known since the Stern report that the climate crisis is the biggest long-term threat to our economy, yet far too often, this spending review locks us into a path that will make the transition to net zero harder, not easier, locking our economy out of the green jobs of the future.
To rebuild business, the Chancellor also needs to listen to business. We are less than a week from the end of the lockdown, yet we have heard nothing about whether extra support will be provided through the additional restrictions support grant for areas subject once again to tough restrictions. The Chancellor is still threatening employers with an increased contribution to furlough in January, at the worst possible time for increasing and building confidence.
In fewer than 40 days, we are due to leave the transition period, yet the Chancellor did not even mention that in his speech. There is still no trade deal, so does the Chancellor truly believe that his Government are prepared and that he has done enough to help those businesses that will be heavily affected? Will he take responsible action to help those excluded from Government support? Why is he still refusing to make the speedy fixes to universal credit that Labour has advocated, which would aid the self-employed, and why will he not provide families with certainty by ensuring that the increase in universal credit continues beyond April?
The IMF has made it clear time and again that now would be the worst time to slam on the brakes and put the car into reverse. It has called for a “meaningful additional push” from our Government to maintain fiscal support until the recovery is on a sound footing. The UK’s GDP is 10% smaller now than it was at the end of last year. We have seen the worst downturn in the G7. We needed ambitious action today to stimulate growth and maintain demand, and we needed the Government to take responsibility for the real reasons why people and communities up and down our country are being held back.
Over the past 10 years, child poverty has risen by 600,000. We have had the worst decade for pay growth in eight generations. The cost of childcare has risen twice as fast as wages. The number of young apprentices has plummeted. Last quarter, we saw the highest level of redundancies on record. Social care is in increasing crisis and, despite the Conservative party’s manifesto having promised a long-term solution, we are still waiting.
It was trailed in the press that the Chancellor would be moving 20,000 jobs out of London, yet cuts to local authorities over the past 10 years have seen 240,000 jobs lost—12 times that figure of 20,000—with the hardest-hit communities often those in the north, midlands and south-west. Today, the Chancellor could have matched his Government’s promise to do whatever is necessary to support local authorities through this crisis; he did not. And yet again he showed his Government’s lack of confidence in their own measures by failing to provide an equality impact assessment.
The measure of this Government will not be the number of press releases issued during this crisis or the number of pictures it published on Instagram; it will be the responsible action that they took, or did not take, for the sake of our country.
Next year, the eyes of the world will be on the UK as we assume the presidencies of the G7 and the UN Security Council and host the COP26 summit, yet now is the time that the Chancellor has turned his back on the world’s poorest by cutting international aid. It is in Britain’s national interest to lay the foundations for economic growth around the world—no wonder many British businesses have condemned his move.
Businesses have been more and more vocal about the problems with this Government’s last-minute approach, always one step behind when we need to plan responsibly for the future. We must learn the lessons from previous failures and ensure that the next challenge—the roll-out of the vaccine—is dealt with as efficiently, effectively and speedily as possible.
Next time, we need a comprehensive spending review that takes responsible choices—to build a future for our country as the best place in the world to grow up in and the best place to grow old in. People should have opportunities on their doorstep, not at the other end of the country. Everywhere in the UK should feel like a good place to set up home. That is what the Chancellor must deliver.
Rishi Sunak
I will address all the points made by the hon. Lady in turn, but it is important to note, up front, that despite her criticisms, there is actually a lot that she and her Opposition colleagues should welcome: more funding for public services; a pay increase for NHS workers; support for those on the lowest incomes; a once-in-a-generation investment in infrastructure; a multi-billion pound commitment to support those looking for work; a new schools building programme; and the Prime Minister’s 10- point plan. I could go on, Mr Speaker.
It is right that the hon. Lady should provide challenge, but I think, even if she does not, that the British people will judge this spending review as a reflection of their priorities: protecting jobs, defeating coronavirus, strengthening our public services and upgrading our infrastructure. If there is any politics here at all, surely it is unifying, and I think that, deep down, she will recognise that.
Let me address the specific points. The hon. Lady asked about pay and the importance of consumption, and I agree that of course there is an impact on consumption from pay. She will know that the marginal propensity to consume is obviously greater the lower down the income spectrum you go, which is why, in particular, we have protected the incomes of those on lower incomes.
Anyone in the public sector earning less than the UK median salary of £24,000 will receive a pay rise of £250 or more. Taken together with all the other things we have done, including giving a pay rise for those who work in the NHS, this will mean that the majority of public sector workers will see an increase in their pay next year. Also, pay progression and promotions—all of that—will carry on. We have increased wages for those on the national living wage: an extra £345 a year, as the wage rate goes up to £8.91. That, again, will help to drive consumption.
The hon. Lady rightly talked about delivery. We believe very firmly in making sure we can deliver the change we promised the British people. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay) and I chair something called project speed, which is already delivering benefits, with plans for the landmark A66 upgrade shortened in time and reduced in cost, so we can get on with delivering what the people want on time and on budget, making a difference in their communities.
The hon. Lady asked about the levelling up fund and, I thought rather bizarrely, seemed to suggest that local Members of Parliament were not a good reflection on their local communities and able to articulate the local needs of their communities. I say to colleagues on the Opposition Benches that I am more than happy to hear from them and their local areas about the needs that they want met, because this Government will meet the needs of local communities up and down the country.
The hon. Lady talked about support for businesses during coronavirus. We have already put in place support through this winter period. The local restrictions grants we announced a while ago are paid monthly and they work. If your business has been closed, you will receive a grant of up to £3,000 per month depending on your rateable value. If you are a hospitality, leisure or accommodation business in a tier 2 area, where obviously the restrictions have an impact on your ability, you will receive a grant of 70% of that value up to £2,100. Those amounts mean that the business can help to cover the fixed costs of rent. They, of course, have access to the furlough scheme right the way through winter.
That comes on top of the other recent support announced for businesses. Today, I announced major reforms to the way the apprenticeship system works, giving businesses what they have long asked for: the flexibility to spend unused apprenticeship levy funds down the supply chain with small and medium-sized enterprises, and the ability to frontload payments for training. We are also looking at ways to introduce even more flexibility for some professions. We also recently announced an extension of the annual investment allowance for a further year up to £1 million, giving 98% of small and medium-sized businesses the ability to write off investments in full next year, which will help to drive their recovery.
The hon. Lady talked about welfare. Again, I stand proud of this Government’s and previous Conservative Governments’ record on this issue since 2010: hundreds of thousands fewer people in absolute poverty; several hundred thousand fewer children living in workless households; and income inequality lower coming into this crisis than when we first came into office.
This Government care greatly about those who are most vulnerable. We have demonstrated that during this crisis by the support we have put in place. The evidence shows that those on the lowest incomes have been protected the most by this Conservative Government. And that does not stop. The temporary uplift in universal credit runs all the way through to next spring, providing security for those families. Of course we will look, when we come to next spring, at the best way to support people and their families when we have a better sense of where the economy is and where we are with the virus, but we are providing extra support for next year: £670 million to help struggling families meet their council tax bills, worth about £150 each for families up and down the country. We also said we will maintain the £1 billion increase in the local housing allowance that we instituted this year into next year, providing support for many millions of families. We are also making available further funds, as the House knows, to provide extra support for food and meals for children throughout the holidays next year.
The hon. Lady talked about support for local authorities. Perhaps she has not seen it yet in the document—that is fair enough—but we announced over £3.5 billion of extra support for local authorities next year specifically to deal with coronavirus. That comes on top of their core spending power increasing at decade-level highs of 4.5%. That £3.5 billion is there to help to meet the shortfall in sales fees and charges, and the unrecoverable losses in business rates and council tax that they have experienced this year, as well as £1.5 billion for general pressures. Let no one say that we are not standing behind our local authorities at this difficult time.
Finally, the hon. Lady asked about green issues. I think she compared us with France and Germany and questioned this Government’s and the Prime Minister’s ambition. Let me say this about our plans. They are, I believe, among the most comprehensive and ambitious of any developed economy. She talked about France and Germany, but in this country we are phasing out certain vehicles in 2030; in France, it is 2040. In this country, we are phasing out coal in 2025; in Germany, it is 2038. She talked about the billions of pounds being spent by our friends, but it is important when we make these international comparisons that we understand the detail of what the other countries promise. The German numbers include the subsidies for renewables; ours do not. That happens separately outside our plan and is worth £44 billion, supporting renewable energy in this country through the tariff system, which is what Germany alluded to. The German numbers also include support for public transport, which ours of course do not, because that is something we do just in the ordinary course of business. I am proud of this Conservative Government’s record. We are the first major economy in the world to legislate for net zero, and our economy has decarbonised faster than any other in the last 20 years. This Conservative Government will deliver the Prime Minister’s plans to get us to net zero, and that is something that I hope the whole House can welcome and support.
In conclusion, this spending review puts the full force of the Government behind the priorities of the British people, and while we may have many disagreements with the Opposition, I am confident that, in private at least, they will recognise the significant investment we are making to protect jobs, strengthen our public services and improve our infrastructure. We in this House are all answerable to the people we represent, and it is in their interests that we serve. Today, we have made some difficult choices to fulfil that responsibility, but with the positive news about the development of vaccines, the winter covid plan being announced by the Prime Minister and the very real hope that we are finally entering the final stages of our fight against coronavirus, now is the time for us to come together. The British people have been through so much this year, as have right hon. and hon. Members, and it is my belief that, with this spending review and the fresh hope given by medical advances, we can finally begin our recovery. Now, difficult decisions and all, we must deliver on the priorities of the British people.
Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con) [V]
I very much welcome many of the positive measures that my right hon. Friend has just announced. However, he has inevitably revealed some of the more difficult decisions that he has to make around a reduction in overseas development aid and the freezing of public sector pay next year—not across the board but on a selective basis—and there will be many difficult decisions of that type around spending and taxation in the future. Does he agree that, in terms of dealing with the deficit, it is not just about spending and taxation but also very much about growth? Does he also agree that we should look to private sector businesses and entrepreneurs to provide that growth? Can he set out how he is going to ensure that, as we come out on the other side of the crisis, businesses and entrepreneurs are given every possible support and freedom to power our economy forward over the years ahead?
Rishi Sunak
I completely agree with my right hon. Friend that we will build our recovery through the dynamism of the private sector, and he is right about the power of entrepreneurship. Probably the most important thing we can do in that regard is to make it as easy as possible for businesses to take on new people. He will have heard about the unemployment numbers. We want to get as many of those people back into work as quickly as possible, so we will be looking at how we can make that as easy as possible for those dynamic businesses that are growing. At a very micro level in this spending review, we have also announced more funding for our start-up loan scheme, which provides discounted Government-backed loans of up to £50,000 for budding entrepreneurs to start their new businesses at the smallest level. I hope that that is something that he will support.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
This spending review was an important opportunity and an important test, and instead of posing for photographs in his favourite hoodie, the Chancellor should have been listening to those who are struggling. Spending £29 million on a festival of Brexit while they let weans go hungry at home and abroad just about sums up this tawdry Government. Reneging on the 0.7% aid commitment while the world struggles with a covid pandemic is just cruel. He says he has come to talk about jobs, but how many jobs has this Chancellor cost? Last month, the Office for National Statistics reported that since March 2020 the number of payroll employees has fallen by 782,000, and how many job losses could have been avoided if the Chancellor had not wound back furlough and threatened to cut it short? With a reported £1.4 billion for Jobcentre Plus, will he restore the job centres in Scotland that were closed by his Government?
What about those who have been ignored, patched, and blanked by the Chancellor at every turn—those excluded from his support schemes altogether, many of them limited company directors, freelancers, short-term PAYE workers, new starters and those on maternity leave, who have had absolutely nothing at all from this UK Government? He knows this and it is unjustifiable. He might have had some excuse back in March and April, but we are now in November, so I ask him: what does he expect these 3 million people to live on this winter? Will he look at the proposals for the directors income support scheme and the Equity creatives support scheme? Many of those excluded are in jobs in sectors that cannot safely restart due to the public health restrictions, so he must apologise and he must take action to put it right.
The Chancellor has spoken of the importance of getting young people into jobs, but he has utterly failed to address the reality of low-paid, part-time, precarious work. The Young Women’s Trust says that a staggering 1.5 million young women have lost income since the start of the pandemic. Many of them are in sectors such as retail and hospitality that have been clobbered by covid. What he should be announcing today is a real living wage: £9.50 an hour, as set by the Living Wage Foundation, not his pretendy living wage. I am glad to see that over-23s are eligible, but he said nothing about those in the 21-to-24 bracket, who are on £8.20 an hour, the 18-to-20s, on £6.45 an hour, the under-18s, on £4.55 an hour, and apprentices, on merely £4.15 an hour. What about them? Young people do not get a discount on their rent or their bills due to their age, but this Chancellor continues to short-change them in wages. A fair wage for a day’s work is the very least young people should expect from their Government. In not acknowledging the injustice, the Chancellor fails to protect the rest of our young people.
We need fair wages, too, for public sector workers. It feels like the Government are punishing people for working in the public sector. The absolute heroes who saw us through this pandemic have more than earned their pay. A public sector pay freeze takes £4 billion out of the economy, squeezes living standards and starves the economy of investment at the very worst possible time. These are the hospital porters, the teachers, the jannies, the police officers and the firefighters: those who kept our streets clean and our public services going. All of them—all of them—deserve better than applause on the Chancellor’s doorstep in the summer and a pay freeze in the depths of winter.
Not content with short-changing young people and public sector workers, the Chancellor wants to change RPI in a move that will impact about 10 million pension incomes and cost retirees over £100 billion. SNP Members urge him to see sense and not to pick the pockets of our pensioners. He must also use this spending review to make the £20 uplift to universal credit permanent, scrap the benefit cap and extend the £20 uplift to legacy benefits and those with disabilities—who, for unfathomable reasons, he seems to have forgotten even exist—and to increase the pitiful level of statutory sick pay.
Businesses across the country have been racking up debt while their incomes have not been there. Businesses are terrified by business rates relief coming to an end next year. Will the Chancellor look at this issue so that we can also act in Scotland? Will he make the VAT cut for the hospitality sector permanent to see it through this crisis?
We still await proper details of the shared prosperity fund and what it will mean for Scotland. The Scottish Government have done their part in preparation, and the Chancellor needs to bring forward proposals as a matter of urgency so that we can spend this money properly in Scotland rather than having it hived off to Tories in key seats in England.
The spending review is only for one year, and I appreciate why that is, but this failure to plan effectively for the future is why the UK is doing worst in the G7. What are the Chancellor’s plans for next year if things do not go as he expects? There is nothing in his statement about Brexit and the cost that that will bring, when we see lorries queuing all the way through Kent. We call on him also to make a £98 billion stimulus to invest in a greener, better future for us all. None of this really has anything to do with the strength of the Union; it is merely a reflection of the powers that he has as Chancellor that the Scottish Government do not. So if he will not do these things—if he will not act—he must devolve the full financial powers and let the Scottish Government get on with the job.
Rishi Sunak
Let me run through the hon. Lady’s questions in turn. She asked about my favourite hoodie. I can tell her that it is not the one in the picture, but actually the kickstart hoodie that was given to me by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, which I wear with pride.
The hon. Lady asked about the self-employed and again mentioned this number of 3 million people. I would like to address this point properly. It is not a number that I recognise, and I do not think that it is right to describe those people as excluded, as 1.5 million of those people are not majority self-employed; they are people who earn the majority of their income from being employed. That decision was taken to help target the support at those who really needed it. We have heard a lot from Opposition Members about support being targeted, especially regarding the self-employment scheme. That decision was made because if someone earns the majority of their income from employment, it is reasonable to assume that they will benefit from the furlough scheme, and that is how the majority of their earnings come in. That principle was supported at the time by every trade association that I spoke to when designing the scheme. In fact, those conversations were supportive of a much higher threshold than the one that we adopted, which was just “a majority”; others said that 60% or two thirds would be reasonable.
I hope that it is also of comfort to the House to know that the median amount of self-employment income that those 1.5 million people who are not majority self-employed have in their returns is somewhere between £2,000 and £3,000, so it is not the overwhelming part of their earnings. At that level, the universal credit system and other support that we provide will be significant in making up the difference.
The hon. Lady asked about welfare and again mentioned universal credit. I guess it is worth reminding the House that the Scottish Government have plenty of powers over tax policy and welfare policy—and, indeed, have used them in the past. I hear that there is to be a Scottish budget. We look forward to seeing what the Scottish Government decide to do with the powers that they have over both tax and welfare decisions.
The hon. Lady asked about jobs and talked about the OBR. I am glad that the OBR has today joined the IMF and the Bank of England in commending the Government’s economic response and recognising and stating explicitly that the interventions that we have put in place have reduced the level of unemployment and saved people’s jobs. I think that the OBR actually quantified that in its report today, putting the number at hundreds of thousands and confirming what the IMF said—that our response has held down unemployment.
The hon. Lady asked about young people. We are determined to help young people. They have borne the brunt economically of this crisis, which is in part why we created the kickstart scheme—an ambitious programme under which, I think, 19,000 fully funded placements have now been created for those under the age of 24 who are at risk of unemployment. We also provide a cash bonus to businesses to take on new young apprentices. All those things will make a difference to our young people at what is, without question, a very difficult time.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
The House will be glad that the Chancellor has met the needs of the poorest, that he is going to maintain the increase to the state pension and that he is ensuring that people get opportunities to get back into work if they have been out of it. He talks about the £250 minimum for the lowest-paid people in the public sector. May I ask him whether that includes people working in local government or just national Government? That would be useful to know.
There will be a welcome for the increase in spending for schools. There are also many other things that people will think are sensible and that could—or should—have been done as the Labour Government went through the crisis in 2008, when they also implemented a public sector pay freeze. May I put it to him that it would be incredible if the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority were to force a pay increase on Members of Parliament when others do not get it? One way or another, will the Government—and perhaps you, Mr Speaker —talk to IPSA and ensure that that does not happen? I have the view that MPs’ pay should only be adjusted after a general election; that may be a minority view, but I think it would be wrong for us to have pay forced on us when others cannot get a pay increase.
Let me turn to overseas aid. When the Departments were merged, the Foreign Secretary said that the 0.7% figure would be maintained. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor was elected in 2015, as I was, under a commitment to meet 0.7%. We were re-elected in 2017, and the only difference in 2019 was that the word “proudly” was put in front of that commitment. I am proud of that commitment. I will work with anyone across the House to make sure that a change of percentage does not happen. Obviously, with our GNP coming down by 10%, the amount that goes on aid will come down automatically. I fight to maintain the pledge that the Prime Minister, the Chancellor, the Foreign Secretary and I made at the last general election.
Mr Speaker
I do not like being brought into the situation on pay. What I would say is that there is no decision on pay; there is no award to MPs. There is a big mistake out there somehow that there is an amount that has been given. Let me reassure the Father of the House that that is not the case. It will not even be looked at til next year—probably later, towards Easter.
Rishi Sunak
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his thoughtful and powerful contribution. I respect what he has to say on aid. He is right about the language that was used. He will know the extraordinary circumstances that this country and this Government are grappling with. In order for us to meet our many other commitments and deliver on the British people’s priorities, we have had to make difficult decisions. Of course, it is something that I regret that we have to do, but I believe it is the right decision so that we can keep delivering on the priorities of the people at what is an enormously challenging time.
I turn briefly to my hon. Friend’s other questions. On local government employees, he will know that those pay levels are not mandated by central Government, and local government will typically make its own decisions. With regard to the social care workforce, which I know he also cares about, he will know that many of those workers are on the national living wage and will benefit from the 2.2% uplift—£345—that we have accepted.
On my hon. Friend’s last point, I can tell him that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster wrote on behalf of the Government to IPSA in advance of this statement to inform it of the Government’s approach to public sector pay and to ask it to take that into consideration when it decides what it would like to do. Obviously, it is an independent body, but we have expressed our views in the light of the pay policy that we have announced today.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD) [V]
I listened intently to the Chancellor, but what I did not hear was enough—enough to protect jobs by extending furlough to the summer, enough for those in the public sector who have endured so much in this crisis and now will have a pay freeze, or enough for those millions of families facing enormous financial hardship because they are excluded. I point out to the Chancellor that they do exist; I can give him plenty of examples of people who phone my office every day in deep distress. Will he, for a minute, pause and put himself in the shoes of those 3 million excluded people, and then tell us why he still finds it acceptable to turn his back on them?
Rishi Sunak
I very much hope that the hon. Lady will welcome the £2.4 billion in additional funding that has been provided to the Scottish Government to use as they see fit. Of course, they can use that to support many of the causes that she articulates. In the interests of time, I will not go over the answer I gave to the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), but we have provided comprehensive support to those who are self-employed; between 2.5 million and 3 million people have received £14 billion of support, with more to come. It remains one of the most generous ways to treat the self-employed that I have found anywhere in the world.
Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)
I welcome this statement and the fact that the Chancellor recognises that debt has to be paid back. May I ask him about the changes in public sector pay? According to the ONS, private sector pay has fallen of late, whereas public sector pay has gone up by about 4%. The Chancellor’s announcement today that the 2 million lowest-paid public sector workers will receive £250 shows, does it not, that they are our priority? They are the people who need this most and they are the people we will give attention to.
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It would be wrong to describe a situation in which a majority of those working in the public sector next year will see an increase in their pay as a blanket pay freeze. We have done exactly as he suggests: we have targeted our resources on those who need them most, meaning that over 2.1 million people who earn less than £24,000 in the public sector, who comprise 38% of all those in the public sector, will see that increase of £250 or more in their pay packets.
Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson (Lagan Valley) (DUP)
We welcome the additional £900 million for the Northern Ireland Executive—yet again, a benefit of Northern Ireland being part of this United Kingdom. I think we all believe that nurses, doctors and healthcare workers should receive a decent pay rise, but will the Chancellor acknowledge that there are other public sector workers who have been on the frontline on covid, such as our armed forces and our police officers, and look again at including them in the public sector pay rise? Of course, I agree with the Father of the House that that should not include Members of Parliament.
Rishi Sunak
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for welcoming the £900 million in Barnett funding for Northern Ireland. He will be pleased to know that we have had productive conversations about fixing some technical baseline issues for the budgeting as well, which I know will be welcomed by the Executive.
With regard to pay, we are protecting those who earn less than the UK median salary. Whichever part of the public sector they work in, if someone earns less than £24,000, they will receive the £250. It is the right approach to provide that support to those with lower-than-average earnings.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
I lend my support to everything said by the Father of the House. Covid-19 means that the Chancellor’s strategy is broken into three phases: first, as we are doing now, spending everything necessary to stop the economy collapsing, which he is doing successfully; secondly, essentially from next spring, doing everything possible to maximise growth and recovery in the economy; and thirdly, after that, when things get on to an even keel, returning to conventional economics. Does he agree that the enormous deficit inevitably created in the first and second phases of the strategy needs to be financed in a similar way to major incidents such as wars, with very long-term bonds, not destructive short-term taxes?
Rishi Sunak
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his comments. I would distinguish between two things. The borrowing that we are carrying out this year, which is, as he knows, at a peacetime high, is financed through the gilt markets. He will be pleased to know that we push as much as we can to the long end of the curve relative to our international peers; the average maturity of our debt stock is about 14 or 15 years, which is almost double the average of the G7. He is right that we should do that. I would differentiate that from an ongoing structural deficit, which is with us for many years. As he said, our first priority coming out of this will be to get growth going again.
Ben Lake (Ceredigion) (PC)
On average, Wales received £400 million a year from EU structural and investment funds, sadly well above the UK per capita average due to our greater relative need. Promises have been made that Wales will receive not a penny less from the UK shared prosperity fund. The Chancellor has stated that he will match total UK funding, but will he also confirm that Wales’ share will not be diminished, that it will represent additional investment, and that the fund will be allocated according to need?
Rishi Sunak
We have said that as the EU funding that we are currently financing runs off, we will step in and replace it up to the tune of about £1.5 billion, which is the UK amount. Obviously there are conversations to be had about how best to allocate that, what kinds of projects, and how it should be done. Some initial thoughts on that are published today, alongside more than £200 million of funding to start piloting the approach and working with communities to see what works best. I know that people in Wales will welcome that and I look forward to seeing the proposals that they come up with.
Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)
The Chancellor is quite right that people want to look back and see that their community is better off than before. To pick up on the point about the shared prosperity fund, Cornwall also received European funding and has been promised the shared prosperity fund, but it is often difficult in areas where the population is not so large to demonstrate value for money to the Treasury, and as a result we miss out. As he sets out more on the levelling-up fund and the shared prosperity fund, wages in Cornwall remain stubbornly low. Can he reassure me that those funds will address low wages, provide good jobs, improve skills, and provide the pathway to the skills and opportunities that people in Cornwall need?
Rishi Sunak
I commend my hon. Friend, because he consistently comes to the House to champion his constituents and talk about increasing the opportunities available to them. He is right that we want to make sure that we target our resources at the places where they can make the most difference. I look forward to hearing from him what projects he thinks will be able to transform the lives of his constituents and the communities that they are proud to call home.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green) [V]
The Chancellor speaks of a fiscal emergency, but said not a word today about the climate and nature emergencies. There is a real risk that any green steps will be fatally undermined by the reckless pursuit of business-as-usual, environmentally destructive spending, such as the £27 billion road-building programme. He has said that there can be no lasting prosperity for people if we do not protect the planet, so will he adopt a new economic rule—a net zero test—and assess all spending and fiscal measures against the UK’s climate and nature goals, so that the whole package is properly green?
Rishi Sunak
The Government firmly believe in making sure that the recovery is green. I urge the hon. Lady to have a look at the national infrastructure strategy that we have published today, entitled, “Fairer, faster, greener”, which outlines the funding for all the green measures contained in the Prime Minister’s 10-point plan. I think it represents a comprehensive and ambitious path to deliver our net zero commitments.
Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for his courtesy over the weekend and I assure him of my very strong support for virtually all of his package today. As a result of the pandemic here in the UK, 50,000 people have died and we are rightly moving heaven and earth to prevent more deaths here at home. Is he aware that his proposed breaking of the 0.7% promise and the 30% further reduction in cash will be the cause of 100,000 preventable deaths, mainly among children? This is a choice that I for one am not prepared to make. None of us in this House will be able to look our children in the eye and claim that we did not know what we were voting for.
Rishi Sunak
I am enormously grateful to my right hon. Friend for the conversations I have been able to have with him, and I fully respect his passion on this subject. He brings an enormous amount of experience to this House on this topic, and obviously he will have heard the reasons that I set out for doing what we are doing. I believe we can still make a difference to the world’s poorest countries with the measures that we have put in place. The most pressing issue that the developing world faces at the moment is the ability to deliver and deploy a coronavirus vaccine. He will know that we are the largest donor globally to the COVAX advance market commitment, the global initiative that is supporting developing countries’ access to vaccines. Right now, that is probably the most important thing we could be doing. We are doing it. We are leading the world in helping tackle coronavirus. I know that my right hon. Friend and I will carry on this conversation.
Stephen Farry (North Down) (Alliance) [V]
The covid pandemic has exposed structural weaknesses in our economy and society, but it is also likely to accelerate change in how people work, live and interact. May I also point out to the Chancellor that the excluded are a genuine problem? One of the difficulties is that the Government are not counting those who are sole directors of limited companies as part of the self-employed, which is how the figures are coming across as confusing. Does the Chancellor accept that public spending should not necessarily assume a restoration of the status quo ante but must be based on a transformation of our society and economy around social justice, inclusion, reskilling and investment in a green new deal?
Rishi Sunak
We want our recovery to be green and the national infrastructure strategy sets out an ambitious way to do that. Skills are at the heart of what we believe, giving people the tools they need to improve their lives and go on to better things. We are funding £375 million today to deliver our commitments on the Prime Minister’s lifetime skills guarantee and other matters. The hon. Gentleman can rest assured that that remains an area of enormous focus for this Government.
Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con) [V]
In the light of the difficulties the country faces with its finances, I was pleased to see the commitment to infrastructure. Is the Chancellor aware of Hinckley bridge on the A5, which has been awarded the status of “most bashed” bridge in Britain? It has been hit 25 times and causes a delay of six hours every time. It is a prime example of the pinch points littered up and down the A5, which strangle productivity. Will he commit to provide funds to the likes of the A5 to bring prosperity to the midlands and grow our economy out of the covid situation?
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend articulates well an example of local pinch points being a blight on communities, stopping people improving the quality of their life and driving growth. It seems like a very good example of the type of project that our new levelling-up fund would be interested in, and I look forward to discussing it with him further.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind) [V]
Throughout the corona crisis, public sector workers in all areas have delivered brilliantly and helped to save lives and look after all our communities. Civil servants have lost 19% in wages over the past 10 years due to austerity, and there is a 12% gender pay gap that affects civil servants. So will the Chancellor recognise the importance of their work and their participation and give an increase of 10% to begin to make up the ground that they have lost over the past 10 years? Instead of saying to them that, as thanks for all their work, they will get a maximum of £5 a week for the lowest paid, will he return to proper national pay bargaining for all civil servants, so that those people who deliver for us are seen to be treated properly and fairly as we come out of the corona crisis?
Rishi Sunak
I am glad the right hon. Gentleman gives me an opportunity to thank my fantastic team of civil servants in the Treasury, who have been extraordinary in their hard work and creativity throughout this crisis, and have remained so over the past few weeks in concluding the spending review. I put on record my thanks to them.
Unsurprisingly, my numbers are slightly different to those of the right hon. Gentleman. According to the ONS, before this crisis even started in 2019, there existed at least a 7% pay premium between the public and private sectors after accounting for characteristics and pensions. That gap no doubt has been exacerbated and widened over the past six to 12 months as a result of widening pay inequality between public and private sector pay. That is why I believe it is fair to take the approach we have, but I share with him a desire to protect those on lower incomes, which is why those 2.1 million people who earn less than £24,000 will receive a pay rise of £250.
Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)
I commend the Chancellor for having to make some very difficult decisions, but as President-elect Biden commits to a new era of western leadership, here we are about to mark the start of our G7 presidency by cutting our overseas aid budget. Downgrading our soft power programmes will leave vacuums in some of the poorest parts of the world that will further poverty and instability. It is likely to see China and Russia extending their authoritarian influence by taking our place. Will my right hon. Friend concede that we cannot genuinely claim to be global Britain, or claim to be serious about creating post-conflict strategies for countries such as Libya and Yemen—strategies that could lead to greater UK prosperity —when our hard power is not matched by our soft power? Will he meet me to discuss how these dated rules governing overseas aid should be updated?
Rishi Sunak
My right hon. Friend will I am sure welcome the very significant increase in our defence budget, which he has campaigned for to fix many of the issues of the past. He also alluded to our ability to help lots of different parts of the world in lots of different ways; Libya was one example that he gave. He will know that we are the fifth largest contributor to the UN’s peacekeeping operations. He makes a good point about aid rules. For example, we spend about half a billion pounds every year on peacekeeping and security operations in countries such as Libya, Mali, Somalia, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. That spending, that difference we make on the ground and that security that we bring to some of the world’s poorest places is not currently counted as overseas development aid.
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
The Chancellor has spoken well today of the scars that are felt by so many in society due to the triple whammy of covid, climate change and Brexit. Will he outline how he will manage to ring-fence money for mental health within the health spend? Mind, the charity, has said that phone calls have doubled, with many young people experiencing debilitating anxiety, depression and self-harm. Will he urgently look at mental health and ring-fence money for workforce changes, which are desperately needed, and for a decent revenue spend to bring mental health up into line with physical health?
Rishi Sunak
The hon. Lady makes a good point, and I am pleased to tell her that of the £3 billion of extra money for the NHS that we have announced for next year to help recover from coronavirus, half a billion pounds of that is specifically earmarked to address waiting times in mental health services, to give people the support they need and to invest in the workforce that she rightly identified. I hope that gives her some reassurance. That is incremental to the existing NHS plans.
Mrs Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con) [V]
I congratulate the Chancellor on how he has handled the financial pressures that the pandemic has thrown at the Government, by thinking outside the box with brilliant, innovative solutions. However, I cannot support the new tiering system, because it is totally illogical and will force too many people to stay holed up at home. Hospitality businesses will fold in their tens of thousands, and I cannot condone that when they have spent tens of thousands becoming covid-safe.
I will also not support the reduction in the aid budget. This country has made an amazing difference to the lives of millions, but with the reduction of GNI and the proposed cut, the aid budget will be decimated. No longer will girls have 12 years of quality education—resulting in more child marriages, more instances of early childbirth, more female genital mutilation and more domestic violence. We will not be vaccinating millions, preventing polio and TB, providing medication for HIV or preventing malaria. We will be reduced to spending on humanitarian crises in emergencies only—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. Please could we just have a question?
Mrs Latham
So many things will be damaged, and our relations with the developing world will lose the soft influence that we have today. I cannot condone this, and therefore I will not be supporting this statement.
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend makes a passionate case, and a right case, for our ability to help provide immunisation to the world’s poorest children. It is something that I proudly support, and I am happy to tell the House that we are the largest donor to the Gavi consortium globally, of any country in the world. That is the multilateral body that provides immunisation against infectious diseases for 75 million children, and as I have said, we are proudly the largest donor to that effort.
Mr Deputy Speaker
I just remind Members that we must not have a speech and eventually a question. Can we get quickly to the questions in order that we can get everybody in?
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
In this covid crisis, the Government have presided over an horrific double whammy of one of the largest per capita death rates in the world and the deepest recession in the G7, and that is before the Brexit disruption due at the end of the year. Is the Chancellor really proud of his record?
Rishi Sunak
My priority throughout this crisis has been protecting jobs. I am pleased to see that that is something the OBR, the Bank of England and the IMF all acknowledge has happened as a result of our interventions. We currently have an unemployment rate that is lower than Italy, France, Spain, Canada and the United States. So, yes, I do think what we are doing is making a difference to millions of people up and down the country.
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
Can I commend all the work that the Chancellor has done this year? Many constituents I speak to credit him personally with keeping them in a job. I am also pleased to see that, despite the financial pressures, the Chancellor is investing in transport. We see multi-year settlements for road, rail and active travel, and changes to the way infrastructure projects are appraised to increase the number of transport projects in deprived parts of the country, as well as a green book, a national infrastructure strategy, a red book and a £4 billion levelling up fund—and I am pleased to see that the Department for Transport is a sponsor. Can I ask him to keep a watchful eye on how all that is spent? Will he continue to place transport investment at the heart of our recovery and his long-term vision for this country?
Rishi Sunak
I am very grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention. He is absolutely right, and he has championed tirelessly for his constituents and the country the importance of transport in our levelling-up agenda and in helping to drive growth and spread opportunity. He is also right that we should be careful about how this money is spent and make sure that it is delivered. I talked about Project Speed earlier, and I would welcome his involvement and advice on that. He will notice in the spending review document a new focus on outcomes across public services with a new public value framework. That will deliver what he is asking for.
Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP) [V]
Could I raise with the Chancellor the issue of statutory sick pay? Even before the crisis hit earlier this year, statutory sick pay in the United Kingdom was not comparable with that in similar advanced economies. Sitting at only £95, we know that it is not enough for those who need it for self-isolation, and that it is estimated to make up only about a fifth of workers’ wages. Will the Chancellor look at building up the statutory sick pay mechanisms in this country, so that they are fit not just for the present times, but for the hard times people are going to face in future, and give workers the proper financial security they deserve and are lacking right now?
Rishi Sunak
At the beginning of this crisis, we made changes to the way that statutory sick pay operates, ensuring that it was payable from day one rather than day four, and for those who are self-employed, and we made changes to the way that universal credit, employment and support allowance and the minimum income floor work—all to enable some of the things that the hon. Gentleman mentioned. It is worth bearing in mind that, on the last survey evidence we have, a majority of people —something north of 60%—get more than statutory sick pay as a result of the treatment of their employers.
Jeremy Hunt (South West Surrey) (Con)
I recognise that the Chancellor will have made the decision on 0.7% with an extremely heavy heart, but does he recognise that the respect felt for this country around the world is because we have championed causes throughout our history that matter to people everywhere, such as democracy, human rights and the rule of law? One of those causes is tackling extreme poverty. To cut our aid budget by a third in a year when millions more will fall into extreme poverty will make not just them poorer but us poorer in the eyes of the world, because people will worry that we are abandoning a noble ideal that we in this country have done more to champion than anyone else.
Rishi Sunak
I am enormously grateful to my right hon. Friend for the approach that he has taken and I appreciate our conversations on this topic. Of course he rightly feels passionately about it. As he knows better than anyone, there are many ways in which we exert our influence and our values across the world—aid is just one part. Even at 0.5%, we will still be more generous as a percentage of GDP than almost all our major economy peers—France, Japan, Canada, Italy, the United States—and than the average of the OECD. The values that he cares deeply about I also care deeply about, and I look forward to talking with him further about how best we can express those values and make a difference to those who need our help everywhere that we find them.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
Charities up and down the land will wonder why the Chancellor has abandoned them today. Charities have already accumulated £10 billion-worth of debt, and 20% of them could fold, despite the extraordinary work they have done for our nation during the pandemic. His statement says that there will be further rationing in the Office for Civil Society. Will he reflect on that and come back to the Dispatch Box with real money to support our valuable charities?
Rishi Sunak
Almost uniquely among other countries during this crisis, we have provided enormous financial support to our charity sector. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has distributed £750 million to small and large charities up and down the country. They do fantastic work, and it has been a difficult time for them. That is why this Government stood behind them at a time of acute crisis.
Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)
On 26 February, I asked the Prime Minister to offer additional support to Wales over and above the devolved settlement in the face of unprecedented flooding caused by Storm Dennis. The Prime Minister gave an assurance that funding would be “passported” to Wales. Nine months later, with winter approaching, that funding still has not been delivered. What discussions has the Chancellor had about that, and when does he think the Government will be able to deliver on the Prime Minister’s promises to Welsh communities?
Rishi Sunak
I believe we have, with £1.3 billion of extra funding next year for the Welsh Government to spend as they see fit on their devolved competencies, of which flooding is one. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman can raise that with the Welsh Government. We in England are doubling investment in flood defences over the next few years to over £5 billion, protecting over 300,000 homes, and the £1.3 billion of Barnett funding for Wales will enable that funding to go to where it is needed.
Sir Robert Syms (Poole) (Con)
I thank the Chancellor for his statement. Over the last 10 years, we have spent over £100 billion on overseas aid, with a lot of it borrowed. Most of my constituents will understand the difficult decision that the Government have had to make. At 0.5%, our aid spending will be higher than that of most of our neighbours, and probably higher than the Major Government and many other Governments in the past. He has set out the recovery in GDP and growth over the next three or four years, and no doubt the budget will go up again.
Rishi Sunak
I thank my hon. Friend for his comment. He is right—I think the average aid spending of the last Labour Government was 0.36%, so it will be sufficiently ahead of that. As I said, we intend to return to this over time when the fiscal situation allows. He will appreciate better than others the unbelievable uncertainty at the moment, but that is our intention.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab) [V]
May I declare an interest in this question, as I suffer from myeloma, a form of blood cancer?
We all recognise and applaud the incredible work that the NHS and its staff have done for us all in the past few months. In terms of the future, does the Chancellor recognise, however, that much research for cancer is funded by charitable donations, which have fallen significantly during recent months for reasons that everyone can understand? To ensure that treatments continue to improve in the future, will he agree to fully fund cancer research to make up the difference in charitable donations, at least for the next few years?
Rishi Sunak
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his question. I know that it is a topic on which he speaks passionately. He will be pleased to know more generally about our record spending on R&D next year of just shy of £15 billion; the exact allocation is for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, but there is a significant increase for basic research. Also, within the Department of Health and Social Care Budget settlement, there is about £1.3 billion to fund research for the National Institute for Health Research and Genomics England—both of which do a fantastic job, and I am sure will be working on treatments for us all for many years to come.
John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
I welcome the Chancellor’s continuing commitment to sound money. It is particularly easy to forget, in a year when we have just seen an 11.3% cut in the size of the economy, that ultimately, all the money that we are borrowing must eventually be paid back by us as taxpayers. So I urge him not to lose that focus, and as soon as possible to get back to a sustainable basis. As part of that, could he say more about the Restart programme, which he mentioned earlier—a crucial thing to get members of the long-term unemployed back into work? How many people does he expect that to help, and what benefit does he expect that to have for our long-term, sustainable economy?
Rishi Sunak
As ever, my right hon. Friend speaks fantastically good sense. He is right; we will need to return to a sustainable fiscal position, not least to build resilience for the next crisis or shock that comes along. We want to be able to react in the same comprehensive and generous way that we did this time, and that requires us to have a strong set of public finances going into it.
My right hon. Friend is right about the Restart programme, which will help, we hope, around 1 million of those who are long-term unemployed; it will be an exciting and ambitious programme. The Institute for Employment Studies has spoken very well about the evidence in favour of that type of high-quality, individual work-focused approach making an enormous difference in getting people back into work. If we can do that, we can reduce some of the long-term scarring that they will face. So I have high hopes for what that programme can achieve.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
I first welcome the £900 million that will be available to the Northern Ireland Executive, which is a reminder to the people of Northern Ireland of the economic security that we have as a result of being part of the United Kingdom. The Barnett consequentials for Wales and Scotland should also be a reminder to the people there of the benefits of the Union.
May I ask the Chancellor one thing about the levelling up fund, the infrastructure bank and the shared prosperity fund? When will he have the details of access to those, and can he assure us that the access to all those funds will be equally available to different parts of the United Kingdom?
Rishi Sunak
I can give the right hon. Gentleman that assurance. Those are UK-wide programmes and we hope to have more details about the infrastructure bank in the spring, so that we can get it up and running, at least in shadow form, as quickly as possible and make a difference to communities all around the United Kingdom.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
May I first join my hon. Friends in expressing concern about the proposal to reduce overseas aid, but welcome today’s announcements in particular on infrastructure, apprenticeships and research and development, which will create wealth and jobs? I also welcome the substantial support that the Chancellor has provided to help businesses and people get through coronavirus. However, my constituents know that those measures will all have to be paid for, so can he assure them that when this economic emergency is over, he will return to a policy of balancing the books?
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Although it is right to act in this way during the crisis, it would not be a sustainable way to operate. The important thing to know is that right now the focus should be on supporting businesses and jobs; but once our economic recovery is secure, we can turn our task to making sure that we have a strong set of public finances.
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
The Chancellor has announced a pay freeze for hundreds of thousands of public sector workers today who do not deserve it. Firefighters, care assistants and teaching assistants will all suffer a pay freeze. What is the assessment of the economic impact of that pay freeze? There must be one in the Treasury somewhere. What is it?
Rishi Sunak
It would be wrong to describe this policy as a blanket pay freeze when a majority of those working in the public sector will see an increase in their pay next year, because they earn less than the UK median salary of £24,000 or they work in the NHS, or, indeed, they are on the national living wage. Across all those areas, there will be a pay increase. That will benefit millions of people and make a difference to the economy.
Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)
I welcome the significant financial commitment to mental health services. One of the striking takeaways in my constituency is the proliferation in anxiety, depression and sometimes addiction that is emerging from the crisis. We know that these have a pernicious correlation with long-term unemployment and, for that reason, I invite my right hon. Friend to keep a sharp focus on mental health spending over the years ahead, because the best training programmes and the best labour market interventions in the world will only work if the workforce is mentally well enough to engage.
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point and it is a topic that she knows very well. I hope that she was heartened to hear what I said earlier about £500 million of the increase of £3 billion for the NHS this year being specifically targeted on mental health to address all the things she said. She is right about the difference they will make for many people in our country.
Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)
Over 4 million children are in poverty in the UK. Under successive Conservative Chancellors, Sure Start centres have closed, child trust funds have been slashed, nurseries today are on the brink of collapse and the number of children falling into poverty increases month after month. It is an unnecessary national tragedy, so why, especially at these difficult times, could the Chancellor not today commit to eradicating child poverty in his economic statement?
Rishi Sunak
On the last numbers, there are 100,000 fewer children in absolute poverty than in 2010 and 750,000 fewer children living in workless households than in 2010. The hon. Gentleman asked about nurseries and early years. He will be pleased to know that an above-inflation increase in the hourly rate for nursery providers is contained in the spending review.
Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab) [V]
A few months ago, the Conservative party was clapping public sector workers. Now it is cutting the pay of millions. This crisis should not be paid for on the backs of the working class, but it is. Over 2 million people are now paid less than the minimum wage—up fivefold. Sick pay is so low that people are forced to choose between their health and putting food on the table, and millions of people’s benefits—largely sick and disabled people—will rise by just 37p a week. Instead of forcing millions into poverty, will the Chancellor impose a windfall tax on those who have made super-profits from this crisis?
Rishi Sunak
The hon. Gentleman talked about those on the lowest pay. We accepted the recommendations from the Low Pay Commission to increase the national living wage by 2.2%. That will make a difference of £345 to full-time national living wage workers, as well as protecting those in the public sector who earn up to the average UK salary of £24,000, who will receive a £250 uplift.
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con) [V]
I commend the Chancellor on many of these measures, including the support for the lower-paid. When it comes to funding, I encourage him not to stifle enterprise through increases in taxes, as these are often counter- productive. May I raise with him the case of social care workers? They provide an essential service but they are often overlooked, in part because they span the private and public sectors. What more can he do for them? For example, further to my letter to him, will he consider raising their personal tax threshold so that they can take home more of their pay?
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend is right about the importance of social care workers. He will know that they are not formally part of public sector pay settlements, but many of them are national living wage workers, as he knows, so they will benefit from the increase of 2.2% that we are putting in place for next year. He will also know that we have already made a start in the Budget on our desire to raise the national insurance threshold, delivering cash benefits to people of about £100 this year, but it is something that we will keep under review for future fiscal events.
Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP) [V]
The Chancellor has already allowed UK unemployment to rise to 4.8% and expects it to rise further, with redundancies at a record high. Will he now admit his mistake in leaving the 3 million without furlough or the self-employed help scheme and give contractors, freelancers, creators and others the help that they so desperately deserve?
Rishi Sunak
The OBR and others have said that our economic interventions have helped to keep down unemployment and protected jobs, and that is part of the reason why our unemployment rate is lower than that in Italy, France, Spain, Canada and the United States.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
I support the Chancellor’s decision to cut the overseas aid budget, which will be widely welcomed across the country in the real world, even if not always in here. I do not see why it should be controversial to say that we should spend only what we can afford on overseas aid. I suspect that the vast majority of the British public will be asking not why he has cut so much, but probably why we are still spending so much. If some of that money that he is saving can be spent on the much-needed and long-awaited Shipley eastern bypass and on some proper flood defences in the Shipley constituency then so much the better.
Rishi Sunak
I thank my hon. Friend for his support. He makes an important point: this spending review is about delivering on the British people’s priorities. Yes, we have made some tough choices, but we have done that so that we can continue investing in the things that our constituents value most. I look forward to talking to him further about the bypass and flooding defences that he needs, but, hopefully, with a doubling of our flood defences over this Parliament, it is something that we can make progress on for him.
Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)
May I place on record my thanks to the Chancellor for the recent announcement of support for airports, which has been very welcome? I also thank him for the measured and sensible way that he is approaching the unprecedented challenges that we are facing, but may I just raise the challenges facing the hospitality sector, which has been impacted more than any other? Although the Government have provided incredible support in recent months, the sector is facing real challenges this winter with the restrictions that we are placing on it. It says that 94% of businesses in tier 3 will be unviable, 74% in tier 2, and, even in tier 1, 30% of businesses are likely to be unviable. The sector has played an incredible part in our growth and job creation over the past 10 years and wants to continue doing so as we recover from this crisis. Will he please look again at what support we can give to the sector to make sure that it is still around in the spring to help our recovery?
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend is, as ever, a passionate champion for the hospitality sector, and he is right to be so. It employs 2 million people, often lower paid, and it has been hit harder than almost anybody by this crisis, which is why, as he acknowledged, we have put in place unprecedented support, from VAT cuts, initiatives over the summer such as eat out to help out, business rates holidays and now cash grants when those businesses are either closed or in tier 2 areas facing restrictions to help get them through the winter. Those grants in general will equate to the rental payment of most of those businesses—we have that information and that is the single biggest fixed cost of hospitality businesses; and, of course, they can furlough their staff. I know that it is difficult, but, hopefully, those interventions will make a difference, because he is right that we want them to be able to bounce back strongly.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
The midlands engine has identified priorities for investment as transport, digital connectivity and energy. That is what we need to enable the midlands and the UK to recover from this pandemic and to build back bigger, better and greener, but, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the east midlands has suffered the lowest level of transport spending per person since 2014-15. We have also been at the back of the queue for all capital spending for at least five years. If the Chancellor is serious about levelling up, can he guarantee that the east midlands will receive the highest allocation of any region when he hands out his new levelling-up fund?
Rishi Sunak
The hon. Lady talked about a few different things, transport and digital connectivity being among the most important to her region. This spending review delivers on both those priorities, with record amounts of spending on road, rail, intra-city transportation, buses and cycling, and, on digital connectivity, with our plans to bring 85% of the country to gigabit-capable broadband by 2025, we are also delivering on the green plan that I outlined. I very much look forward to hearing from her and her local areas once we launch the levelling-up fund, because I am sure there will be projects we can make a difference to.
David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con) [V]
I welcome the levelling-up fund. From the outset I have been championing the Eden Project North in Morecambe, which is coming shortly, so will the Chancellor meet me to discuss it, as it is exactly the kind of shovel- ready project that would level up not just Morecambe, but the whole of our region?
Rishi Sunak
Yes, Mr Deputy Speaker, I think it was something about the Eden Project. I would be very happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss his ambitions for his area and this project. I know he has put a lot of thought and energy into it, as has his community, and I very much hope we can make progress in the coming years.
Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)
In his statement, my right hon. Friend said:
“The spending announced today is secondary to the courage, wisdom, kindness and creativity it unleashes. These are the incalculable but essential parts of our future, and they cannot be mandated or distributed by Government.”
He is right on that, and the private sector and businesses will respond to what he has announced today. When it comes to the consideration of taxes, will he look to protect the incentives for those who invest and grow such businesses?
Rishi Sunak
I thank my hon. Friend for his comment, as he is absolutely right, and from his own business experience he knows this well. He will know that one thing we do to incentive entrepreneurship through the tax system is our world-leading enterprise investment scheme and seed enterprise investment scheme programme, which provides significant support to private investors to help fund new businesses. We have expanded that scheme over time. I know he has thoughts on it, and I look forward to hearing them.
Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab)
I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
The taxpayer support for British businesses and jobs during this pandemic has been a lifeline for many, but today we hear that Rolls-Royce, which has benefited handsomely from the public purse while moving highly skilled jobs abroad, intends to shut down its historic Barnoldswick site until after Christmas and offshore the work to Japan, Singapore and Spain, in a clear attempt to break the current industrial action there. Does the Chancellor agree that these kinds of bully-boy, strike-busting tactics are utterly unacceptable and that all the financial support must be immediately withdrawn until Rolls-Royce comes to its senses, ends its lockout and gets back to the table with Unite the union to resolve this dispute?
Rishi Sunak
I know that the aerospace industry has been suffering a particularly difficult time over the past few months, and that has impacted businesses such as Rolls-Royce and others up and down the supply chain. We have put some measures in place to help airports and get people flying again, and we enjoy conversations with specific companies all the time. I urge all companies to work constructively with their workforces through what is a difficult period and, we hope, find resolution. Collectively, we are all trying to protect jobs, but of course this is a very challenging set of circumstances.
Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
The £325 million for the NHS to invest in the new diagnostic kit is really welcome, as will be the £1 billion to begin tackling the elective backlog caused by covid. May I ask the Chancellor to stick with that? What freedoms will my local NHS trusts have to spend that money? I have constituents who are waiting for a knee op or a hip op, and although those may not be life or death issues, they are massively life-impacting issues, as people are being prevented from getting on with their lives, working or enjoying their children and grandchildren. I ask the Chancellor to stick with that and clear the backlog.
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend of course knows about this particularly well from his own experience, and he is right. One of the implications of the lockdown and what we have done in the past is that we have this backlog now. He rightly says that it makes a difference to people’s day-to-day quality of life, which is why we have provided £3 billion, of which £1 billion is to tackle exactly that elective backlog. It will enable 1 million more scans and treatments to happen, and, as he says, it is something we should stick with.
Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP) [V]
More than 1 million 1950s-born WASPI—Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign—women remain in the workforce, including in front-facing roles. Many had planned to retire but cannot do so because the Chancellor’s Government hit them with a lengthy delay in accessing their pensions. WASPI women have asked me why the Chancellor cannot sort out their pensions, allowing them to retire and freeing up their jobs for others. That would be a win-win for the Chancellor and WASPI women, so will he look to do it?
Rishi Sunak
The case has been settled in the courts and there is not much further I can add, but today we have announced an uplift of 2.5% for 12 million pensioners on the state pension, which I know will make a difference to many.
Ben Everitt (Milton Keynes North) (Con)
I am sure the Chancellor shares my vision that Milton Keynes and the wider Thames valley can be the silicon valley of Europe. We know that 88% of UK companies are currently experiencing a lack of digital skills, and that this is costing our economy £63 billion a year. May I therefore ask whether the proposal for a brand new STEM-focused science and digital technology university in Milton Keynes would be eligible to apply for funding from the new £4 billion pot for levelling up?
Rishi Sunak
We will publish further details on how the levelling-up fund will work in due course. It is for those smaller, deliverable, everyday infrastructure projects that I have talked about. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to champion technology, innovation and digital adoption by small and medium-sized enterprises. He will be pleased to know that the spending review confirms just over £50 million to support the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to deliver productivity-enhancing programmes for SMEs. I think that one of those does involve the use of digital technology, in which the UK lags behind its peers.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
We know that families are really struggling right now. The Bank of England has said that the inflation forecast next year is 2%. Can the Chancellor guarantee that the 2.1 million public sector workers he referred to will not face a real-terms pay cut next year? Will he also explain why on earth he is still going ahead with the appalling £1,000 cut in universal credit, which will hit millions of families across the country at this incredibly difficult time?
Rishi Sunak
Those in the public sector who earn less than £24,000, which is the UK national median wage, will receive a fixed increase of at least £250. That is 2.1 million people—38% of the workforce. [Interruption.] Well, it will depend on each worker’s exact salary, but there will be a fixed increase of £250 for all of those 2 million workers.
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con) [V]
I welcome much of the Chancellor’s statement, and look forward to sending him the bid for the Ripley-Codnor bypass. Is he able to offer any encouragement to the supply chain of the hospitality industry? He is supporting the restaurants and pubs that are closed, but not the important businesses that supply them and also cannot trade because they have no customers to sell to.
Rishi Sunak
Obviously those businesses will be able to use the generous terms of the furlough scheme for their staff through the winter period. The more than £1 billion of funding that we made available to local authorities before the start of the latest national restrictions was also to support businesses and local economies in the way that authorities saw fit throughout the winter period. That funding is available at a local level, perhaps to do some of the things that my hon. Friend mentioned.
Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)
The Chancellor has promised the British people a green jobs revolution, but the UK is fast falling behind countries like France and Germany. We need investment in the jobs of the future now. What immediate steps will the Chancellor be taking to support green infrastructure projects such as offshore wind and the Mersey tidal projects, and green jobs on Merseyside?
Rishi Sunak
I do not believe that we are behind France and Germany. We are phasing out internal combustion engine vehicles 10 years before France, and we are phasing out coal 13 years before Germany. Indeed, the Prime Minister’s 10-point plan will support up to a quarter of a million green jobs, building on the progress that we have made by being the country that has decarbonised the fastest out of all major economies.
Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)
My constituency is home to the global headquarters of AstraZeneca, the private sector company that has committed to producing, on a not-for-profit basis, the so-called Oxford vaccine—not just for the British population, but for developing countries around the world. It is doing that through Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, of which the UK, as the Chancellor said earlier, is the biggest financial supporter. The coronavirus pandemic is the biggest crisis facing the world, and the UK is in a leading position in tackling it. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that, as a result of the spending review, the UK will continue to be able to play that leading role against the pandemic?
Rishi Sunak
I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. He highlights a perfect example of this country making an enormous difference to millions of people around the world, not just with our aid budget but through the quality of our research and then our desire to find commercial partners who will bring that life-saving treatment to millions of people at cost. It is a fantastic example, and my hon. Friend is right to highlight it.
Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab) [V]
It was frankly opprobrious that there was nothing today to help the 3 million people excluded from Government support schemes. They are desperate, they are struggling, and some have even taken their own lives. Will the Chancellor tell me whether we are to assume that, after eight months without any change in policy, he deems it politically expedient to exclude these people, because they just do not matter?
Rishi Sunak
I am sure the hon. Lady heard the answer to the previous question on this issue. She keeps mentioning this 3 million figure without giving an explanation of whether she agrees that 1.5 million of those people should be included, given that they make the majority of their earnings from employment and are eligible to be furloughed. Indeed, that approach was supported by all trade organisations at the time when the scheme was launched.
Gary Sambrook (Birmingham, Northfield) (Con)
Fifteen years after the MG Rover collapse, there is still 150 acres of unused land in Longbridge that could be used to provide much-needed jobs locally. Will the Chancellor support my campaign, along with Mayor Andy Street, to make sure that Longbridge is at the top of the list when it comes to levelling-up and that we have those jobs right across Northfield?
Rishi Sunak
That sounds like an excellent idea. I hope that the £400 million brownfield fund, which is part of our housing fund, could be of help. I know that Mayor Andy Street has spoken to the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government about how best he can access the brownfield fund, and this sounds like exactly the kind of project that it is designed to help.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
The Chancellor has repeatedly said that he does not recognise them, but today 3 million taxpayers—including many of my constituents—who have been excluded from any support at all will have been in anguish waiting for his statement. Far from protecting lives and livelihoods, he has let them down yet again. Their income is down to zero, they are losing their homes and unable to feed their families and—again—some have even taken their own lives. Is it that the Chancellor does not understand the heartache and hopelessness of poverty? Or is it simply that he just does not care?
Rishi Sunak
Anyone in the circumstances described by the hon. Lady would surely be eligible for support through universal credit, which can provide, depending on the circumstances, somewhere between £1,500 and £1,800 per family per month to help to support them if that is what they need. She talks about the self-employed as if perhaps they are not also people who benefit from better hospitals, better schools, better local infrastructure and safer streets. That is what this spending review delivers, and it will benefit everybody in the United Kingdom in that way.
Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con) [V]
I very much welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement and strongly applaud the Government’s commitment to fund the NHS with investment not only in hospitals, such as the £3 million for the A&E at Russells Hall Hospital in Dudley, but in diagnostic equipment, as well as for more nurses and GP appointments. Will he outline how these commitments help the Conservative party to meet its manifesto commitment to deliver stronger public services, such as through 50,000 more nurses?
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend is absolutely right: not only are we maintaining our commitment to the NHS’s five-year long-term settlement, but we are providing additional funds, with £3 billion for covid recovery this year, and also providing fully the extra funding required to deliver on the commitments to 50,000 more nurses, 50 million more GP appointments and, indeed, 40 new hospitals.
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
The British people have faced an incredibly difficult year, with covid and the resulting economic crisis. We then have the looming prospect of either a no-deal Brexit or a minimalist one that will be very disruptive for businesses. The OBR has forecast a 5.2% loss of potential GDP over the next 15 years, while the Governor of the Bank of England has said that with a no-deal Brexit we could see a situation that is two to three times as bad. How much more economic carnage and unemployment should the British people expect, with these two scenarios on top of coronavirus and its impacts?
Rishi Sunak
All I would say is that our teams are hard at work, and I am very hopeful that we can reach a constructive agreement with our European friends and partners. Our wishes in this negotiation have always been consistent and transparent and are based entirely on the precedent of what other countries have achieved with the EU, so I am very much hopeful that, with good work and a constructive attitude, we can get there.
Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con)
In what must be the most challenging circumstances ever to deliver a spending review, I welcome the Restart scheme to help the unemployed. Last year, £500 million was announced to help youth services, and Southend YMCA greatly benefited from that. Will the Chancellor recommit to that £500 million, and will he set out a timeframe in which that can be delivered over the next five years?
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the importance of youth services. I am not entirely sure exactly which bit he refers to, but I am happy to talk to him further about it. He will see in today’s spending review that the National Citizen Service is still there and we have provided more funding for capital projects for youth organisations, but I will happily pick up the specific case he mentioned separately.
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement, particularly the levelling-up fund. May I make an immediate representation for dualling of the A64 in my constituency? I also welcome the changes to the Green Book. Will he take a similar look at the housing infrastructure fund, which also has a built-in bias towards spending in London and the south-east?
Rishi Sunak
I know that this is an area that my hon. Friend knows particularly well, so I am very happy to take him up on that suggestion and discuss his concerns with the Housing Secretary. I thank him for bringing it to my attention.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
There are some positives for the NHS in the Chancellor’s statement, but it does feel like there is a blind spot: in the detailed documents, as far as I can tell, there is only one reference to cancer. Bear in mind that clinicians estimate that we will unnecessarily lose 60,000 years to cancer deaths during this time, and that it may take five years for the NHS to catch up with the colossal cancer backlog. There is no reference in the Chancellor’s statement to the urgent investment in radiotherapy or other treatment mechanisms that is necessary to catch up with cancer. Will he think again? Will he meet me and a cross-party group of MPs, clinicians and patients living with cancer, so that he can think again, act now and save lives?
Rishi Sunak
Of course, it will be for the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to do the detailed allocation of this budget, but I would point to the £3 billion for covid recovery, £1 billion of which is to help tackle the backlog of elective surgery and of screening and diagnostics, which I think will help. We have also provided £325 million to invest in new diagnostic machines, replacing about two thirds of ageing machines, which presumably helps with referrals and identification of cancer, but of course the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care will be the best person to discuss the exact allocation of the increased NHS budget.
Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con) [V]
I praise the measured and sensible way that the Chancellor has approached this spending review, and I welcome in particular the infrastructure fund. With levelling up in the north of England a real priority, I look forward to discussing more projects for Warrington South with him. I am particularly pleased to see that those working in the lowest-paid public sector jobs will get a pay increase, but can he confirm that the extra police officers promised for Cheshire will be delivered so that we can tackle antisocial behaviour and protect our communities from the dreadful impact of county lines drug gangs?
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the importance of safer streets. I am pleased to tell him that this spending review makes available £400 million more for the Home Office and local policing to make sure that we can recruit an additional 6,000 police officers next year, on top of the 6,000 this year, in order to make great progress on our way to 20,000 by 2023.
Matt Vickers (Stockton South) (Con) [V]
My right hon. Friend has had to make some tough decisions on issues such as foreign aid, but can he assure me that by doing that, he will be able to focus on domestic priorities and a levelling-up agenda that can do so much for so many in Teesside?
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This spending review is about focusing on the priorities of our constituents. I am sure that he and his constituents will be pleased to know that we have made £3 million available today for the Tees Valley hydrogen transport hub. Teesside is at the heart of our hydrogen revolution, bringing new jobs, attracting investment and driving growth in his local area. That is an example of the kind of local priority that we can now fund, having made these tough decisions.
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
The Chancellor said that he wants to invest in the places that we call home, but the homes of thousands of leaseholders are currently worthless fire risks because of the cladding scandal that they did not cause. He will be well aware that the £1.6 billion that he has already allocated is nowhere near enough to make all those homes safe again. The leaseholders do not have the money and, as far as I can tell from the Blue Book, not a single additional penny has been allocated. How much longer will my constituents have to wait before they can once again call the place in which they live a home?
Rishi Sunak
We have made available £1.6 billion, which means that, at this moment, 80% of high-rise buildings with aluminium composite material cladding have work under way or complete. That number is likely to rise to 100% by the end of the year.
With regard to people who are unable to move, I think the right hon. Gentleman is referring to the issue with the EWS1 certificates. The Minister for Housing, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher), made a statement on that recently, but the right hon. Gentleman will be pleased to know that £700,000 was made available to help more assessors to qualify to undertake those assessments. I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government is in conversations with UK Finance and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors to ensure that the use or demand of those certificates is appropriate and proportionate to the needs of the situation.
Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con) [V]
I understand that my right hon. Friend has had to make some difficult decisions as we seek to rebuild our economy in the months ahead. I am delighted to hear his commitment to investment in infrastructure, but can he set out what that means for the north, in particular York and north Yorkshire? What benefits will it bring to my constituents?
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend is right that it is about making difficult decisions so that we can prioritise the things that our constituents want us to. In his area, he will be pleased that there has been a success in accessing the new stations fund for Haxby station. That is an example of the Government delivering on our promises and trying to find ways to improve local transport infrastructure in his local area to drive growth and opportunity. We will relentlessly focus on those types of priorities.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op) [V]
I ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether we can have the new infrastructure bank in Yorkshire, in particular in Huddersfield. Is he sure that he has paid enough attention to the tremendous challenge of young people’s unemployment and young people who want to get into a job and be trained? Is the programme that he announced today sufficient to train a whole new generation of young people as green apprentices?
Rishi Sunak
I would, of course, be sympathetic to the idea of putting the bank in Yorkshire, as the hon. Gentleman knows, but he was slightly beaten to the punch over the weekend by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), who made a pitch for Bradford. In any case, I will happily hear his thoughts.
The hon. Gentleman is right about the focus on young people. The new Restart programme will be able to help a million people who have been unemployed for over a year. Before that happens, we have the kickstart programme that will benefit a quarter of a million young people—or more if it is successful. He talked about apprenticeships. Rightly, we have increased the cash bonus to businesses to £3,000 for them to take on a fresh new young apprentice, because he is right that that is where our focus should be.
Jane Stevenson (Wolverhampton North East) (Con)
I thank the Chancellor for the range of measures to support those on low incomes and to protect the most vulnerable, whether that is through an uplift to cash for local authorities to identify and support vulnerable families, or through the holiday activities and food programme and an uplift to the Healthy Start programme. Levelling up is crucial to a seat such as Wolverhampton North-East. Can he reassure my constituents that the Government will continue to prioritise job creation, investment and other opportunities for them?
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Government are committed to spreading opportunity across the country, especially in places where people feel they have not had the same fair crack of the whip. Our levelling up fund is designed to correct that. Today, her local area will be benefiting from discounted funding from the Public Works Loan Board to help with local infrastructure projects. That is a symbol of our commitment to her area and her constituents.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
The Chancellor said that my hon. Friends were wrong about the number of working people excluded from financial support. It is the freelancers and the self-employed who have not had any support who think that he is wrong. In the Liverpool city region, the Mayor, Steve Rotheram, has found a package to support some of the people who have been excluded. When will the Chancellor step up, support Steve Rotheram, Andy Burnham and the other Labour leaders in local government, and put a support package together? He has to admit that these people have not qualified for furlough, self-employed support or business grants, and most of them are not eligible for universal credit. When is he going to end this burning injustice?
Rishi Sunak
Some £1 billion has been provided to local authorities across the country to support their businesses and local economies as they see fit. That funding has, of course, been made available to the hon. Gentleman’s local authority. If that is how it chooses to use the funding, that is up to the local authority. We have provided a range of different support, whether loans, access to our more generous welfare system or mortgage holidays that, in the end, one in six mortgage holders used. Those are all ways by which we have tried to do our best to provide support to the largest number of people possible.
Robert Largan (High Peak) (Con)
I wholeheartedly welcome the announcement that doctors, nurses and NHS workers will be getting a pay increase. This crisis has shown that we desperately need to invest in our urgent care capacity. That is why I have been campaigning for new urgent care centres for both Tameside Hospital and Stepping Hill Hospital. Will the Chancellor confirm that the Government remain 100% committed to the NHS hospital upgrade programme?
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. On top of the existing in-year funding we have provided to deal with winter pressures for A&E, the spending review confirms £3.7 billion of funding over the next few years to deliver both the 40 new hospitals we have talked about and 70 hospital upgrades. Rest assured; we remain completely committed to this programme.
Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP) [V]
I thank the Chancellor for his statement and welcome the additional financial support for the Northern Ireland Executive. I also look forward to the detail of the pay rise for nurses, doctors and healthcare workers, and how Northern Ireland healthcare professionals can benefit. In my constituency of Upper Bann, the private sector has been absolutely devastated by covid-19. Had it not been for the support provided by him, many businesses would be closed. What will the Chancellor do to ensure that the private sector recovery is supported across the United Kingdom, and will he undertake to show his clear commitment to a UK-wide recovery by visiting my constituency, when restrictions permit, to meet businesses who want to thank him and be part of our national economic recovery?
Rishi Sunak
I thank the hon. Lady for her kind comments. She is right about the importance of our businesses, especially our small and medium-sized businesses, in helping to drive our recovery. We have provided cash grant support to those most impacted by the restrictions and that extra funding comes to Northern Ireland. On a UK-wide basis, we have provided tax cuts, grants, loans and other measures that she will be aware of. She can rest assured that I will keep all that in my mind as we think about how to exit the crisis. I look forward to my first visit as Chancellor, hopefully, to Northern Ireland in the near future.
Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement this afternoon. He will know that affordable housing is needed in my constituency, but that development is constrained by green belt, which we are rightly enhancing and protecting as a manifesto commitment. Therefore, will he outline what fiscal steps he is taking to support councils like mine to regenerate brownfield sites?
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the importance of going to brownfield first. Today’s spending review makes available an additional £100 million for non-mayoral combined authorities to access remediation funding. My right hon. Friend the Housing Secretary will be able to talk to her in more detail about that, but it is exactly the kind of thing that I think could make a difference in her constituency.
Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP) [V]
By introducing the emergency measure to increase universal credit by £20 per week, the Chancellor was acknowledging what many people have known for years: universal credit is simply not enough to live on. If that was the case during the pandemic, why will he not commit to retaining this uplift permanently?
Rishi Sunak
We put in place a range of temporary measures because we were dealing with an unprecedented crisis. We are now working our way through that crisis, and the future looks considerably brighter than it did in March, not least because of the medical advancements and our ability to do improved testing, so we can look forward. We keep everything under review. The uplift lasts all the way to the spring. As we get to the spring and have more clarity about the future path of our economy and restrictions, we will of course be mindful of how to support and protect those who are most vulnerable in our society.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
While I share some of the concerns expressed by colleagues about the aid budget, I think that if we are to continue asking our constituents to make sacrifices, this temporary move is the right one. Can the Chancellor give an assurance that the Greater Grimsby town deal, which is of great benefit to my constituency, will continue to be funded? He is aware from a note I gave him last week that modest support for LNER would restore our direct rail service to London, and I hope he can provide that.
Rishi Sunak
I thank my hon. Friend for his support. He is right about my need to make difficult decisions and tough choices so that we can prioritise the things that he talked about. I believe that his local area has received some seed funding to examine proposals for the south Humber line, which I hope will make a difference to his constituents. I hope that he and I can have a productive conversation about our levelling-up fund, as we figure out how best to support the wonderful town of Grimsby with its future ambitions.
Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)
It is irresponsible to pit public sector and private sector workers against one another in the race to the bottom on wages, especially when key workers across both sectors kept us going through the pandemic. Notwithstanding the small amount given to low-paid workers, who frankly deserve better, this pay freeze for civil servants will also freeze any meaningful action on tackling the gender pay gap in the civil service, which is 12%. Will the Chancellor outline what discussions he has had with the Cabinet Office about eradicating the gender pay gap in Departments?
Rishi Sunak
For the record, no one is trying to pit anyone against anyone else. This is simply about doing what is fair for the country. It is the right decision to make. It is a difficult decision, but we have taken a targeted approach to protect those on lower incomes and those in the NHS, ensuring that a majority of public servants will receive an increase in their pay next year. I would be happy to go away and look at the gender pay gap in the civil service and ensure that we are making good progress on eliminating it.
Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con) [V]
We all want to see people’s wages go up again after the pandemic, and my right hon. Friend’s statement provides a strong foundation for securing that. At a time when many workers in the private sector face cuts or job losses, I can understand why it is necessary to pause public sector pay rises, other than those for frontline NHS workers and those earning less than the national average. Will he join me in urging the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority to ensure that that freeze also extends to the salaries of Members of Parliament?
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and the way he framed it was spot on. He will be reassured to know that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has written to IPSA on behalf of the Government, the Prime Minister and I to express our views on the situation, to inform it about the pay policy that we have put in place in the public sector and to urge it to take account of that when it sets pay policy. Of course, it is an independent body, but I hope very much that it will look at what we are doing.
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab) [V]
The Youth Violence Commission report, published earlier this year, highlighted the importance of high-quality youth services provision, yet in a recent written response to the report, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), made no mention of the youth investment fund, and neither did the Chancellor today. Indeed, when the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) asked about it, the Chancellor did not seem to know what he was on about. Does this mean that the promised and already delayed £500 million has been shelved?
Rishi Sunak
No, it has not been shelved, and I can he tell the hon. Lady that there is extra funding in this spending review for youth services. There is an amount of money for extra capital projects for youth clubs and, of course, funding for the National Citizen Service. More generally, the Government will review their approach to all youth services later this spring, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will set out the details in due course.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
I welcome the focus on infrastructure in the statement. As my right hon. Friend knows, I chair the all-party parliamentary group on infrastructure, and I can tell him that the industry has been looking for the certainty that he is providing today. Does he agree that that certainty will allow the industry to plan better and, through that, to deliver better value and develop skills programmes, including apprenticeship programmes?
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is because of that multi-year certainty, particularly on the capital side, that we can deliver projects more efficiently, faster and at lower cost. That certainty also helps the supply chain to take on new apprentices—helped, indeed, by our apprenticeship bonus as well. He is absolutely right to say that we must train the next generation and create jobs as we deliver this infrastructure, and that is exactly what we are doing.
Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
Britain’s publicans and the wider hospitality trade are facing a catastrophic Christmas. The Government’s mishandling of coronavirus, the lack of evidence behind their policies, particularly on pubs, and the lack of a financial package to support pubs after the second lockdown will mean that many of them never open their doors again. Rather than getting to his feet and congratulating them on what they did in the first lockdown, will the Chancellor actually give Britain’s publicans some kind of sense that a package is coming that might see them through the winter?
Rishi Sunak
The reason I talk about the things that we have done is that they last all the way through the winter to next spring, whether it is the VAT cut or the business rates holiday. I have consistently come to this Dispatch Box to support the hospitality industry. Many times I have been accused of doing the wrong thing by Opposition Members, but the local restrictions grants that we put in place will last through the winter, which means that if a pub is closed, it will receive up to £3,000 per month. When we look at the average rateable value of a pub in England, we see that the vast majority of small and medium-sized pubs will have their rent covered by that. Of course, they can furlough their staff as well, and those pubs operating in tier 2 areas under restrictions will still get a grant worth 70% of that value. Of course we are trying to do what we can to support the hospitality sector. I have done that since the beginning of this crisis, and I will keep doing so.
Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his statement today and on his stamina, as mine will be the 80th question he has answered so far this afternoon. Rough sleeping and tackling the causes of rough sleeping are subjects close to my heart. Sadly, in my constituency, we see more rough sleepers than in any other constituency in the United Kingdom. Will my right hon. Friend give me an assurance that today’s statement will provide financial support so that we can focus on the Government’s priority to end rough sleeping by 2024?
Rishi Sunak
I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. I think £254 million has been made available to local authorities to help them to end rough sleeping. That is a 60% increase in cash terms on the money available this year. She is absolutely right to say that this is something we must end, and I know that the funding will make an enormous difference in her constituency. I know this is an issue that she cares passionately about.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
Braehead Foods is a large employer in my constituency that supplies top-quality produce all over the United Kingdom. Furlough has been welcome for the company, but it needs additional support to cover fixed overheads while borrowing is maxed out and orders are almost non-existent. Will the Chancellor please reconsider past requests from myself and the Federation of Wholesale Distributors to provide a grant or rates relief system that can be replicated in Scotland for UK food wholesalers such as Braehead that are above the £51,000 business rates threshold, so that they can stay afloat and play their part in the post-covid economic recovery?
Rishi Sunak
Business rates are, of course, a devolved competency, and I am sure the hon. Gentleman can talk to the Scottish Government about their plans. They will receive £2.4 billion of Barnett consequentials as a result of what we are doing this year, and they could choose to use some of that funding to provide support in the way that he asks.
Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)
Earlier this week, I spoke to many people and companies— training providers and others—in my constituency about apprenticeships, and how we need to improve the system and make it more flexible. Will the Chancellor set out in further detail what the measures in this spending review will do to help businesses, training providers and young people get the apprenticeships they deserve?
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend knows this well, from his own business experience, and he is absolutely right. What businesses have been asking for is more flexibility on how levy funds are used. I am pleased that we can deliver that today. It means businesses can transfer their unspent levy funds down the supply chain easily, in bulk, to small and medium-sized companies. We are going to create a matching service for that to happen, and we are also going to allow employers, in certain industries at first, to front-load some of their training funding, which is what they also wanted. Those obviously will be funded by the Government—all those changes that happen as a result of our getting less in the levy funding—but we think they are the right thing to do. They will support business and support apprenticeships, and he is right to raise it.
James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)
The focus on the NHS and infrastructure is welcome. The Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn is on the frontline of dealing with covid, and it is 40 years old but was built to last only 30 years. Will my right hon. Friend look seriously at the compelling case for QEH to be one of the eight additional hospitals to be built on top of the 40 announced today?
Rishi Sunak
I look forward to hearing from my hon. Friend about the plans and the ambitions he has for his local hospital. The Secretary of State for Health will also be interested. My hon. Friend will know how committed we all are to improving our hospitals and having new ones across the UK. There is funding for that today, but I am happy to discuss it further.
Beth Winter (Cynon Valley) (Lab) [V]
In Wales, aerospace generates £1.47 billion in GVA for the Welsh economy. Since the pandemic, GE Aviation, which employs 200 of my constituents, has suffered 600 job losses, with future job losses likely. The sector faces a very uncertain future, which will have a devastating impact on our communities. These highly skilled workers have transferable skills. With the Chancellor’s stated interest in funding the development of green initiatives, will he consider a sector-specific package to support such a development for my constituents?
Rishi Sunak
I know from my conversations with the industry that one of the things it was very keen to see was an extension of our job support and furlough schemes, which is something we have been able to provide, and I know that will make a difference in preserving those valuable skill matches the hon. Member talked about. She will also know that there is an existing research and development park that the Department for Business runs, where it works with the aerospace industry to provide access. Some of the new R&D we have put aside for our net zero transition will also help because it is designed for reducing emissions and finding new ways in the transportation sector.
Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)
As somebody who campaigns to protect green-belt land, I welcome my right hon. Friend’s additional investment in prioritising brownfield developments. His changes to the Green Book will also benefit the north-west in relation to infrastructure investment. Will he say more about what he can do to incentivise business growth in the north of England, which will bring jobs and, importantly, tax revenue to fund many of the spending commitments he has announced today?
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Although not part of the spending review, just very recently announced is the extension to the annual investment allowance, which was due to expire at the end of this year. This allows small and medium-sized companies to write off, in full, investments of up to £1 million, so that is a tax break that we are extending into next year. I know that it will be warmly welcomed by businesses in his constituency, and it will allow them to invest in their growth in a tax-advantaged way.
Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)
Brighton and Hove has double the national average number of people renting their homes, yet the cost of rental in Brighton and Hove is the same as in central London. I am hearing from an alarming number of people who are struggling to pay their rent. They are either running businesses or they are in employment that is not covering the bills. They are running out of savings, and soon they will be destitute. Can the Chancellor say—he did not say anything about rental homes in his statement—what assistance can be given to making sure that people can stay in their homes till the end of this crisis and then start earning money again?
Rishi Sunak
What I can say is that the local housing allowance uplift that we put in place this year will be maintained into next year—the £1 billion—and I know that is of benefit to about 1 million households, at about £600 each. That is the main announcement today, but I would be very happy to hear if there are further things. The hon. Member will know about our £12 billion affordable homes programme, which is designed to build 180,000 affordable homes over the coming years as well.
Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
It is almost exactly a year since we launched our manifesto, and today’s sobering statement has laid bare the impact that the pandemic has had on the nation’s finances and the difficult choices the Chancellor is having to make. He has done well to keep manifesto pledges on track, but I feel I need to make it clear that I personally feel ashamed that the only manifesto pledge we are breaking today is our promise to the world’s poorest.
Rishi Sunak
I know that this is a topic about which my hon. Friend feels passionately, and rightly so. As she will have heard me say, we do this with a heavy heart. It enables us to make progress on our other priorities, and it is indeed temporary. We intend to return to 0.7% when the fiscal circumstances allow.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind) [V]
According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, public sector pay is now at its lowest level in decades relative to that in the private sector. Although the announcement of a pay rise for NHS workers is welcome, other public sector workers will be put in even greater financial insecurity by the pay freeze. Does the Chancellor not feel that, in the context of the great work those people are doing in this pandemic, the public sector pay cap is a dramatic failure to show our appreciation for all their hard work?
Rishi Sunak
The hon. Lady mentioned the relative pay premium. It is worth bearing in mind that there still is a pay premium. The latest numbers we have, from 2019, show a 7% pay premium between public and private sector wages. That premium will without doubt have been exacerbated by the growing disparity in public-private sector wages that we are seeing this year. So in the interests of fairness and of protecting public sector jobs, I think it is right that we have taken a targeted approach and prioritised pay rises for those on lower incomes and in the NHS.
Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)
I very much welcome the £4 billion levelling-up fund, but it cannot just be about the north and the midlands. Ipswich will need to be part of the mix as well. I also welcome the over £7 billion extra funding for schools, but I am very passionate about special educational needs provision, as the Chancellor will know, and I just wanted assurances from him. We are talking about this extra investment and the extra 500 schools in the next decade. That must include providing first-class special educational needs provision, which does cost a lot but is absolutely worth it.
Rishi Sunak
I know about my hon. Friend’s passion for this subject and I am pleased to be able to tell him that £300 million has been allocated for new school places for children with special educational needs and disabilities, which is, I think, about four times as much as was provided to local authorities a year ago.
Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
We have heard very much a smoke and mirrors statement today, with the Chancellor repeatedly saying that there is more cash year on year than in the last decade. Well, that is easy to say after 10 years of austerity and cuts. But I want to focus particularly on the local government settlement, which is a static settlement on the departmental expenditure limit but has this mysterious phrase, “core spending power”, which has become commonplace now in Government and includes the option to increase council tax. Council tax is a regressive tax. There are some councils with a very low council tax base where the percentage increase will mean very little money into the coffers. Even if they were to go down that route, how is he going to ensure, in his levelling-up agenda, that they do not lose out because they have a lower council tax base?
Rishi Sunak
As a former local government Minister, which was my first job, I am happy to tell the hon. Lady that there is nothing smoke and mirrors about core spending power. It is the metric on which the local government finance settlement is done each year and it is the main metric on which it is focused. It is going up 4.5%, which is a very high level compared with that in any of the last years. She is right about how council tax works, which is why we have put in an additional £300 million of grant on top of the existing grant. Part of that is used for equalisation and the exact way that that works is a matter for MHCLG. As is always the case, we have an equalisation element to the grant to deal with the specific issue she raises.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)
First, may I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend, who has the most extraordinarily difficult job in juggling the nation’s finances at this time? I pay tribute to him for his investment in levelling up, and I also pay tribute to his focus on business, which, after all, is going to pay for all the money that he has just spent. However, will he perhaps tell me a bit about the aid budget? I have noticed 20 basis points moving from aid into defence. It is a very welcome defence budget, certainly, but at a time when aid has never been more needed in extending the perimeter of our public health to countries where the covid crisis would otherwise run wild, surely this is not exactly the right moment to be reducing those defences.
Secondly, does my right hon. Friend agree that the International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Act 2015, to which he has made reference this afternoon, clearly gives him the opportunity to opt out of the 0.7% target according to three different metrics, all of which are covered by the covid crisis? He can therefore do his reduction, if he feels it is necessary, with no change in the law whatever.
Rishi Sunak
I am thankful to my hon. Friend for his comments and, indeed, the constructive conversations I have had with him on our aid budget, our defence budget and, more generally, our place in the world, which he rightly champions, and he does a very good job at that. He is right that we should look holistically at this, and he made a good argument for why we play a role, particularly with providing security through our defence budget to many places. He is also right about the 2015 Act and the so-called ouster provision contained within it, but given that we cannot predict with sufficient certainty when exactly the current fiscal circumstances will have improved and given our need to plan accordingly, we do intend to look at bringing forward appropriate legislation in due course. However, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary will make a statement tomorrow and can answer the question in more detail.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)
May I admire my right hon. Friend the Chancellor’s stamina in answering well over 90 questions? I also warmly welcome his statement this afternoon and in particular the £100 billion he announced on infrastructure spending, which includes some vital projects in my constituency, notably the levelling-up fund and the feasibility study for the Cirencester light railway, the reconfirmation of the funding for the A417 and, above all, the extra funding to improve gigabit broadband, which is an issue my rural constituency suffers from. Will he confirm that very hard-hit economies, such as Gloucestershire’s, will benefit from this infrastructure funding, and that it will help speed up a strong recovery?
Rishi Sunak
I thank my hon. Friend for his kind words in support. He is absolutely right: we want to ensure that this record investment in infrastructure brings tangible benefits to our constituents wherever they live, whether that is in the rural south-west or a town up in the north-east. All the people of this country should see measurable improvement in the quality of their lives and see the opportunities that they can seize ahead of them. That is something that the Government will focus relentlessly on and intend to deliver.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
It is not often that I get to bring a smile to the Chancellor’s face, but that is it. I thank him for his statement today and answering the questions. He was on his feet from 12.45, which is over two and a half hours. I am extremely grateful, as I am sure is the entire House of Commons.
I have now to announce the result of today’s deferred Division on the motion relating to the draft European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (Relevant Court) (Retained EU Case Law) Regulations 2020. The Ayes were 354 and the Noes were 261, so the Ayes have it.
[The Division list is published at the end of today’s debates.]
We will now suspend for a brief period for the sanitisation of the Dispatch Boxes and the safe departure and entrance of Members of Parliament.
Virtual participation in proceedings concluded (Order 4 June)
Driving Offences (Amendment)
Wednesday 25th November 2020
(4 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Driving Offences (Amendment) Bill 2019-21 View all Driving Offences (Amendment) Bill 2019-21 Debates Read Hansard Text
A Ten Minute Rule Bill is a First Reading of a Private Members Bill, but with the sponsor permitted to make a ten minute speech outlining the reasons for the proposed legislation.
There is little chance of the Bill proceeding further unless there is unanimous consent for the Bill or the Government elects to support the Bill directly.
For more information see: Ten Minute Bills
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Road Traffic Act 1988 to provide that dangerous and careless, or inconsiderate, driving offences may be committed in places other than roads and other public places; and for connected purposes.
In August 2017, a 22-month-old girl, Pearl Melody Black from my constituency of Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney, was tragically killed while walking with her father and brother. Pearl was killed by an unoccupied vehicle that rolled from a private drive in Merthyr Tydfil on to a highway and down a hill, crashing into a wall that subsequently crushed her and injured her father and brother. In the months after the incident, officers from the serious collision unit of South Wales police worked tirelessly in putting a case together to provide justice for the family. In short, all tests concluded that the car was mechanically sound and that it had rolled because the handbrake was not fully engaged and the automatic transmission was not fully placed into “park” mode.
The case was sent to the Crown Prosecution Service in March 2018 and was worked on by the London office as well as an independent QC hired by the CPS to consult. Everyone was hopeful of a conviction under the death by dangerous driving category, and the CPS also looked into other possible options. In June 2018, however, the CPS stated that it was unable to send the case to court as a glitch in the law states that the vehicle must have started its journey on a public road to make a prosecution under the Road Traffic Act 1988. Even though Pearl was killed on a public road, the fact that the vehicle started its descent from a private drive has meant that prosecution was not possible. The coroner stated that the vehicle was in fact well maintained and it seemed that the issue was very much driver operation. The inquest heard that the handbrake had not been fully applied in the “park” mode.
Over the past two years, I have been meeting Pearl’s parents, Gemma and Paul, who I know will be watching me present this Bill today, to look at what could be done to change the legislation so that other families do not face this kind of injustice in future. The inquest into Pearl’s death was heard in October 2018 and the outcome was “accident”. However, with the support of South Wales police and the CPS, Pearl’s parents sought a change in the law, and are continuing to do so, to stop other families being in a similar situation of not being able to secure justice, due to a legal loophole, following such a tragic and completely preventable incident as this. As Gemma and Paul acknowledge, it will not help to bring justice for Pearl, as legislation is not retrospective, but if this law can be changed to prevent anyone else from suffering this injustice again, that may provide some comfort.
Having spoken to the Public Bill Office and the Private Bill Office and held meetings with Government Ministers, I appreciate that there is no current major transport Bill that could provide a vehicle for this change. I therefore hope to bring in this Bill to at least allow us to start making some progress. I hope that the Government will also look at the Bill carefully to see if it can be included in any future Government legislation.
It is wholly wrong that in such cases, including those as tragic as that which I have outlined, justice cannot be achieved. There is no conviction simply because the land on which it takes place is not classified as public.
Pearl’s case, however, is sadly by no means an isolated one. In 2017, the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) raised the case of a tragic accident where a young boy was killed by a tractor, the driver of which was more than twice over the legal limit for driving. What was very likely to have otherwise been a prosecution for death by dangerous driving with a sentence of a number of years’ imprisonment was, in fact, a prison sentence of little over a year and prosecuted only under health and safety legislation. Again, that awful and preventable tragedy saw no real justice because it took place on private, rather than public, land.
In his response to the debate, the Minister at the time, the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), acknowledged that an overarching change in the law to cover driving offences occurring on private land in general would be a very significant and difficult piece of legislation, due to the wide-ranging nature of land that comes under the definition of “private”, and complications around other classifications of private land, such as land being used for military, commercial and other official purposes, and exemptions from legal proceedings for offences committed as a result.
I have discussed the difficulty of legislating broadly for such matters in correspondence and meetings with Ministers over the past two years. While I appreciate that that remains the case, we can at the very least start to look at changing the law with more focused legislation to enable driving offences that occur on private land adjoining public land to be prosecuted. That would apply to cases like the death of my constituents’ daughter, Pearl, and another similar case brought to the House three years ago by another Member to which I have referred.
If the law were changed in relation to driving offences occurring on private land adjoining public land, it would be a very powerful deterrent to road users showing carelessness as well as to those who have no doubt exploited the current loophole in the law to avoid conviction when they have undoubtedly been at fault. People would be likely to take more care and pay more attention when driving or parking on private land close to public land in the knowledge that there could be serious consequences for careless or reckless behaviour.
There will, of course, always be a degree of human error present in such situations, but this Bill and the threat of legal charges resulting from such carelessness or irresponsibility could make a real difference in helping to prevent accidents, as well as bringing to justice anyone who would have used the loophole to escape conviction or any kind of consequence.
There are a huge number of instances where private land adjoining public land is regularly used and potentially dangerous to those around, including residential driveways, schools and nurseries, supermarkets, shopping centres, hospitals and doctors’ surgeries, to name some of the most common. When we consider some of those examples, we can see that driving on that specific category of land can present a very high risk to people in everyday situations, especially children, the elderly and some of the most vulnerable among us.
I am sure that all hon. Members would agree that nobody who has suffered the loss of a loved one or had an accident or injury as a result of a driving offence should have to endure the injustice of seeing those responsible go free simply because of a loophole in the law. Prosecutions for driving offences and, indeed, any illegal action should be based on what happened, not where something happened. The legislation that I am hoping to take forward through this Bill would give people such as my constituents Gemma and Paul, and many others, the peace of mind that there are consequences for dangerous driving, no matter where it occurs, and help to prevent such needless and avoidable tragedies ever happening in future.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Gerald Jones, Judith Cummins, Wayne David, Chris Evans, Carolyn Harris, Ben Lake, Jessica Morden, Alec Shelbrooke, Nick Smith and Jamie Stone present the Bill.
Gerald Jones accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 15 January, and to be printed (Bill 219).
Prisons (Substance Testing) Bill (Money)
Queen’s recommendation signified.
Resolved,
That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Prisons (Substance Testing) Bill, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable under the Prison Act 1952 out of money so provided.—(Lucy Frazer.)
Independent Expert Panel
(4 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr Jacob Rees- Mogg)
I beg to move,
That:
(1) in accordance with Standing Order No. 150C (Appointment of Independent Expert Panel Members), the following be appointed as members of the Independent Expert Panel—
(a) Mrs Lisa Ball, Mrs Johanna Higgins, Sir Stephen Irwin and Professor Clare McGlynn for a period of 4 years, and
(b) Monica Daley, Miss Dale Simon, Sir Peter Thornton and Dr Matthew Vickers for a period of 6 years; and
(2) notwithstanding the provisions of paragraph (4) Standing Order No. 150A (Independent Expert Panel), Sir Stephen Irwin be the Chair of that Panel.
It is a pleasure to open this debate on the appointment of the independent expert panel, which would provide important support to the work of the independent complaints and grievance scheme. The appointments that we debate today represent a significant next step in our collective efforts to ensure that Parliament has a culture that is respectful to all and where there is no place for bullying, harassment or sexual misconduct.
I want to emphasise that this panel is just one step. Although significant progress has been made on this agenda, none of us is under any illusion that to bring about the lasting change needed to our culture will not take painstaking work, tireless communication and myriad reinforcing actions by many over a considerable period.
The steps already undertaken are significant ones. They include, of course, the creation in 2018 of the ICGS itself and I pay tribute to my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), and all those who worked with her to generate a consensus and set a way forward for the scheme.
The ICGS is now open to all members of the parliamentary community and, importantly, it has been broadened to include investigation of non-recent allegations and from those who have since left the parliamentary community. As set out in the ICGS’s annual report published last week, over the past year, the pool of investigators has been expanded so that more cases can be processed, including non-recent ones, and there has been the creation of a single helpline service to provide confidential and immediate advice, which includes a speciality independent sexual misconduct advisory service.
Recently, we have also seen the launch of the second of two planned independent reviews of the ICGS to ensure that consideration is given to how what is still a fledgling scheme can be strengthened. May I briefly again take the opportunity to encourage all members of the parliamentary community to participate in that review being undertaken by Alison Stanley. As I mentioned in business questions last week, an online survey seeking views will run until 4 December—it is a very simple survey; even I managed to do it. I ask Members please to take the survey if they can so that the widest range of views are captured and taken into account.
Looking beyond the ICGS, a new Member services team has also been established to provide human resources support to MPs and their staff, and I should add that more than 4,000 people in Parliament have now taken the Valuing Everyone training, which aims to demonstrate how to recognise and understand what harassment and sexual harassment mean in the workplace and how to tackle them.
Turning to the independent expert panel, it is important to note that the appointments that we are discussing today form part of our fulfilment of the key recommendations made by Dame Laura Cox in her 2018 report. Members will remember that Dame Laura made three fundamental recommendations: the first was that Parliament’s existing policies relating to bullying, harassment or sexual harassment should be abandoned; the second was that the ICGS should be accessible to those with complaints involving historical allegations. Both of those recommendations have been met. The final recommendation was that the process for determining complaints of bullying, harassment or sexual harassment brought by House staff against Members of Parliament should be an entirely independent process in which Members of Parliament play no part. This is that independent process.
Under our current arrangements, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards has the power to determine cases and impose sanctions up to a certain level of severity. More serious cases, including those where suspension or expulsion might be the resulting sanction, have been for the Standards Committee to determine.
In February this year, the House of Commons Commission considered a number of alternative approaches developed and presented by the staff team. The Commission agreed that the strongest option was that an expert panel, comprising an independent chairman and seven panel members, none of whom would be MPs, would determine ICGS cases, decide on sanctions and hear appeals by either party against the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards’ conclusions.
Dame Laura was consulted on the options considered by the Commission and was among those who supported the approach. Members will also remember that, in June, a motion was passed to establish the independent expert panel. The panel will determine complaints of bullying and harassment or sexual misconduct made under the ICGS. It will do so entirely independently of MPs. In cases where the IEP recommends the most extreme sanctions, such as suspension or expulsion of an MP, the House must approve the recommendation via a motion in this Chamber that will be taken without debate.
I have always been clear that the panel must be of the highest calibre collectively. Its members should provide considerable expertise in relevant fields, and they should do so under the leadership of a chairman of the standing equivalent to that of a High Court judge. I am therefore delighted that we have such a strong set of candidates to consider, and that recommended for the role of chairman is Sir Stephen Irwin, who was Lord Justice of Appeal from 2016 until his retirement last month, and was previously a High Court judge for a decade.
John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)
Can the Leader of the House tell us how much the chairman is going to be paid for this job?
Mr Rees-Mogg
Indeed, I can. Members of the independent expert panel, including the chairman, will be paid monthly in arrears a fee of £350 excluding value added tax for each half day spent by the panel member in the provision of their services. The amount claimed by each member will depend on the number of cases, and their individual contribution. It is expected that the annual report of the panel will include information on its costs. I can reassure the right hon. Gentleman—I think this may be his next question—that panel members will not be part of a pension scheme for their services, but I am happy to take further interventions from him.
John Spellar
When I looked up the link from the report which referred to the advertisement for the job, it said that these jobs were going to be fixed term and full time, not per diem—if it is £350 for every half day, it is £700 a day as a full-time position—and that panel members would be part of the civil service pension scheme. This is slightly confusing. I would be grateful if the right hon. Gentleman could clarify the situation, because there is a difference between the advertisement and what he has just told the House.
Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)
Is the right hon. Gentleman going to apply?
Mr Rees-Mogg
The right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar) would not have been eligible to apply because Members of Parliament cannot join—unless he decided to take the Chiltern Hundreds, but that would be a great loss to this House.
The fee is £350 per half day. The number of days or half days of work will be dependent on the number of cases, and the roles are not eligible for a civil service pension. Those are the terms under which people have agreed to serve. I do not know about the advertisement. I am afraid that I did not think of applying and therefore did not read the advertisement with the care that the right hon. Gentleman read it.
John Spellar
The right hon. Gentleman would not only be disqualified as a Member of Parliament; he referred to people being qualified, and it seems that all those who got the jobs happen to be lawyers, as though they are the only people in the whole country who are qualified to deal with these issues. I will come back to that in my speech.
Mr Rees-Mogg
I know that it is popular to be disparaging about lawyers, but it is sometimes unfair. The right hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) is a very distinguished lawyer herself, as is, as it happens, the Leader of the Opposition, so the Opposition have plenty of distinguished lawyers on their Benches. This process has to meet the requirements of natural justice. An understanding of the law and the application of law is a protection both for those who bring complaints and for those who are accused, so I am not surprised that lawyers make up a significant number of the applicants.
John Spellar
Again, the right hon. Gentleman seems to run slightly contrary to the advertisement for the positions, which says that panel members should have
“judicial, quasi-judicial, or adjudicating capacity, or bring expertise in a relevant policy area, such as employee or industrial relations or HR disciplinary processes.”
That implies that we would have people from industry, and probably also from the trade unions, who have experience of dealing with these matters practically, rather than exclusively lawyers.
Mr Rees-Mogg
I can confirm to the right hon. Gentleman that 134 completed applications were received —no doubt, from a variety of people. Of those applications, the ones that were seen to be the most suitable are those before the House, having been approved by the Commission. I think it is a distinguished panel—[Interruption.] The right hon. Gentleman mutters that it is chumocracy; I do not want to give too much away, but the only member of the panel who claimed a friendship of any kind with any Member of Parliament said that he was on nodding terms with the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition, so if they are chums, they are not my chums, particularly, but they are very important and good people.
Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
I entirely support the idea that we should bring on to the panel people who have juridical experience in the courts, and I commend my right hon. Friend and the Commission for appointing to the chair of this body an ex-High Court judge. That is exactly the kind of authority, independence and legitimacy that is required to give both those being scrutinised or disciplined in this process and those who are complaining through this process the confidence that it is being done properly.
Mr Rees-Mogg
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that point. Before the appointments were made, we had a number of representations from Members of this House saying that they would feel confident in the system if the chairman of the panel had the experience of a High Court judge, and Sir Stephen is a distinguished—
Mr Jones
Like the Leader of the House, I have no problem with the chair being a lawyer, and I accept what has just been said, but my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (John Spellar) raised an interesting point. There is no one on the panel from an HR background in business, the trade union movement or the third sector. There are a number of individuals in the third sector who could have brought great expertise—not legal—to the panel, so I question how the consultants drew up the list in the first place. I would have thought that if they were looking for a broad spectrum of interests, lawyers are important, but so are others.
Mr Rees-Mogg
The right hon. Gentleman is being unduly uncharitable towards lawyers. Lawyers can, in addition to being lawyers, have a wide range of experience in the way that they practised. Other than Members of Parliament, lawyers probably see more of life in its many and varied forms than many people in a lot of other professions. To broaden out from the people who often serve on quangos is not a bad idea for this type of panel.
As I was saying, Sir Stephen has had a distinguished judicial career, which will be of great benefit to his role as chairman of the independent expert panel. The other candidates who have been recommended for appointment are also—I hope this will reassure the right hon. Members for Warley (John Spellar) and for North Durham (Mr Jones)—of an impressive standard. Miss Dale Simon, CBE, is a qualified barrister and a former director for public accountability and inclusion in the Crown Prosecution Service, which is an important role in a public body beyond the immediate application of the law.
Dr Matthew Vickers has been the chief ombudsman and chief executive of Ombudsman Services, and we know from our experience with constituents how valuable the ombudsman services are and what an understanding ombudsmen inevitably have of a variety of lives lived and experienced by our constituents.
Sir Peter Thornton, QC, is a retired senior circuit judge with almost a decade’s experience at the central criminal court, including hearing cases of serious sexual violence. I go back to the point that I made to the right hon. Member for North Durham: lawyers do see life in the raw, and probably the rawest is on the criminal circuit seeing cases of serious sexual violence. That is an experience that few people would have.
Mr Kevan Jones
The Leader of the House is misreading what I said. If he listened to what I said, he would know that I am not opposed to people with a legal background being on the panel—I think that the chair having a legal background is right—but if we look at the CVs of the other people, what is lacking from the panel are people from, for example, industry, trade unions, the third sector and local government. People from all those sectors could have huge experience and add something to this panel.
Mr Rees-Mogg
I say once again that this panel has come from 134 applicants, and the most distinguished and capable have been drawn from it. The panel’s members include Monica Daley, a barrister of 25 years’ standing and former independent legal chair of the police misconduct committee; Professor Clare McGlynn QC, professor of law at the University of Durham—the right hon. Gentleman’s part of the world—with particular expertise in the legal regulation of sexual violence, so there is a good deal of expertise in some of the issues that may come before the panel; Mrs Lisa Ball, who brings two decades of experience in determining cases and complaints in a range of fields, including bullying, sexual harassment, discrimination, misconduct and professional standards; and Mrs Johanna Higgins, Northern Ireland commissioner for the Criminal Cases Review Commission and a barrister of 27 years’ standing.
John Spellar
I am afraid that the Leader of the House is reinforcing our case. It is not about whether any of these individuals are defective. For example, an industrial tribunal panel will rightly include a lawyer as the chairman, as well as a representative of employers and a representative of trade unions—that is the make-up of all industrial tribunal panels. It is about the narrowness of the experience on this expert panel, which is drawn from a very small part of society—134 people. Does he not see that the breadth of society and people who have real-life experience are not reflected on the panel?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I fundamentally disagree with the right hon. Gentleman. I think that the real-life experience of the people who make up the panel is very varied, considerable and distinguished. As I said, there was considerable competition for these positions, with 134 applicants. The recruitment process was robust and thorough, overseen by a panel chaired by Sarah Davies.
Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Mr Rees-Mogg
It is a pleasure to give way to my right hon. Friend and predecessor, who started this whole process with such distinction, and it is my privilege to be carrying it on.
Andrea Leadsom
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. I looked carefully at the CVs of the proposed members of the panel, and I wholeheartedly endorse them; I have no reservations. However, I think that one of the first things the panel should consider when it meets is the unresolved issue that, if it recommends that a Member of Parliament be expelled from this place, that disenfranchises the Member’s constituency for a period. We have had this debate before, but that seems to be a missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle, and the panel might like to consider it.
Mr Rees-Mogg
That is an important point, and my right hon. Friend has raised it before in the House. The hope is that the panel will meet relatively soon, if the motion goes through this afternoon. If I may, I will send a copy of today’s Hansard to the chairman, if he were to be appointed, so that he may see my right hon Friend’s contribution. Although it is an independent panel, and it would be wrong of me to tell it what should be on its agenda, that will bring to the chairman’s attention the thought that the panel should consider this.
The chairman of the panel was Sarah Davies, the Clerk Assistant. Also on the panel were the Speaker’s Counsel, Saira Salimi; Steven Haines, external member and lay members of the Bar Standards Board; and Dame Laura Cox, whose report started this process. The process was overseen at each stage by two members of the Commission appointed for the purpose: my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker) and the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart). The Commission has concluded—and I concur—that the eight selected candidates bring an impressive combination of qualities and experience. I believe that, together, they will bring exactly the authority and impartiality needed to build confidence in the ICGS and to demonstrate that independence, fairness and rigour sit at its heart. I commend this motion to the House.
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
I thank the Leader of the House for moving the motion, and I agree with the majority of his remarks. I draw Members’ attention to the report, which was published on 19 November 2020 on behalf of the House of Commons Commission. It lays out the exact process that the Leader of the House described.
My right hon. Friends the Members for North Durham (Mr Jones) and for Warley (John Spellar) made important points. Mr Speaker has said that he would look at this issue, because otherwise we are just getting the usual suspects. For instance, given Black Lives Matter, putting adverts in a slightly different place might be a good idea, and then we would get a broad range of people applying. We thank all those who applied for these posts for agreeing to serve. I am not sure that the issue raised by the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) would be a matter for the panel. That is a policy issue, rather than a judicial issue, and the panel is there to look at cases, rather than to decide on policy.
Andrea Leadsom
I completely agree that it is not the panel’s jurisdiction or role to do that, but in a way that highlights the point: it is no longer the House’s role and it is not the panel’s role either. The losers are, potentially, our constituents. I entirely agree with the right hon. Lady, but otherwise it will fall to nobody to reconsider this issue.
Valerie Vaz
I thank the right hon. Lady for her comments. She leads me to go on to say that Alison Stanley did a brilliant six-month review, and the concern is that not all her recommendations have been implemented. She is looking at the governance of who is responsible—who is the named person—for this whole process. The important part of the process is that it should be transparent and not secretive. I am aware of a number of cases that come through where perhaps the procedure is not fair on both sides—to the respondent and the claimant—but, again, that is a matter for Alison Stanley to look at in her 18-month review. As the Leader of the House said, it is a very simple survey, which can be found online, and it is open until 4 December.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
I am here as a member of the Standards Committee, which has absolutely no jurisdiction over the adjudication of any ICGS case, but it certainly falls within the remit of the Standards Committee to keep a watching policy brief on how the ICGS develops and whether we want to inquire and report and make recommendations on the performance of the ICGS. I am sure we will, and indeed I think we will want to learn the positive lessons from the ICGS for our own code, which we are currently reviewing in our own inquiry.
Valerie Vaz
I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that intervention. I agree with him, and I hope that anybody who has an interest will look at it. That is why the survey is so important. I know that Alison Stanley is open to speaking to people as well, and I am sure that she will take that on board.
I am pleased that a lot of hon. Members and House staff have taken up the Valuing Others training; many people on the estate have taken it up. It is so important that they do that, because people can then see the difference between what is a management issue and what is bullying and harassment. Certainly, I was concerned to start with because, as you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, many of the cases that came through at the start were about serious sexual harassment. I think initially, we decided—the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire and I, among others on the working panel—that we would have two separate helplines. I know that there is one helpline for both, but I am reassured that the person answering the phone does have expertise and will have expertise on serious sexual harassment cases. We do not want a situation where people have to repeat their stories over and over again before they are dealt with.
As well as Valuing Others training, I know that the House is looking at unconscious bias training, which I hope will be rolled out, and I will just say that Her Majesty’s Opposition’s shadow Cabinet have all been through the unconscious bias training. Other than that, Her Majesty’s Opposition support the motion.
Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
I rise only briefly, as an observer rather than a participant. As I pointed out a minute ago, the Standards Committee has no role in this, though we were consulted about the shape of the final process that should adjudicate the appeal cases in the ICGS scheme and we took an interest in what the character of the panel should be. I am personally very pleased that it reflects the necessary juridical expertise for assessing evidence and balancing the arguments about what rules mean and how this should be properly and independently assessed.
I think it is important for a member of the Standards Committee to convey to the House the disquiet of the Committee that this was taken out of our hands, but also for me to explain why I think that it was right, in the end, to take it out of our hands and why I voted for that. What was evident, not just from the Cox report but from the conversations with many staff in the House service, and conversations amongst MPs, was that the people whose complaints were stifled and ignored for so many years were left with no faith in the ability of MPs to mark their own homework—our ability to adjudicate on ourselves.
I have to tell the House that I find the cases that come before us about the breach of our own code extraordinarily difficult. It is the most testing and miserable task—to find myself having to make decisions about people I know, many of whom I know well and like. Personally, I will be looking at how the panel works, because our system for adjudicating our own code—the House of Commons code of conduct—is rather unsatisfactory, for the reason I have just described, and it may well be that the experience of this far more prestigious, objective and professional panel offers us a better way of adjudicating our own code.
I reiterate that we are conducting our own inquiry into the revision of the code of conduct, which is long overdue and has been interrupted by several general elections in recent years. We are doing a comprehensive trawl of options and considering how our own code intersects with the ICGS, with the ministerial code and with the codes of political parties. Members of Parliament are subject to many codes. The public are very confused, and have either no interest or no confidence in the systems, which overlap and conflict with each other, that we have created for the various roles that people adopt in this Parliament. We have a very big task—to reduce that confusion. There is, indeed, a lot of confusion amongst right hon. and hon. Members who do not understand how these things work.
So there needs to be a much higher level of engagement and understanding and a simplification and clarification, and that is what we are working on now. I hope that we will learn from the work of the panel, and if the panel is a success, we may well learn some very positive lessons.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
From the start, the SNP has welcomed and co-operated with the development and implementation of the ICGS process. Like others, I pay tribute to the former Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom). I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend —he really ought to be my right hon. Friend—the Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart). There is an extremely well qualified and distinguished line-up of individuals for approval. [Interruption.] I am sure that was tremendously funny, but I did not catch that sedentary intervention. A very distinguished panel of candidates has been brought before us, from a range of backgrounds, from across the four nations.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
I just misled the House. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) would not have to swear allegiance to the Crown; he would have the oath administered to him. So it is rather like having an injection; it is just given to you. Whether we like it or not, and whether we agree with it or not, the oath is just given to you. If the hon. Gentleman wants to be a Privy Counsellor, he would have to go through that process.
Patrick Grady
It is slightly off topic, Madam Deputy Speaker, but the best way to find out would be for the Leader of the House to phone up my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and North Perthshire and make that offer to him; then we will see whether or not he rises to the offer of joining Her Majesty’s Privy Council.
I do not know whether any of the candidates in this line-up are Privy Counsellors as yet, but they have all left distinguished careers, they have experience across the four nations of the United Kingdom, which is welcome, and it is a gender-balanced line-up as well—although, as the shadow Leader of the House says, there is always more that can be done to promote ethnic diversity. But I think we should thank the Clerk Assistant and the panel for selecting such quality final panellists out of all the candidates who came forward.
I just wonder whether the Leader of the House was in touch with the candidates yesterday to explain the slightly unedifying scenes that took place when the motion was suddenly withdrawn without notice. I know that when lay people are being appointed by the House to commissions and so on, they quite often watch with anticipation to see what happens—they may well be watching just now—and they may have been a little bit shocked yesterday. If notice was not given to them, I hope that some kind of apology or explanation has been given for the kind of unedifying scenes that we went through yesterday, which cannot have exactly filled them with confidence about the commitments that they are about to take up. I am glad that they are taking them up, however.
It is absolutely right, as other hon. Members have said, that bullying and harassment of any kind are called out and properly investigated. They are completely unacceptable in any workplace, particularly the one that sets the rules and standards for the rest of the country. I have undertaken the valuing others training and the unconscious bias training and found them incredibly valuable; I know that many colleagues have as well when they have had the opportunity. I would recommend them to everyone.
Andrea Leadsom
I have a small point on undertaking the various training programmes, in particular the behaviour code training. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman and the right hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) will recall that it was supposed to be mandatory following the next general election.
Patrick Grady
Indeed. I do not know what any hon. Member’s reason for not taking part in it would be. We are all very busy, but the unconscious bias training that I took part in was delivered remotely via Zoom. Surely no harm can come from it; only good can come from taking part in some training. I would recommend it to everyone. What we are discussing now, and on the next motion, will help to strengthen the entire process. We look forward to moving forward.
John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)
I am sorry to introduce a slightly discordant note in the debate. It started with the Leader of the House saying that he was sure that the Committee will be meeting soon. At £700 a day, I bet they will be meeting soon—and often.
Let me make it clear from the outset that I have no animus or knowledge of any of the individuals who have been recommended, but they are surely all of a type. They did not all go to Cambridge, but quite a number of them did. At the description of them as distinguished, I almost thought that we were supposed to genuflect. It is as though we were creating a new priesthood and that, if people do law at university and then go through one of the Inns of Court and become a member of the Bar Council, they are the only people who have a valid opinion in our society, so we have to designate everything to them. It might have been the Chair of the Committee on Standards who mentioned the quality of the judiciary that we need to deal with these cases. Frankly, if they require that level of judicial intervention, they should be a matter for the criminal courts rather than for disciplinary processes.
Not just in this context, but every time an issue comes up, it is asked, “Can we have it decided by an eminent judge?” I find that rather remarkable coming from the Conservative party. It was not very long ago that it and its supporting newspapers were absolutely berating members of the judiciary for becoming involved in so many issues. It did not have such a high opinion of the judiciary then.
Many of the issues are rightly political; I am not saying these ones are, or that it should be politicians doing this. As I was saying in earlier interventions, however, not all wisdom resides in people from that narrow caste who often go to the best schools and the best universities, who manage to get themselves into the best chambers in the Inns of Court, and who then go into the judiciary.
That is why, as I pointed out, in industrial tribunals—a system that works extremely well—we have a lawyer, normally a solicitor rather than a barrister, as the chairman and then a panel. We have representatives of trade unions and representatives of employers, many of whom have industrial relations experience and some of whom are used to negotiating for very large establishments, such as offices, factories or whatever. Are hon. Members seriously arguing that those people do not see life, that they do not understand how life works, or that they are not able to assess evidence? That is an utterly elitist approach.
Mr Kevan Jones
My right hon. Friend was, like me, a trade union official in a former life and will have dealt with capable personnel managers, as they were in my day—human resources managers, as they are now. Would it not have been helpful to at least have had someone on this panel from an HR background, and possibly someone from a trade union who has actually represented people in the types of cases this panel is going to be dealing with?
John Spellar
Very much so. Such people are used to engaging with people and having to make decisions. We could have a senior nursing officer in an accident and emergency department or a senior matron in a hospital. Do they not see life? Do they not have to make decisions? Do they not have to weigh up what people are telling them? We could have retired police officers on the panel, as they are used to weighing up evidence. We must get away from this elitist concept that only lawyers are able to be above all this sort of thing.
I wish to mention the very substantial salary, which seems at variance with the advertisement. These retired judges will be on a stonking pension—we know about that because they are always complaining any time the Treasury has the temerity to try to keep their pensions in line with the pensions being imposed on other parts of the public service.
The approach being taken is also at variance with the advertisement, which said clearly that the people should have
“substantial and very senior experience in a judicial, quasi-judicial, or adjudicating capacity, or bring expertise in a relevant policy area, such as an employee or industrial relations or HR disciplinary processes.”
Of course, if we have a panel where two of those involved are part of the Bar Council or the judiciary, and we bring in headhunters, they are all part of the same social circle. I am sure the individuals would probably be very agreeable dinner table companions, but that does not mean they have wisdom or experience that outweighs that of the rest of the population, nor does it mean that we should have a pretty homogeneous group, rather than having a balance.
If we have a panel, we should have people with different realms of experience, because that would work—one for the other. Not just for this appointment, but right across the many appointments we have involvement in, the people all come from a very narrow band. We ought to be looking at the construction worker, the factory worker, the nurse and the care home assistant. I accept that we would be having people who were in a more senior representative or managerial role, as outlined in the job description. We could have somebody who is in charge of a major unit in a major retail environment. These are people with life experience.
Mr Jones
Does my right hon. Friend agree that it would have been helpful to have had someone from the third sector on this panel, for example someone dealing with domestic violence and related issues? Many of those very able individuals could have stepped into this role well and added something to it.
John Spellar
Indeed. We could have people who have gone into those roles, often later in life, with a range of life experience, as opposed to people who have gone from elite school to elite university, then to chambers and into the courts, where they have done well, doing their public duty as judges. They may observe a bit of life, but that is very different from living it. [Interruption.] The Leader of the House seems a little distracted by his colleague. If he would care to listen to the debate rather than to the Whips, it would be rather courteous and it might even be valuable. The fact is that we ought to look at all appointments and not automatically go to so-called headhunters who just go to the people they know. We need to broaden this out. We need to ask the CBI and the Trades Union Congress. Interestingly enough, back in the day when we were looking at Members’ expenses, we came up with a much better scheme, ultimately, than the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority. The House invited the CBI and the TUC to each nominate two people, who gave up their time to do it. They made an excellent contribution because they understood what they were talking about. We need to get away from elitism.
I will continue to raise these issues, because they make us not even semi-detached but detached from the public we serve. Ultimately, Members of Parliament are here to represent the public. We need to be accountable mainly to them, and stop imposing elite individuals and an elite culture.
Mr Rees-Mogg
May I begin by thanking the right hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) for her support and the support of the official Opposition? We have worked closely on this matter not just in the Chamber, but in the Commission. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) for his support and for his very interesting contribution, saying how he had not initially thought it was right to take it away from the Standards Committee, but that, working on the Committee and seeing how difficult it is to judge those with whom we work, he has come to the conclusion that it is the right thing to do. I think that that is a particularly helpful contribution to this afternoon’s debate.
I am also grateful to the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady). He wishes to give me powers that I do not have. I may be Lord President of the Council, but that does not mean I have the right of appointment to the Privy Council. I can tell him, however, that Sir Stephen Irwin is a member of the Privy Council as a Lord Justice of Appeal. They are normally sworn of the Privy Council.
In response, briefly, to the right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar), I want to answer the question on the advert and pensions. The advert from the recruitment agency did not mention pensions or the job being full time. As I understand it, the cover page of the Commons’ own advert did say that there was a pension, but that the people who applied would not have been misled in any way because they would have had the advert from the recruitment agency.
John Spellar
I thank the Leader of the House for giving way. I am sure he will forgive me for having looked at the House of Commons’ own documentation to ascertain the position. How does he explain the inconsistency?
Mr Rees-Mogg
Indeed, it is perfectly reasonable and proper for the right hon. Gentleman to have done precisely that. I was merely explaining to him why the information he was raising was not the information that would have been given to people applying to the panel. It is very important that they did not apply to the panel on a false basis, thinking it was a full-time job with a nice pension when they are actually getting a per diem.
Finally, as to the independence of this brilliant and inspired panel that will do wonderful work, the right hon. Gentleman made it sound as if it was all a great chumocracy and then said that many of them were from Cambridge. Does he really think that, as an Oxford man, I would have put forward the names of people from Cambridge if they were not first class?
Question put and agreed to.
ICGS Investigations: Commons-Lords Agreement
(4 years ago)
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Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will just speak very briefly to this matter. The Chair of the Standards Committee sends his apologies. He has had to take a close relative to hospital today. I am standing in for him, although I take responsibility for my own words.
The Standards Committee has co-operated constructively with its sister Committee, the Lords’ Conduct Committee, chaired by the noble Lord Mance, to develop an arrangement to address a loophole. As a member of the Committee on Standards, I support the motion to approve our Committee’s report. The report deals with what one might describe as an item of unfinished business arising from the House’s creation of the independent complaints and grievance scheme that we have just been discussing. The scheme was put together very rapidly, because the House rightly wished to demonstrate to the wider public that we take allegations of bullying and harassment within the parliamentary community extremely seriously, and it was acknowledged at the time that the scheme would need revision in the light of experience and that there were gaps or lacunae in the scheme that needed to be filled. One of those gaps was the lack of any arrangement between this House and the other place as to how allegations against ex-Members of one House would be proceeded with if they became Members of the other House.
Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. Just to put the record completely straight, the working group—Members who sat on that group are in the Chamber today—was very clear that the two schemes should be aligned between this House and the House of Lords. However, due to a very unfortunate investigation that took place in the House of Lords under the previous system, it was felt that the ICGS could not be implemented in that House at that time. That is why this anomaly has sprung up. I would also like to raise the important point that, as things stand with the ICGS having been working for some time, its findings are just too slow. There have been live instances where individuals who have been Members of this place are being considered for membership of the other place when potential complaints against them are still pending in this place. It is not clear to me that the Standards Committee’s report deals with that circumstance.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
I will certainly take back to the Committee what my right hon. Friend is saying, and if we need to make a further amendment to the arrangements, we should do so. As things stand, however, former MPs who are now in the other place cannot be investigated under the ICGS for behaviour that is alleged to have taken place while they were MPs.
After our discussions with Lord Mance and the Lords’ Conduct Committee, and with the two Houses’ Commissioners also working closely together on this, the arrangement that we now propose is set out in an appendix to the Standards Committee report. It proposes that ex-MPs now in the other place should be investigated under the Commons procedures involving independent investigators, the Commissioner and, if necessary, the new independent expert panel that the House has just nominated. If that does not satisfy my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), could she put on record why it does not do so?
If an ex-MP who is now in the other place is found to have breached the behaviour code, this House will not be involved in sanctioning them. Instead, the House of Lords Commissioner for Standards will recommend a sanction and the Lords’ Conduct Committee would hear any appeal against that sanction. The full House of Lords would decide on imposing a serious sanction, such as suspension or expulsion, but the important point is that the investigation and the findings would be done under our system in this House, and the House of Lords has agreed to that.
Andrea Leadsom
I do not want to detain the House, but this is a really important issue and my hon. Friend asked me to put my views on record. This relates specifically to when someone who has been a Member of this House and has outstanding complaints against them is under consideration for being offered a position in the other place by the House of Lords Committee, which is not privy to the existence of the ongoing complaints about them in this place under the ICGS.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
I think that would be a matter more for the Lords Appointments Commission or the vetting procedures—
Sir Bernard Jenkin
That does not fall under our remit at all, but in recent cases that I can think of, an estoppel has been put on possible elevations to the other place of Members who are under suspicion or where there has been controversy. Obviously, if it was an entirely secret and non-disclosable allegation that had not found its way into the public sphere, we would need to check that there would be a procedure for that. However, that is a separate matter from whether a complaint is going to be investigated and adjudicated by the ICGS.
We have also addressed the complementary problem. There are not many Members of the other place who choose to renounce their peerages and seek election to the House of Commons, but this can and does occasionally happen. The Committee therefore recommends that the new arrangements should be reciprocal. Allegations against an ex-peer who might then be in the Commons would be investigated under the procedures of the other place, but any sanction would be carried out within this House.
The Lords Conduct Committee has agreed a report in very similar terms to our own, and this has been approved in the other place. I urge this House to do likewise and approve these sensible arrangements, which are necessary to block off this lack of redress in our measures for tackling bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct by our Members and ex-Members.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Does the Leader of the House wish to make any comments?
The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr Jacob Rees- Mogg)
I will speak very briefly, if I may, simply to say that this is constitutionally very important because of the exclusive cognisance that both Houses have of their own business. Therefore, that an agreement has been reached whereby the House in which the offence took place may investigate, but the House where the person has ended up may sanction is a very satisfactory agreement. It respects exclusive cognisance, as is constitutionally proper, but will also ensure that the ICGS system is able to work effectively, so I commend the motion to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I suspend the House for three minutes to allow the safe exit of hon. Members participating in this item of business and the safe arrival of those participating in the next.
UK-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement
(4 years ago)
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The Secretary of State for International Trade (Elizabeth Truss)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the UK-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement.
I am delighted to open this debate on the UK-Japan comprehensive economic partnership agreement, otherwise known as CEPA, in a landmark moment for our national trading history. This is the first debate we are having on a new trade deal since our departure from the European Union. This is the first time we have been able to have such a discussion in the House of Commons for nearly 50 years. It was not possible when Brussels represented us in trade negotiations, but things have changed. We now have a deal directly negotiated between London and Tokyo, and the whole House will be glad to know that this will be the first of many debates about our independently negotiated trade agreements. There will be more to come as we pursue gold-standard deals with Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea.
John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)
The right hon. Lady is right in one respect, but we have had many debates recently on trade deals. Indeed, we had a veto on those trade deals between the EU and other partners, and views were expressed. I suspect that we were on the same side on the Canada and Singapore trade deals. We have had those debates. This should be about the principles of trade, rather than just the niceties of whether we are in or out of the EU.
Elizabeth Truss
I observe that the right hon. Gentleman did support many of those deals. I afraid that the same cannot be said for most of the members of his party, who did not support, for example, the Japan trade deal when it previously went through the House. We are in a completely different position. From 1 January next year, we will be operating our own independent trade policies, we will be setting our own tariffs and we will be operating our own trade agreements. That is a huge step forward for the UK as an independent trading nation. Next year, we will be talking about our accession to the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership, but today we are here to talk about Japan.
The UK-Japan agreement is a British-shaped deal going further and faster than the EU deal in areas such as data and digital, services, advanced manufacturing and food and drink. The deal has been welcomed across the board, from the CBI to techUK and the National Farmers Union. It was even welcomed by the Labour party—although rather tepidly and although Labour did not actually vote for the original Japan deal.
The deal is estimated to add over £15 billion in trade to our already growing trading relationship with the third largest economy in the world. We expect it to be even more. We have asked Professor Tony Venables from Oxford University to lead a review of our future modelling to ensure that it accounts for our world-leading digital and data trade. The United States recent study of its deal with Mexico and Canada found that the biggest economic benefit of that deal came from the provisions on digital trade, and we are confident that this is the case for the agreement with Japan, which is why we want to better quantify the benefits of future free trade agreements.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)
On the quantification of future benefits, of course the Secretary of State has given us the most advantageous figures that she has, which are about what trade would have been if we were out of the European deal. The reality is that for businesses on the ground very little will change between the end of this year and the beginning of January, and the reality is that the quantifiable benefit she talks about is actually a maintaining of the status quo, is it not?
Elizabeth Truss
The reality is that if we had not negotiated this deal, we would have reverted to trading on World Trade Organisation terms with Japan and businesses on both sides would have faced tariffs and barriers to trade. But we have gone further than just continuity with this deal, and I am about to tell the House exactly how that is the case. This deal is better and more valuable than the Japan-EU deal, which is otherwise known as the JEPA, because in simple terms the CEPA is deeper than the JEPA. It goes further and faster in areas of in vital importance to the United Kingdom economy.
On digital trade, we are protecting source code, enabling the free flow of data while agreeing a ban on data localisation, saving companies the cost of setting up servers in Japan. Our textile and confectionery manufacturers will benefit from more liberal rules of origin, making their goods more competitive by allowing up to £88 million of UK exports to benefit from reduced duties. Our creative industries will have their brands and innovations protected, as we go beyond the EU in tackling the online infringement of intellectual property rights. Our fantastic food and drink producers will benefit from increased protection for iconic goods, as around 70 geographical indications, 10 times as many as before, will be protected in Japan, subject to their domestic processes next year.
Our services industry will have more regulatory co-operation, safeguards on data storage and greater flexibility to move talent across the world.
This is clearly a more British-shaped deal, and it delivers more benefits to the UK than the previous deal. Some Opposition Members have asked for a precise economic assessment of this difference, but in our Command Paper we agreed to assess our deals, not the deals of other countries or trade blocs, and I am not going to waste the time of Department for International Trade economists by asking them to assess deals that are clearly inferior to the one that we have secured.
This is a deal that will benefit every part of the United Kingdom. It delivers for our farmers and businesses, and it delivers for Japanese investors such as Nissan, Toyota and Hitachi, supporting thousands of jobs across the United Kingdom.
Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that, in addition to all the opportunities she lists, this deal is a fantastic opportunity for the growing and sustainable industry that makes British sparkling wine across 770 vineyards in the United Kingdom? It employs 10,000 people today, and is on a journey to increase its exports and could potentially employ 20,000 or 30,000 people in the future. By securing important geographic indicators, my right hon. Friend has unlocked that opportunity for us all.
Elizabeth Truss
My hon. Friend is a doughty champion of English sparkling wine and knows that this will be one of the geographical indicators that goes through the domestic process early next year, to be registered in Japan and recognised in Japan, and who knows how long it would have taken under the EU, because under its deal, it has to negotiate every new indicator. We have got agreement on those 70 indicators through the process, and the only circumstance under which English sparkling wine would not qualify is if English sparkling wine were produced in Japan, and I do not believe that to be the case.
This deal aligns with our high environment, animal welfare, labour, data and food safety standards, and it helps to position the United Kingdom as the world’s hub for services in tech trade and establishes us as a major force in global trade. Following Japan’s economic push on womanomics, we have also signed an entire chapter on women’s economic empowerment to help female entrepreneurs in both our nations—another chapter that was not included in the EU deal.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)
I do not want to rain too much on the Secretary of State’s parade, but she will be aware that, according to the British Government’s own figures, the Welsh economy will grow by only 0.05% over 15 years, based on a WTO baseline, as a result of this deal. Also, the British Government’s policy of leaving the single market and the customs union means we will need over 70 deals to make up for that loss, and if we have no deal that figure will be considerably worse.
Elizabeth Truss
This deal is worth at least £15 billion in extra trade, not including the trade that was already increasing between our two nations, and there are significant benefits for Wales, including the recognition of Welsh lamb as a protected geographical indicator as well as more opportunities for manufacturing industries.
Craig Williams (Montgomeryshire) (Con)
I cannot help but stand up when I hear the words “Welsh lamb”. It is a wonderful GI that I know the Secretary of State is working to protect. On Japanese business, Wales saw Japanese trade increase in 2018 by £250 million. That is a 25% increase, and this deal will solidify that. I normally work with the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) and welcome what he has to say, but I think that this deal really is terrific for the Welsh economy.
Elizabeth Truss
We had a major success in 2019 when we gained access for British lamb into the Japanese market, and, of course, one of the products that is flowing into Japan is our fantastic Welsh lamb.
This agreement is not just about economics, but about our close relationship with Japan and the Japanese. Together we are helping to set the standard for trade in the 21st century. That does not come as a surprise, because our relationship with Japan is deep and long standing. Way back in 1613, King James I concluded the UK’s first trade agreement with Japan. Under Queen Victoria, a treaty of peace, friendship and commerce was signed in 1858. We see that friendship endure under Japan’s current Emperor Naruhito, who has written fondly of his time studying at Oxford. We continue to benefit from Japanese commerce after Margaret Thatcher opened the door to new investment from companies such as Nissan, supporting local jobs and communities.
Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)
A fortnight ago, I was delighted to receive an email from the embassy of Japan, informing me that my constituency of Newcastle-under-Lyme will receive 30 of the cherry trees that it agreed to donate to the United Kingdom. That was agreed in 2017, as part of the prosperity agreement, but it is a real symbol of what we are now doing with Japan in this trade deal. I compliment the Japanese Government and my right hon. Friend’s Department for all they have done.
Elizabeth Truss
I thank my hon. Friend. Our relationship with Japan is going from strength to strength. Japan and the United Kingdom are two great island nations, but we are not insular in our embrace of freedom, democracy, human rights and free trade, and we will be working together when the UK has the presidency of the G7 next year to advance on all these fronts and to champion much-needed reform of the global rules for services and digital trade.
Next year, Japan will chair the comprehensive and progressive trans-Pacific partnership, a high-standards agreement that promotes the values that we believe in for rules-based free trade. The CEPA secures Japan’s support for our joining that club and will provide further market access under that agreement. This agreement will turbocharge our trade with dynamic members from Canada and Australia to Chile and Peru. The CPTPP is more than the sum of its parts, because we gain access to a free trade area with common standards and rules of origin, which means flexibility and opportunities, but, unlike with the EU, we retain control of our borders, our laws and our money.
This huge gateway to the Pacific region will help us unleash our potential as a global hub for services and technology trade. On joining CPTPP, global Britain would have unprecedented and deep access to markets covering 13% of the world’s GDP, which equates to more than £11 trillion in some of the world’s fastest growing markets. If we add in the US, this would amount to over 40% of the world’s GDP, which equates to more than £27 trillion.
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
The Secretary of State is very generous in giving way. As a member of the all-party group on Japan, I agree with some of the things that she is saying, but does she agree that, in principle, it would be much better if we had more scrutiny in advance of votes on trade deals, so that we can have this kind of debate rather than having it post facto?
Elizabeth Truss
I will come on to the issue of scrutiny later in my speech, but we committed in our Command Paper to produce a scoping assessment, which we did. We have produced our objectives and there are opportunities for them to be scrutinised through the International Trade Committee, and that has been happening during the process. There will be full opportunity for a debate afterwards. This puts us in a very strong position compared with comparative parliamentary democracies, and of course I welcome the opportunity to debate issues such as CPTPP during the accession process next year.
Today’s debate is truly historic, as trade policy is once again a matter for the United Kingdom and for this House. It is part of our new system of proper scrutiny, of which I am delighted to be a part. Parliament will rightly have the final say on the ratification of this deal. I am very grateful for this report from the International Trade Committee, which has made clear the desire for a debate. We will shortly be introducing an amendment to the Trade Bill, which will write the role of our vital Trade and Agriculture Commission into law, again giving independent advice to Parliament on trade and agriculture.
Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)
I, too, thank the Secretary of State for putting together the continuation of the Trade and Agriculture Commission and setting it up as an expert group for the next three years, because it will be very important, as we move forward to deal with Australia and others, that we really drill down on the way that agriculture is done and food is produced to keep our high animal welfare standards in this country.
Elizabeth Truss
I am delighted that my hon. Friend welcomes the putting of the Trade and Agriculture Commission into statute, which will be done through the Trade Bill. We need to make sure that farmers are engaged, businesses are engaged and our whole country is engaged in these trade agreements because we are doing them to benefit the United Kingdom—to make sure that every part of this country is helped to thrive. We are lowering barriers to trade and creating—
Elizabeth Truss
I have already given way to the hon. Gentleman and we have a limited amount of time for this debate.
Andrew Bowie
On benefiting the whole country, we have yet to mention Scotland and Scottish produce. I am delighted that under this agreement we will see increased numbers of products that are geographically protected, with Scotch beef and Scotch whisky added to that list. The trade between Scotland and Japan is incredible. It dwarfs even Wales, with £500 million-worth of trade between Scotland and Japan last year, and this is only set to grow under the incredible deal that has been negotiated by my right hon. Friend.
Elizabeth Truss
My hon. Friend mentions some of the benefits from the Japan deal. Of course, there are also measures to protect the Scotch whisky industry from counterfeiting in Japan. I know that was very strongly welcomed by the industry when we announced the results of the Japan trade deal.
Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)
The Secretary of State will know that applications for new food geographical indicators through the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture take, on average, five months and had a success rate of only 15% last year. Can she tell us the equivalent figures for new alcohol applications?
Elizabeth Truss
I can tell the hon. Lady that we have agreed with the Japanese that our 70 geographical indications will go through the process and, unless there is some objection by a producer in Japan producing exactly the same product, those procedures will be successful.
As I said, I am grateful for the report from the International Trade Committee, which made clear the desire for a debate. We will shortly be introducing the amendment that I mentioned earlier.
The House will now understand why on signing this deal in Japan, the land of the rising sun, I hailed the dawn of a new era for free trade. Days ago, we struck a vital continuity deal with Canada, which means that we have now secured 89% of the value of UK trade with continuity countries and with Japan, which goes further. These 53 countries cover £164 billion-worth of trade. No other country has conducted so many trade negotiations simultaneously and delivered. We have achieved this by being prepared to stand our ground and to fight hard for Britain’s interests.
I am very confused about Labour’s approach to these deals, which seems to veer between complete capitulation and a refusal to sign any deal. I read that the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) will not vote for any deal we get with the EU, but apparently she does not agree with her leader on this matter. She has told us before that she would not sign any trade deal with the US, yet she seems prepared to do a deal at any price with everyone else. The Opposition have attacked us for not rolling over trade deals that they did not vote for in the first place. They criticise us for not engaging with countries that refuse to come to the negotiating table, and then they repeat the media lines of foreign Governments. Do they understand how negotiations work? I do not think they do.
Let us be honest: negotiating trade deals in a pandemic is not easy, but I am incredibly proud of our team, who have been negotiating in video conferences and phone calls round the clock, and they have got the job done. Just today, long before Parliament opened this morning, our negotiators were deep in talks with Australia, which are now on to their third round. After the House rises this evening, I will be speaking to my New Zealand counterpart about the next round we are about to undertake. This is just the start for global Britain. We are back out there, making the case for free trade and helping to reshape global trading rules. Our deal with Japan is vital for our economic recovery. It will drive jobs and prosperity across every nation and region of the UK, ensuring a brighter future for the British people. I commend this agreement to the House.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
This is all very lively, as I can see, and a large number of hon. and right hon. Members wish to contribute to this debate, so I will start with an immediate five-minute limit for Back Benchers. That may well have to come down later, but we will try to keep that on for as long as possible.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
Before I begin my response, I feel obliged to say two things. First, my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson)—Nissan is based in her constituency—wanted to be involved in this debate, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) and another of my hon. Friends, who has extensive experience in this area and an important constituency interest, but who understandably does not want his name to be mentioned. He says this is an affront to democracy. All of them wanted me to put on record that they were keen to take part in this important debate, but unfortunately were excluded from doing so by the Leader of the House and his current rules for virtual participation.
Secondly, I feel that I should inform the House of an important development overnight on the issue of international trade deals, which somehow the Secretary of State did not see fit to announce. I can tell colleagues that the news was slipped on to her Department’s website this morning that no continuity agreements are expected to be agreed with Algeria, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, which means that our current EU trade deals with them will expire on 31 December and not be replaced. Our trade deals with those three countries were worth £3.5 billion last year. To put that into perspective for those on the Government Back Benches, the growth in UK exports achieved by the deal with Japan is forecast to be £2.6 billion in 15 years’ time.
Nevertheless, turning back to the subject of today’s debate, let me make clear at the outset, as I did 10 weeks ago, that I congratulate the Secretary of State on securing this enhanced continuity agreement with Japan. During a time of great economic turmoil, it provides an important measure of certainty for all those British and Japanese companies that would otherwise have lost their current terms of trade on 31 December. I congratulate the Secretary of State, and I also thank her for holding today’s debate and vote in Government time.
Let me pause for a moment on an important issue of parliamentary scrutiny and approval. As colleagues will know, under the current Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 rules, a new trade agreement must be laid before Parliament for 21 sitting days before it can be ratified in law. The only way that Parliament can block that agreement is through an Opposition day motion, but only if an Opposition day is granted during the 21-day period. We are now on day 15 of ratification for the Japan agreement, and no Opposition day has been granted in that period, nor is one scheduled. If it had not been for the Government’s act of great generosity today, Parliament would have no right and no power to debate and approve this important agreement. It is not an isolated case: of the 20 continuity agreements signed by the Government since 2019, 15 of them have completed their 21 days of ratification with no Opposition day debates granted during those periods, including all 11 agreements signed by the current Secretary of State.
Emily Thornberry
I will rattle through a bit of my speech, because I have the beady eyes of Madam Deputy Speaker on me. Once I know I am definitely halfway, I will take interventions.
The same situation with Opposition day debates is set to be true of the continuity agreements recently reached with Ukraine, the Ivory Coast, Kenya, Canada and, of course, the 11 other continuity agreements that the Government still need to secure in the next five weeks—or 14, if we are still counting Algeria, Bosnia and Serbia.
In other words, the process for parliamentary scrutiny and approval that the Government are relying on for our future deals as an independent trading nation is failing repeatedly at the very first hurdle, through the denial of Opposition day debates. I therefore greatly welcome the Secretary of State’s decision to grant this debate and vote in Government time, and hope that she will amend the Trade Bill, because she will now have realised that this simply will not do; the right to debate and approve future trade agreements should be a matter of law, not just a matter of discretion. That brings me to the main theme of my remarks: the importance of the Japan agreement as a precedent for other trade deals to come, in terms of both substance and the way in which they are presented to the world.
Let me start with some of the positives. I welcome the Secretary of State’s dedicated chapter on the role of women in our economy. That is definitely an important precedent. I hope that her friend Tony Abbott will study it closely to appreciate that female empowerment means more than just plugging in the iron. I welcome the new ground broken in this agreement on trade in digital services and data—a vital area of future growth for exports and investment—and hope that the Government’s stated principles, particularly on net neutrality, will be precedents for our future trade deals with Australia and the United States. But I am afraid that there are many other areas in which I hope that the Japan deal does not set a precedent.
Beyond digital, there is a disappointing absence of any new measures to support the vital role of Japanese companies as investors in our economy and creators of British jobs—something that is especially important in the current climate, as we look to safeguard the jobs provided by companies such as Nissan. There is also a lack of any new, enforceable commitments on climate change and the environment. That is another wasted opportunity and one that does not bode well for the ongoing negotiations with Australia. There is the absence of any progress on workers’ rights, coupled with the failure to consult trade unions on the deal, as well as the rolling back of commitments on civil society dialogue. I am afraid that this is all consistent with a Secretary of State whose official trade union advisory group contains just four members, one of which is the British Medical Association.
When it comes to deeply unfortunate precedents, there is also the sheer extent to which the Secretary of State has exaggerated, oversold and misrepresented the benefits of a UK-Japan deal compared with the EU-Japan deal that it replaces. Let us take a single example: agriculture and food. She tells us that 70 new British products will be protected by GI status thanks to her deal, but that will only be true if they are approved by Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture—a process that takes at least five months and which resulted in the rejection of 85% of applications last year. She tells us that our farmers and food producers will benefit from lower Japanese tariffs, but that will only be true if they are exporting to Japan ostrich feathers, dried eggs or 180 proof alcohol, which none of them currently does.
The Secretary of State tells us that we will benefit from continued access to the EU tariff rate quotas for exports to Japan of products such as soft cheese and cake mix, but that will only be true if the EU does not use up those quotas itself. She tells us that British farmers will have access to Japan’s quota for imports of malt, which, I am delighted to tell colleagues, is true. It is true! But she did not mention that it is actually a global quota to which every farmer in the world has access—so I do not know why she is looking so pleased with herself—and which can be withdrawn by Japan at any time. Finally, her Department’s Twitter feed tells us—during an episode of “The Great British Bake Off”, no less—that imports of Japanese soy sauce will be cheaper, which, as thousands of people pointed out, is not true in the slightest.
In one area after another, the spin from the Secretary of State and her Department does not match the substance, and her concern for how the deal will be presented appears to be more of a priority than the deal that she will actually deliver. That is a hugely damaging precedent, and one that I hope will not be followed—for example, in the Canada deal signed last weekend—particularly when it comes to our cheese exporters. After all, if it is the case that, like the Japan deal, we will only get access to the EU’s quota on exports of cheese to Canada if the EU has not used up the quota itself, that is deeply worrying for our dairy industry.
Elizabeth Truss
I assure the right hon. Lady that we have access to the EU reserve on equal terms with the EU.
Emily Thornberry
So there is a cake of a certain size—the tariff quota—and the EU and Britain will have access to that cake. Who gets what bit first? What happens if the EU gets the cake first—what does Britain do then? Is it first come, first served? Or is the cake already cut up in pieces? I wonder whether the right hon. Lady could help us with that.
Elizabeth Truss
I am happy to furnish the right hon. Lady with a letter about the details of the licensing procedures, but it is important to understand that, in a situation different from that for the tariff rate quota with Japan, the UK reserve is applied for on an equal basis with the EU.
Emily Thornberry
Given the time, I will with your leave, Madam Deputy Speaker, take some other interventions at this moment, as I am halfway through my speech.
Catherine West
My right hon. Friend mentioned workers’ rights; does she agree with the now sadly deceased Senator John Lewis that, had workers’ rights been more at the heart of a proper consultative process, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations may have ended better than they did?
Emily Thornberry
I agree with my hon. Friend. I have to say that trade deals generally are better when we consult properly and extensively and put trust in Parliament, which unfortunately the Conservative party does not seem to have at this time.
Jonathan Edwards
Also missing from the Secretary of State’s comments were the Government’s own figures, which indicate that Japanese imports to the UK will benefit at a level four times greater than that for UK exports to Japan. Does that not indicate that it is actually a very good deal for Japan?
Emily Thornberry
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman; I am coming to that.
When it comes to the exaggeration of benefits and the misrepresentation of the Japanese trade deal, one crucial issue is left unresolved, and it is a vital precedent to get right. By my count, I have now asked the Secretary of State a very simple question three times on the Floor of the House, twice in letters and once in a written parliamentary question and—she knows what is coming— I ask it again now: in pounds and pence, what is the forecast increase in UK exports and growth resulting from the UK-Japan deal compared with the EU-Japan deal that it replaces?
I fail to see why the Secretary of State gets so indignant about this question; after all, she is the one who has repeatedly claimed over the past 75 days that the deal she has negotiated with Japan goes “beyond and above” the EU-Japan deal, goes “further and faster” than the EU-Japan deal and delivers “additional economic benefits” compared with the EU-Japan deal. Indeed, when I pressed her last week simply to confirm that the forecast for exports and growth was higher under her deal than under the EU-Japan deal, the Secretary of State told the House, “Yes, it is higher”, so why has she continually refused to quantify that difference? Why will she not provide the figures, in pounds and pence, to back her claims?
All is not lost, though: we might be able to make some progress on this point today. I went back to the Department’s original impact assessment, published in May 2018, of the effects of the EU-Japan deal. It is a detailed 51-page document, signed and authorised on the front cover by the Minister for Trade Policy, the right hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands). I have to say that I do not think it is the right hon. Gentleman’s best piece of work—the assumptions and baselines are pretty sketchy, and my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) was pretty scathing about it during the debate in 2018—but, nevertheless, it is what we have to go on; we do not have anything else.
On page 2, after the Minister’s signature, it says in black and white:
“The analysis assumes that the UK continues to trade…after EU exit…with Japan on an equivalent preferential basis to the EPA.”
In other words, this is what we have been asking for and what the Secretary of State has repeatedly refused to provide—an analysis by her Department, authorised by her closest ministerial colleague, of what would happen if we had just stuck to the terms of the EU-Japan deal.
I remind colleagues—I wonder whether my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas) wants to write this down, because it might be worth coming back to—that in the final assessment produced last month by the Department of the long-term impact of the UK-Japan deal, the forecast increase in UK exports to Japan was £2.6 billion, and the forecast increase in UK GDP was £1.5 billion. Let us compare those figures with the Department’s assessment of the long-term impact of the EU-Japan deal. Under that assessment, the forecast increase in UK exports to Japan was not £2.6 billion but £4.3 billion, and the forecast increase in UK GDP was not £1.5 billion but £2.6 billion. I do not know about you, Madam Deputy Speaker, but that does not sound like further and faster, above and beyond, additional or higher to me. It sounds like smaller, slower, lower and lamer.
I have no doubt that the Secretary of State will tell me that the 2018 forecasts were inaccurate, the methodology was flawed and the Minister for Trade Policy was having a bad hair day, although he did put his name on it. All those things may be true, but here is the problem: unless and until she can produce an assessment of how the UK-Japan deal compares with the EU-Japan deal in terms of the forecast for UK exports and growth, that is all we have to go on. The two assessments produced by her Department in 2018 and 2020 show that her historic, groundbreaking, British-shaped deal has left our country worse off than if we had simply rolled over the provisions in the EU-Japan agreement. My suggestion to the Secretary of State is that, until she can provide her own assessment of the difference between the two deals, she should stop making exaggerated claims about the “additional economic benefits” of her deal, because quite frankly, she does not have the figures to back them up.
That is why this issue really matters, and that is why it is important that we get this precedent right before the Secretary of State goes off to negotiate any more trade deals on our country’s behalf. It does not matter whether it is an issue as small as soy sauce imports from Japan or as big as car exports to Europe. We gain nothing in international credibility if we overstate what our trade deals have achieved. Indeed, we risk misleading the British people and undermining their confidence in the importance of trade if we claim benefits from the agreements we negotiate that are simply not borne out by the facts.
I welcome the trade agreement with Japan—all of us on the Opposition Benches do—but the Secretary of State has done herself no favours and done our country no service in the way in which she has presented this agreement and oversold its benefits. I hope she will learn the right lessons from this when it comes to negotiating our new trade deals with the US, Australia, New Zealand, the rest of CPTPP and the Mercosur countries in the coming years. More importantly, I hope that a renewed focus on substance over presentation and the chastening loss of our trade deals with Algeria, Bosnia and Serbia will encourage her to get her head down over the next five weeks and do the hard, unglamorous work of sorting out the other 11 continuity agreements worth £55 billion in trade with Mexico, Singapore, Ghana and others before the clock runs out and before any more of the free trade agreements we already have are carelessly and needlessly thrown away.
Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)
I want to begin by congratulating my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and her incredible team of Ministers, our fabulous negotiating team, our Japan team at DIT and our team in Tokyo, led by ambassador Paul Madden, who have all contributed enormously to the success of this negotiation. I want briefly to explain why I think this deal is important in the global trade environment, what it says about Japan’s outlook and the UK’s outlook and why it matters for CPTPP.
All trade liberalisation matters, particularly at the present time. Even before the covid pandemic, global trade was shrinking—partly for cyclical reasons, 10 years post the financial crisis; partly because of trade tensions, not least between China and the United States; and partly because of rising protectionism, not least in the G20. The G20 represent 90% of global GDP and 80% of global trade. At the end of the financial crisis, only 0.7% of G20 imports were covered by restrictive measures. In the first quarter of 2020, that had mushroomed to 10.3%—a huge barrier for developing countries to have to overcome to be able to sell their goods into developed markets.
We have also had a failure of liberalisation at the WTO—25 years and all we have seen is the trade facilitation agreement, no further liberalisation—and we have seen far too few multilateral agreements. In fact, we have seen none apart from TFA; we are now moving to plurilateral, regional and then bilateral FTAs. That is why any liberalisation should be welcomed in this House.
Japan is a country with a GDP of $4.97 trillion. It has a global GDP share of 4.13%—not an inconsiderable market—with a GDP per capita of over $39,000. Japan is increasingly assertive and confident on the global stage. When TPP was looking as though it might collapse when President Trump pulled the United States out, Prime Minister Abe stepped up and led its recovery. I am sure that everyone in the House would like to wish him good health in his retirement.
We have seen increased co-operation in security between the UK and Japan, with the first joint exercise by UK troops in Japan only last year. We have a strong investment relationship with Japan. A self-confident, assertive Japan is good for our bilateral relations, good for regional security and good for global prosperity. My right hon. Friend said right at the outset what she thought that meant for the UK’s outlook. Clearly, having an independent trade policy is one of the positive consequences of Brexit. This agreement itself says a lot about the UK’s outlook. It brings improvements to mobility provisions for business travellers and it is has clear pluses in terms of data and digital, indicating the UK’s forward-leaning position on this most important element in the global economy and our understanding of the importance of e-commerce, not only as a key enabler of development but as an empowerment tool—not least for women in the global economy, particularly in the least developing economies.
The agreement also helps us to escape from the trap of the EU’s data localisation. The four countries—Germany, France, Slovenia and Austria—that held the rest of the EU to ransom are out of step with the rest of the global economy. They had a medieval view of data localisation, and not only have we escaped it by being out of the European Union, but we have managed to go forward in this agreement. Of course, the real gain that we would get with Japan would be global services liberalisation, because a multilateral agreement, or even an open plurilateral agreement, would give us far greater access to what we really need.
Finally, let me say something about CPTPP. This is a regional grouping of increasing importance. As my right hon. Friend said, it represents an increasing share of global GDP. With the UK, it would be bigger in GDP share than the EU; with the United States, its share would be over 40%. Here is a great opportunity: if we can persuade the new United States Administration to take America back into TPP alongside the UK, it will also have net benefits for our trading relationship with the United States.
Eleven fast-growing countries: a single set of rules of origin, allowing content from all CPTPP countries to be cumulated—but above all else, its advantage lies in the strategic environment. If we want to deal with the problems of China in global trade, in terms of intellectual property theft and transparency, we are going to do it not by hitting it with tariffs repeatedly, but by creating a parallel structure with a widened CPTPP that shows what can be achieved by genuine free trade and adherence to global rules. That is the real prize for us.
Alyn Smith (Stirling) (SNP)
Last time we discussed this text, I said that I would reserve my enthusiasm until we saw more of the detail. I am rather glad I did, because while it would be churlish of me not to give the Secretary of State her moment—this is an achievement, and I welcome it—it is really small beer. Any rational person recognises that in any course of action there are upsides and downsides, costs and benefits, and any course of action will have consequences. I am struck, to mangle Thomas Hardy, that this is a treaty in which no Brexiter would see anything to dislike, but no objective person anything to admire when set against the disadvantages of this course of action.
In EU stuff, in trade and in life, if we do not look at things in the round—if we do not look at the full picture—we will make poor conclusions. As we heard earlier, the consequences of giving up the benefits of the EU-Japan trade deal, to be replaced by this deal, have not been properly analysed. By the UK Government’s figures, such as they are on this, the deal will add 0.07% percent to UK GDP. That is not a small amount of money and I welcome it, but we need to look in the round at what we are losing.
I am struck, as always, by the capacity of Government Members to be giddy with excitement over the Brexit process and the potential hypothetical upsides, which, in a spirit of intellectual honesty, I accept may exist. I am proudly pro-European. A cornerstone of the SNP’s economic plans for Scotland is membership of the single market. We believe we were adequately well represented by the EU on the world stage. PGIs were mentioned earlier and there is an interesting point to be asked, and perhaps answered, about what protections the UK Government sought within the EU’s negotiation and at what point the UK disengaged from that process to foster its own deal, but that is a different argument. I accept that we have left the European Union and we need to properly analyse the costs and benefits of where we are now.
There may be some advantages to this deal. There may be some things that fit better. I have my doubts and I am not convinced that it was worth the change, but the SNP is pro-trade. As I say, we believe that the risk to our existing trade patterns is not set off properly by the benefits of this deal. Japan accounts for 1.8% of the UK’s exports of goods; the EU accounts for 46% of them. So to get the hypothetical potential upsides of the Japan deal, the UK jeopardises the real-world existing benefits of the EU single market membership and access right now. To ignore that strikes me as flatly absurd.
Alyn Smith
We will tell the right hon. Gentleman that when we are bringing forward the independence prospectus. We regret that the UK has left the European Union. We regret the consequences to all our businesses, traders and exporters of the increased complexity and uncertainty that leaving the EU single market means. Our proposition on independence will be rejoining the EU market, and that has consequences for our trade flows, of course, but a proper analysis of how much Scottish trade goes through England, rather than to England, is an interesting statistic in itself. In the same way as Ireland, pre-EU membership, was very heavily dependent on the UK market, Scotland’s trade flows will change also.
There are consequences, which I do not dismiss and deny, but let us talk about this deal right now as opposed to our plans for the future. This deal right now is not worth the candle, is not worth the effort and is in no way better than what we are giving up to get it. A real-world example, where the Secretary of State and I have a degree of common ground, is cheese. She has mentioned cheese a number of times. I note that it was a particularly nice touch to give a jar of British Stilton to Japan’s Minister Motegi to celebrate this deal. I wonder: did the Secretary of State check whether he is lactose intolerant? There was an interesting statistic—I see that there are doctors in the House— from The Lancet in October 2017 that 73% of the Japanese population are lactose intolerant. Perhaps we should consider what the opportunities for our exports of cheese actually are in the real world, as opposed to Panglossian excitement about what they might be, hypothetically.
In conclusion, we welcome this treaty—just. We think it is better than the alternatives, but like any responsible Government, we are concerned about the real-world consequences and real-world costs to all our exporters right now of jeopardising our closest trading relationships with the EU, and, as we have heard, of the failure to roll over trade agreements with the wider world. It was best put by Mike Hawes, the chief executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, who said:
“We hope the deal can be ratified swiftly but, for both sides to benefit fully, we still need to urgently complete an ambitious and tariff-free UK-EU deal—and time is rapidly running out.”
I counsel Government Members to save their hubris until the bigger questions are answered.
Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)
By rights, the Chair of the International Trade Committee, the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil), should be making this speech, but he is stuck in the Western Isles and unfortunately cannot be here. I am joined by a number of Committee colleagues, however, and I am sure that we will make similar speeches.
I start by thanking the Government for how much effort they have put into helping the Committee’s scrutiny process. There is no doubt that, at every opportunity when we have asked the Secretary of State to help out, she has come along and been very helpful to us, and has been keen to help the process of scrutiny. I will say more about that in a minute.
I echo what my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) said about the extraordinary amount of work that has been done by the Department and its Ministers. I also point out that I was part of the ministerial team when he set up the Department, and the reason it is so qualified to do this now is the incredibly hard work that he put in as Secretary of State. He had the foresight to take on the trade negotiators and Crawford Falconer to lead the trade policy team to make the Department fit to do all these trade deals and roll-overs.
To turn to our report, we categorically congratulate the Government on their achievements and on helping us out, but I will raise one or two points. There is a big argument about whether this is a roll-over deal or a new deal. Actually, it seems to be a bit of a hybrid deal. Although if this deal had not been done there would be no deal at all, it seems to have been based on JEEPA—the Japan-EU economic partnership agreement—so it is a bit of one and a bit of the other. When it comes to scrutiny, that means that we have tended to look at some economic forecasts that compare it with the WTO and some economic forecasts that compare it with JEEPA.
Looking at how it compares with JEEPA is incredibly important, because it signifies what it will be like when we modify all the roll-over deals that we have made so far. For example, CETA has been rolled over, but at some point we will want to improve on that deal. What we have done here, with the improvement on JEEPA, signifies what can be achieved elsewhere, which is obviously something that we will be taking a close look at.
When it comes to scrutiny, there is no doubt that it is an incredible challenge for a Select Committee, and indeed Parliament, to really get into the nuts and bolts of the whole deal. It has been pointed out that CRaG lasts for 21 days and we are now on day 15. The good news is that when we asked for a debate, the Department was keen to table one, so we got a debate. It is worth bearing in mind that, for Select Committee members trying to look into these documents—although we were given them a week earlier than anybody else, which was very helpful—when they sit down on a Friday afternoon and see an impact assessment, a parliamentary report, an explanatory memorandum and 57 documents, it is a huge amount to get through. It certainly messes up one’s weekend.
That means it is incredibly important that we get a huge amount of feedback from everybody else who is being affected by this. As I say, it is very good that the Department has been open with us, but the scrutiny is none the less quite a challenge. We have to think carefully, as we come to more complicated deals, about how we will be able to do it. As I say, however, the Secretary of State has been very flexible, and I am sure that we will have an opportunity to talk to her about it in future.
I do not particularly want to go into the content of the deal, but there is a point to be made about how trade deals are incredibly important in how they lean on one another. The hon. Member for Stirling (Alyn Smith) mentioned the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. Certainly, when Mike Hawes came in, I had the opportunity to ask him whether, if we did not get a trade deal with the European Union, that would affect Japanese manufacturers in the UK, to which his answer was that he did not think so. Certainly when I was a Minister looking after that sector, I was acutely aware of that.
The bottom line is that those manufacturers have been in the UK for 25 or 30 years—a long time—so they are not going to get up and leave. It is incredibly important, however, to remember that trade deals lean on one another and people need to have confidence in future relationships. It is also worth bearing in mind that, when we do a deal with Japan, that makes us more attractive to those who might come to the UK to export to Japan. If we join CPTPP, the same applies. We have to understand that all trade deals have more implications than perhaps the immediate economic impact that people look at.
Many other hon. Members wish to speak, so I will finish by thanking the Department again for its co-operation with the Select Committee. If it carries on like this, we will have an extraordinarily wholesome and good relationship.
Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)
We know that this deal is almost a carbon copy of the EU-Japan deal. We can discuss the ironies of this Government plagiarising the EU’s work on another occasion. However, I would like to focus on the small but significant differences and what they might mean for the UK.
We will undoubtedly hear a lot of concern about digital rights today, and it would be remiss of me not to voice my concerns and the concerns of my constituents—I am also a graduate of the School of Computing at the University of Leeds—about what the deal means for data privacy. The deal allows for the
“free flow of data between Japan and the UK”,
and from there on to other trade partners, undermining existing data protection frameworks.
Perhaps most concerningly, this means our data being transferred to a range of countries, including the USA, and obviously the other countries that have recently signed the CPTPP. US data protection laws are some of the weakest in the western world. There is no federal oversight, just a patchwork of state enforcement models. By allowing data to be sold off to the US, the Government are removing the right of UK citizens to know where their data is held and for what purpose. We will not be able to stop our data being used in discriminatory ways, and we will not be able to have it deleted. This could well undermine the provisions of the online harms Bill that the Government plan to lay before the House.
It is also worth noting that despite e-commerce and online retail being wrapped up in digital tech services, they are not mentioned in the deal. Instead, the deal only specifically refers to FinTech, which gives us a crucial clue about the Government’s plans. FinTech firms, usually backed by venture capitalists, are necessarily globalised. The deal fails to support small start-ups or individuals. It tells us what we already know: the Conservatives are not the party of business, they are the party of the financial elites. This deal does not create a level playing field.
The lack of concrete and enforceable environmental and sustainable provisions is another real concern of mine. This deal was a golden opportunity to outline and to aspire to establish world-leading practices as both countries work to reduce their carbon emissions to zero by 2050, and to lay the groundwork for COP26 in Glasgow. How many golden opportunities on the climate are the Government prepared to squander in the run-up to COP?
I think it is fair to say that the natural environment is at best an afterthought here. Little consideration was made of the deal’s effect on biodiversity, which is particularly pertinent as we export more agricultural goods and import large quantities of chemicals and plastics. There is an over-reliance on future technologies to excuse the potential increase in carbon emissions caused by international trade. This is worrying, and yet to be addressed.
Japan’s track record on animal welfare and sustainability is shaky, to say the least. Last year, it resumed catching whales for profit in defiance of international criticism, yet the majority of the environmental provisions in this deal are non-enforceable. Flimsy, unenforceable terms present a real barrier to upholding high environmental protection, animal welfare and food standards. The Conservatives promised us in their manifesto that they would not compromise on that, so why are they compromising on it in this first deal?
Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend perhaps notice a pattern emerging here? We have seen the Agriculture Bill, and the widespread concern about chlorinated chicken and other abhorrent practices. We have heard today of the deep concern about some of the things that are happening in Japan. While we obviously welcome the deal, does he agree that there is a pattern emerging of the Government putting serious environmental concerns at the back of the list of the matters they are addressing in these deals?
Alex Sobel
I do agree with my hon. Friend. I sat on the Environment Bill Committee many months ago, when the Bill first came in and before there was a huge pause, and this was also clear in relation to that Bill, so we are seeing a pattern across these Bills and these deals.
Moving on to the wider ambitions of the Government, I would like to ask—I see that the Secretary of State is leaving her place, but perhaps the Minister for Trade Policy will respond—whether this is the first step towards joining the regional comprehensive economic partnership, or just clearing the way to become a member of or a signatory to the CPTPP through the British overseas territory of the Pitcairn Islands.
Jonathan Edwards
From my understanding of the trans-Pacific partnership, it includes very strict provisions on state aid and an investor-state dispute resolution mechanism, both of which mean conceding a great deal of sovereignty. Does it not just go to show that the great Brexit slogans of “take back control” and “a global Britain” are inherently contradictory?
Alex Sobel
The provisions of the investor-state dispute settlement are exceedingly worrying. We have seen previous trade deals founder on them because they give private entities a whip hand over Government and the state. We are meant to be taking back control, not handing it to private courts.
Perhaps the Minister can enlighten me on the points I have raised about his ambitions towards the CPTPP and the RCEP through that great overseas territory, the Pitcairn islands—which qualifies as it is in the Pacific.
Ultimately, we have to ask what kind of deal we want. Do we want a deal that puts the data privacy and security of the everyday person at its heart, or one that furthers British financial services? Do we want a deal that protects the natural environment or one that encourages lower standards? I would ask the Government to do better in future.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
After the rather negative contributions from the Opposition, I hope to make a more positive case. I congratulate the Secretary of State and the ministerial and negotiating teams on achieving the deal, and it is nice to know that, as a post-Brexit free sovereign nation, we can manage to conclude such a worthwhile deal.
As a member of the International Trade Committee, I have had the opportunity to scrutinise the agreement in detail and can assure the House that it is a significant improvement on what we previously had via the EU. I can also assure hon. Members that food standards, animal welfare and so on will not be compromised.
As we move forward, the Opposition might be accused of moving the goalposts in their assessment of the deal. Prior to the announcement of the historic agreement, critics of the UK negotiating team claimed that we were not able to secure a deal as good as the EU’s. Now that we have a deal, the same people complain that it is only on a par with the EU’s. I can assure the House that they were wrong to be pessimistic in the first instance, and they are wrong about the result in the second. It is certainly true that we have replicated key elements of the EU-Japan deal, and that provides much-needed continuity and certainty to UK businesses involved in trade. However, this is a deal tailored to the UK economy, which secures additional benefits beyond what the EU was able to secure.
The most notable differences can be seen in the provisions on digital, data and financial services. Those are areas in which the UK already has a very strong comparative advantage, so the deal represents a significant boost to British business. The City of London Corporation labelled those provisions “a major achievement”. In some areas, we have agreed to implement the same measures as the EU but on a faster time scale, such as the 21 industrial tariff lines that will be eliminated under the CEPA immediately, in January. Another example is the immediate withdrawal of UK duties on two tariff lines relating to electronic control panels for electric vehicles, which will not be eliminated until 2024 under the EU agreement.
The UK is a trading nation; 64% of our GDP comes from imports and exports. I understand that the Department for International Trade has identified around £88 million-worth of trade with Japan that could gain from lower tariffs, owing to more liberal rules of origin. Those new rules, which again go beyond what the EU has in place, will be a big bonus to the many British businesses that import products in order to add value to them in some way.
In respect of visas, the International Trade Committee concluded that the CEPA represents an improvement on the JEPA in a number of respects. Financial services represents one of the areas in which we have made significant strides beyond the Japan-EU agreement. UK suppliers will now be able to offer new financial services on the same basis as Japanese suppliers in all modes of supply, whereas the JEPA only allows for one mode. That is an improvement. A further example relates to the joint UK-Japan Financial Regulatory Forum. That is an improvement on the EU deal, which only gave the UK indirect representation. From next January the UK will be its own representative, on an equal footing with our partners. The House can be reassured that those improvements have been widely welcomed by industry.
On digital trade and data, the UK has negotiated more ambitious provisions. Industry can be assured that the agreement also goes well beyond the EU deal in respect of intellectual property, where provisions are in place to protect trademarks and copyright. We have also got a better deal for geographical indicators. Japan has 55 products that it wants to get on to the UK register, and we have 70 products—including, of course, traditional Grimsby smoked haddock, vital to my constituency and its neighbours.
The UK-Japan agreement creates a working group for co-operation in the field of agriculture. That contrasts with the EU by producing a system involving fewer administrative burdens and allowing greater flexibility while maintaining appropriate decision making. Reference was made earlier to Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia. As the Prime Minister’s trade envoy to the western Balkans, I can assure Members that negotiations are continuing and I am pretty confident of success. Free trade is the foundation of this country’s prosperity and I can assure the House that we want more free trade. This agreement provides the opportunities.
John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)
I am pleased to be making this speech in this debate tonight—I was hoping to make it last night. I declare an interest as a vice-chairman of the all-party group on Japan. May I also take slight issue with my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel), who criticised some parts of the agreement for plagiarism? Personally, I think plagiarism is much underestimated. I am very much with Tom Lehrer:
“Plagiarize! Plagiarize. Let no one else’s work evade your eyes…Only be sure always to call it please ‘research’.”
I join my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) in welcoming the agreement while recognising that there is considerable work still to be done. I will come back to that point in a minute.
My interest in Japan—I am pleased to see the chairman of the all-party group on Japan, the right hon. Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt), in his place— primarily stems from working in the electricians’ union. We were involved with many of the Japanese electronic and car companies that came in, bringing not just product but a whole new mindset to engineering and manufacturing. Mention has been made of Margaret Thatcher bringing Nissan to Sunderland, which has been a huge boost to that region, along with Toyota and Honda—although Honda, unfortunately, will be departing in the near future. There is a book about Toyota, “The Machine that Changed the World”. Toyota certainly changed the British motor industry. It had an enormous effect on the success of the industry, which has driven much of our engineering. We all benefited from that engagement and involvement. The trade union movement was also involved in a way that, very often in those days, did not happen with British companies.
I want the Government to look not just at the agreement, but at the follow through. I wish they would show concern about that. Hitachi came to Newton Aycliffe and built a major train manufacturing unit, employing large numbers of people, but who did we give the next agreement for trains to? To Siemens, which did not have any manufacturing capability in the UK. We need much more joined-up government. That is what other countries, particularly Japan but many others, expect of us.
There was mention of Canada and New Zealand. The detail is very important, and I fully accept many of the key points that have been made, but so is the context. Trade is important for economies, but it also binds together countries and societies. That is why the role of the Japanese embassy here, and the work of Paul Madden and the British embassy in Japan, is enormously important in establishing cultural and economic links, building unity among liberal and economically liberal industrial societies. That is very important in relation to Japan. We have looked at the work being done in industry and in Japanese finance houses here, but also many specialist companies.
We have many things in common with Japan. We are both island peoples with limited national resources. Both of our countries have had to live on the ingenuity and technology of our people and our nations. Incidentally, there seems to be a liking for rugby and the Japanese have had great success in rugby. We both like beer, to the extent that they even bought Fuller’s brewery, and we drink tea. However, with the autocracies around the world flexing their muscles and engaging together, the unity of liberal democracies around the world is enormously important. Trade deals are a significant part of that, and we therefore need to be working together with not only Japan and the other major countries, but those countries that wish to join that democratic caucus. Otherwise, the rules of not only world trade, but international engagement and society will be set by the autocracies. That will not be good for our country and it will not be good for the world.
Craig Williams (Montgomeryshire) (Con)
As a member of the Select Committee on International Trade, I will try to keep my comments brief. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] Thank you for that. My hon. Friend the Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier) summed up the thanks the Committee wishes to give the Front-Bench team for the access given. It is interesting to see the CRaG—Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010—process in action, given that this debate had been asked for. The fears we heard from Opposition Members about the inadequacy of the CRaG process are clearly not being met in this trade debate. The report was interesting; we looked at those documents and discussed this process with other members of the Committee. We have fed back to the Front-Bench team about areas of possible improvement, but I wish to reinforce our thanks for the openness we saw.
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar) and his talk about trade links and trade lines. I echo the tribute paid to both embassies for the work they put in behind the scenes and in front of the scenes on this trade deal. I was also reminiscing, as a Welsh Member, about how terrific the Japanese were in hosting the rugby world cup, and their match against England was one to remember.
As chair of the all-party group on international trade and investment, I completely agree with the comments made by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) on liberalisation. This is an important milestone as we emerge from the tentacles of the European Union and set out on to the open stage with our own trade deals. It sets again an independent trading story of this island nation, and I certainly want to see that greater liberalisation. He espoused it far better than I can, so I will move on.
The hon. Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) is not in his place, but he accused us of plagiarising the EU treaty and of lowering standards. I say gently that we can either have copied the EU treaty or be doing something differently, but I am not sure that both lines of attack work in the same paragraph.
As a rural Member of Parliament, I wish to reflect on the agricultural nature of these trade deals. I know that my local farmers will particularly take heart from the tone of this continuity extra trade deal. They will be looking at what they can achieve through this sector. The hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) touched on the potential for Wales, and trade between Wales and Japan has been growing at a terrific rate. Two companies in my constituency, Nidec and Invertek, are thriving under new Japanese ownership, and I can only see these bonds strengthening.
Jonathan Edwards
Before the hon. Gentleman gets too excited, I am sure he will agree that most Welsh farmers this evening will be looking at the cut of nearly a third in agriculture support that they now face as a result of today’s comprehensive spending review. That is a far bigger issue than the Japan-UK trade deal.
Craig Williams
I would not want to be told off by you, Madam Deputy Speaker, as often happens to me in these debates. I will not make accusations about anything that will get me in trouble with you, but if Members look at the detail of the funding supplied by the UK Government and topped up from the EU to the Welsh Government direct, they will see that the Welsh Government and the Farmers Union of Wales need to be very careful with their accusations. We will take that aside after this debate. I wish to focus on the growth of that trade, which has been terrific. It was £250 million in 2018 and we are talking about a 25% increase year on year. Our relationship and that of our companies with Japan is growing. It is hugely welcome, and it is reinforced by this trade deal.
I will finish by commenting on the GIs. It is brilliant to see not just the greatest lamb product in the world, Welsh lamb, recognised in these trade deals, but also the Anglesey sea salt, the Conwy mussels, the west Wales salmon and, of course, the plums from the Vale of Clwyd. They will be going through the normal process, of course, but it is great to see this on the face of these agreements. It is incredibly encouraging. On deals such as these, Opposition Members were incredibly sceptical that we could ever get anything on a par with the EU deal. Their attacks have moved on, and we now have something that is superior. I have no doubt that these deals will continue.
Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate as a Member who serves on the International Trade Committee. I would like to start by congratulating the Secretary of State and the Department for International Trade on what they have achieved. However, I have concerns that I would like the Department to address, and I will come to those in a moment. As we know, CEPA is the UK’s first bilateral trade agreement of its kind, and it therefore lays crucial precedents for the future trade agreements that the UK will eventually enter into. There are several aspects of CEPA that improve on its predecessor, JEPA. This is true, for example, of how CEPA treats the rules of origin of manufactured goods. Previously, there were stricter limitations on what could be considered UK- manufactured goods.
CEPA also provides for the so-called extended cumulation of manufactured parts made in the EU and placed in UK and Japanese goods. This change makes it easier for inputs from non-EU third countries to count as being of UK origin, and this will enable UK producers of those goods to diversify their supply chain. However—and it is a big however—the EU may challenge this shift, to the long-term detriment of the automotive industry, and as third-party cumulation will be crucial in producing electric vehicles, I believe that the Secretary of State should consider how a challenge to third-party cumulation could impact the automotive industry’s expansion into electric car manufacturing.
There are sections of CEPA that require further clarification, and prominent among them, as we have heard, are the rules governing data protection. That is an area in which CEPA departs from JEPA. There are concerns that provisions relating to cross-border data flow could have negative implications for our NHS, for example, and I ask the Minister to clarify how those restrictions could potentially harm NHS data storage and sharing.
I would also like to raise my concern over the provision relating to the UK’s future accession to the CPTPP. In the short term, the Government have promised to assent to a partnership that would give the UK access to some of the CPTPP tariff quotas and, by extension, access to more competitive export markets. However, the Secretary of State has indicated that that tariff scheme is a temporary arrangement that will expire in 2024, at which time it will be assumed that the UK will join the CPTPP. However, if the UK’s accession to the CPTPP takes longer than the Government predict, or if it ceases to be a high-priority objective, will the UK lose access to those advantageous tariff quotas?
I am also concerned about how the Government modelled CEPA’s impact on our annual GDP. The Government estimate a resulting 0.09% GDP increase in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Will the Minister clarify whether that increase would be due to higher projected barriers to trade between the UK and the EU, resulting in more potential trade with Japan, or whether it would be due to the negative impact on UK GDP growth of the UK and EU not concluding a trade agreement?
On a more general note, CEPA currently lacks any guidelines requiring imports to meet UK standards of animal welfare. As it stands, the agreement may create problems for our farmers and agricultural standards when it comes to agreements with other priority trading partners, particularly Australia and the United States. So when the Minister rises to his feet, I hope he will tell us whether the Government will re-evaluate that section on animal welfare, bearing this concern in mind. Finally, it is important to note that the time given to the Committee to scrutinise CEPA was very limited. I understand that there is pressure to pass CEPA with all urgency, but we should not sacrifice the thoroughness of a process this important for the sake of expediency. It is vital that Parliament should be given an appropriate amount of time, and indeed more time than the task requires, for future agreements.
Jeremy Hunt (South West Surrey) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi), who does formidable work on the Health and Social Care Committee. I normally see her through a screen, so it is nice to hear her in person.
I particularly want to congratulate the Secretary of State for International Trade, although I know that she is not in the Chamber right now. Getting this deal is a personal triumph for her, and it gives great confidence to the country that this Government will be able to negotiate the formidable number of deals we need in the post-Brexit era. She is being fantastically supported by the Minister for Trade Policy, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands), and it has to be said that they are building on the excellent foundations laid by the previous Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox). He is one of the most formidable advocates of free trade that this House has ever known, certainly since the days of Margaret Thatcher. It was excellent to hear his comments earlier.
I am speaking today as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Japan, which, with 93 members, is the second-largest country all-party group in the House of Commons. That is testament to the great interest in Japan among hon. Members. I am proud to have that role, because I lived in Japan for two years in my 20s. I worked there, learned the language and fell in love with the country to such an extent that I once memorably accused my Chinese wife of being Japanese, something she has never allowed me to forget.
The genius of Japan is the people’s humility and willingness to learn, their decency and civility, and their work ethic. Of course, it is a country that has tremendous respect for the past but is able to combine that with an active embrace of modernity. For our purposes in this House, it also has what my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset talked about: the tremendous support for western liberal values for which Japan is a beacon in east Asia, a part of the world where those values are not universally shared. That is why this trade deal has a lot more significance than simply the increase in trade that we are looking forward to.
None the less, that increase in trade is important. I have personal experience of that, because anyone who remembers last summer’s leadership contest, which now feels rather a long time ago, may have picked up that I used to be an entrepreneur. I have not had an opportunity to say that on the Floor of the House before. Hon. Members may not know that my very first venture was an attempt to export marmalade to Japan. It was not terribly successful; in fact, it was a complete flop. I managed to export half a container load of Frank Cooper’s “Oxford” marmalade to Japan before the market rather dried up. I realise now what I did not realise at the time, which is that what was missing was a fantastic trade deal to give me all the encouragement I needed to ship that marmalade to Japan.
My marmalade exporting days are sadly behind me, but I know that an army of younger entrepreneurs are willing to take up the baton. As they embrace those opportunities alongside many other entrepreneurs, we will be proud to know that we are strengthening our relationship with a country that is our best possible strategic ally. That is why this deal is such a triumph for the International Trade Secretary, her Minister and their team.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)
I, too, sit on the International Trade Committee and our report outlined the positives in this deal. There were also many things we just could not quantify, because the Government have not given us the figures, or they do not want to do that analysis, so we just do not know how things will pan out in the future. This is the first run at this.
My first point is about the role of parliamentary scrutiny. This is very much the first run and we need to deepen and strengthen parliamentary scrutiny. We have the weakest parliamentary scrutiny of the major bodies that we now want to negotiate with. Japan and the Japanese Parliament will have longer debates, binding votes and a guaranteed vote to accept sections, the European Union will of course be able to have discussions through the negotiations and will vote section by section, and the US will be able to vote section by section on the deal and will be involved in setting up the framework of the negotiations.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
The Minister shakes his head; I am happy to send him a constitutional 101 of all those countries, because the fact is that we have one of the least developed parliamentary scrutiny systems. Of course we do, because we have not done it for 40 years and other countries have developed since then, but we do need to develop, and it is no good the Minister shaking his head on these points.
The other thing I would say is that, although I welcome the Department giving the International Trade Committee a two-week head start on these documents, I have here in my hand just one volume of the documents, and three of the annexes never arrived in time and were only given to my office a few days before they were publicly released. It is all well and good, and I understand these are working documents, but that cannot be a continued pattern for how these things work; we need to be involved earlier, and we need to be involved throughout.
On the content of the deal, let’s be honest: many of the clauses we have heard celebrated today are non-binding or worse, or are being exaggerated. The workers’ rights sections are of course all totally non-binding; the climate change sections are non-binding and weak; the women and trade section—a new section—is all totally non-binding in the agreement. There is no section on consumer standards, and Which? says to me that it has not been involved much at all in these discussions. It believes there need to be whole sections on consumer standards, and the agreement fails to do that.
Also, in many areas there are standstill clauses that embed the current system we have in Britain and do not allow change. For example, there is a standstill clause on the Post Office; that means if a future Government wanted to change their mind on the disastrous privatisation by this Government of the Post Office that put money into their crony friends who bought the shares which then zoomed up—[Interruption.] It is true, and we would not be able to reverse that without renegotiating this deal. That is an inhibition of sovereignty, and that is a problem.
This deal is also reliant on the EU deal. If we do not get an EU deal, there are some clauses in this deal that will not be enacted fully; there is also a danger that the deal might be a green light for offshoring many jobs out of Britain, as there will be an EU-Japan deal and a UK-Japan deal. But if there is no UK-EU deal, businesses will place themselves in Japan because they will access both markets from there. If we do not get that EU deal, this deal could be an offshoring charter.
The TRQs are a scraps-on-the-table deal, under which the EU of course gets first dibs and if there are crumbs left—we hope there will be crumbs left, for a few more years anyway, until we sign the CPTPP—then we can get those crumbs. We cannot get the crumbs beforehand of course; and in terms of developing innovation, businesses cannot rely on them because they do not know what amount of crumbs will be left over. We have heard that Government analysis of the EU-Japan deal conducted when it was signed shows that the deal will have a worse economic outcome rather than a better one: there will be £1.7 billion less in exports with this deal than under the EU deal, and £1.6 billion less in GDP with this deal compared with how much the EU-Japan deal was benefiting us. Those are the Government’s figures, not my figures.
There are also some very dangerous elements on data protection, including voluntary agreements rather than binding agreements, not least in areas such as data protection and the NHS. That should greatly worry many people.
Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to speak in this debate. I look forward to my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt) being able to export marmalade under this new deal. May I assure him that my daughter-in-law is most definitely Japanese? I just want to make that absolutely clear. I agree with the points that have been made about the liberal democracy in Japan now and the need for us to co-operate and build on that across the world, especially in Asia.
I thank the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil), the Chair of the International Trade Committee, for his great co-operation, for allowing me to guest on the Committee and for the work he has put into scrutinising this trade deal with Japan. I also thank the members of the Committee for allowing me to guest on that Committee and for putting up with me as we debated this. It has been a very interesting experience to monitor the deal through the Committee and to see how another Select Committee works. It may—dare I say it?—give me some ideas for my own Select Committee.
I thank the Secretary of State for her engagement on scrutiny and her commitment to amend the Agriculture Bill, to put the Trade and Agriculture Commission in legislation. I look forward to the Government publishing that amendment, which they have yet to do. The independent Trade and Agriculture Commission will be important in helping MPs to scrutinise new trade deals, whether with Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the US or Brazil. We need to ensure that Parliament has a proper opportunity to debate and scrutinise trade deals, and I hope that the Trade Bill will strengthen that process when it comes back from the other place. I welcome the deal that we have agreed with Japan.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
Does the hon. Member share my concern that animal welfare standards are generally lower in Japan and that this agreement does not replicate the FTAs that have better, stronger animal welfare provisions? Does he agree that we could and ought to do more to protect ourselves against lower standards of imports from Japan?
Neil Parish
When the hon. Lady served on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, she always worked hard on animal welfare. I think that we can get improvements, which is why it is essential to have the Trade and Agriculture Commission up and running to scrutinise these deals as they are put in place. The issue is that once a trade deal gets to the Floor of the House, we can scrutinise it, but it is very difficult to change it, so work has to be put in through the negotiations to get that trade deal right. There can be improvements on animal welfare.
It is essential that thae continuity agreement preserves the tariff reductions we enjoy as part of the EU trade deal. We must ensure that we can increase our access to quotas from Japan, because we can export more of some agricultural products to Japan than we have in the present agreement. This is welcome news for agrifood businesses that export to Japan, but it could have been a bit more ambitious on exporting our excellent British food into Japan. Japan is the largest net importer of agrifood products worldwide, as it lacks enough agricultural land to feed its population, importing about 60% of its food, so there is a huge advantage in trading with Japan.
In future, we will have to boost exports of even more of our great food. It is in our interests to use the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board and the levy payers who pay every time they process lamb, beef and milk and get those people out to do those trade deals. We need to build on the great links that our Government have with the industry, and I particularly welcome the engagement with businesses about what they need through the Trade and Agriculture Commission.
To conclude, I welcome the agreement. I thank the International Trade Committee again for its scrutiny of the deal. I hope to see a lot more of the Secretary of State and her team on the Floor of the House and in Committee telling the House what brilliant deals we have signed and allowing us enough time to scrutinise them. The Government have set an excellent precedent by coming to the House and having a proper debate on this deal, and I look forward to having a debate on all future trade deals.
Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)
I rise in support of the trade agreement that has been reached with Japan, and I congratulate the Minister and the Secretary of State on their efforts to secure this very important deal. In terms of scrutiny of the process, I have been grateful that the Minister’s door has always been open to my questions, particularly about digital and data policy relating to trade agreements, whether this agreement or the other agreements currently being negotiated. I note that he offered last week to write to me with a detailed note setting out the differences in data and digital policy between this trade agreement with Japan versus the EU-Japan trade agreement.
The Government have been clear that this is an enhanced deal. I welcome anything that increases the scope for digital trade in this country, because it is incredibly important to our future growth. These are industries of the future, and the UK is a world-leading nation, but I raise an issue that is important for this agreement and for other agreements as well, which is the scrutiny of data and digital policy as it is concluded in trade agreements. It would be worth while to have an opportunity to scrutinise the reports from the Information Commissioner on digital agreements, because the commissioner is responsible for the enforcement of our data protection rights.
I note as well that the Government say that there are high levels of data protection in this agreement, but this agreement means that UK data can be processed by data processors in Japan, rather than that having to be done here. We know that Japan has a data agreement with the US, which allows the free flow of data between Japan and the US, so people will naturally ask, “Does that mean that UK citizens’ data could end up, via Japan, being processed in the US, outside UK data protection laws?” I know that is not what the Government or the Minister want, and I am sure there are safeguards to ensure that cannot happen, but nevertheless those are natural concerns that people raise. If a company was processing UK data in America, having routed that through Japan in breach of the agreement and our laws, it could be very difficult for the Information Commissioner’s Office to take enforcement action. It is perfectly right that people ask those questions, and I certainly think the ICO could have a role in allaying such fears and concerns.
This is important in the context of other trade agreements because we know that the big technology companies, particularly through their trade bodies, are actively lobbying for trade agreements to be used to lock in more liberalisation of data policy and of how data is handled and processed around the world. In America, they have lobbied successfully for the US-Japan trade agreement and the US-Canada-Mexico trade agreements to abide by the section 230 provisions in US law, which give immunity for tech companies in how they process and handle content. That is contrary to the rules and regulations we have here.
I have discussed this with the Minister many times, and it is not something I would want to see in a UK-US trade agreement. If the House said, “We would rather have data protection laws that are more like America’s than the EU’s,” that is a matter for the House to decide and for legislation to be passed to do that. It is not the route I would want to go down, but it should not be the role of trade agreements to try to lock in the changes.
The Minister will know that there has been considerable criticism in the US Congress of the Trump Administration using trade agreements in that way to try to set domestic policy in this area. That should rightly be the role of Parliaments, not trade agreements. I have expressed to the Minister my concern that if the current US proposals for a US-UK trade agreement were accepted, we would also have to take this measure on board, which would massively restrict our ability to legislate on things such as online harms. It would potentially undermine such things as the age-appropriate design code to protect children online. I know that is not what the Minister wants. The Government have resisted those efforts, and I hope that President-elect Biden’s Administration will review the terms offered by the American Government in that trade agreement and change them.
I raise this today because the Government’s intention is clear to ensure that we keep high levels of data protection. Any changes to our data protection laws should be something that Parliament votes and legislates on, but there are forces at work who want to use trade agreements to try to change the global norms, and we do not really have a global system for monitoring and policing the movement and use of citizens’ data. Data is the new oil of the economy, so it is important that people know what their rights are and how they can be enforced around the world and that trade agreements do not affect that.
Stephen Flynn (Aberdeen South) (SNP)
It would be remiss of me not to start my remarks by touching on some of the connections of my city with Japan, because they are long and special. Where else to start other than with Thomas Blake Glover? We have heard numerous examples of fantastic Japanese companies that have borne huge success. Mitsubishi has not been mentioned, but Mitsubishi is indeed one of those, and one of its founding pioneers was Thomas Blake Glover. Thomas Blake Glover House is situated just north of the idyllic Brig o’ Balgownie in Aberdeen in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Richard Thomson), and it is my understanding that Thomas Blake Glover went to school in Old Aberdeen, which is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman). It is important that we reflect on the cultural significance.
Andrew Bowie
It would be remiss of us not to speak up for my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan (David Duguid), who cannot speak, but is itching to do so, because, of course, Thomas Blake Glover did in fact originate from Fraserburgh in Banff and Buchan. I just thought that I would put that on the record.
Stephen Flynn
I thank the hon. Member for his contribution. He is absolutely correct. Thomas Blake Glover did indeed originate from Fraserburgh, but his house is in the Bridge of Don. Hopefully, the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (David Duguid) will have discussions with his colleagues in the Conservative-led council in Aberdeen, and we can perhaps get the house fitted back up from its dilapidated state as it stands at present.
The cultural links between Aberdeen and Japan do not stop there. They also extend to the Scottish Samurai awards, which I am sure my colleagues are also aware of. They were founded by Mr Ronnie Watt, who I believe is a 9th dan in karate. Ronnie managed not only to bring forward the Scottish Samurai awards, which have been a tremendous success story for Scotland, but to bring the World Karate Championships to Aberdeen.
Ultimately, this entire debate is about trade. In that regard, it is important to reflect on what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Alyn Smith). Is it worth it? Again, I will look at matters from a particular Aberdeen perspective, because, of course, Japan has a trade deal with the EU and much of what has been brought forward by the Government—in fact, almost all of what has been brought forward by the Government —is a replication of that trade deal. We are leaving the European Union—indeed, we have left it—and the impact of that on my city will be enormous. Aberdeen is projected to be the hardest hit city in the entire UK as a result of Brexit. Gross value added is expected to reduce in Aberdeen by around 3% on the basis of a hard Brexit. Since 2016, Warwick University has outlined that around £9,000 per head of population has been lost in Aberdeen from investment.
Let me provide some further context. My city is bearing the brunt of an oil and gas sector price crash. It is also bearing the brunt of a 75% drop-off in job vacancies. Universal credit claimants doubled between March and September, and we are obviously still facing the challenges of covid.
When we look at that wider context and we look at the damage that Brexit will do to Aberdeen, we have to weigh that up against another figure—0.07%. That is what this trade deal is estimated to bring to the UK economy. It is an absolute drop in the ocean compared with the damage that this Government will do to my city and to my country. I am utterly appalled by it. Quite frankly, they should be apologising to the people of Aberdeen for disregarding their democratic views and, alongside that, disregarding the views of the people of Scotland.
Of course this trade deal is not just about the trade deal in itself; it is obviously a precursor to the Government’s intended plan to join the CPTPP, which is all good and well, but I caution the Government in that regard because, as I am sure they are aware, Canadian exports to Japan dropped between 2018 and 2019, while, of course, being members of CPTPP. This is not all about the land of milk and honey—far from it. You know what, Madam Deputy Speaker, I do wish the Government well. I wish them well in trying to secure better trade deals. We support trade deals. They are a complete necessity, but, ultimately, at some point very soon, Scotland will choose a different path where we can define our own trading future.
Mr Jonathan Djanogly (Huntingdon) (Con)
Accounting for 2% of UK total exports in 2018, Japan is the UK’s fourth largest export market. By size alone, it is an important one for this country to have secured an FTA with, and our Ministers are to be congratulated on that achievement. However, it is important that consideration is given to what constitutes success or levels of success when looking at this deal, against which later deals will be judged. Do we measure success by jobs secured or jobs to be gained, by tariffs saved or regulations avoided—or is it political, defence or strategic gains, all of which can directly or indirectly come out of a trade deal? In this regard, I have seen reports that complain that the Government have, for the most part, only got the same as the existing EU deal with Japan; the Opposition also said that earlier. That is somewhat harsh, as the Government’s stated objective was to roll over existing EU FTAs. If they have done so, in my book they have met their objective.
Having said that, we still need to understand and set out the parameters for future FTA measurements of success. The speed of negotiations with Japan has been frenetic. We should look again at the timetable and learn whether we can make improvements on the timing of future FTA talks, including for scrutiny purposes. I would be interested to hear whether the Minister thinks that more could have been achieved at this stage with more time.
I declare any interest that I may have as a non-practising solicitor, but it is clear that recognition of professional qualifications with Japan has simply failed to happen in the way in which services’ representative organisations had asked for. Will this now be addressed, or will services continue to be treated as the poor relation of manufacturing as we progress with other FTAs? Given that services account for 51% of our trade with Japan, this is an important issue.
The Government have stated their intention that this Japan FTA should act as a stepping stone to the UK acceding to the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership. With 13.5% of global GDP and 495 million consumers, this clearly is a big deal. Of course, the CPTPP’s predecessor was the trans-Pacific partnership, which was partly a US-inspired effort to marginalise China in the Pacific region. The US then withdrew from the TPP, and seemingly now may be replaced by China. This clearly raises many political, as well as trade, questions. I think that the Government will need to set out their case here at the earliest opportunity. How is this likely to affect our US FTA negotiations? How will we deal with regulatory issues such as the US-based agriculture regulations, which the CPTPP follows? Could this be a rare opportunity to create a new set of rules with China, such as on treatment of state-owned enterprises, and how does this impact on other CPTPP members that have varying levels of issues with China in trade, as well as security concerns?
Let me finish by heading back to the important issue of scrutiny, process and approval. The Minister will know full well my amendment to the Trade Bill requesting parliamentary approval for FTAs between agreement and signature. We can go through any processes we like, but the bottom line is that this Japan deal had to be approved by a vote in the Japanese Parliament, and that is not the case in the UK. A version of my amendment is currently in the other place, and I wish it well.
A further set of Trade Bill amendments is aimed at modernising the antiquated CRaG system, which currently enables, but does not demand, votes on treaty ratification. CRaG does not allow Parliament to stop a treaty as Ministers have previously suggested, but only to delay ratification for 21 days at a time. I note that the Government maintain that the speed of the Japan negotiations did not allow regular updates to Parliament via written ministerial statement. I also note that the EU Committee in the other place has suggested a process for the sharing of FTA documents before laying them formally. Is the Minister going to accept this common-sense proposal? Likewise, there have been some very late stage letters—sent, I think, in October—from the Secretary of State to Lord Goldsmith and the International Trade Committee setting out a proposed scrutiny system process. Clearly, more needs to be done in this area and it would be good to hear the Minister’s comments on that this evening, but I would not wish to detract from the importance of this deal to the UK and the further opportunities that it will open for us looking forward.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly). I will pick up where he left off—on the question of the scrutiny of this agreement and others that are yet to come. He is absolutely right; we are very much in the early stages of feeling our way back into this business. I hope that, for future trade agreements, we will see something rather more substantial and detailed than on this occasion.
To pick up the point made by the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), surely it should be possible for this House to play a more front-loaded role in relation to scrutiny, because waiting until a signed deal is, in essence, presented on a take-it-or-leave-it basis is somewhat unsatisfactory. There must be an opportunity for the various Select Committees of this House to engage, follow and scrutinise future deals as they come forward. But that is all for the future; we are where we are and it is welcome that we even have this debate.
It is significant that we have a deal with Japan, which is a significant trading partner: it is the world’s 11th biggest trading nation and our fourth biggest export market. It will be a matter of significant relief to the salmon farmers in my constituency in Orkney and Shetland, for whom Japan is an important export market, that we have a deal of this sort that means they will be able to trade without tariffs.
It is also welcome that we have a continuation of the very important protected geographic indicators. The continued protection for Scotch whisky is supremely important for Scotland and for the UK as a whole, and I am delighted to see that. Of course, it is a continuation of what we already have; it is also important that we continue to have protection for Orkney beef, Orkney lamb, Shetland lamb, Shetland organic wool and one other that escapes my mind at the moment—I know there are five of them in total. I apologise for the offence that I have caused to that particular sector in my constituency. It is Orkney cheddar, of course—and it is important because I am meeting its representatives tomorrow.
The protections given to those important local products are important, but it has to be said that Japan is not their biggest export market, so their producers will be looking for the successful conclusion of a deal with the EU sometime between now and the end of the year, because that market will matter to us. For example, for decades now Orkney cheddar producers have, at the encouragement of Governments of all colours, moved towards participation in that export market and produced a higher-quality product as a consequence. If they are now forced to compete on a different basis, and one for which tariffs will be payable, that will be a matter of great significance for them.
When we consider trade deals of this sort, it is sometimes important to think about exactly what impact they will have on the individual citizen, their daily lives and their rights, liberties and freedoms. In that regard, I hope that those on the Front Bench paid close attention to the comments of the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) when he was talking about the data protection provisions. Data protection is squirrelled away; it is not in a substantive clause but in a footnote and that causes serious concern for him, me and many others from all parties in this House. The prospect of data being processed and somehow laundered for onward transmission—particularly to the United States of America, because Japan already has that agreement with the USA—should be a significant cause of concern for us all.
I also venture to suggest that if that provision is to be left unamended, it will make it very difficult for us to do a future deal with the European Union. I cannot see the European Union agreeing data transfer with us if the prospect remains of our transferring it to Japan for it then to be onward laundered. The Minister is frowning; I hope he has an answer when he comes to reply.
Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I commend the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) for his speech. He speaks about fish, and he and I are universally aligned on the need to make sure that export markets are always open and available to our fishermen and that fine British fish is on the dinner table around the rest of the world.
I thank the House, or at least those on the Government side, for putting me on the International Trade Committee, on which it is a pleasure to serve. In the Committee’s most recent two or three sittings, I have had the opportunity to look at some level at the new deal that has been signed with Japan and what we can look forward to in future.
I do take the points that were raised about scrutiny, which are important. My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) made the exceptionally important point about the role the Trade and Agriculture Commission is going to have in future trade deals. I represent a constituency with a fine farming background, as well as a vibrant fishing community. We want to be able to make sure that our ag and trade commission is playing the role that it needs to to allow both the Committee and this House to have the full breadth of understanding of what each trade deal is doing before we debate it in the House. I know that Ministers have been competent in assuring us that that will happen.
The hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) seemed quite happy to say that nothing was quantifiable and then to outline a whole load of figures that he felt were quantifiable just for his argument. Actually, the purpose of the International Trade Committee has been, so far, to look at those deals and scrutinise them in depth. If he is a slow reader, I apologise for that, but we are able to get through those documents. In this case, I do believe that the information that we were given was in good time and good order, and we have had the ability not only to scrutinise the information within this trade deal but to speak to the Secretary of State and to other Ministers and experts on the deal.
The value of this trade deal may easily be able to be seen now and in future in how we develop our relationship with the Japanese, but it should also be seen as a mark of confidence in the faith that they have in this country and its future. It should also be seen as the way in which we can have stronger political co-operation. The ambition to join the CPTPP is a fantastic one. As Japan is due to hold the presidency of that organisation in due course, I think we can look forward to a successful entry into that organisation and the UK playing a role in an enormously important part of the world.
Much of what I wanted to say has already been said. This deal rolls over some of the agreements that Japan had with the EU and that we now have with Japan. As the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland said, it protects geographical indicators. It also allows us to look at new export markets across the world. As a vote of confidence in what the UK can achieve both now and outside the European Union, we should look at the Bill for the success that it is, and we should build on the lessons that we have learned from this negotiation to make sure that future trade agreements, say with Canada and elsewhere, are as successful and beneficial to all corners of the United Kingdom.
Virginia Crosbie (Ynys Môn) (Con)
It is always a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall), who is such an eloquent speaker.
As we stand on the precipice of 2020 and search for visions of 2021, many in this country are hopeful of a brighter future. Not only do we hope that 2021 will see a vaccine reignite the country’s economy, but we hope that our departure from the European Union will spark opportunities for businesses and return sovereignty to this great Chamber. One such opportunity is the ability to form new trade deals like the one we are discussing today. Economic opportunity has the potential not to just benefit a single business owner but to change the future of communities and generations.
In my constituency of Ynys Môn, economic opportunity has been lacking for decades. Underinvestment has seen our island’s GVA drop to one of the lowest in the UK, and only with significant effort can we turn this around. So far, the support from this Government has made it possible to save many jobs across Ynys Môn, and I know that the innovative Welsh people will continue to make best use of the opportunities made available to them.
The UK-Japan trade deal is set to build upon the 7.6% growth of UK exports to Japan that we saw last year. Welsh businesses contributed exported goods worth about £300 million to Japan. Particularly important for Anglesey is the reduction of tariffs on agricultural products. The green fields of Ynys Môn are home to some of the finest cattle and sheep in our United Kingdom, and our farmers are some of the most ambitious. Getting to know farmers from NFU Cymru and the Farmers Union of Wales has been a privilege. Seeing the hard work they carry out and the determination they have makes this trade deal even more significant. Peter Williams, a local sheep farmer and chairman of the Anglesey show, said today:
“Japan offers new opportunities for farmers across the island.”
Last year, Welsh agricultural exports to Japan were worth £2 million, and now, with the reduction of tariffs, I am certain that we will see that accelerate. Families across Tokyo will be able to savour the same delicious Welsh lamb at the dinner table that is sold in Raymond’s the butchers next to my office in Holyhead. We also expect flagship products such as Welsh lamb and Halen Môn’s Anglesey sea salt to benefit from geographical indication protection in Japan as early as 2021. That will highlight the extraordinary dedication to quality that sets Welsh farmers apart from the rest of the world. The House should not just take my word for it; a business owner from Anglesey told me today:
“We were delighted to see that the UK has negotiated its first trade deal with Japan. Japan is a brilliant country to work with and the trust between our two countries ensures that the export process is straightforward. We look forward to continuing the development of our relationship with our Japanese importer. Growth in Japanese trade will definitely help safeguard Anglesey jobs.”
This Government and I made a promise to the people of Ynys Môn at the last election. We promised that we would deliver the jobs and investment that they needed to see real change in their community. This trade deal is just one of the many approaches we are taking to fulfil that commitment, and I look forward to seeing how producers across Anglesey make the most of this new opportunity.
Imran Ahmad Khan (Wakefield) (Con)
It is a delight to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie).
May I first congratulate the Secretary of State—she is not in her place—on achieving a truly sterling landmark trade deal with Japan, the first of many outside the European Union? This deal sends a clarion call to the international community that the United Kingdom is once again a proud, sovereign, independent trading nation. This deal demonstrates how effective, pragmatic and nimble the mechanisms of government can be in dealing with constructive, like-minded nations in remarkably short timeframes. The House may compare and contrast.
In an increasingly multipolar and uncertain world, it is crucial that diplomatic links with our allies across the globe are underpinned by strong commercial foundations that produce benefits for all. Pessimists claimed that this deal would not be better than the one we could have achieved as part of the European Union. However, as now proven, that could not be further from the truth.
In the realm of data provision, the excellent team from DIT has secured a more comprehensive footing for UK firms operating in Japan, allowing them to innovate and expand their businesses. In financial services, crucial gains have been made between Japanese and UK regulators, which will make conducting business easier for firms of both our nations. In the exchange of goods, tariffs have been removed to support jobs in the car and rail industries in the UK. Liberalisation of rules of origin regulations makes things far simpler and cheaper for British export producers. I, for one, am looking forward to seeing Scottish beef give Miyazaki’s own a run for its money.
I commend the British negotiating team for being constantly at the disposal of MPs throughout the negotiating period to ensure that input was received and progress monitored. Monthly cross-party sessions were held with Ministers in the Department for International Trade, the UK’s chief trade negotiation adviser, Crawford Falconer, and Graham Zebedee, who headed up the team, to respond comprehensively to questions that I and many parliamentary colleagues raised.
This is the first of many steps in repositioning the UK as a vital international trading power and signals an opportunity for the UK to enter into the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership. Japan is a key ally, with which we have enjoyed a long history of friendship—an ally that has been a beacon of tolerance, pluralism and democracy in the post-war world. I am confident that we have a close friend and ally in the Liberal Democratic party Administration of Yoshihide Suga and am keen for our relationship with Japan to develop further, so that we may tackle key issues, notably climate change, national security and the global economic recovery, following the covid-19 pandemic.
Jo Gideon (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con)
Is it a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Imran Ahmad Khan), who is always most eloquent. I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak in this debate at a historic moment for the UK as an independent trading nation, and I congratulate the Minister and the International Trade Secretary on doing this brilliant deal. It demonstrates that we are ready to start trading independently from the European Union with our allies across the world.
I have a particular interest in our relationship with Japan. Some years ago, I ran a small business importing handmade paper from around the world, and Japan provided products and the source of inspiration. I visited a number of times, once as part of a trade mission.
The deal is historic, not least because it is the first we have struck since constituencies such as mine voted overwhelmingly to leave the European Union. It will create new and exciting opportunities for businesses in Stoke-on-Trent Central. For many UK businesses, Japan has traditionally been a challenging market to penetrate with multiple barriers to entry, but thanks to the agreement, many of those barriers have been eliminated. The cutting of red tape and removal of barriers between the two countries means that the agreement is a huge win for the more than 8,000 small and medium-sized enterprises in the UK that already export goods to Japan, more than 700 of which are based in the west midlands.
With the free trade agreement in place, many more businesses stand to prosper. I want to encourage more local businesses to explore the opportunities that trading with Japan can offer. For example, an advanced ceramics research and testing company in my constituency, Lucideon, has told me that the UK-Japan comprehensive economic partnership agreement will support more than £1 million of commercial growth for it in the next 12 months. The agreement makes it easier for such companies to export and sell the knowledge and skills of their world-leading experts to the highly competitive and highly lucrative Japanese market. It also makes it easier for business people and skilled workers to travel between our two countries and gives British and Japanese workers more flexibility to move between them.
Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend for her outstanding representation of Stoke-on-Trent. In Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke, I have the amazing Burleigh Pottery based in Middleport, which saw exports to Japan grow by 60% last year, worth £250,000. Does she agree that this is a fine deal not just for advanced ceramics, but for our traditional tableware ceramics as well?
Jo Gideon
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that this is a great deal for Stoke-on-Trent and all the Potteries.
I am delighted that the first deal that the UK has struck as an independent trading nation is with our long-standing ally and friend Japan. From having previously done business in Japan, and from my personal connections, I know that the Japanese, just like the British, have a huge love and respect for quality brands, the highest standards and excellence in manufacturing. After all, it is the country that has introduced the concept of kaizen to the world, improving productivity across the globe. For household names in the UK, such as Emma Bridgewater, Portmeirion and Wade, all of which manufacture in Stoke-on-Trent Central, the deal presents a fantastic opportunity to sell more goods and achieve even more brand recognition.
The deal shows us that, now we have left the European Union, there is not a race to the bottom in standards, as some naysayers would claim—quite the opposite. The Government have placed, and will continue to place, our shared common values and commitment to high standards at the heart of the UK’s trading policy.
In conclusion, the deal is a great step forward for an independent and global Britain. It moves us ever closer to joining CPTPP, which will give businesses in my constituency and across the UK tariff-free access to some of the world’s fastest-growing economies. I am extremely enthusiastic about the deal, which is only the tip of the iceberg of what the Government can achieve for our country as we leave the constraints of the European Union and become a truly independent trading nation.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
We are almost at the end of the debate, but if he will take only three minutes before I call the Opposition spokesman, I will call Mr Brereton.
Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Jo Gideon).
Like the UK, Japan is an island nation—a maritime trading nation. We have shared values: it is a strong voice for free trade and the rules-based international order, as many hon. Members have already said. It was hugely welcome that Japan was one of the first nations to announce that it would seek a mutually improved trading future with a post-Brexit UK. As our partnership deepens, I want more of that investment to come to Stoke-on-Trent, and for Japanese tourists and buyers to come to enjoy the authentic world capital of ceramics.
Like the Japanese, we are keen on tea and fine ceramics—or should I say porcelain?—so at the top, or high-value, end of the market for exceptional ceramics, it is no surprise to find a fusion of Japanese and Stoke-on-Trent expertise and artistry. The British-Japanese ceramicist Reiko Kaneko, whom I was delighted to visit in my constituency, has her studio locally. There is also Hitomi Hosono—sorry for my pronunciation—who trained in Japan, Copenhagen and London, but it was at Wedgwood in my constituency that she really made her mark. She is now its artist in residence, and one of the few who has actually exhibited while still alive at the British Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum. This is what Stoke-on-Trent can offer to global Britain: local expertise and local passion at the very top of the world class.
However, it is not just about those artists; we are also keen to ensure that earthenware, ceramics, tiles and tableware are increasing their exports to Japan. The UK lags behind EU competitors such as France and Portugal, and we can do a lot better than that. We want to make sure that we are increasing our exports into the Japanese market, and this trade agreement will allow us to do that. It is also about ensuring that we secure not just market access, but greater market presence, and a specialist DIT adviser for ceramics based in Stoke-on-Trent could be just the way of achieving that. Ceramics manufacturers have certainly welcomed the partnership with Japan, which is their fourth largest export market. I hope we can agree that Stoke-on-Trent ceramics are an iconic good that we must continue to push locally.
I would like to thank the Secretary of State and the Ministers for all they have been doing to push ceramics. They never fail to mention ceramics in the many trade agreements we are seeking to secure. It fits very much as well with the recent work of VisitBritain, which shows that this is a place that the Japanese see as the world’s best destination for revisiting places of nostalgic importance. That is very much about the ceramics industry and the ceramics that we want to see very much pushed with further trade agreements.
Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
While I welcome this deal and the recent announcement of the Canada deal being rolled over, I am not sure it merits the “truly historic” or “groundbreaking” description that the Secretary of State would have us use to describe it.
The problem is that, out of the hearing of the Secretary of State and her cheerleaders today, there are very few experts who think this deal is quite as good as she does. The more generous suggest privately that it is a deal just a little bit worse than the EU agreement, while even the more considered suggest that we look at the impact assessment. On the upside, from that impact assessment it is clear that trade is set to rise significantly between our two nations, and as a key strategic ally, that is welcome. However, this is a deal that, according to the Government’s own calculations in the impact assessment, will see 83% of the almost £16 billion increase in trade over the next 15 years between the UK and Japan going to Japanese exporters, while the share coming to UK exporters is just 15%. Clearly, the last thing we should do is adopt a mercantilist attitude, but a deal five times better for the other side’s exporters than for our own does, I think, merit a little pause for thought. Even Donald Trump might not have rushed to describe this as a “truly historic” triumph.
In May, the Secretary of State published alongside the Department for International Trade’s scoping objectives for a UK-Japan deal, an impact assessment showing the limited benefits of the deal she was hoping to achieve. As the impact assessment on the final deal reveals, she was not even able to reach the sunlit uplands of those limited heights. Not only will our negotiating partners apparently benefit by five times as much as our firms and employees, but the deal will apparently increase our GDP by just 0.07%, and that is in comparison with there not being a deal.
Strikingly, Ministers claim that the deal they have negotiated is better than the EU-Japan deal, but they provide zero evidence to back up that claim. Despite repeated requests, as again today, from the shadow Secretary of State in written parliamentary questions, letters and parliamentary debates, Ministers have refused to estimate what impact the deal has achieved above and beyond the EU-Japan deal. It has been 75 days since the shadow Secretary of State asked the Secretary of State why she could claim that her deal goes far beyond the existing EU deal. She again, in her opening remarks today, did not give us any figures to back up that assertion. One can only assume that the difference between the two deals is marginal at best.
My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi) rightly drew attention to one of the other comments in the impact assessment. The Government’s estimates show that as a result of increased imports from Japan arising from the deal, there will be economic costs for the UK—indeed, a long-run fall in employment in chemical, machine and automotive production as a result of cheaper Japanese imports. There was again no word from the Secretary of State on how she plans to help the industries and communities in our country affected by those job losses.
Japan is a valuable export market for our agricultural goods. The tariff reductions agreed in the UK-Japan trade deal are almost identical to those set out in the EU-Japan deal. Important analysis by the independent UK Trade Policy Observatory found that there are just 11 out of 9,444 products where the tariffs on UK exports are set to be lower under the UK-Japan deal. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), the shadow Secretary of State, pointed out, the extra concessions to the UK are striking by the lack of logic behind why Ministers sought them, as, for example, we have had no exports to Japan of any of these products, which include dried eggs and ostrich leather.
The Secretary of State has also claimed that another 70 of our food and drink products will be recognised by Japan under the geographical indication scheme, increasing their value and protecting their brand. I say this gently, but it does appear that the Secretary of State is exaggerating just a little. There are only seven, not 70, GIs recognised in the UK-Japan deal—exactly the same as in the EU-Japan deal. All that has been agreed is that the UK can apply to Japan to have more of our products recognised, with at least two Government Ministries in Japan having to be involved and deciding whether or not to grant them. There is absolutely no guarantee of success.
One of the key questions about the deal was whether the UK would be able to roll over all the anticipated agriculture benefits of the EU-Japan deal into our UK-Japan deal. In some areas, this appears to have been relatively straightforward. Tariff reductions for exports for lamb and beef, for example, are exactly the same in the UK-Japan deal as apply under the EU deal, but there does appear to be one key difference, which was alluded to in the exchange between the Secretary of State and the shadow Secretary of State. The European Union has 25 separate tariff-free quotas with Japan for agricultural goods. The UK has managed to secure partial access to just 10. Of those 10, it would appear that the UK gets only what is left after the rest of the European Union have had their fill. I will read with interest the legal letter that the Secretary of State is going to release after this debate, but one has to ask why such a letter was required and why this was not clarified in the text itself.
A series of Members have highlighted the need for better scrutiny arrangements for trade deals going forward, from my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State to my hon. Friends the Members for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) and for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle), the hon. Member for Stirling (Alyn Smith)—the SNP spokesperson—the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), and, most welcome of all, the hon. Members for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier), for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) and for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins).
Of course, I should emphasise again the shadow Secretary of State’s great thanks to the Secretary of State for being so kind in allowing the House the opportunity to have this debate at all. Under the so-called CRaG process for considering trade deals, there is absolutely no legal requirement for this type of debate to take place. It is entirely in the Government’s gift. If the Trade Bill was amended in the other place to demand the same level of scrutiny as we are applying to the Japan deal today, how could any Member of Parliament reject such a reasonable proposition, given that at the moment we rely entirely on the generosity of the Government as to whether or not to grant a debate?
Despite the rather complacent air of the Secretary of State’s speech, I hope that the Government will not be resting on their laurels. Even after the loss of Algeria, Bosnia and Serbia, there are still 11 continuity agreements waiting to be agreed, covering some £55 billion of our trade last year. There are serious questions, too, about the UK’s future membership of the CPTPP. It is not a done deal; it will warrant serious debate in this House.
There are serious questions that the Minister of State could answer now. When will there be an impact assessment setting out what Ministers expect to be the benefits? Will we simply have to accept the provisions already in the CPTPP? Will we be a rule taker, or will we be able to be a rule maker? What will be the benefits of CPTPP for UK exports, jobs and economic growth, and what might be the downsides? What we know is that the Secretary of State has negotiated a deal with Japan that appears to put British farmers and agricultural exporters at the back of the European queue for tariff-free quota access and that, by her own Department’s analysis, benefits Japanese exporters five times as much as it does British exporters.
The Minister for Trade Policy (Greg Hands)
This has been an excellent debate, with speeches from 13 Government Back Benchers and six Opposition Members. It is an historic moment, as the Secretary of State outlined. The UK-Japan comprehensive economic partnership agreement is an historic milestone in embracing the opportunities of the UK’s future as an independent trading nation. It shows that economic powerhouses such as Japan—the world’s third largest economy—want ambitious deals with the UK and that it is possible to strike deals that go further and faster than the EU. It not only secures the benefits of the existing EU agreements, which many—and particularly the Opposition—said was impossible, but goes further in a number of key areas such as digital and data, financial services, the protection of geographical indicators and rules of origin. It was negotiated in record time, almost entirely virtually.
Greg Hands
I give way to hon. Friend, who was not able to get into the debate.
Richard Graham
I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend. Does he agree that this important free trade agreement is the first of several key UK-Asia goals over the next year, including accession to the trans-Pacific partnership, dialogue partner status with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, several bilateral market access initiatives and partnership of the climate change summit in Glasgow? Altogether, this will bring alive the determined strategy of global Britain.
Greg Hands
My hon. Friend is quite right. He is our trade envoy to the ASEAN region and to a couple of countries there. I was addressing our DIT internal teams in the Asia-Pacific region just this week on the incredible opportunities that this country has there.
The deal was negotiated almost entirely virtually. It deepens the economic partnership between two like-minded island democracies. It reflects our shared values and our shared belief in the fundamental principles of free and fair trade and the importance of playing by the rules. That point was made on both sides of the House, including by the right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar) and my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt). This British-shaped deal strengthens ties between the world’s third largest and fifth largest economies and will help to drive economic growth in the long run. The Government are committed to levelling up the UK, delivering opportunity and unleashing the potential of every part of our United Kingdom.
We heard in this debate from two former Trade Ministers: my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox), with his excellent and deep understanding of world trade, and my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier) on the importance of the International Trade Committee in scrutinising this agreement. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers), who again showed that we have proved the naysayers wrong, and from my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Craig Williams) about thriving Wales-Japan trade, particularly in the area of lamb.
My right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey, a former Foreign Secretary, described this as a personal triumph for the Trade Secretary; I entirely agree. I can attest at first hand to how much personal effort she has put into getting the team to move forward, including in the early hours of the day. That has been incredibly helpful. My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), who chairs the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, welcomed the fact that the Trade and Agriculture Commission was to be put on a statutory basis. He also pointed out that Japan is the world’s largest importer of agrifood.
Greg Hands
I am afraid I have too many hon. Members to respond to.
My hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) has a keen interest, of course, in all matters relating to data. I can tell him that I shall be meeting the Information Commissioner’s Office in the next few weeks. I say to the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) that he was correct when he made the point that the UK-Japan deal would not change the current position in relation to onward transfer of UK personal data from Japan.
My hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly) made some very important points. He made an important point on services—that it is very important that there is mutual recognition of professional qualifications in deals as we go forward. In recent weeks I have met the architects, the Law Society, the Bar Council and so on.
My hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) said that Japan’s role as chair of the CPTPP this year was really important for our agenda in 2021. My hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie) said that the deal opened up new opportunities for farmers in her constituency. My hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Imran Ahmad Khan) praised the DIT’s outreach to MPs. That has been a priority of the Secretary of State, me and the entire team.
Then we had the entire Conservative team from Stoke, lined up geographically in order, South, Central and North—the sort of line-up that Alan Hudson would have been proud of in the 1970s, in his Stoke City pomp—making the point again and again how important trade is going to be for the future of that great city. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Jo Gideon) of her business and personal connections with Japan, and her commitment to quality. It has been a great effort. I know how supportive the whole Stoke team has been of the DIT’s efforts.
The hon. Member for Stirling (Alyn Smith) said that the SNP is “pro-trade.” He may not know, but the SNP of course abstained on the original EU-Canada deal. But he is almost unique. There are only two Members in this House who have actually voted against the original EU-Canada deal, and he is one of them, from his time as an MEP. So with all of his praise for that original deal, he is one of only two Members in this Parliament who has actually voted against it. He has fallen into the trap that the SNP fell into last week of praising EU agreements that they actually voted against in the first place.
The hon. Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) spoke about the importance of COP 26 and climate, and slightly ridiculed the idea of our joining the CPTPP. He claimed that Britain owned the Pitcairn Islands. Well, it is not the Pitcairn Islands but the 11 members of the CPTPP that have welcomed the UK’s interest in applying to join—countries such as Japan, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and so on.
The right hon. Member for Warley raised an important point about the unity of liberal democracy, which I have mentioned.
I assure the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi) that no harm will be done to the NHS or NHS data by this agreement, but it does help tech firms and data firms setting up operations in Japan that they do not have to follow local data localisation rules. That is incredibly important for our tech sector.
The hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) spoke about parliamentary scrutiny. He said that Which? had not been involved. I was the guest speaker at Which?’s national trade conversation just last week. He does serve on the Select Committee, but he is not always fully up-to-date with his information.
I have already answered the point that the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland raised about data transfer.
The hon. Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas) summed up for the official Opposition. He is like the SNP: he never actually supported any of these trade deals in the first place. He did not support EU-Japan. He voted against EU-Canada. He voted against EU- Singapore. So for him to come along today and say that the new UK rolled-over version is somehow inferior to the trade deal that he might have supported in the past—well, a quick check of Hansard revealed that he never supported any of those deals; in fact he actively opposed most of them.
It has often been said that an independent UK would not be able to strike major trade deals, or that at the very least such deals would be bad and take years to conclude. But even in the midst of this terrible pandemic we have proven the naysayers wrong, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes also nobly said. We have secured provisions as good as the EU’s on all our objectives and gone beyond them in some key areas, securing vital priorities for the UK.
This deal benefits all parts of our country while protecting our red lines on areas such as the NHS and food standards. It is a sign and a signal that we are back as an independent trading nation, as a major force of global trade, and as a country that stands up for free enterprise and liberal values across the world. Using our newfound independence as an optimistic, outward-looking trading nation, once again we are embracing the golden opportunities ahead for global trade, visibly shown in this UK-Japan comprehensive economic partnership agreement.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the UK-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement.
Business without Debate
Delegated Legislation
Support for post offices
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
I rise to present a petition from the residents of Kilmarnock and Loudoun regarding the sub-postmasters who keep our post offices open. We all know that post offices are often the lifeblood of communities, even more so with the closure of banks in so many communities across the UK.
The petition states:
The petition of residents of Kilmarnock and Loudoun,
Declares that sub postmasters and their staff carry out valuable work daily to support their local communities; further declares that they provide financial services that ensure the physical and psychological wellbeing of vulnerable people; and further declares that all sub postmasters should be commended for their efforts and their role should be preserved by a UK Government commitment to the Post Office network.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to ensure the extension of the Post Office subsidy beyond 2021; and make a formal statement on the integral role that sub postmasters play in supporting their communities.
And the petitioners remain, etc
[P002630]
Mental Health Support: Policing
(4 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
Policing and supporting our police officers are both enormously important to me. I have worked with police officers throughout my political career, especially during my 12 years in local government, and every single police officer who serves has my absolute and total respect and thanks for all that they do to keep us safe, often putting themselves in dangerous situations to do so.
I also speak as someone who grew up with policing. My father served for 31 years. As I reflected on the subject of tonight’s debate, it struck me how policing changed so much throughout his career and continues to do so to this day. When he joined the Birmingham City police in 1970, he was issued with the usual tunic and a truncheon and sent out on patrol. By the time he retired from the Metropolitan police in 2001, stab vests had already become the norm and ASPs had replaced truncheons. As I joined officers in Aylesbury Vale a few Fridays ago to see first hand their day-to-day operations, it struck me how it had become necessary for so many to carry a taser.
The inspiration for this Adjournment debate came from my constituent Sam Smith—for the record, he is not a relative—who came to my surgery with a number of very well researched points about mental health support in policing, which I shall put to the House and my hon. Friend the Minister in the hope that they will be addressed.
To set the scene, my constituent is an ex-police officer who served for three years on the frontline. Unfortunately he had to leave service a year ago because of struggles with his mental health caused by the trauma experienced in policing. He reports that throughout his short policing career very little support was offered for his mental health and he points to a strong stigma around mental wellbeing in general. It came as a surprise to him when he found out from a survey of nearly 17,000 serving officers and operational staff last autumn—conducted by the University of Cambridge and funded by the charity Police Care UK, and entitled “The Job & The Life”—that 90% of police workers had been exposed to trauma, and almost one in five suffers with a form of post-traumatic stress disorder or complex post-traumatic stress disorder. Those who work in law enforcement are almost five times more likely to develop PTSD than the general UK population.
To give a flavour of what our police officers face on a daily basis, the British Transport police were in touch with me this week. The nature of BTP’s work means that their officers regularly deal with the most traumatic of incidents. For example, tragically about 300 people take their own lives on the railway each year and British Transport police officers attend and manage all of those incidents. Some 40% of BTP staff are impacted by one of these incidents every year and over 1,000 staff are impacted by two or more.
Going back to the survey, among the 80% without clinical levels of post-traumatic stress disorder, half reported overall fatigue, anxiety and trouble sleeping. It is concerning that this information is not regularly provided to officers during their initial training, so that they can be aware of the dangers of the job for their mental health. If someone tried to join the police while suffering from PTSD it is unlikely they would be considered medically fit, so it is worrying that we are allowing so many officers to struggle with their mental health and go through trauma while being responsible for the safety of members of the public. Another sad statistic from the Office for National Statistics data is that approximately one officer every two weeks is taking their own life. The true number and risk is hard to quantify, as not all police forces in the UK are separately recording this data.
After experiencing the inadequate support currently available for officer mental health, my constituent decided to start a campaign for change. Through his experiences he felt that there was a lack of prevention and support for resilience to help avoid mental health issues and he believes that his force at the time concentrated on aftercare, which he informs me is poorly advertised and rarely used. Officers’ experiences are unique to the force they are serving in, so the level of care that officers receive comes down to individual forces. That position is backed up by Gill Scott-Moore, the chief executive of Police Care UK, who said:
“There is no comprehensive strategy to tackle the issue of mental health in policing, and that has to change.”
Indeed, there is no Government mandate or minimum standard for forces’ management of trauma exposure or mental health, and no requirement for anything to improve. This has led to a mix of positive and negative experiences for officers struggling with mental health.
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
I apologise for missing the start of this very important debate. As a former police officer myself, I am aware of this issue and the additional burden that police officers face in supporting people who also have their own mental health challenges. One constituent contacted me to say that they had tried to take their own life but had been stopped by police officers. The officers said that they wished they could do more, but that they were not trained in mental health. Indeed, today Deputy Chief Constable Will Kerr, at a Scottish Police Authority board meeting, said that the
“level of demand has outstripped capacity”
and Police Scotland’s
“professional ability to deal with”
those with mental health issues. The hon. Gentleman is talking so compassionately about the experience of police officers. Does he agree that we need to make sure that police officers have mental health support to give to other people?
Greg Smith
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I agree with her, particularly on her point about training. I will come on to that later on in my speech.
My constituent found in his research that, although it is a near costless process, not all forces are recording tragic police suicides separately, so they cannot feed in to the work we must do to prevent those suicides taking place. The research by the charity Police Care UK and the University of Cambridge into police trauma and mental health made headline news in May last year. The research highlights areas in which police officers are not given adequate opportunity to look after their own mental health or that of others. For example, 93% of officers who reported a psychological issue as a result of work said that they would still go to work as usual, and 73% of those with possible or probable PTSD have not been diagnosed and may not even know that they have it. This represents a huge human cost to police officers’ wellbeing, and the implications for performance and public safety do not bear thinking about. With figures like these, I put it to my hon. Friend the Minister that change is required.
For a long time now, mental health has come second to physical health. The statistics show that mental illness is as dangerous to a police officer’s health as physical injury, and we therefore need to give mental health the same attention that physical health has received for so many years. The College of Policing is working on creating a national curriculum for police safety training. This is the training that focuses on the physical side of policing. Police safety training was reviewed after the tragic death of PC Harper last year, and it was unanimously agreed by all chief constables that the training should be consistent across forces, as there were major discrepancies in the quality of training across the board. I put it to the House that mental health and trauma resilience should feature as a key component to that officer safety training.
By creating a new, pragmatic, national approach, the Home Office could guarantee that every force would meet the agreed and expected standard to best protect our officers. Initiatives such as the national wellbeing service are very welcome. However, Police Care UK’s research with the University of Cambridge illustrates that there is an over-reliance on generic NHS services. As long as police officers and staff are on NHS waiting lists, the existing national approach can hope to have only limited success. Challenges such as these have already been recognised by the NHS, which has set up its own specialist service to support the mental health of its doctors through practitioner health programmes. There needs to be an equivalent for our police.
My constituent’s campaign therefore proposes that the same is needed for mental health in the police force, and that a 360° approach to mental health needs to be adopted. This would include prevention through education, maintained resiliency and aftercare, so that no matter what stage someone was at in their policing career, they would be better protected from the overwhelmingly high chances of being a victim. In particular, mental health prevention and education on officers’ personal welfare are widely missed, and training currently focuses only on dealing with mental health in the community. The fully encompassing approach should also increase awareness of the existing aftercare support that is currently being underused.
This consistent and fair approach would also help to break the long-standing stigma around mental health in policing. The benefits of this would go far beyond protecting those who serve; it would mean that police officers were able to carry out their duty more safely and be at less risk from finding themselves in situations where they were being investigated, for example, for misconduct. It would reduce long-term sickness and better retain experienced police officers who would otherwise have their careers cut short. While this is not about money, the long-term financial savings would outweigh the short-term spending required to implement the new approach.
The fear is that, without Government intervention and guidance, the 43 individual forces will continue to go off in different directions, and someone’s mental wellbeing should not be put down to the luck of which police force they are located in. We are showing a lack of equality not only in the way we view mental health but across the wider policing family. The police covenant offers the perfect opportunity for my hon. Friend the Minister to listen to these concerns and to instigate simple, specific and vital changes to managing police mental health across the UK, such as monitoring PTSD prevalence and suicide rates. Providing the police with a full support network for both physical and mental health is the very least we can do.
It is clear that no force would send an officer to a stabbing without a stab-proof vest, so why do we as a country continue to send them into repeated trauma without the knowledge of how to safely manage their own mental health? Unlike physical health, mental health is too often invisible, but it is there and we cannot ignore it. Mental illness affects not just the person suffering; it can destroy entire families and cause great heartache for years to come. The question for my hon. Friend is this: will she support and help implement a change nationally to provide equal standards of mental health welfare, training, support and access to therapy for every officer that serves for Queen and country no matter what force they are in?
Crucially, any initiatives introduced need to make provision for addressing the backlog of cases that need support. Police Care UK has seen a fivefold increase in demand for therapy over the past 12 months alone. Will my hon. Friend the Minister back this campaign? Will she make it mandatory that all police forces in the United Kingdom show consistency and record those PTSD prevalence rates and those sad tragic suicides? As Dr Jessica Miller of the University of Cambridge says:
“A stiff upper lip attitude will not work in contemporary policing. Without decent interventions and monitoring for trauma impact and a national conversation involving the Home Office and the Department of Health, the alarming levels of PTSD our study has uncovered will stay the same.”
Every single day, police officers across the country face risks—dangerous risks—defending our communities. I was proud to stand on a manifesto that committed to backing our police by equipping officers with the powers and tools that they need to protect us, including Tasers and body cameras. It is now time that we increased steps to look after their mental health, too.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith) on securing this debate on this important subject, but may I go further than that and thank him for bringing his experiences as the proud son of a police officer into the Chamber and indeed thank his father for his 31 years of public service? Those experiences and that service will help, I am sure, to influence and inform the debates that we will have in the future on the vital topic of police safety and wellbeing, particularly with the police covenant galloping towards us, more of which I will speak about in a moment.
I also thank my hon. Friend’s constituent, Sam Smith, who has had the courage to be frank about his personal circumstances and has used those experiences to inform a body of work that he has been able to take to my hon. Friend, and I sincerely thank my hon. Friend for taking this opportunity to put them before the House.
Our brave police officers do an extraordinary job in the most difficult circumstances, keeping us safe day in, day out. The job of a police officer can be very, very tough. Many of them face more danger in a single day than we may see in months, years or indeed a lifetime. We have only to look at the tragic deaths of Thames Valley officer PC Andrew Harper, and Sergeant Matt Ratana of the Met, as examples of where officers have made the ultimate sacrifice. Their extraordinary bravery will not be forgotten.
Our police continue to serve our country courageously. Their commitment to protecting and supporting their communities has shone through in the role that they have played in the response to the pandemic. Across the policing family, those who go to work to keep the country safe are truly the best of us. It is therefore absolutely right that we ensure that they are supported every step of the way.
Of course the work of the police involves dealing with traumatic incidents and helping some of the most vulnerable people in our society. This is not a job that they can leave at the office. Indeed, I would not call it a job; I would call it a vocation. The pressures of the role can leave their mark on a person’s personal and family life as well. As I say, I very much bear in mind the family experiences of a serving officer as well. I know from my portfolio about the effect of working on, for example, a case involving the sexual exploitation and abuse of children; or the impact on an officer arriving at the scene of a domestic homicide; or even, as we have seen in recent weeks, the impact on an officer arriving at a terrorist incident and having to run towards that danger, not knowing what they may face. Those are extraordinary experiences, which leave terrible marks on police officers who have to deal with them.
It is absolutely right that we ensure that the mental health and wellbeing of our police is a priority, which is why this Government have invested £7.5 million in a new national police wellbeing service. The service is available to every officer in England and Wales; policing is devolved in Scotland and Northern Ireland, so they are responsible for their arrangements. The service was built up following two years of development and piloting, and was launched in April 2019. It provides evidence-based guidance, advice, tools and resources that can be accessed by forces, and individual officers and staff. There is an emphasis on prevention and on identifying mental health issues early so that officers and staff can get help before a problem takes hold.
The service offers a wide range of support and guidance, including an outreach service of bespoke wellbeing vans that are being deployed to police stations, providing physical, psychological and financial health checks for officers and staff. It also includes psychological risk management to clarify potential problems and identify suitable interventions such as counselling, further referral, or, in some cases, signposting to information, advice or training. There is also trauma and post-incident management to help officers and staff who have dealt with traumatic incidents, considering how individual officers and people may respond differently.
Wendy Chamberlain
As a police officer, I remember paying my monthly subs to the national police treatment centre in Auchterarder and the one in Harrogate as well. I would be interested to know the Minister’s thoughts on the work of those centres, and how they complement the covenant that she is describing.
Victoria Atkins
I am about to come to the covenant, but I am just setting out the wellbeing service. It has been created very much with the police to ensure that we address the issues that they face, but we do not for a moment pretend that we have completed the job. We are conscious that this is a journey of progress and we want to do more. In summary, the service is designed to ensure that support is available for police before, during and after a traumatic incident, but we want to go even further to ensure that our police get the support and protection they need. A crucial strand of that is the police covenant, which my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham has mentioned. We are working at pace to introduce the covenant in legislation, and are committed to ensuring that it has a meaningful impact on those working within or retired from policing roles, whether paid or as a volunteer.
The covenant marks an important moment for the country to recognise the policing family’s huge contribution to our society. We expect to establish a robust governance structure in the coming months to drive progress, and policing partners have already been involved in these discussions. The covenant will be enshrined in law, and the Home Secretary will have a duty to report annually on progress. This legislation will be introduced in Parliament later this Session. Our focus will be on health and wellbeing, physical protection and support for families, and we are in no doubt that we must focus on mental health support, building on the work already done by the national police wellbeing service.
To support that, we must all ensure that occupational health standards are embedded consistently within forces, which is a point that my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham has made. The national police wellbeing service has been working hard to drive that, but we have to make sure that forces have the right people, who make the right investments and ensure the highest quality standards in this area, and we intend for that to be a key priority under the remit of the police covenant. All of that work provides a great opportunity for us to make a difference to the lives of those working in policing and their families, and we will continue to work closely with policing partners to ensure that the change makes a real difference to police officers and families.
As I have said, our police make enormous sacrifices to protect us in hugely challenging circumstances, and they deserve our respect and our support, so it is utterly shameful to see that some individuals think it is acceptable to attack them. That can not only cause physical injuries, but serious psychological impacts. We have been completely clear that we will not stand for the police enduring violence and abuse while doing their critical work.
We are pleased to see that the review into officer and staff safety conducted by the National Police Chiefs’ Council has included as one of its recommendations that chief constables should implement the seven-point plan developed by Hampshire constabulary. It sets out what officers and staff should expect from their force if they have been a victim of an assault. It is vital that, should these awful incidents happen, police officers and staff are provided with the right care to help prevent a lasting impact on their health and wellbeing. We are also clear that those convicted of such assaults should face the full force of law, which is why we have announced our intention to legislate to double the maximum penalty for assaults on emergency workers from 12 months to two years. We will continue to work with the Ministry of Justice to ensure that assaults on police officers and firefighters are handled with appropriate severity across the criminal justice system.
In conclusion, our police are among the most selfless and courageous members of our society. They run towards danger to protect the public. They put their lives on the line every day. They perform their duties with skill and professionalism, all in the name of keeping our communities safe. In recognition of all that they do, it is our responsibility to make sure they get every possible support, and I hope I have been able to demonstrate to my hon. Friend and to colleagues across the House how seriously the Government take our responsibility to support our police, and the steps that we intend to take to do even more.
Question put and agreed to.
Members Eligible for a Proxy Vote
Member eligible for proxy vote | Nominated proxy |
|---|---|
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab) | Bell Ribeiro-Addy |
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Imran Ahmad Khan (Wakefield) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Tahir Ali (Birmingham, Hall Green) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con) | Mark Spencer |
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con) | Mark Spencer |
Stuart Anderson (Wolverhampton South West) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Caroline Ansell (Eastbourne) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Edward Argar (Charnwood) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Sarah Atherton (Wrexham) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Kemi Badenoch (Saffron Walden) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Steve Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab) | Kim Johnson |
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Simon Baynes (Clwyd South) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Margaret Beckett (Derby South) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Scott Benton (Blackpool South) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Saqib Bhatti (Meriden) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mhairi Black (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Steven Bonnar (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Tracy Brabin (Batley and Spen) (Lab/Co-op) | Chris Elmore |
Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Suella Braverman (Fareham) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West ) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con) | William Wragg |
Sara Britcliffe (Hyndburn) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
James Brokenshire (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudon) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab) | Bell Ribeiro-Addy |
Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab) | Bell Ribeiro-Addy |
Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Amy Callaghan (East Dunbartonshire) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP) | Gavin Robinson |
Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Douglas Chapman (Dunfermline and West Fife) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Jo Churchill (Bury St Edmunds) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Feryal Clark (Enfield North) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Theo Clarke (Stafford) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Brendan Clarke-Smith (Bassetlaw) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Chris Clarkson (Heywood and Middleton) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD) | Wendy Chamberlain |
Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind) | Bell Ribeiro-Addy |
Alberto Costa (South Leicestershire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Claire Coutinho (East Surrey) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Angela Crawley (Lanark and Hamilton East) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Virginia Crosbie (Ynys Môn) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con) | Rebecca Harris |
Jon Cruddas (Dagenham and Rainham) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
James Daly (Bury North) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Ed Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD) | Wendy Chamberlain |
Gareth Davies (Grantham and Stamford) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op) | Chris Evans |
Mims Davies (Mid Sussex) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) | Rachel Hopkins |
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Miss Sarah Dines (Derbyshire Dales) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Michelle Donelan (Chippenham) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Allan Dorans (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Ms Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
James Duddridge (Rochford and Southend East) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Rosie Duffield (Canterbury) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Mark Eastwood (Dewsbury) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mrs Natalie Elphicke (Dover) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op) | Chris Elmore |
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Sir David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Stephen Farry (North Down) (Alliance) | Wendy Chamberlain |
Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind) | Jonathan Edwards |
Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Stephen Flynn (Aberdeen South) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab) | Bell Ribeiro-Addy |
Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Lucy Frazer (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Marcus Fysh (Yeovil) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Nick Gibb (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Peter Gibson (Darlington) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Jo Gideon (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op) | Chris Elmore |
Dame Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Paul Girvan (South Antrim) (DUP) | Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson |
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Michael Gove (Surrey Heath) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Damian Green (Ashford) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Kate Griffiths (Burton) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con) | Rebecca Harris |
Luke Hall (Thornbury and Yate) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) ( Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Matt Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Greg Hands (Chelsea and Fulham) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP) | Ben Lake |
Neale Hanvey (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
James Heappey (Wells) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Gordon Henderson (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Sir Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op) | Chris Elmore |
Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Mike Hill (Hartlepool) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD) | Wendy Chamberlain |
Dame Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Kate Hollern (Blackburn) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con) | Maria Caulfield |
Sir George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
John Howell (Henley) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Paul Howell (Sedgefield) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Dr Neil Hudson (Penrith and The Border) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Jane Hunt (Loughborough) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Jeremy Hunt (South West Surrey) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab) | Bell Ribeiro-Addy |
Mr Alister Jack (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD) | Wendy Chamberlain |
Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Mr Ranil Jayawardena (North East Hampshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mark Jenkinson (Workington) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Andrea Jenkyns (Morley and Outwood) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Boris Johnson (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Fay Jones (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Gillian Keegan (Chichester) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Robert Largan (High Peak) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mrs Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con) | Mr William Wragg |
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab) | Bell Ribeiro-Addy |
Chris Law (Dundee West) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Ian Levy (Blyth Valley) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Andrew Lewer (Northampton South) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Brandon Lewis (Great Yarmouth) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Ind) | Stuart Andrew |
Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater and West Somerset) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP) | Sir Jeffrey Donaldson |
Chris Loder (West Dorset) (Con) | Robbie Moore |
Mark Logan (Bolton North East) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab) | Bell Ribeiro-Addy |
Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mr Jonathan Lord (Woking) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green) | Bell Ribeiro-Addy |
Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Kenny MacAskill (East Lothian) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Karl MᶜCartney (Lincoln) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab) | Bell Ribeiro-Addy |
Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Conor McGinn (St Helens North) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Cherilyn Mackrory (Truro and Falmouth) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
John Mc Nally (Falkirk) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham, Perry Barr) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Alan Mak (Havant) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Julie Marson (Hertford and Stortford) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Mrs Theresa May (Maidenhead) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab) | Bell Ribeiro-Addy |
Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Johnny Mercer (Plymouth, Moor View) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Amanda Milling (Cannock Chase) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab) | Kim Johnson |
Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) | Patrick Grady |
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD) | Wendy Chamberlain |
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con) | Mark Spencer |
Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Wendy Morton (Aldridge- Brownhills) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con) | Tom Hunt |
Holly Mumby-Croft (Scunthorpe) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
David Mundell (Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
James Murray (Ealing North) (Lab/Co-op) | Chris Elmore |
Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Lia Nici (Great Grimsby) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
John Nicolson (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op) | Chris Elmore |
Neil O’Brien (Harborough) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con) | Rebecca Harris |
Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Abena Oppong-Asare (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Kate Osamor (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op) | Rachel Hopkins |
Kate Osborne (Jarrow) (Lab) | Bell Ribeiro-Addy |
Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP) | Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson |
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mr Owen Paterson (North Shropshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con) | Peter Aldous |
Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op) | Chris Elmore |
Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Will Quince (Colchester) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op) | Chris Elmore |
Christina Rees (Neath) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Nicola Richards (West Bromwich East) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Ms Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Rob Roberts (Delyn) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con) | Rebecca Harris |
Douglas Ross (Moray) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op) | Chris Elmore |
Gary Sambrook (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab) | Stuart Andrew |
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) | Ben Lake |
Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Paul Scully (Sutton and Cheam) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con) | Rebecca Harris |
Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP) | Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson |
Grant Shapps (Welwyn Hatfield) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Alok Sharma (Reading West) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op) | Chris Elmore |
Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Alyn Smith (Stirling) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Royston Smith (Southampton, Itchen) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Amanda Solloway (Derby North) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Jane Stevenson (Wolverhampton North East) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
John Stevenson (Carlisle) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD) | Wendy Chamberlain |
Sir Gary Streeter (South West Devon) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab) | Bell Ribeiro-Addy |
Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op) | Chris Elmore |
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Kelly Tolhurst (Rochester and Strood) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Craig Tracey (North Warwickshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab) | Bell Ribeiro-Addy |
Laura Trott (Sevenoaks) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Mr Shailesh Vara (North West Cambridgeshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Matt Vickers (Stockton South) (Con) | Tom Hunt |
Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mr Ben Wallace (Wyre and Preston North) | Stuart Andrew |
Dr Jamie Wallis (Bridgend) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
David Warburton (Somerton and Frome) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Suzanne Webb (Stourbridge) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Claudia Webbe (Leicester East) (Ind) | Bell Ribeiro-Addy |
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mrs Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
John Whittingdale (Malden) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Craig Williams (Montgomeryshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC) | Ben Lake |
Gavin Williamson (Montgomeryshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD) | Wendy Chamberlain |
Beth Winter (Cynon Valley) (Lab) | Rachel Hopkins |
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP) | Patrick Grady |
Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Jacob Young (Redcar) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Deferred Divisions
Draft Veterinary Medicines and Residues (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020
Draft Aquatic Animal Health and Alien Species in Aquaculture, Animals, and Marketing of Seed, Plant and Propagating Material (Legislative Functions and Miscellaneous Provisions) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020
(4 years ago)
General CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 10 / Noes: 3 - Question accordingly agreed to.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Victoria Prentis)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Veterinary Medicines and Residues (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the draft Aquatic Animal Health and Alien Species in Aquaculture, Animals, and Marketing of Seed, Plant and Propagating Material (Legislative Functions and Miscellaneous Provisions) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020.
Victoria Prentis
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell, particularly—if I may say so—in your new slimline state. I have been gripped by social media—
Victoria Prentis
That is all I needed to say. The draft regulations were laid before the House on 2 November. Turning first to the veterinary medicines and residues regulations, veterinary medicines are tightly regulated in the UK. They are essential for the treatment of animals and ensuring animal welfare, but they can also present a risk to human health and the environment. If misused, they can affect human health directly or may enter the natural environment, causing long-lasting damage.
The existing UK Veterinary Medicines Regulations 2013 set out the requirements on the manufacture, authorisation, supply, possession, and administration of veterinary medicines in the UK. The statutory instrument before us addresses technical deficiencies in our veterinary medicines and residues surveillance legislation to ensure that it continues to operate effectively at the end of the transition period. For example, minor corrections are being made to the text to address references to EU membership, which are no longer accurate or appropriate. The changes are also needed to reflect the requirements of the Northern Ireland protocol, as well as to implement the Government’s commitment to ensuring unfettered market access for Northern Ireland businesses in relation to veterinary medicines.
The legal frameworks will continue to regulate veterinary medicines and to safeguard the wellbeing of our animals. The instrument does not diminish the high standards in the established veterinary medicines and residues surveillance regimes. I emphasise that the amendments in the instrument are to ensure operability and that the high safety standards we have in place will continue.
The second SI is a composite one, covering seven policy areas—aquatic animal health, transmissible spongiform encephalopathies and animal by-products, livestock, zoonotic diseases, pet travel, alien and locally absent species in aquaculture, and seed, plants and propagating material. They have been grouped together purely to speed up the passage of these affirmative SIs before the end of the transition period.
The regulations transfer functions carried out by EU legislative bodies to the appropriate UK authorities. They also amend previously made EU exit statutory instruments to reflect the changes that took place at the end of last year and to implement the Northern Ireland protocol. The SI makes no major policy changes.
The instrument makes operability amendments to several pieces of secondary legislation. In particular, it will continue our robust sanitary and phytosanitary safeguard regimes in several crucial areas, give effect to our obligations under the Northern Ireland protocol and allow our new systems to operate at the end of the transition period. It will allow for the continued movement of pet animals and assistance dogs into Great Britain in a manner that protects our biosecurity as well as the health and welfare of the animals being moved.
We have taken the decision to list the EU to import live animals and animal products because, in biosecurity terms, we do not believe the risk will change on 1 January 2021. The SI will allow for decisions to be made about a country’s certification processes for plant reproductive material and whether they are equivalent to our own.
We have amended our legislation so that by the end of the transition period, the EU will become Part 1 listed for the non-commercial movement of pets into Great Britain. Practically, that means no change for EU travellers. We are maintaining the current health requirements on pet movements from the EU based on the unchanging disease risk at the beginning of next year, and to ensure that there is minimal impact on pet owners and users of assistance dogs who travel with their pets into GB under the EU pet travel scheme.
The instruments will make sure that legislation to ensure our biosecurity will continue to function in Great Britain after the transition period, and that we will continue to have a functioning pet travel scheme and imports system that guarantees our high standards of food and animal safety while ensuring frictionless trading and movements. For the reasons I have set out, I commend the draft regulations to the Committee.
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Mundell, and to be with the Minister again today. There is something rather important about the statutory instruments before us. I am not sure that anyone thinks that considering them is soporific because most Members, in my experience, are quite keen on knowing what they will have for tea later. Somewhere down the line, this could well affect what we find being served up in the Members’ Tea Room, so it is important stuff. [Laughter.] I will come to it—do not worry. I also have a direct interest in the sense that I chair the all-party parliamentary group for life sciences. I have many life science researchers in and around my constituency, so I know quite a lot more about this issue than I did when I came to Parliament a few years ago, and it is important.
Paragraph 2.2 of the explanatory memorandum explains what the instrument does, which is pretty much what the Minister said:
“In England and Scotland, the Residues Regulations prohibit the use of certain substances as growth promoters and provide for a surveillance programme for residues of veterinary medicines…Regulation 470/2009 establishes maximum residues limits for pharmacologically active substances in foodstuffs from animal origin.”
That is, of course, quite salient to many of the debates that we have had in recent times. Paragraph 7.2 states:
“The policy objective is to maintain existing laws.”
We agree with that overall objective; the question is whether it will be achieved. Paragraph 7.3 talks about
“light touch regulatory controls on medicines that are approved in Northern Ireland and not Great Britain and that move from Northern Ireland onto the Great Britain market.”
Could the Minister elaborate a bit on what those light-touch regulatory controls actually mean?
I am grateful to the British Veterinary Association, whose members obviously deal with such matters on a day-to-day basis, for giving us some advice. The BVA said:
“In the medium term there may be concerns about the availability of medicines in Northern Ireland. Today, medicines are often shipped from the EU and warehoused in GB. They are then moved in smaller quantities to NI. Friction in the Irish Sea could make this difficult. For example, there could be a requirement for batch testing once medicines enter Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is a small market. Similarly, if there are additional costs associated with sending medicines to Northern Ireland companies may choose to exit the Northern Ireland market.”
It is therefore very important that we get this right. I am frequently accused by Ministers of being unduly pessimistic about the future, so here is a note of positivity from the BVA, which says that
“an agreed approach had been reached on a phased process for implementing medicines regulation in Northern Ireland up to 31 December 2021, providing the additional time needed”.
That is good news, and it came from the Ireland/Northern Ireland Specialised Committee, which apparently met on 5 November, but it leaves some longer-term questions in the air. The BVA concludes:
“The concern is that there may be a requirement for a standalone authorisation process for Northern Ireland. As a result of the small market, this could see medicines companies choose to forgo the market.”
It is important that we get these things right in the future.
I am also grateful to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee in the House of Lords, which often does excellent work in this area. There is some correspondence between that Committee and Friends of the Earth, which had asked very detailed questions that the Department answered. It showed me the level of complexity in all this. With the best will in the world, I am not sure that any of us has the capacity, knowledge or time, frankly, to dig through the levels of complexity to be absolutely sure that nothing has been either overlooked or, if one were being unduly negative, passed through the back door in some way. The questions from Friends of the Earth certainly bear looking into. I will not trouble the Committee with the fine detail of each part, but I would be grateful if the Minister wrote in response to one or two of their points.
There is a detailed legalistic discussion about whether the analysis of animal product samples is subject to two pieces of legislation, one of which is removed in the first SI. The Department argues that it is replicated elsewhere, but I do not think Friends of the Earth are entirely convinced by that, though I am not in a position to judge.
The second question is more serious. Friends of the Earth argue that within the regulations there are so-called reference points for action. That essentially means points at which the standards are reconsidered. There are some to come in future, prompting a discussion between Friends of Earth and the Department as to whether we would replicate that process. The answer from the Department is only that we are committed to maintaining high standards. Frankly, that is not an answer. I would read that answer to mean that there is no guarantee, which potentially weakens the position we would have been in if we were not taking this course of action. On that basis alone, it gives me cause for concern.
What gives me more concern when I think about what might be in the Tea Room later—or many years hence—are maximum residue levels. That is the vexed question of what is still left in the animal when we come to eat it. There is a complicated series of questions posed about whether to shift to an administrative process rather than a legislative one. I would argue that the Department has not put our minds at rest on that process. That again suggests a potential weakening of our protections.
Some may ask why any of that matters. I will quote my good friend, the learned Lord Whitty, speaking in the House of Lords. Members will appreciate that much of this has been discussed before, when we were going through the process last year. Lord Whitty put the case very well. He said:
“MRLs are ultimately there to protect the human and, in some cases, animal consumer. They are there for a health reason. It is very important that we do not go backwards. The withdrawal period specified in the EU legislation—the period since the animal last received those medicines—is important to preserve but does not exist in the same way in other jurisdictions around the world. If we are entering new trade agreements with, say, America or Brazil, they will be operating on different systems. We must be careful.”
Lord Whitty asked that we check on one particular protection. He said:
“The Americans portray hormone injections as medicine but they are really there for growth.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 20 March 2019; Vol. 796, c. 301GC.]
I suspect the Minister knows where I am going with this discussion, as all roads in these debates tend to lead ultimately to chlorine-washed chicken and hormone-fed beef. My concern is that deep in the intricacies of the legislation there are potential back doors opening to allow lower standards. That is something the Opposition are not prepared to allow.
The other SI deals with a range of issues. As the Minister said, it covers seven policy areas: seed, plant and plant propagating material; aquatic animal health; transmissible spongiform encephalopathies and animal by-products; livestock; zoonotic diseases; pet travel and the use of alien and locally absent species in aquaculture. That is very wide ranging and there is some question about how those issues are grouped. Some of the things we are discussing this afternoon were previously grouped with some of the things we discussed this morning, which adds to the confusion, I am afraid. No one ever said this was going to be easy.
I gently suggest that anything relating to spongiform encephalopathies and salmonella will cause politicians of a certain age to be on alert. Of course, that dispute ran for years and years. It strikes me as astonishing that people talk about how easy everything is to sort out when we spent a decade having an argument with the European Union, with all those “Dad’s Army” posters on the front of The Sun and all the rest of it, over one item of dispute. Goodness knows what lies ahead, but that is for another day, sadly. These are important issues and they need to be resolved properly.
Finally, I come to the subject that probably concerns the most people: the pet travel issues. As the Minister said, these SIs touch on that. As I understand it, something like 300,000 pets come into the UK at the moment. There are some concerns about those numbers and about puppy smuggling. Anything the Minister might want to say about that would be welcome. I again welcome the work of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee in the House of Lords, because it has asked some serious questions about that, and again I will refer to the Government’s answers. It is all about which direction we are going in, basically. We can make our decisions, but it is not so easy for us to take pets into the EU. The EU is apparently now considering our application to be a Part 1 listed third country, and the Lords Committee rightly said:
“We note that it is not clear at this stage what the process and requirements will be for moving pets from GB to Ireland via NI after the end of the”
transition period. Anything the Minister can tell us about that would be extremely helpful.
The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee also asked about the practical impact of having separate regimes in areas such as TSEs and zoonotic diseases. DEFRA’s explanation was:
“Changes for goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland will be kept to an absolute minimum”—
oh, joy—
“but there will be a requirement for export health certification. A new Trader Support Service, available to all traders at no cost, will be established to provide wraparound support”.
Frankly, that is the same old magical thinking and we are not convinced by it. On that basis, we are not convinced by either of these pieces of legislation, but we will divide the Committee only on the first.
Victoria Prentis
The hon. Gentleman asked a large number of questions, and I will try to answer them as best I can. He asked about the light-touch transparency arrangements in veterinary medicines. A medicine that is legally on the market in Northern Ireland but not in GB may benefit from unfettered market access, providing that the following conditions are met. The marketing authorisation holder, if it is not already based in Northern Ireland, must have a dedicated place of establishment in Northern Ireland. The holder must provide the same application dossier and supporting information to the Veterinary Medicines Directorate as it would have provided to the European equivalent. The Northern Ireland dedicated place of establishment must provide access to any EU-based pharmacovigilance system that the marketing authorisation holder has in place. If the conditions are met and there are no safety concerns, a certificate will be issued to allow the product on to the GB market. In brief, we are trying to work in a joined-up, sensible and proportionate way as we come to the end of the transition period.
I am also grateful to the scrutiny Committee in the House of Lords. As the hon. Gentleman knows, I love secondary legislation, which is good because we spend a lot of our time doing it at the moment, and I spent many happy years on the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. I feel that the questioners on the scrutiny Committee in the House of Lords did not completely understand the purpose of this statutory instrument, but I am happy to answer those points in any event.
As we said many times during the passage of the Agriculture Act 2020, any future trade agreements must respect the retained regulatory autonomy that we have brought over as a result of the withdrawal agreement. We will continue to protect public, animal and plant life and health, and reflect our existing high standards. The EU law banning the import and production of hormone-treated beef has been transposed into domestic law and will continue to operate in the UK at the end of the transition period. That will apply in all parts of the UK. Any changes would require legislation to be brought to Parliament. After the transition period, the Food Standards Agency and its equivalent in Scotland will continue to oversee food safety to ensure that all food imports comply with the UK’s high safety standards. You will be aware, Mr Mundell, of the changes made recently to the Agriculture Act that add an extra layer of scrutiny to that.
All current EU maximum residue levels will continue to apply in the UK from the end of the transition period. The methodology is set out in Commission regulation 2018/782, which now forms part of our retained EU law, with only very minor amendments for operability. There is nothing—I do love secondary legislation—that concerns me about our new regulatory system. I accept that it is complex, but it is also comprehensive.
The Veterinary Medicines Directorate—this may be of assistance to Committee members—has published extensive guidance on its information hub, which will help businesses prepare for the end of the transition period. This hub has, broadly, been very well received by the veterinary medicines industry. I recognise that this legislation, especially where it amends other legislation, is not always easy to read, or to follow. I suspect that that is one of the reasons why the VMD has engaged so strongly with its stakeholders to ensure that they understand it.
The hon. Gentleman’s question on pets is not exactly within the scope of this instrument, which relates to inbound travel of pets and guidance dogs to the UK, but as he has asked, I will answer. DEFRA has submitted its application for the UK to become a Part 1 listed country under Annex II of the EU pet travel regulations; we are currently in technical negotiations with the EU about this. We will do what we can, and we intend to make sensible, proportionate and biosecure changes in the regulations.
We have had a constructive and useful debate, and I commend the regulations to the Committee.
Question put.
Draft Agricultural Products, Food and Drink (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020
Draft Food (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020
(4 years ago)
General CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Victoria Prentis)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Agricultural Products, Food and Drink (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to consider the draft Food (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020.
Victoria Prentis
It is an enormous pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Davies. The draft Agricultural Products, Food and Drink (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020 contain necessary amendments to EU agrifood, spirit drinks, wine and aromatised wine regulations to enable them to function in domestic law. The changes primarily concern geographical indication or GI schemes, but they extend to wine and spirit drink sector standards.
I first want to address the impact of the Northern Ireland protocol. For the duration of the protocol, the EU GI framework will apply in Northern Ireland. As such, most of this instrument has the territorial extent of Great Britain. However, these schemes will be administered and regulated by the UK Government, so they will generally be referred to as UK GI schemes.
GIs are a form of intellectual property protection for the names of food, drink and agricultural products with qualities attributable to the place they are produced or the traditional methods by which they are made, such as Scotch whisky, Welsh lamb and Melton Mowbray pork pies—[Hon. Members: “Hooray!”] It is a little early for a Melton Mowbray pork pie. Most of the amendments made by this instrument are to the retained EU regulations that govern GI schemes. They collectively convert the four EU GI schemes into a legal framework for the new schemes in Great Britain.
The framework will allow applications for GI protection to be made to the Secretary of State by both UK and international applicants. It will allow applications to be scrutinised and consulted on, and for the Secretary of State to take decisions on awarding new GIs. In doing so, we condense what was a two-stage application process to the Commission into a single, streamlined domestic process, which ought to be easier and quicker.
Once awarded GI status, a product name is then added to the relevant public GI register established by this instrument, meaning that the GI protection will formally take effect in Great Britain. From 1 January, all existing UK GIs and the EU GIs, which are protected through the withdrawal agreement, will be on our registers. These will be joined by international GI products protected through trade agreements.
This instrument removes the requirement for EU GI logos to be used by British producers and establishes the new domestic logos. I know, Chair, that we are not allowed to wave things around, but—
Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend give way on that point?
Andrew Griffith
I speak not only as the representative of Arundel and South Downs, but as the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group for wine of Great Britain. GIs are incredibly important both to allow consumers to make smart choices about country of origin and food or wine supply chains and to support a burgeoning and rapidly growing British industry that stretches across most parts of the kingdom. It already employs 11,000 people, with the aspiration, once we find our new way in the world, of employing many more people in a successful, green, sustainable British industry.
Victoria Prentis
I thank my hon. Friend. I understand his passion for GIs, as some truly delicious wine is produced in his constituency. The APPGs for wine of Great Britain and on geographically protected foods are doing really good work at the moment. I very much look forward to promoting our new GI schemes in the early part of next year.
To avoid burdening producers, we are introducing a three-year period before logo use becomes mandatory on GI products. The first instrument also includes a small number of non-GI amendments to EU wine and spirits sector rules. Those include the definition, composition and labelling of spirit drinks, and the use of wine labelling terms, experimental winemaking practices, accompanying documents and the registers maintained by wine operators.
Finally, the first instrument amends the domestic legislation that enables enforcement of the regulations. It makes separate amendments for GB and NI, to take account of the different regulations that will apply in each territory from 2021.
These rules collectively ensure that we have not only a fully functional GI framework, but one that enables and encourages our international reputation for quality food and drink to grow.
I turn now to the second SI, which concerns natural mineral waters and food information for consumers. The main purpose of this instrument, like so many SIs that we are dealing with at the moment, is to place food information for consumers and natural mineral waters rules on a legal footing that accounts for the Northern Ireland protocol, which obviously the legislation prepared for no deal at the end of last year could not do, as the Northern Ireland protocol at that point did not exist. This instrument also makes some minor technical amendments to retained direct EU law and domestic regulations, to ensure the operability of the legislation at the end of the transition period. It does not bring about a substantial change in policy. The retained EU regulations assure a high level of consumer protection in relation to food information so that consumers are not misled about their food, can make informed food choices and use food safely.
Both instruments have received the devolved Administrations’ consent and, for the reasons that I have set out, I commend them to the Committee.
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to be back in a Committee under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I thank the Minister for her introduction. She explained very well the importance of geographical indicators, as did the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs in a powerful intervention. I think we are all broadly supportive of getting these things right. Geographically protected goods represent about one quarter of the UK’s food and drink exports each year, we are told by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and are worth almost £6 billion.
This is a complicated set of issues. I am not sure that I fully comprehend all the complexities in the documents that we have been given, but ensuring TRIPs—trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights—compliance and that we are conforming to World Trade Organisation rules is important, so we are broadly supportive of what the Government are doing. However, we do have a few questions, as you might expect, Mr Davies.
Some of the questions are really about the broader issue of what happens in the next few weeks if we do not secure a deal with the European Union. We have heard assurances from the Government that our geographical indicators will continue to be recognised in the EU market after the end of the transition period, but clearly there is considerable concern across the sectors that, in the absence of any deal, there is no guarantee that that will continue to be the case. If the talks do not lead to fruition and the UK does not offer mutual recognition for EU GIs in this country, what will that mean for those producers and what message are the Government giving to our exporters, who depend so much on these recognitions?
The Minister touched on the new arrangements for administering the schemes in the UK, which she described as being likely to be streamlined, more efficient and quicker. I am sure that we all hope that that will be the case, but what assurances can the Minister give that the internal digital infrastructure necessary to administer all this will be in place by 1 January? Perhaps she can update us on what progress has been made so far. As ever, I do not necessarily expect her to have all the answers at her fingertips—she is very good at writing afterwards.
The Minister claims that the new arrangements for administering the schemes will be more efficient, quicker and streamlined. Perhaps she could say a little more about the evidence to back that up, because we are not convinced that that is always what happens. We have not seen an impact assessment for this SI, but it seems to us that engaging with the changing systems will have some costs for specialist food companies and those with protected designations. What is the Government’s assessment of those extra costs, and what costs will be involved in applying for a new geographical indicator status and appealing to the first-tier tribunal?
We also imagine that there will be extra costs in setting up systems of promotion abroad for our specialist protected products. Again, any indications as to where the Government have got to on that would be helpful.
On the second SI, which is largely about natural mineral waters, it was clear from the consultation, which we welcomed, that the majority of respondents favoured the Government’s course of action, but some took a different view. Can the Minister explain why we settled on six months? Some looked for a much longer time through a transition period. That is a similar point to the one I made earlier about a no-deal scenario: it could leave our producers of natural mineral water at a distinct disadvantage if they cannot export to the EU. Will the Minister say a little about the provisions in that case?
On the details relating to Northern Ireland, there is a complex and difficult set of issues. Although we welcome the Government’s recognition of the pressure on the food industry in relation to labelling changes—I think they have advised that the necessary labelling changes for food sold in Great Britain will now apply to food sold from 1 October 2022 to give producers more time to get their affairs in order—there is still much to get in place by 1 January next year. After all, it is now only four or five weeks away.
Much still needs to be done in terms of pre-packaged food. If it is sold in Northern Ireland, it must include a Northern Ireland or EU business operator address. Food manufacturers have been told that from 1 January they need to label food from or sold in Northern Ireland as such where EU law requires it. So there is a range of complexities, and I would welcome any indication from the Minister on how close we are to resolving those points.
I have one final point, which I will probably repeat in future SI Committees. In my research for the Environment Bill Committee yesterday, I came across an interesting piece by Professor Andrew Jordan and Dr Brendan Moore, who have analysed many of the SIs that we have been talking about. It was a fascinating piece. We are frequently told that the SIs involve technical transpositions and that nothing is really changing. Their piece pointed out that in much of EU law there are review and revision clauses, and they have helpfully gone through and noted which are the SIs where we too have introduced review and revision clauses, and which are the ones where we have not, and overwhelmingly we have not. I will not bore the Committee with the list, but some of them are ones that we have ourselves discussed. So my question on all the SIs is: were the review and revision clauses included in the legislation that was brought across? If not, why not?
Victoria Prentis
That sounds like an extremely interesting article. I look forward to finding it later. I am sure the hon. Gentleman and I can have a discussion while we wait for our SI debates this afternoon. I will try to answer as many of his questions as I can.
The first SI that we are discussing today is very long. It replaces 15 EU regulations and four different GI schemes. I accept that the legislation is complicated. In the first SI, there is certainly policy change. It very much lays the framework for setting up our new and, in my view, very exciting GI system.
To talk generally about the new policy, last week we had a webinar with about 130 producers, all of whom are raring to get going in the GI space. In future, there will be a one-stage application process. We are designing it with producers in a way that we hope will be as helpful as possible.
On the broader issues that have been raised, we very much hope that we will get a deal with the EU in the next week or two. As I said earlier, we will continue to recognise EU GIs. As I set out, we have a 21-month period of adjustment on labelling, and I will go through some of the labelling changes. The same basic rules will apply for logo use as under the EU schemes. Logo use will be mandatory under the agrifood schemes but optional under drinks schemes relating to wines and spirits—that is the same as it was under the EU schemes. GB producers of existing agrifood GIs will have a three-year period from 1 January until the use of the new logos becomes mandatory. New GB applicants for agrifood GI protection will need to start using the logos straightaway once their protection starts. It will be optional for NI producers that are protected under the UK schemes to use the UK logo, but they will of course continue to use the EU logos. We will endeavour to make the process as streamlined as possible for new NI producers that apply under both schemes.
Daniel Zeichner
The Minister has explained that very clearly. What she has not touched on is costs to producers. Can she say anything about that?
Victoria Prentis
We very much hope that the costs will be less than for the previous application process, which is partly why we are engaging so heavily with producers at the moment to find a system that suits everybody. It is not an easy issue, though. To have a GI is a big deal for a producer, and it should be. The application process will of course be relatively onerous, but we will try to ensure that it is as low cost for producers as possible.
Victoria Prentis
No, the existing GIs will just be brought over into our system, so there are no new costs for producers there. If producers wish to sell in the GB market as well as in the EU market, as I said earlier, we are working hard to ensure that the two processes are streamlined, to minimise the cost to producers as much as we can. This is in a world where I hope GIs will be a much bigger deal for the UK. I am looking forward to boosting them and to working with producers as we seek to export much more food, and much more really high-quality food, than we do at the moment.
I think I have dealt with most of the hon. Gentleman’s points. Public consultations were held on natural mineral waters, food labelling policy and impact assessments in 2018, when we thought we might have a no-deal Brexit. Meetings were held with industry, and we had a great deal of feedback from stakeholders. As I said, the amendments made by the SI are mainly technical changes in order to make the regulations operable, so we did not feel that any additional consultation was needed. With that in mind, I recommend that we approve the two instruments.
Question put and agreed to.
DRAFT FOOD (AMENDMENT) (EU EXIT) REGULATIONS 2020
Resolved,
That the Committee has considered the draft Food (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020—(Victoria Prentis.)
draft Data Protection Privacy and electronic communications (amendment etc.) (EU exit) regulations 2020
(4 years ago)
General CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Chair
Before we begin, I must remind Members about the social distancing rules, as we are in a very small room. I see that Chi Onwurah has done her best, by limiting the numbers on the Opposition side to make it easier. [Interruption.] I also remind Members that if they have any speaking notes, our Hansard colleagues would like them at hochansardnotes@parliament.uk.
The Minister for Media and Data (Mr John Whittingdale)
I beg to move,
That the Cttee has considered the draft Data Protection Privacy and Electronic Communications (Amendments etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr McCabe. The statutory instrument was laid before both Houses on 14 October and is made under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. The main intention is to ensure that the UK’s data protection framework will function correctly at the end of the transition period, and that there will be no data cliff edges. I want to bring to the Committee’s attention the fact that neither the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments nor the House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has drawn either House’s attention to the SI.
Where the transition period comes to an end, the European Union’s regulation on data protection, known as GDPR, will be retained in domestic law through the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. Last year the Data Protection, Privacy and Electronic Communications (Amendments etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 were made. They made minor changes to the retained GDPR under the Data Protection Act 2018, to ensure that UK data protection law would continue to operate on exit day.
The statutory instrument before the Committee today makes limited amendments to those regulations. The majority of the changes are updates of exit day references to read “IP completion day”. The SI will also revoke some EU legislation that would have no practical effect if it were to be retained under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 at the end of the transition period.
There are a small number of other changes, which relate to the transitional provisions for international transfers of personal data. At the end of the transitional period UK organisations will be able to transfer personal data outside the UK if it is covered by an adequacy regulation, an appropriate safeguard, or an exception. Currently UK organisations can freely transfer personal data to EU and European economic area member states and to non-EEA countries for which the EU Commission has made adequacy decisions.
The regulations that I have referred to continue that position on a transitional basis. For clarity, the relevant adequacy decisions are listed. The measure before the Committee updates that list to reflect recent developments, adding the EU’s adequacy decision for Japan, and removing the reference to the adequacy decision for the US privacy shield. These amendments are not substantive, and are entirely in keeping with the original intention of the main regulations—namely, to ensure the continued free flow of personal data between the UK and third countries that have already been found to meet the requisite standards for data protection.
Binding corporate rules are an internal code of conduct operating within a multinational group, which has been approved by EU data protection regulators, to enable personal data to be transferred within the global group. The main regulations preserve pre-GDPR binding corporate rules that were previously authorised by the Information Commissioner as a valid transfer mechanism after the transition period. However, a subset of pre-GDPR binding corporate rules currently relied on by organisations with data flows in the UK may have received authorisation only from EU supervisory authorities. The SI before the Committee makes provisions that will allow UK-based group members to use such rules as a valid transfer mechanism if they obtain approval from the Information Commissioner within six months of the end of the transition period.
The main regulations also provided a legal basis for the continued free flow of personal data from the UK to the EU, falling within the scope of the law enforcement directive, otherwise known as the LED. The approach adopted in the main regulations was to transitionally deem EU member states and Gibraltar as adequate.
Since the main regulations were made, the Home Office has established that Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Switzerland have also transposed the law enforcement directive into their domestic law, which enables data sharing between authorities in the UK and law enforcement agencies within these countries. In order that law enforcement co-operation and data sharing can continue as it does now, following the end of the transition period, this instrument adds these EEA states and Switzerland to the list of countries that will be treated as adequate on a transitional basis.
Finally, I turn to the revocation of the Data Protection, Privacy and Electronic Communications (Amendments etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019. In 2019, an additional SI was made to amend the main regulations to reflect the arrangements made for personal data transferred from the UK to privacy shield companies in the US. As the CJEU has invalidated the adequacy decision, the amending regulation no longer has any practical affect and, therefore, this regulation revokes that amending regulation before it comes into force.
As I have set out, these regulations address deficiencies in our data protection regime resulting from the UK’s leaving the EU at the end of the transition period. I commend the regulations to the Committee.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
It is a pleasure, Mr McCabe, to serve under your chairship for this important statutory instrument. I thank the Minister for his opening remarks. I also state for the record that although I was as dismayed as most people by all the emails that invaded our inboxes from organisations explaining their data privacy policies when the general data protection regulation took effect in 2018, I was pleased that data protection was finally beginning to be taken seriously and coming to the attention of the vast majority of people—even in that most irritating way.
Data is the business model of the internet age. It is often referred to as “the new oil”. I do not like that because we have seen what oil extraction has done, both to the environment in countries such as Nigeria and to the planet with carbon emissions. We want to make sure that the impact of data is more constructive in the short and long term. It is certain that there is an impact. As more and more aspects of our lives move online—and the pandemic has accelerated that migration—we all excrete a trail of data and create a data doppelgänger, which can be used to empower and inform us or to control, sell to and disempower us. Data privacy, data rights and data flows are therefore of critical importance to all of us.
Depending on any deal, which may or may not be signed —we still do not know—by the Government when the UK leaves the transition period, our data and data protection will no longer be subject to the European Union’s GDPR law. Instead, we will have transposed EU GDPR into UK GDPR. The direction in which the UK takes GDPR will have a wide-ranging impact. Cross- border data flows are now an absolute requisite of trade, with businesses reliant on their ability to transfer personal data about their customers or workforce to offer goods or services and run even basic internal processes such as cloud-based email or file storage. Those all involve data flows, but that is especially true of digitally intensive sectors—telecommunications and financial services, which account for 16% of UK economic output and a quarter of total exports, according to techUK.
As the Minister set out, the SI amends and revokes areas of legislation to ensure that the European Union’s GDPR law is translated into UK GDPR law in time for the end of the transition period, as agreed under the withdrawal agreement. The EU GDPR will become UK legislation on IP completion day and, as such, will become the UK’s GDPR. It is then immediately corrected by today’s SI.
As the Minister set out, the SI seeks to ensure that the legal framework for data protection within the UK continues to function correctly after the transition period. The changes in the SI update the date on which the DPPEC come into force from the start—exit day—to the end of the transition period, IP completion day, in effect applying EU case law during the past nine months, ensuring that personal data can continue to be transferred to third countries as it could immediately before exit day. And they set out revised transfer provisions for law enforcement data to include the addition of EEA countries.
The current transitional mechanism does not apply for any EU adequacy decisions that are repealed or suspended immediately before IP completion day, as amended by this instrument. On 16 July 2020, in case C-311/18, commonly referred to as Schrems II, the Court of Justice of the European Union declared one such decision, the Privacy Shield agreement with the USA, to be invalid. Therefore, the transitional mechanism will not apply for that decision, and this SI removes Privacy Shield from the list of transitional adequacy provisions that the UK will roll over.
The SI incorporates European Union decisions on the adequacy of third party countries in UK domestic law. Data adequacy is a status granted by the European Commission to countries outside the European economic area that provide a level of personal data protection comparable to that provided by European law. When a country has been awarded the status, information can pass freely between it and the EEA without further safeguards being required.
However, despite the UK’s application of the GDPR and implementation of the law enforcement directive under the Data Protection Act 2018, there is no guarantee that we will be awarded an adequacy decision. The European Court of Justice, which can strike down any adequacy decision approved by the Commission, has already twice ruled that the UK’s handling of personal data is not in line with European Union law, so can the Minister tell me what discussions he has had with the European Union about the likelihood of the UK receiving data adequacy recognition? I am sure that he recognises that many businesses are very concerned to have some reassurance and some certainty in this regard.
Even if the UK does manage to secure an adequacy agreement before the end of the transition period, there is no guarantee that we will keep it. It will be vulnerable to being overturned by the European Court of Justice, so can the Minister promise us that the UK’s handling of personal data will remain in line with our legal obligations that arise from any agreement with the European Union, and can he set out what impact he envisages—I know that he is well versed in these areas—European Court of Justice rulings might then have on UK GDPR law? Will they, as it were, remain supreme following the end of the transition period?
Those are the things that the SI does, but there are some things that it does not do. The Government have not been clear or forthcoming about their data management strategy. The shift of public sector data management from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to No. 10 in July—as I understand it, at the behest of Dominic Cummings, no longer of this parish—raised many questions as to the direction of the Government’s handling and use of public data.
The national data strategy, which is undergoing a consultation that closes next week, talks a lot about the role that data can play in driving economic growth, but there is nothing about data rights, duties and obligations on the huge tech platforms that use and misuse so much of our data, or discussion of a regulatory framework for data. Content created by the tech platforms uses people’s data to promote disinformation, fake news, extremism, hatred and other harmful material, while data-driven business models place ever more extreme content in front of our eyeballs.
I recognise that the statutory instrument is limited, but it would be helpful if the Minister said something about the extent to which he sees our GDPR evolving, addressing in particular the issue of data rights. That would help us to understand its impact. The SI does nothing to address long-term alignment and divergence decisions. The explanatory memorandum mentions “UK GDPR”. Does that language indicate that the Government intend to diverge from European Union GDPR?
As the UK begins to sign trade deals across the world, UK GDPR may be altered. The recent Japan trade deal made reference to facilitating data transfers and could allow them to go via third countries such as the US, which might have different data regulations. Will the Minister commit to ensuring that data protections and treatment are not traded away and that our data protection regulations remain in line with European Union minimum standards, to ensure validity for third-nation adequacy benefits?
That is already an issue, as the privacy shield adequacy agreement with the US has been invalidated, and the European Union adequacy agreement with Japan, as I understand it, has no practical effect in the UK. How, then, will adequacy be reflected in our ability to negotiate future trade agreements? Are further decisions of this type likely and how will they be reflected in UK law?
Finally, the Labour party is passionate about ensuring that our citizens have control of their own data. We have proposed a digital charter to put people’s real selves back in control of their digital selves. I would appreciate it if the Minister told us how he plans to ensure that agreements with other nations do not provide a back-door way to undermine GDPR. We will not oppose the instrument as it is necessary, but we have concerns about the specifics, and we think assurances must be given to businesses and others about our data privacy and control.
Mr Whittingdale
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for indicating that the Opposition do not intend to oppose the regulations and for her remarks. I am tempted to say that we should stop meeting like this, but I think we may be doing so again in further Committees.
The hon. Lady and I absolutely agree about the importance of data in fuelling economic growth and innovation. She does not like the expression “new oil” in that context, and I understand why, but I am not sure that her suggestion about people going around excreting a trail of data was much more preferable an analogy. Nevertheless, data is of increasing importance, and the Government are keen to ensure that we reap the maximum benefit from it to create an economy driven by innovation and growth, based on the free flow of data. At the same time, we absolutely recognise the importance of data protection, which is, as she said, underpinned by GDPR, a set of EU regulations.
The hon. Lady referred to the fact that we are still in negotiation with the EU Commission about adequacy. In our view, there is no reason that we should not be granted adequacy—after all, our data protection regime is one that the EU formulated—but that is a matter ultimately for the Commission to decide. Certainly, the time left before the end of the transition period is reducing and this is therefore challenging, but we are still optimistic that it can be achieved. We have indicated to business that it is sensible to put in place the mechanisms necessary to ensure that data can continue to flow from the EU to the UK should adequacy not be achieved.
I am sure the Committee would have been disappointed if the hon. Lady had not mentioned Schrems II, which we all think about a great deal. Schrems II resulted in some quite tricky decisions, not just for the UK, because we are bound by the Schrems II judgment that negated the privacy shield, but it creates equal challenges for the EU, which is something the EU is working on; the Information Commissioner’s Office is still in conversation; and we hope to find a mechanism to allow the flow of data between EU member states, the UK and the USA to continue.
The hon. Lady is right that, even if we achieve adequacy, this is an ongoing process. We would not be negotiating as hard as we are to achieve adequacy if we intended to do anything shortly afterwards that resulted in our losing it again. On the other hand, we wish to take advantage of the fact that we will be responsible for our own data protection regime, and we wish to explore ways to facilitate the flow of data between companies and to drive growth forward. That is an opportunity, since we will no longer be bound by the Court of Justice of the European Union rulings, although in terms of adequacy decisions we will need to watch developments in the EU. Should those rulings change things, there might be implications for its attitude to our adequacy.
We certainly have no intention of doing anything that results in a loss of adequacy. The national data strategy mentioned by the hon. Lady is intended to consult very widely all those who potentially have an interest in the matter—companies that use data, privacy campaigners, stakeholders and so on—to find ways in which we might improve the UK’s data regime. She referred to the Opposition’s suggestion of a digital charter. I hope she has responded to the national data strategy, as we are obviously interested in any ideas that she has.
On trade agreements, which the hon. Lady also talked about, it is true that, for instance, the UK-Japan trade agreement contains data provisions that go beyond the EU-Japan agreement, and we regard that as a considerable achievement. However, nothing in the agreement undermines the data protection regime in this country. Indeed, the agreement makes it absolutely clear that both sides are able to maintain a legal framework that provides for the protection of personal information. The trade agreement with Japan will, we hope, result in a freer flow of data between the UK and Japan, but at the same time not undermine GDPR and our existing protection.
Chi Onwurah
I thank the Minister for his responses and his genuinely seeking to answer my questions, which is something of an experience for me. We have an agreement with Japan, which means data will be allowed to go to Japan. Japan has an agreement with the US, so data is allowed to go to the US. That undermines our conditions on data flowing from the UK to the US if they do not meet the European Union adequacy rules. That is what I meant by a back door.
Mr Whittingdale
I understand the hon. Lady’s concern, but I do not think it is justified. There is nothing forcing any company to transfer data from the UK to Japan or any other third country. We seek to remove unnecessary obstacles that impede that flow, but that does not undermine the requirements on UK-based companies to comply with the existing data protection regime. Indeed, that is spelt out clearly in the agreement. We do not believe that that is a risk, but it is something we continue to attach priority to, and we will keep it in mind for the future trade agreements that we are hopeful of striking.
I hope I am answering the points that the hon. Lady made. The point she made at the end of her remarks was about the obligations on the tech platforms, and she talked about disinformation and fake news. As she will be aware, the Secretary of State had a recent roundtable specifically to talk about the efforts made by the tech platforms to address the problem of disinformation about a potential covid vaccine. She will also know that the issue of obligations on tech platforms will be addressed through the online harms legislation that we still expect in the near future.
I hope I have answered the hon. Lady’s questions and I commend the regulations to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Botulinum Toxin and Cosmetic Fillers (Children) Bill
Wednesday 25th November 2020
(4 years ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Botulinum Toxin and Cosmetic Fillers (Children) Act 2021 View all Botulinum Toxin and Cosmetic Fillers (Children) Act 2021 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 25 November 2020 - (25 Nov 2020)
The Chair
Welcome to this Public Bill Committee. Before we begin, I have a few preliminary announcements. Members will all understand the need to respect social distancing guidance; if necessary, I will intervene to remind you. Note passing should be electronic only. The Hansard reporters would be grateful if Members emailed their speaking notes to hansardnotes @parliament.uk.
The selection list for today’s sitting is available in the room and online. It shows how the selected amendments and clauses have been grouped together for debate. Formal decisions on amendments and clauses will be taken in the order they appear in the Bill.
Clause 1
Offence of administering certain substances to a child
Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 1, in clause 1, page 1, line 17, after “practitioner” insert “and deemed the procedure to be medically necessary”.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 2, in clause 1, page 1, line 21, after “practitioner” insert “who deemed the procedure to be medically necessary”.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. I broadly support the amendments, which I understand are of a probing nature. When we have the stand part debate, I will raise other concerns with clause 1, but I should start by congratulating the hon. Member for Sevenoaks for bringing the Bill forward.
The amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East is really about medical practitioners. We all want to think that medical practitioners are of the highest quality and abide by the law, but in this area that is not always the case—even in cases that are medically necessary. For a number of years, I have been involved in highlighting the lack of regulation when it comes to botox and fillers and the cosmetic surgery industry more broadly. The good thing about this Bill, although it is quite small in terms of changing the law, is that it is a welcome first step. There is cause for a lot more regulation in the area generally.
At the moment, the prescription of botox for cosmetic procedures is controlled, but there is clear evidence that medical practitioners are prescribing it in a way that leads to queries over the medical supervision. I would like to put my trust in the General Medical Council, but I have to say that my experience is that it is woefully inadequate in protecting the patient. A number of Members have met my constituent Dawn Knight, whose medical negligence case against her doctor took nearly five years to conclude.
I accept that there are situations where the prescription of botox, even for under-18s, is medically needed, but that needs to be explicitly in the Bill—that would then provide protection. I accept that there is then going to be an argument about the courts having one description and the GMC another. The problem is, however, that the GMC is failing. We need the law to be very clear that medical practitioners need a medical reason for prescribing botox for under-18s. Without having the wording in the Bill, people might somehow argue that because they are a medical practitioner, they can prescribe it whatever. The idea being advanced through these amendments, arguing about the medical necessity, would make the Bill stronger.
I accept that my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East has tabled probing amendments, but we need to look at the issue as the Bill progresses. I will raise some of the broader issues, including my concerns about medical practitioners, in the clause stand part debate.
The Chair
Do any Front Benchers wish to speak at this stage? No? In that case, I bring in Carolyn Harris.
Carolyn Harris
Thank you, Ms Rees. I am not being presumptuous by sitting in the shadow Minister’s seat; I am merely observing social distancing. I would not presume to elevate myself to such great heights.
I would first like to congratulate the hon. Member for Sevenoaks on having secured parliamentary time to debate this important issue, and I welcome the Bill’s principle of protecting vulnerable young people. The amendments I have tabled are simply intended to improve the Bill. They aim to ensure that no person under 18 years of age receives a non-surgical cosmetic procedure unless it is deemed medically necessary, and medical advice has previously been sought.
As the co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on beauty, aesthetics and wellbeing, alongside my hon. and dear Friend the Member for Bradford South, I recognise the importance of this Bill and its aim of protecting our young people. The APPG is currently conducting an important inquiry into non-surgical cosmetic procedures, and we have found that all representatives from the beauty industry and beyond are united in supporting a restriction on all persons under 18 years of age.
I am concerned that the Bill, as it is currently worded, would allow registered medical practitioners, as well as regulated health professionals under the direction of a registered medical practitioner, to carry out procedures on any person under the age of 18 without needing to provide medical evidence. I want to be absolutely clear: no practitioner should be exempted from this measure simply because of their qualification level.
It is important to make the case for rare exceptions, as non-surgical cosmetic procedures have uses outside aesthetics: for example, when treating certain muscle conditions such as dystonia, which is a type of uncontrollable muscle spasm. At the beauty, aesthetics and wellbeing APPG session yesterday, on ethics and mental health, it was emphasised by our expert witnesses that medical exemptions must be at the discretion of medical professionals such as psychologists, not left to the devices of the practitioner. One thing I found very disturbing is that we were given evidence by eminent experts in this field who told a story of some medical practitioners seeking excuses to carry out procedures during lockdown that would have justified them being able to practise. I felt that the Minister should know that.
I know that the hon. Member for Sevenoaks accepts the principle of these amendments, and I urge the Minister to consider how to protect vulnerable groups in our society, especially young people who are influenced by social media, peers, and in some cases the industry itself. I know that the hon. Lady will keep us informed about progress, and I urge the Government to make sure that we find a way to protect these young people going forward.
The Minister for Patient Safety, Mental Health and Suicide Prevention (Ms Nadine Dorries)
It is a delight to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks for all the hard work and commitment she has put into bringing the Bill forward. She had the delight of being drawn first in the ballot, but the passion and commitment she has shown to this issue, which is close to all our hearts, is second to none.
I thank the right hon. Member for North Durham and the hon. Member for Swansea East. Since I took up this post, the right hon. Gentleman has contacted me, written to me, spoken to me personally, and cornered me in the Tea Room and the corridors to talk to me about this subject many times. I know that he is passionately committed to the subject and the amendments that we are here to talk about. He has been relentless in his pursuit, letter writing and lobbying on the issue.
The hon. Member for Swansea East never rises to speak unless she firmly believes in what she is saying. She is an MP of principle and belief. It is a delight to have her in the House and we are the better for her presence here.
Can I clarify something, Ms Rees? Do you want me to make my comments now or are we going to the hon. Member for Swansea East first?
Ms Dorries
Thank you, Ms Rees.
The hon. Member for Swansea East has tabled her amendments. I wish again to reiterate the Government’s support for this legislation. On amendments 1 and 2, I should say that the Government are responsible for understanding the impact of any regulatory policy through the completion of a post-implementation review within the first five years following implementation. The review should assess whether the objectives of the regulation have been achieved and are still relevant, the cost of the policy and any wider unintended effects of the policy.
The indicators of the success of this policy would be a reduction in the numbers of businesses offering or performing treatments on under-18s. That may assessed through means such as measuring public, practitioner and stakeholder awareness and experience of the policy, to understand the policy’s reach and effectiveness, and gathering intelligence on the level of enforcement by the police and local authorities.
I was concerned to hear the hon. Lady’s comments about practitioners who were finding reasons and excuses to continue practising. That is something that I know my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks has been made aware of, and we will keep it under review.
Laura Trott (Sevenoaks) (Con)
It is honour to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. Before I start, I thank everyone in the room today. This has long been an overlooked area of policy, but with the work of everyone here, perhaps that will not be the case for much longer. As the right hon. Member for North Durham has said, it is a welcome first step.
I pay particular tribute to the work of the hon. Members for Swansea East and for Bradford South, and the all-party parliamentary group on beauty, aesthetics and wellbeing that they lead. The group’s findings have underpinned the substance of the Bill and I thank them for sponsoring it.
I completely agree with the sentiments behind the amendments. It is right that we should restrict these treatments for under-18s to only where it is absolutely medically necessary. The advice I have received is that that is covered in the Bill, inasmuch as UK doctors must be registered and hold a licence to practise with the GMC. The GMC publishes specific ethical guidance that says that doctors performing cosmetic interventions can provide treatment to children only when it is deemed to be medically in the best interests of the patient.
I accept that, as the right hon. Member for North Durham said, in some cases at the moment this is not happening correctly when it comes to botox, but to create a new legal precedent around the wording “deemed medically necessary” would add a layer of complexity, given that it is generally for the GMC to decide what is in the best interests of the patient. As he also mentioned, it would also produce two different authorities—the GMC and the court—which would then opine on the same issue. That could cause confusion.
I understand the thrust of the amendments, but if the hon. Member for Swansea East is content to withdraw them, I will work with hon. Members on some form of strengthened wording, which we can bring forward on Report.
Carolyn Harris
I welcome the comments from both the Minister and the hon. Member for Sevenoaks. We would welcome the opportunity to work with the hon. Lady to ensure that we strengthen the Bill. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 3, in clause 1, page 1, line 23, after “age,” insert “including by requiring and recording proof of this information,”.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. First, I thank the hon. Member for Sevenoaks for introducing this Bill and successfully bringing it to Committee. It is long overdue. I thank her from the bottom of my heart.
I stand in support of the Bill’s principles and I want to reiterate a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East. My amendments seek to enhance the Bill and close the gaps in the wording. This amendment is a probing amendment and it deals with ensuring that a framework for age identification is present when practitioners are assessing a client for a non-surgical cosmetic procedure.
I am concerned that, as currently worded, the Bill leaves open to interpretation what reasonable steps a practitioner must make to establish the age of the person receiving the procedure. I want the Bill to make it clear that practitioners must request proof of age before any procedure is undertaken, verify the authenticity of that document and ensure that it is recorded, to ensure that there is no doubt about a client’s age. We need clear and explicit guidelines to ensure that vulnerable young people do not fall through the net.
My hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East and I established and became the co-chairs of the all-party parliamentary group on beauty, aesthetics and wellbeing. I am worried about how few protections there are for children under 18 years of age when it comes to non-surgical cosmetic procedures.
I was also in attendance at our inquiry into ethics and mental health. It will be no surprise that all our expert witnesses agreed that young people are at their most vulnerable in their teenage years. They are faced with many pressures, including societal pressures, which make ideal beauty standards the norm, especially in this age of social media. We must ensure we put safeguards in place to protect our young people.
I ask the hon. Member for Sevenoaks and the Government to consider this amendment to ensure that proper mechanisms are in place to strengthen the process of age verification for non-surgical cosmetic procedures and to improve the accountability of all practitioners. The amendment requires the practitioner to formally log and prove a client’s age.
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East, I welcome the opportunity to adapt the wording of the amendment should the hon. Member for Sevenoaks be unable to accept it. I ask that this amendment be considered.
Ms Dorries
Again, I thank the hon. Lady for moving the amendment. I understand that it will not be pressed to a Division, but I give her my absolute assurance that all comments made in the Committee today will be taken away and reviewed by my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks and me before we move forward on to the next stage of the Bill. I thank all hon. Members for their contributions today.
Laura Trott
Again, I agree entirely that we must ensure providers have proof of age before carrying out treatments. However, I worry that the amendment is too narrow, in that it is for the defendant to establish the steps that they took to evidence proof of age. It is already implicit that that could and should include recording information, but it should not be limited to that. For example, it should be for them to establish the veracity of the documents produced, rather than just recording them.
While I completely agree with the intent of the amendment, I argue that it is not needed on the face of the Bill and would be more appropriately contained in guidance, which I would expect professional bodies to produce when the Bill becomes law. I would like to continue discussions with the hon. Members on the topic.
Judith Cummins
I am happy with the assurances that we will be listened to and that our words will be considered throughout the passage of the Bill. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Laura Trott
Clause 1 of the Bill creates a new criminal offence of administering in England botulinum toxin injections and cosmetic fillers to persons under 18. Currently, children and young people can access invasive cosmetic procedures on the commercial market without the requirement for any medical or psychological assessment. As the hon. Member for Bradford South said, that cannot be right.
Mr Kevan Jones
I welcome the Bill, but there are issues with it and those need to be improved.
Clause 1 goes to the heart of trying to stop the wild west that we have in this sector, but my concern is with the get-out-of-jail card for medical practitioners. Again, while most will follow the rules, there is clear evidence that we have medical practitioners signing prescriptions for botox and then selling them on. If we had a robust GMC or regulator that was clamping down on this, that would solve some of these problems, but I have seen no evidence of that at all.
The Bill will make a start on improving this situation, as the hon. Member for Sevenoaks said. There are existing regulations, but they are toothless. Do they provide the powers to intervene? Yes, I think so, but that is not happening. Certainly, the situation with prescription botox needs to be tightened up.
The problem I have, as I said in my earlier contribution, is the allowing of medical practitioners to administer these products to under-18s. I understand that there are perfectly good medical reasons that they are needed, and it would be wrong for the Bill to block those altogether, but I believe that regulation on this could be strengthened, and I know the hon. Lady and the Minister said that they will look at that.
I do not know whether this is something that the Minister could talk to the GMC about or whether we could get it into the Bill, or indeed if it is in the regulations that go alongside the Bill, but before an under-18 is prescribed these treatments, there should be a written prognosis giving the reason that they are needed. There should also be a clinical treatment plan outlining how and why those will be administered over a certain period, as well as a written statement relating to the supporting evidence, the consent of the patient and their guardians, and an agreement with the patient in advance on the expected outcomes. That would strengthen the rules.
Most practitioners will abide by the rules, but I have been looking at the sector for five or six years, and frankly, my experience is that there are medical professionals out there who are just out to make money.
Carolyn Harris
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the practice of remote prescription serves only to further damage the reputation of the industry? During a recent evidence session, a GP stated that they were offering a lifetime botox prescription for £50. That is a dangerous practice and it needs to be considered very deeply before we move forward on the issue.
Mr Jones
I agree. There are adverts on Amazon in this sector, and treatments offered include fillers, although certain other terms are used. People are not allowed to advertise botox, but they get around that by advertising consultations. In response to the question, many practitioners are not qualified at all and hold no medical qualifications, so how do they get access to botox? They do so because people are signing prescriptions. I fear that a situation may arise in which that practice continues, although it needs to stop.
Another issue is that under the definition the botox can be bought because this is basically a free market, as I see it. A practitioner could then administer the botox to a young person with no regard to that individual’s medical history. A medical practitioner, under the definition, could even be defined as a dentist. That needs tightening up. I do not think that would be onerous for doctors, who are quite rightly prescribing botox injections and other things for perfectly legitimate medical use. Doctors and patients are protected when those uses are laid out.
If I had more faith in the GMC to clamp down, I would be content to leave the situation as it is. I am sorry, but having seen the way the GMC operates, I see that the organisation is not friendly to the complainant or to the patient organisation. It protects the doctor. We took self-regulation away from solicitors, and I have concluded that self-regulation should be taken away from doctors. I did not start with that position, but have come to it.
The Minister promised a Bill on GMC reform in the last Parliament, and one is certainly needed, because frankly, the patient is at a disadvantage in a host of areas, not just this one. It cannot be right that it took my constituent’s case five years to reach the GMC, with huge hurdles to overcome to get there. I hear what the hon. Member for Sevenoaks says, but we should try to tighten things up a bit. The Bill will certainly be improved if we can.
Ms Dorries
Again, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks. Many points have been made today and throughout the passage of the Bill that will give us plenty to consider and review.
The GMC publishes guidelines on the ethical obligations of doctors undertaking cosmetic procedures, including guidance on responsible advertising. There is no question as to the GMC’s performance and it being fit for purpose as an organisation. The GMC maintained its track record of meeting regulation standards last year, and it met those standards amid a surge in demand for registration.
The performance review of the GMC for 2018-19 by the Professional Standards Authority, the body that oversees the healthcare regulators, found that good practice was upheld in all 24 standards of good regulation across education, registration standards and fitness to practise. The review confirmed an effective approach to managing a rise in registration applications, progress with the credentialing framework and work to promote fairness in fitness to practise processes.
Mr Kevan Jones
I hear all that, but I think what needs to happen—I offer this to the Minister—is for her to meet my constituent, Dawn Knight, so she can explain to the Minister the agony that she went through to get justice. The GMC is not user-friendly to patients. The fact of the matter is that, in her case, a doctor was allowed to remain on the register for five years, even though there was clear evidence from multiple women that he had undertaken operations that were, in some cases, life-threatening. Frankly, that is appalling.
Ms Dorries
The right hon. Gentleman does Dawn great credit by raising that case again, and his words have been noted. He is a tireless advocate. The GMC publishes guidance on ethical obligations for doctors undertaking cosmetic procedures, as it does with all procedures that doctors undertake, which includes guidance on responsible advertising, as I have said. There is another opportunity to continue to raise this matter: I will take his comments away and, as I have a patient safety meeting later today, I will raise them in that forum as well, since this is ultimately a patient safety issue.
Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab)
First, I want to say a massive well done and thank you to the hon. Member for Sevenoaks for bringing this important Bill to us and getting it in Committee. The question is not necessarily about the existing guidance, but around the enforcement of that guidance—I think that is what my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham is saying. It is not just about saying that the guidance is there; we need to see strengthening of that enforcement.
Ms Dorries
The most I can say at this point—Dawn is a case in point—is that I will take away the comments made by the right hon. Member for North Durham, and I know my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks has also heard them. We will consider those comments. It might be that this matter cannot continue within the scope of the Bill, but we will look to continue it. This does not stop here: my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (Dr Evans) is introducing the Digitally Altered Body Images Bill under the ten-minute rule, so there will be another opportunity to raise these points. Within the confines of patient safety, this is an issue that we need to continue reviewing.
Mr Kevan Jones
Will the Minister look at prescriptions for botox as well? There is clearly a market out there and there are medical professionals signing prescriptions and then selling them on, fuelling this market and leading to people who are not qualified giving that botox. Could she look at that?
Ms Dorries
Of course. I heard that comment in the right hon. Gentleman’s initial remarks. This is a difficult market to police—it is regulated, but it is difficult to police and to know who those practitioners are and where they are selling prescriptions on to. If he knows of any practitioners who are doing that, or is aware of any practitioner who is writing out bulk prescriptions for botulinum toxin and selling them on to other, more ruthless practitioners, or to people who are not even registered to practise, I ask him to please let us know, then we can take that forward.
Mr Kevan Jones
May I suggest another way of doing this? If the Minister speaks to the prescription licensing body, it will know exactly who is signing huge amounts of botox prescriptions, and one possible way to investigate large numbers of botox prescriptions is to ask whether those people can justify what they are doing. If we go online, we see umpteen adverts for botox treatments, and those people who are doing this are not doctors, so where are they getting them from?
Ms Dorries
Again, the right hon. Gentleman has done his cause justice by raising those concerns and saying what he has in Committee. We will have a look at that.
Laura Trott
Thankfully, the future of the GMC is slightly wide of the scope of the Bill, so I will leave those matters to the Minister. However, the right hon. Member for North Durham made the point well that there is widespread abuse by doctors who prescribe botox for cosmetic purposes, particularly for under-18s. It is absolutely right that we are looking to fix that through the Bill, and we will talk further about the wording on it.
The right hon. Gentleman rightly made the case for wider reform of that area, which has not been regulated to the extent that it should have been over the years. The Bill will, I hope, be a first step in addressing that, as we discussed earlier.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 2
Offence by persons carrying on a business
Mr Kevan Jones
I beg to move amendment 4, in clause 2, page 2, line 31, at end insert—
“(c) a person advertises or otherwise promotes the administration, in England, to another person (“A”)—
(i) botulinum toxin, or
(ii) a subcutaneous, submucous or intradermal injection of a filler for a cosmetic purpose, where A is under the age of 18;”
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to consider new clause 1—Report on preventative measures—
“(1) The Secretary of State must prepare a report on steps that are being, and will be, taken to seek to prevent offences being committed under this Act.
(2) That report must include any steps to prevent the advertising or promotion of the cosmetic use of botulinum toxin and fillers on children.
(3) The report must be laid before Parliament no later than the end of the period of six months beginning with the day on which this Act is passed.”
Mr Jones
Again, this is a probing amendment to get concerns on the record. These issues affect not only under-18s, but people in the wider sector. The amendment deals with the broader issue of the way that the industry has developed. The concern is that botox is a prescription medicine, but if someone were to look at online adverts, they would think it was something that they could just pick up on the street corner. In fact, it can be picked up on the street corner, because the individuals who advertise the injections are not regulated.
Online, people offer home injections, botox parties or injections on premises that are not regulated in any way to ensure that basic hygiene is in place. The other worrying point is that the individuals who carry out the injections are not qualified in any shape or form. There are clear instances when people ask, “Well, what’s the danger?” There are dangers to injecting anything into someone’s body, but particularly in some of the areas in which botox is injected, such as the eyes and other areas. Such injections can lead to nerve damage and quite severe problems, and a medical professional would obviously know not to do them. With someone who is completely unqualified, there is a huge danger that under-18s, and even older age groups, could be affected by those problems.
Judith Cummins
Would my right hon. Friend’s amendment cover the eventuality that I described? That was related to me by the APPG’s most in-touch consultant, my daughter, who told us about her friend who, for her 16th birthday, had a lip filler injected by her cousin.
Mr Jones
That is the point. Part of this is about a process of education to teach people what the dangers are. These products are marketed and sold to people—especially young people—as if they are just like make-up.
Well, they are not make-up—this is a medical procedure that can have life-threatening consequences if it goes wrong. It is clear that some of the advertising on Facebook and other sites is directed at under-18s. The Minister mentioned body image, and the Mental Health Foundation’s report from last year on that issue shows that the marketing is for young people.
This is a probing amendment to get this issue on the record. We need to look at ways to ensure that young people are protected from advertising. It is not newspaper advertising; that is for old-fashioned people like me. It is advertising on Facebook, Instagram and elsewhere. I have raised this issue with Facebook. Of course, we get the usual guff from Facebook: “Oh well, we take them down.” I have even written to Sir Nick Clegg asking whether he will do anything about it. Getting an audience with or response from the Pope would be easier than getting a response from him. Those platforms are making money out of this, and they are targeting their adverts at young people, not older people.
Do not get me started on the Advertising Standards Authority, which is a completely toothless, useless tiger, frankly. It takes down some adverts, but they keep proliferating. The social media companies need to do something about it, because young people are being put at risk and because there is a market. Botox is supposed to be a medically controlled substance, but it is not; it is advertised. The way the companies get around that is that, although they cannot advertise botox, they can advertise a consultation, which just happens to be for botox. Facebook, Instagram and others could take down those adverts overnight and just stop them, but they are not doing that because there is clearly money to be made in this sector. Some of those issues will come out in the private Member’s Bill of the hon. Member for Bosworth on body image, but if we do not tackle them, this Bill could be enacted and the Facebooks of this world could still make money on the back of this sector.
The purpose of new clause 1 is to ensure some oversight over the effectiveness of the Bill. It calls for a report when it is under way so that we can assess whether it is effective. It also relates to advertising and promotion. By raising this issue with the Minister, I want to put on the record that there is an issue. I accept that advertising is not directly within her remit as Public Health Minister, but I want to see what more can we do not just on the targeting of under-18s, but on the broader issue of the way in which big business is trying to circumvent the law—advertising botox is supposed to be illegal.
There are two ways of doing that. The first is to stop the supply of botox from prescribers, and the second is to crack down on it very heavily. The Mental Health Foundation’s report on body image shows that, in this age of the internet and the internet of things, young people are in a terrible situation and are suffering due to their body image. That is reinforced by advertising. Botox is seen as a quick fix, but it is potentially dangerous. We need to try to stop this danger to our young people.
Ms Dorries
The right hon. Gentleman has made wide-ranging and important comments. I am not sure it was any easier to speak to the former right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam when he was in this place than it is now—there is not much change there—but I thank the right hon. Member for North Durham on all our behalf for his efforts to do so. Outside of the Committee and official channels, he still keeps batting away and trying to get results. We thank him for that.
I believe everyone has the right to make informed decisions about their bodies and our role in Government is to support young people in making safe, informed choices and, where necessary, to protect them from the potential harm that cosmetic procedures can do to their health. This Bill is a really important step on that path and in that process.
On indemnity, the Government passed legislation in July 2014 requiring all practising regulated healthcare professionals to have appropriate indemnity arrangements in place as a condition of registration with the regulatory body and, therefore, their ability to practise. For doctors, those regulations came into force in August 2015. Failure to comply may mean that they are dealt with under fitness-to-practise procedures. That means that all practising surgeons are affected by the legislation, including overseas surgeons practising in the UK. I hope that information helps.
Mr Kevan Jones
I am not against the cosmetics industry. I agree with what the Minister just said—it is about informed choice—but it has to be done safely. I welcome her comments on professionals. The big grey area, which this Bill cannot cover but which needs covering, is those who administer botox and fillers. Most of those people are not medical professionals. They have done “a course” in injections, which in some cases I have seen is just a tick-box exercise. That is the area we need to move on to next—not only who can prescribe, but who can inject these fillers and botox.
Ms Dorries
As the right hon. Gentleman notes, those matters are not within the scope of the Bill and the Bill will not seek to achieve the points he has made. As I have said before, I will take the comments away and will continue to work on them and review them.
Laura Trott
I thank the right hon. Member for North Durham for all his work in this area. On amendment 4, the pressure that young people are put under by social media is undoubtedly a motivating factor behind many of them seeking out these cosmetic treatments. That was discussed at length on Second Reading by the hon. Member for Clwyd South, among others. In many case studies that we have heard, discounts were one of the reasons that a young person went to have one of these treatments.
I note that there is a lot more work going on this area, which is welcome. In January, the Committee of Advertising Practice and the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority issued an enforcement notice to the beauty and cosmetics industry and have started to use monitoring tools to take down posts on social media, which is a welcome development, although obviously we need more.
I completely agree that further work is needed in this area. However, as the right hon. Gentleman rightly notes, it is outside the scope of the Bill. I will be making those points in the debates on forthcoming online harms regulations. I imagine he will be doing the same.
Mr Kevan Jones
These were probing amendments. I took the opportunity to get them on the record, as it is important to ensure that we tackle this area. I welcome the Minister’s comments on this being an area that we need to look at further. I know the Department of Health and Social Care does not like to bring legislation forward because it is still suffering from the Care Act 2014—
Mr Jones
Well, I was told that by a Minister in her Department. One simple thing we could do is to regulate those who administer these fillers and botox. That would be a huge step forward. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Laura Trott
Clause 2 sets out a duty on business owners to ensure that substances are not administered to a person under 18. This does not apply to administration by a doctor or regulated healthcare professional. Subsection (1)(b) sets out that a business owner commits an offence if they or someone acting on their behalf makes arrangements for botox or filler to be administered by injection for cosmetic reasons to a person under the age of 18. This will cover, for example, making an appointment, or agreeing to make an appointment by social media. By making it an offence to make arrangements to administer the products covered by the legislation, prosecutions can be brought even when the person aged under 18 does not go on to have the procedure administered because, for example, they changed their mind or there was an intervention by an enforcement body.
Ms Dorries
My hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks has said everything that needs to be said about these clauses.
Mr Kevan Jones
Are we now debating whether the rest of the clauses stand part of the Bill?
Mr Jones
Right. I again put on the record my thanks to the hon. Member for Sevenoaks for bringing the Bill forward. Will the Bill solve all our problems in this sector? No, it will not, but as I say, it is a welcome first step. It also gives us an opportunity to put on the record other concerns, which I know the hon. Lady shares.
This industry—because it is a multibillion-pound industry—is very lightly regulated. When these fillers and botox procedures go wrong, they can cause damage to individuals and costs for the NHS. There are cases of people having to go through expensive procedures on the NHS to put things right before we even mention the cosmetic surgery industry, which costs this country an absolute fortune when operations go wrong and the cost of people’s life-changing conditions have to be met by the taxpayer.
Going right back to when I was chair of public health in Newcastle upon Tyne in the early ’90s, I am reminded a little bit of the same lack of regulation that there was around tattoo parlours. The Government changed that and gave local authorities clear powers. Now, largely, the rules on administering tattoos, for example, are clear. They are enforced by local authorities and the standards are high. To go back to what the Minister said, I agree: I do not want to close the industry down. It has to be about personal choice. If people want some type of what they consider necessary enhancements, that is entirely up to them; but it must be done in a safe and regulated way. I referred to the wild west, and it is like that: there is little control over what is happening.
I think it is five years since the Keogh review recommended increased regulation, and it is now time, with the Bill, which will be a first step forward, to try to get those recommendations put into law. I think that if that proposal came forward there would be no problems about getting cross-party support. I would be a huge champion of such regulations. The issue is not just with fillers and botox, but the broader cosmetic surgery industry. It is about people making informed choices and ensuring that work is done in a safe and effective way. At the moment, the system is in many ways completely unregulated, and regulations that exist are being ignored.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Sevenoaks on bringing the Bill forward, and thank the Minister for how she has responded and taken the issues on board. I think that, although on occasions we have our disagreements, she believes at heart that in the sector in question things should change, and patient safety should come first and foremost for everyone.
Laura Trott
Many good points have been made today about the wider work that we need to do in this, but when the Bill goes through it will be the next step towards protecting children, in an area where at the moment they are open to physical and mental scarring for life. I thank everyone who is here today for their work in supporting the Bill, and I thank you, Ms Rees.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 2 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 3 to 6 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Bill to be reported, without amendment.
10.23 am
Committee rose.
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North of England: Infrastructure Spending
(4 years ago)
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Damien Moore (Southport) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered infrastructure spending in the North of England.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. This debate about support for infrastructure spending in the north of England is extremely timely and significant, for a number of reasons, the first being that in the next few hours my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will get to his feet in the House to make a financial statement on public spending.
I welcome the many new colleagues on the Government side of the Chamber who represent seats that we did not hold a year ago and who have an absolute commitment to ensuring that infrastructure projects go ahead in their constituencies. Although I also welcome Members on the Opposition side, we do not have quite as many as I thought we would for this important debate.
Recent press briefings detail that the Treasury is keen to use today’s statement to announce the conclusion of its review of the Green Book. The Chancellor, after all, represents a northern seat, and I am sure that his constituents will also benefit from changes being made to the guidance on how the Treasury appraises and evaluates policies, projects and programmes, as well as the investing of billions of pounds in a national infrastructure strategy. I speak for many colleagues in welcoming that news from the Government, and I look forward to hearing the announcements in full in a short while.
Another factor is most pressing and only too obvious to hon. Members: we are in the midst of fighting a devastating pandemic. However, that pandemic is not only a health crisis, but an economic one. The north has historically seen greater adversity and has more recently experienced greater disruption—unparalleled disruption, compared with other parts of the country. That has exposed the deep structural, systematic disadvantage that we face.
That distinct disadvantage was highlighted by the Institute for Fiscal Studies when it released shocking statistics in October. It calculated that spending on infrastructure was higher per person in London, at £1,461 a year on average over a five-year period, than in the north-west, where the average was £979; the north-east, where it was £793; and Yorkshire and the Humber, where it was £744. Consistently disproportionate investment has, over the years, created an obvious divide between north and south, and particularly between London and the south-east, and the north.
Without adequate investment, the north has been held back and unable to see the benefits, such as jobs, growth and investment, that other areas have seen. That has undermined the quality of economic opportunity for people, families and businesses to thrive, compared with other areas of the country. There is an urgent need to redress those inequalities and start to invest in infrastructure, which will unleash the north’s potential.
Let me also say that the north is much more than its cities. It feels as though any discussion that we have about the north provokes a reaction centred on Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Newcastle. Although they are important, that is another reason that there is a feeling in some areas of the north that, over the years, they have been forgotten and left behind—more so in those areas where there is no major city at all.
It would be remiss of me, especially as my right hon. Friend the Minister is listening, not to mention my own constituency and all the prosperity that we want to bring to Southport through infrastructure projects. Southport is a jewel in the north’s crown, attracting thousands of visitors each year to its annual events: the flower show, the air show and the comedy festival. I am also privileged to have in my constituency the Royal Birkdale Golf Club, which hosted the Open golf tournament. Royal Birkdale is in fact one of four championship golf courses in my constituency. That, combined with some wonderful bars and restaurants, makes Southport a great place not only for me to live in, but for thousands of others to visit. However, the visitor economy, which accounts for more than a third of the local economy, has been particularly hit during the pandemic.
Improved spending on transport infrastructure would open up our economy to more opportunity and the benefits that come with better connectivity. That connectivity is best delivered through rail projects such as the Burscough curves, which would connect Southport and Preston with a direct line, benefiting us as well as communities in the neighbouring constituencies of West Lancashire and South Ribble, and in the wider region. I say to the Minister that rail should be a key focus of revitalising the northern economy. Bringing with it highly skilled jobs and increased gross value added, more rail would enable us not only to move people around with greater ease, but to move freight around, helping to reduce carbon emissions and making our communities healthier.
We also want to see new rolling stock on our tracks. The north of England is unique, but there is a wonderful comparison. I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) will confirm that the north of England shares similarities with Iran. They are the only places in the world still using Pacer trains—of course, in Iran, they are reserved fleet, not the current fleet that they use when they can get them round. That is quite a damning indictment of what we need to do in this country to get improved rolling stock out on our rails.
Infrastructure investment would also attract private investment. Another great initiative taken by the Government is the town deals. Our town deal, which was submitted recently for £50 million, would unleash a further £350 million completely to transform Southport—enhancing our tourism industry and diversifying our economy, making it stronger and more resilient. The prospect of the town deal has already been the catalyst for private investment projects such as the Southport surf cove and the Viking golf attraction. With more emphasis in our plan to develop enterprise and innovation, we hope to attract more companies, such as Techedia, a specialist IT company that has started a £1 million transformation of a landmark building, which will bring into the building 75 brand new jobs.
As Great Britain becomes global Britain, another great initiative announced by the Government is freeports. Across the north, there are six project bids, one of which is an excellent bid by the Peel combined freeport, which provides links between the United States, Canada and the Americas, and Southport and Lancashire. With these trading links, we can develop and grow advanced manufacturing, energy, digital, biotech and agriculture. The importance of investment in such projects cannot be overestimated if we are to overcome the economic challenge of covid and realise the full potential of Brexit.
Looking to the future, we heard last week about the Government’s 10-point plan to create 250,000 green jobs. We want to get our share of those jobs by creating investment in infrastructure, particularly nuclear energy and advanced manufacturing. We should give highly skilled, highly paid jobs to people in constituencies such as mine—building wind turbines, servicing those wind turbines and seeing them through a career.
A recent report from the Green Alliance estimated that, in striving to get the UK to net zero, associated infrastructure investment would create 60,500 jobs in the north-west, 21,500 in the north-east and 17,200 jobs in Yorkshire and the Humber. Creating jobs through the upgrading of digital infrastructure, particularly in rural areas, will allow increased home working and facilitate the transition to a smart, low-carbon and decentralised energy system away from London. It is quite apt that my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) is present. She is the leader of blue-collar Conservatives and is doing a fantastic job for our communities in the north, but she might have another title yet: she might become the leader of green-collar Conservatives, which would enhance the portfolio of things that she looks at in those areas.
The fact is that the pandemic has accelerated the need for improved infrastructure spending in the north. From energy to broadband, and from transport to trade, we have an unquestionable opportunity to use infrastructure spending not only to root out and address disadvantage, but to provide greater and improved economic opportunity and empowerment for our constituents. I have campaigned with many other northern MPs and the Northern Research Group for a northern economic recovery plan. Improved infrastructure spending is a vital and core part of our recovery. Done correctly, it will have the power to fulfil our commitment to people living in the north to build back better, to level up and, dare I say, to unleash our potential.
Several hon. Members rose—
James Gray (in the Chair)
Order. I do not intend to impose a formal time limit on speeches. Looking around the Chamber, colleagues will realise that if they keep their speeches to three or four minutes, they can accommodate one another.
Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray, and I give the hon. Member for Southport (Damien Moore) credit for securing such an important debate, the topic of which is vital for our region of the north and for our infrastructure.
Levelling up, closing the economic divide and dealing with decades of inequalities in the north has certainly been a clarion call for me and many Labour MPs. We now have the new voices that the hon. Gentleman referred to in seats in the north of England that were traditionally red. They talk about powering up and levelling up the north, as well as regional disparities and infrastructure. The evidence cited by the Institute for Fiscal Studies and others is clear, and it is decades long. For example, in London and the south-east, nearly three times as much is spent on transport infrastructure. The hon. Gentleman mentioned average spend as well.
Collectively as northerners, regardless of whether we are Labour, Conservative or Liberal Democrat, or the odd Green that we might have, we represent our communities, and I hope that at times we can act together to ensure that the Executive—Downing Street—become more focused on our street in the north. However, this is about more than the fiscal environment; it is about power, democracy and shaping our own future. The missing part of the jigsaw, or the unfinished business, is genuine devolution for Cheshire and Warrington.
In the past, I worked for Andy Burnham, the current metro Mayor. I was a councillor for 11 years in Manchester, so I have been involved in shaping devolution in that patch, which is just up the road from my constituency and that of the right hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey). On the other side of my constituency there is devolution in the Liverpool city region, so we have a missing part of the jigsaw where things are largely done to us, sometimes mistakenly and sometimes not the right things. We have minimal say.
I want to ask the Minister about the devolution White Paper. We genuinely have an oven-ready deal, ready to go with the support of Cheshire West and Chester Council, Warrington Borough Council, Cheshire East Council, and, very importantly, the business community, whether that is the Tatton Group or the local enterprise partnership. We just need to get on.
Before the pandemic, the economy was worth about £38 billion. We can realise that potential and shape our own destiny, which will help us to focus on the things that we need in our patch, such as the mid-Cheshire line, which the right hon. Member for Tatton and others are campaigning on cross-party. We need that to happen in our constituencies and we need it to happen yesterday. We need to realise the potential of hydrogen in Cheshire, where we can not only lead in Britain, but be world leaders. However, we need that say, that investment and that devolution deal.
I will conclude there. I thank the hon. Member for Southport for giving me, a Labour voice, the opportunity to contribute to today’s debate.
Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray, and I thank my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Southport (Damien Moore) for securing this important debate. The topic is broad, but I will confine my remarks to Tatton and Cheshire, and will look at cost viability and prioritisation as a good Conservative should. I want to bring a good dose of public common sense to Parliament for the Minister to hear and hopefully take back to the Chancellor and the Cabinet.
I want to talk about High Speed 2, whose cost is like a runaway train, rising and rising. We have that grandiose scheme—some might call it a white elephant—but in Tatton we do not have local infrastructure. We are waiting for local train routes that are meant to have been delivered, and while we focus nationally on just one line, many small lines across local regions have not happened. People commuting from Knutsford to Manchester off-peak are waiting two hours for a train. That is one train every two hours off-peak, although it is one an hour at peak times. However, when the bid for the franchise was made, we were promised that we would have two trains an hour—not two a minute, but two an hour—which is not a lot to ask for and does not involve huge amounts of investment. Just two trains an hour, but that has never been delivered.
Bus routes are another local transport issue to look at. It is hard to find a bus or bus route in Tatton and people are crying out for buses. Buses are not often used during this covid period, but soon that will change and people will not be able to get around, for example, from Wilmslow to Handforth, and then maybe travelling further afield to Warrington, Liverpool or Manchester. I would be remiss if I did not mention my constituents Mr and Mrs Sunderland, who stopped me the other day in Handforth as they were shopping at the Paddock and asked, “What is happening to the 130 bus?”
I ask the Minister to please think about these local transport routes, the bus service, the tram service, the train service—nothing is happening. We also need investment in the mid-Cheshire line, as was mentioned by my friend the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury). We have been talking about that year after year and we are here for every question and debate in the House to ask what is going on, but it is being overlooked. We are talking about levelling up. We are talking about not just the north, although we are all here from the north, but the regions, towns and villages, and we all need our local transport.
The final bit of infrastructure we absolutely need and must have is the digital infrastructure to have us all connecting and connected. I admire and praise our Government’s vision for a 1 Gbit capability and the money they have promised to achieve that. It is vital—now more than ever, as people work from home, learn from home and socialise from home—that we have the digital connectivity we need. Therefore, I say stop HS2 with its runaway expenses—it should have hit the buffers a long time ago—and put that money into digital infrastructure to benefit the whole country, and into local transport.
Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Damien Moore) on introducing this important debate.
I want to build on what my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) has just said, although I both agree and disagree with it. HS2 and other big projects are important, but I think she was saying that they cannot be exclusive, and they must form part of a bigger picture. She is absolutely right that this is not just about transport links and that fibre broadband infrastructure is going to be revolutionary. Many of us have noticed during lockdown just how difficult it can be at certain points in the day even to open emails. That stands in stark contrast to what needs to be done.
My view on infrastructure, as laid out in a paper I hope to publish shortly, is that we must look to the short, medium and long terms. This is where I differ from my right hon. Friend: I believe there is value in the long-term projects, which will take a long time to build, although it is vital that we have these small, short projects, which are sometimes as simple as 1 km of train track that completely opens up different rail routes. There are lots of those around the Liverpool area, I understand. My hon. Friends might be able to build on those comments.
There are medium-term projects such as light rail infrastructure around my city of Leeds—something that has been in the offing for decades and where money has been supplied, but we have been talked out of it because the project is too difficult and upsets too many people. These things need to happen. However, I want to focus on the main big projects over the long term, which really make a difference, and on particular issues that will be in the report we are producing soon.
In the north of England we are lucky in our maritime position, with the port of Hull and the port of Liverpool. If the globe were tilted to give the relevant perspective, it would show that that corridor is more linked into mainland Europe than the other corridors are. Germany has been able to adapt its economy regularly as the world has changed and moved forward, and the one fundamental truth about where and why that happens is the River Rhine. It is a huge transport link, and a lot of engineering work has been done to link it to other rivers.
Of course, we do not have that between Liverpool and Hull. The canal system was built, but that is not what I am talking about. We need to look at a fundamental freight rail transport system that is akin to what the River Rhine does for commerce in central Europe and Germany. That is there to be built on. On that route, we could build inland freeports, to which the railway freight would be brought from, say, Hull, having come out of Europe. With value-added engineering in tax-free freeports, it would go back on the railway, over to the port of Liverpool and off round the rest of the world—or vice versa, coming back the other way.
We must think in the short, medium and long term, but the long-term projects, which will cost a huge amount of money, need to be really transformational and to put the country in a place that we have not been in before. Is that blue-sky thinking? Is it dreaming? Maybe, but it has to be the ambition. That would go a long way, through infrastructure, towards levelling up the north of England.
James Grundy (Leigh) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Damien Moore) for securing the debate.
Investment in new infrastructure is a key issue in my constituency. Indeed, it comes up at every election, local and national, and has done since the 1960s. The first issue, and the one that my constituents raise most often, is reconnecting Leigh to the national rail network. From the moment it lost its station in 1969, local people have campaigned vociferously for a new one, as have the people of Golborne, who lost the second of their two stations in 1967—the first was closed in 1952. I am pleased to say that two bids are currently under consideration as part of the Government’s Restoring your Railway programme. One is for the west coast main line serving Golborne, and one is on the Liverpool to Manchester line, at the old Kenyon Junction site just south of Pennington in my constituency, which would act as a new station serving Leigh itself.
Access to the national rail network, through investing in reopening those two stations, will generate massive economic opportunities for my constituency, meaning that jobs in both Liverpool and Manchester will be accessible by a train journey of approximately 20 minutes in each direction, rather than the two hours and 17 minutes that it currently takes to reach Liverpool, and the hour it takes to reach Manchester, by bus. In the long term, the investment will pay for itself in economic returns.
The second major issue to do with infrastructure investment in Leigh is the need to complete the Atherleigh Way bypass, which has lain unfinished for nearly 35 years. Currently only the middle section has been constructed, and the northern section to Chequerbent roundabout in Bolton and the southern section to junction 22 of the M6 are in desperate need of completion.
Both Leigh and the surrounding communities are beset by congestion and the associated air quality issues. Air quality is poorer in some parts of my constituency than it is in central London, with regard to nitrogen dioxide and fine particulate levels. The latter problem will only increase with the introduction of heavier batteries in electric vehicles, adding to the wear on tyres and roads. That congestion also dissuades new businesses from setting up in the constituency and considerably increases journey times for commuters. In 1966, Golborne Urban District Council, a predecessor authority to Wigan Metropolitan Borough Council, our current local authority, wrote to the Government of the day that the construction of the bypass was an urgent priority. I assure Members that the situation has grown no less urgent in the intervening 54 years.
The final issue I want to raise is that of connecting Leigh to Greater Manchester’s Metrolink system. In the fullness of time I hope that the Leigh guided busway system can be upgraded to a light rail link. Evidence provided to me by the all-party parliamentary group on light rail shows that buses persuade between 4% and 6.5% of car users to switch to public transport. Light rail, by contrast, persuades nearly 27% of car users to make the switch. If we are to meet our ambitious environmental targets, a new generation of hydrogen fuel-powered light rail serving suburban communities will be critical, and we need to start undertaking feasibility studies as soon as possible.
For too long, northern constituencies such as Leigh have been left behind in terms of infrastructure investment. We have been talking about these issues for the better part of 60 years. It is time for the talking to stop. It is now time to deliver for towns such as Leigh across the north.
Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I am relieved to see a Treasury Minister here who has also been a Transport Minister, so we might have a good chance of a response to our debate, given the focus on transport.
This should be a technocratic debate as much as anything. There is no Labour philosophy on pouring concrete to build a new road, and no Conservative philosophy based on an exegesis of Edmund Burke on how to erect a gantry for overhead line electrification. This is predominantly technocratic. I could spend an entire four minutes trying to demolish the per capita regional spending figures that I have heard quoted for the past 10 years. They are a myth and deeply misleading, but the political class seems universally to have drunk the Kool-Aid.
More topically, it is worth thinking about the review of the Green Book announced today and the impact it will have on benefit-cost ratios. As a Minister who had to focus on BCRs time and again, I can tell colleagues the input to deliver any BCR they wish to find. BCRs on their own do not allow projects to move forward. They are a useful tool in comparing projects that achieve a similar objective—for example, how to improve trans-Pennine links. We can then compare different ways of achieving that and work out the best value.
What BCRs do not do is allow us to choose between north and south projects. It will still be a political choice whether to opt for Crossrail 2 or Northern Powerhouse Rail, and the sequences in which one might do that. In particular, and I will disappoint my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Damien Moore), it will not get us any new rail carriages—as I know from experience—because a BCR does not take into account the fact that any new rail carriage does not mean more passengers travelling. Therefore, there is no benefit in the Treasury’s mind in that regard.
It is also worth considering that one of the problems that the Treasury has created—and a rod for its own back—which I have been unable to solve over many years, is that it has numerous fantastic projects across the north of England that cannot proceed, because they are predominantly private sector-led. A good example right now is Peel Holdings, which owns Doncaster airport. It wanted to build a short four-mile spur of the east coast main line into the airport. The Department for Transport has just turned it down, despite it being private sector-led. That is because, despite a Treasury and DFT joint review, we could not find a straightforward and simple way to keep such projects off the public purse—that meant that they would have counted towards our debt figures. That still needs to change if we are to properly unlock the true potential of all the private sector-led schemes out there.
Since my three minutes have gone—very quickly—I will make one final plea. I am struck by the fact that I have never detected such a dislike of devolution at any point in the past 15 years from the Government and most of my colleagues. In my view, and in my experience, it is only by devolving power to Metro Mayors, combined authorities and our regions that we will get these smaller projects through and get the compromises that are needed between the regions to deliver some of the more strategic projects. In all my conversations with Metro Mayors and combined authorities—with one notable expectation that Members can probably predict—they have always been apolitical, sensible and constructive and have improved decision making because of the quality of local transport planners. If we move away from devolution, we will have a much less effective transport policy and must less infrastructure built, so please show a little confidence in why George Osborne chose to devolve during the coalition Government. That is my four minutes up.
Imran Ahmad Khan (Wakefield) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Gray. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Damien Moore) on securing this important debate. In 2019, we Conservatives stood on a manifesto that pledged new infrastructure projects to help reduce the disparity between the north and south of England. Inequality between the north and the south has long existed, but has grown exponentially over the past two decades. In 2004, London’s economy was the same size as that of the north. As of 2020, London is a quarter larger, according to the think-tank Onward.
Her Majesty’s Government have since committed to a significant number of projects that seek to fulfil their manifesto pledges and reverse the historic imbalance between north and south. To date, a £5 billion package of new funding to overhaul bus and cycle links for every region outside London has been established. Northern Powerhouse Rail and the upgrade to the trans-Pennine route will serve to benefit regional interconnectivity, which is vital to collaboration and commerce between key northern cities.
On 18 November, the Prime Minister announced the Government’s 10-point plan for a green industrial revolution, which includes commitments to key infrastructure areas, notably public transport and clean energy. Today, the Chancellor will unveil the national infrastructure project, which will provide billions to improve transportation connectivity, improve infrastructure such as flood defences, and bolster fibre broadband in our digital infrastructure. It is vital that the funding is used to help areas that have long felt left behind by successive Governments, to boost local economies and to create new sustainable jobs. Conservative MPs elected to represent northern seats such as my own must hold the Government’s feet to the fire and help them to realise their splendid vision for the north to ensure that our constituencies receive tangible and transformative change from these investment plans.
However, the state should not always be the driving force behind infrastructure projects. Incentivising private firms, which understand market demand and consumers far better than the state should be the primary means of levelling up the entire United Kingdom, especially the north. We should appreciate how Heathrow terminal 5 was entirely funded by private investment. It serves millions of passengers, providing hundreds of thousands of flights each year.
We have reached the current stage only because of the failed policies of successive Governments of all stripes, who have created and entrenched a national divide through London-centric policies. Thus, a severe market failure requires rectification. Once we emerge from the covid-19 pandemic and focus on resetting our economy, ensuring that every region of the United Kingdom thrives must be central to policy making. I am confident that, together with my fellow Conservative parliamentary colleagues, we will keep holding the Government to account and ensure that they deliver this exciting and welcome promise for our constituents and the entire kingdom.
Paul Howell (Sedgefield) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gradually. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Damien Moore) for bringing this debate to Westminster Hall.
I and my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Richard Holden) represent the north of the north in this debate, and we would like to make sure that we are all holistic in our consideration of where investment goes in the north. When we think of infrastructure spending, what comes to mind are roads, bridges and trains, but it is also about research and development, social infrastructure and social capital, and about allowing money to be channelled into not only buildings and equipment but the day-to-day needs of public services.
The Government’s promise of levelling up is extremely welcome in the north, and particularly in my constituency. As my hon. Friend the Member for Southport said in his introduction, London has received significantly more public spending per capita than the north has. Looking at the 2003 Treasury Green Book updated by the then Labour Government, that is hardly a surprise. The north and particularly the north-east have suffered since 2003, when these disastrous funding decisions were put in place as a direct result of the Green Book and its skewed investment criteria. The north is clearly disadvantaged, and reform is urgently required to give it stronger weight. The Green Book needs to be ripped up, and investment should go where it is needed in the north.
December 2019 showed that the north had had enough and wanted change. The question is: how do we set about doing that? First, new transport spending in the north should focus on connectivity and capacity. The north does not have the same issues as the south, and what will level up the north is connecting the north’s forgotten and left-behind towns, villages and communities to employment centres and cities. That will connect people across the north to well-paying jobs and will allow people access to better education, being an enabler to lift people up.
Another part of this approach would obviously be the introduction of things such as freeports in Teesside and using the assets of the state to move Government Departments, as well as pump-priming and stimulating private investment. That would also boost companies supplying infrastructure, such as Hitachi and Cleveland Bridge, as well as smaller infrastructure companies such as Finley Structures in Newton Aycliffe.
In my constituency, Ferryhill station has the east coast main line and the Stillington spur running through it. Those lines are active and connect to major conurbations, but the Stillington spur is for freight only, and the fantastic Azumas just whisk straight on through. At one point, it was one of the busiest stations in Europe. The Beeching reversal fund, launched by the DFT, offered the opportunity for MPs to apply for funding to reopen stations. I have made an application for Ferryhill station, and I hope to hear about that shortly.
A key dynamic of this Beeching rail reversal fund is the need for MPs to lead. MPs have a unique perspective on the communities that we represent; we often look at our communities from a hyper-local perspective, allowing us to see the issues and possible solutions, and how small changes can make a big difference. I suggest that the Government create a similar funding pot, open to applications from MPs, to allow funding for particularly rural infrastructure projects that have been overlooked or ignored by councils or mayors. That should be at the level of sorting out a dangerous crossroads or getting broadband into a small village—the things that are too small for national attention, but never seem to quite make the list of local councils or mayors. I am certain that every hon. Member in this debate from a non-urban-centre seat could name a potential infrastructure project in their constituency that has been overlooked, but that would make a huge difference in their community if it was to happen.
To level up infrastructure spending in the north of England, we must look to our communities, and at both macro-connectivity and hyper-local interventions, to see what can be done to level up locally and regionally, with equal importance. Our communities need to see both serious, big schemes and immediate, community-level initiatives, and they must believe that, in the future, the decision-making field will be level.
Christian Wakeford (Bury South) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gradually. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Damien Moore). I do emphasise the term “Friend” because we go way back—before either of us took up a seat in this place.
I will start by touching on a point highlighted by the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury): this is about not only hard infrastructure, but soft infrastructure. Unfortunately, I think he was approaching this from the wrong angle, and I much prefer the approach of my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell).
We think of infrastructure very much in terms of concrete, new roads and new rail links. To me, that is not what infrastructure is, or what levelling up is about; for me, it is about education, skills and those communities that we represent. How many times do we speak about large-scale planning applications and then say that there is no real infrastructure to support them, when what we actually mean is that there are no schools, doctors, dentists and real economic centres to support thousands of new homes? That is not just an approach that the Treasury needs to take when moving forward, but an approach that planning policy needs to adapt to to fully understand what is going on in our communities.
The white elephant of HS2 has been raised already in the debate. I have spoken in favour of it previously, and it is the right kind of approach. However, we cannot think of all roads leading to London, because that is a falsehood. People from the north should not be forced to choose between HS2 or HS3, just as the people of London were not forced to choose between Crossrail and Crossrail 2; they were able to have both, and they were able to have their cake and eat it—that is the point of having cake.
We do not necessarily want a quicker journey to London—again, it is a falsehood that HS2 is framed in terms of speed rather than capacity—but we do need to ensure that our northern towns and cities are linked together so that we can truly make the northern communities the economic powerhouse.
Alec Shelbrooke
My hon. Friend is talking about HS2 and linking northern cities. There is a delay coming on phase 2b, as we have heard. Does he agree that we should look at this creatively and extend HS3 from Manchester to Leeds, so that we do not have to wait decades to link up northern cities?
Christian Wakeford
I completely agree with my right hon. Friend; in fact, he framed that argument so succinctly that I do not need to add to it. As I said, the choice between HS2 and HS3 is a fallacy; we can, and should, have both.
In terms of the view that all roads lead to London, the economy is not driven by London; the economy is growing more and faster in the north than anywhere else in the country, and we need to support that.
Much of this east-west connectivity is also driven by the private sector. Drax wants to improve east-west connectivity so that it can ship its fuel source from Liverpool over to Hull. That is part of our green infrastructure recovery; it is about not just greener fuel but carbon capture, which is intrinsic to meeting our net zero target. When we focus on our infrastructure for the north, it truly has to be a soft infrastructure-led, community-led and community-driven process that we are all part of .
Sara Britcliffe (Hyndburn) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. The Government’s big promises to level up the north and build back better have been warmly welcomed by my constituents. It is not surprising that the north has been widely ignored over the past decades; the Government have the opportunity to bring towns and cities in the north of England into the future, and to develop our hospitals, schools, railways and much more.
In my maiden speech, I promised that places such as Hyndburn and Haslingden would not be forgotten anymore. We have the amazing towns of Haslingden, Huncoat, Great Harwood and Rishton, and villages such as Belthorn, and they have been forgotten. My constituency is at the heart of Lancashire—on the right side of the Pennines, if I do say so myself—but we need investment, which is why I too look forward to listening to the Chancellor today.
Alongside my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Antony Higginbotham), I support a new swathe of enterprise zones across the country, especially in east Lancashire. They would be places where businesses could invest in new machinery to help them diversify, while receiving capital relief; where the Government supported the infrastructure that was needed; and where job creation was clearly incentivised.
Since becoming an MP, I have fought to reopen the Skipton to Colne railway line. We need the Government’s support to make that a reality. I am pleased to work with the local group, the Skipton-East Lancashire Rail Action Partnership, which has worked tirelessly and invested thousands to prove the viability of the redevelopment of the railway line, but we need to move forward with the engineering study. That railway line would connect east Lancashire to West Yorkshire in a new way, giving my constituents quick access to Leeds and other cities across the north, and opening up new job opportunities across the region. I want to highlight the economic advantages that would be gained by investing in that railway line, alongside the proposal for a freight terminal in Huncoat, which would support businesses and attract new ones to my constituency. That builds on what my right hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) said.
I graduated from university only last year, and I used to have to travel to Manchester. What should have been a 23-mile journey, taking about 40 minutes, used to take me two hours every morning and evening. To level up the north, we really need to improve our roads and railways.
My time is short, and I want to finish by talking about town centres. I was elected on the promise that I would push for investment in town centres such as Haslingden and Accrington, which were once a hub for my community but are a shadow of their former selves. Town centres are vital. There is not the same lure for businesses to set up in the town centre, but I believe that with strategic investment, we can make town centres such as mine a centrepiece of business and social life.
I ask that the Government continue to take the pledges to level up the north seriously by making large investments in towns such as mine. That would create a legacy for Hyndburn and Haslingden, and it would truly make sure that the forgotten towns in the north were forgotten no more.
James Daly (Bury North) (Con)
When I saw this debate scheduled, I looked at the dictionary definition of “infrastructure”, and it said:
“The basic physical and organisational structure and facilities needed for the operation of a society or enterprise.”
Infrastructure therefore goes beyond roads, and this or that bypass; it is a much wider concept, as my hon. Friends have said. When it comes to investing in facilities in individual constituencies, I agree completely with my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell) that the role and input of MPs can be crucial and can have a huge impact on local communities.
People who have listened to my various contributions in the House will know that I try to mention Bury football club in every speech I give, no matter what it is about—even if it is on foreign policy. The point about the demise of that club is that its site, Gigg Lane in my constituency, is hugely important and strategic, but it has lain untouched for 12 months. Jobs and economic activity have been lost. So much could be done with a site like that. After my election, I managed to persuade Bury Council to look at investing in it, with a vision of creating jobs and enterprise, which is what is needed from infrastructure. Those positive steps would transform my community, as I think my hon. Friend the Member for Bury South (Christian Wakeford) would completely agree, and the passion of people in the town. That is what I think infrastructure is about. My town does not need a bypass; any bypass would have to go up in the air. We are not connected to any rail; we are on the tram system. If I were to talk about transport infrastructure, it would have to be about buses.
Let us take a creative view of infrastructure. Let us invest in those facilities, and in local politicians’ vision for transforming their areas through the creation of jobs and enterprise, which will basically improve the lot of thousands of their citizens.
Sara Britcliffe
On buses, we had a great campaign to save a vital bus service that ran through my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly). Does he agree that services such as the X41 are vital to our communities, and that it was a great effort to save that bus route ?
James Daly
I do. The campaign’s success was completely down to my hon. Friend, so I am glad to be able to acknowledge her input. I benefited by associating myself with her efforts.
The simple point I wish to make in conclusion is this: infrastructure is facilities. It is the way to improve people’s lives. Let us take a creative view of investing in local areas in the north.
Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Damien Moore), whom I know well, for securing the debate. I disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Sara Britcliffe): there is no right side of the Pennines. It is vital that all of us across the north stick together. Speaking as someone from Lancashire who represents a seat in the north-east, nothing is clearer than the need to improve trans-Pennine links, as well as north-south links.
Christian Wakeford
As we are both proud Lancastrians, my hon. Friend will agree that the best thing to come from Yorkshire is the road to Lancashire.
Mr Holden
I thank my hon. Friend for that, but I do not want to create further division; I am trying to bring us all together.
North West Durham is a unique constituency, in that it has no dual carriageway and no railway line or stations. Local people, feeling rather fed up with being particularly left behind, last year voted for change, and for the first time elected a Conservative MP. On the Prime Minister’s promise to level up the country properly, I remember visiting the cricket club in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell) with the Prime Minister after the election, and he doubled down on that pledge.
I hope that today’s spending review and future Budgets will see some cash flow through. I agree with several hon. Friends that levelling up is not just about infrastructure; it is about something broader than that. It is about providing opportunity—the opportunity for a person to get on, provide for their family, help lift an entire community, employ people and do the right thing. That is what many people in my community would like to see.
Paul Howell
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important to have some small projects now, some planned projects, and visions for the future? This is a journey that starts now.
Mr Holden
I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. We need to show people that we are getting on with the job. We need to show plans for the future and a real vision for where we want the country to be in a few years’ time. That brings me to projects in my constituency.
We have had the news in the past few weeks that our local community hospital is to be redone. We are campaigning for future infrastructure projects, particularly in transport, such as the A68 project, on which I am working with hon. Members from across the country. There is a project to transform the Derwent walk into a public transport link with cycling and walking alongside. There are also improved cycling, walking and bus routes in Weardale, Crook and Willington in my constituency. We must not forget the cultural infrastructure, which also helps support communities. I will be campaigning for a new swimming bath for Crook; the Labour council closed down and demolished the old one within a few weeks in 2012.
Most importantly, I will reflect what my hon. Friend the Member for Bury South (Christian Wakeford) said about education. In the past few weeks, I was really glad to see the removal of the age cap of 23 on the entitlement to a first level 3 qualification, and to see other moves to do with post-qualification applications to university. That is a direction we need to head in. This is not about one thing, and not just about infrastructure; it is about our collective approach in the long term.
Robbie Moore (Keighley) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Damien Moore) for securing this debate. I want to touch on the concept of levelling up, which all of us have spoken about, and to give some thought to what it actually means. We have all talked about it and many of us stood on a manifesto to deliver it. But what does it actually mean to somebody on the ground? In my constituency of Keighley, it very much refers to that forgotten-about place that many of us have referred to. For far too long, Keighley and Ilkley have sat in the shadows of Leeds and Bradford. Levelling up is about ensuring that places like Keighley get the economic recognition they deserve, ensuring that proper, sound, well-thought-through investment is put right into the hearts of these places. I mean tangible investment in projects that will make a real difference to everyday lives, and not just glorified, piecemeal projects, but projects that will have a real impact. For me, the levelling-up agenda is about investment in society and communities—in our healthcare, in our schools, in delivering homes and, of course, in cutting crime, which is a huge consideration in my constituency.
Levelling up is also about infrastructure. When I say infrastructure, I mean a whole range of products. In the summer, the Prime Minister himself said that we need to build, build, build, and build back better. Those sound like great soundbites, but it is exactly what we need to do. I want to talk about projects in my constituency. My hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Sara Britcliffe) talked about the Skipton to Colne railway, which I support hugely. We need to get that delivered, and to connect Yorkshire to Lancashire, so that my constituents can get across to Manchester much quicker, and hers can get across to Leeds.
Levelling up is about ensuring that we connect Northern Powerhouse Rail and the cross-Pennine route. Also, it is about ensuring that the towns fund’s kick-start of up to £25 million is really delivered, so that, if we use those public funds wisely, we can crystallise private investment. When I go around my constituency, business after business tells me that they want to grow and expand. We need to start thinking about how we can use public money wisely to remove restrictive barriers and enable the wise use of private investment on infrastructure, and how we can revitalise business rate structures.
There is one small project I would like to push the Minister to consider in the short time I have: a pedestrian bridge across a dual carriageway connecting Silsden and Steeton in my constituency. This has been talked about for nearly seven years; I must see it delivered in my time.
To conclude, levelling up is much more than a slogan. It is about transforming the lives of people right across the country, not just in the north. I am certainly committed to doing that in my constituency. I will continue to lobby on behalf of all of my residents.
Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)
I feel a bit of an intruder, because Stoke-on-Trent might geographically be placed in the west midlands, at the very tip of the midlands engine, but we very much see ourselves as the gatekeepers to the northern powerhouse. For too long, Stoke-on-Trent has been forgotten, stuck between Manchester and Birmingham, where money is being poured in, left, right and centre. Stoke-on-Trent is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingdom, but is sadly in the bottom 20% for social mobility and for level 3 and 4 qualification take-up. The average house price is £114,000. It is a city with plenty of brownfield sites, but, sadly, buildings are rotting away, because the negative land value means that, to developers, it is not worth investing.
When it comes to infrastructure, I concur with many of the comments made today. People are wary of “shiny” and “new” in our area, because they have seen vanity projects being built time and again which have resulted in no real, drastic change in their personal circumstances. Therefore, I am not asking the Minister from the Treasury to just build lots of shiny stuff; what I am asking for is a real focus on how we spend that money.
I build on the superb comments from my hon. Friends the Members for Bury South (Christian Wakeford), for Bury North (James Daly), and for North West Durham (Mr Holden), who talked about education. I have too many schools in Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke that are simply not hitting the mark. They are producing results that ensure that children stay trapped in a cycle of low-skilled, low-wage jobs. Education means free school investment. It also means ensuring that adult education—the lifetime skills guarantee—is applied in areas such as Stoke-on-Trent, and ensuring the local college has the funding to deliver. People may not be aware of this, but 12% of my workforce have no formal qualifications—8% higher than the national average.
It also means homes—not just affordable homes, because as I said earlier, Stoke-on-Trent has those. What we need are the four and five-bed executive homes that can attract commuters to Manchester and Birmingham to the area, to help bring regeneration and wealth. However, that also means giving us money, as the Government did at the Royal Doulton site, where we knocked down the empty factory and managed to build over 200 brand new homes, each of which will have gigabit installed directly—pure gigabit, not the stuff that BT and others claim that they are inserting into the network grid.
We need to ensure improved transport. That means finally giving Stoke the transforming cities fund money that it truly deserves. It means ensuring the Stoke to Leek line that connects North Staffordshire is delivered, and ensuring that Superbus, which has been paused due to covid, is reopened, so we can have better and affordable bus routes, and a big push on the hydrogen bus idea in Stoke. The towns fund is an example of how this Government have been superb in ensuring that areas have a chance to level up, and to take ownership of what they want to see. Kidsgrove’s bid is in with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, and I am hoping we get our full £25 million ask.
The town of Tunstall was previously stuck in the city of Stoke-on-Trent, which meant it was excluded from the last round of the scheme. Stoke is a collection of six towns. Tunstall should not have to miss out. Burslem has the greatest number of closed high street shops in the UK; it is the perfect place for the Government to lead a pilot on how to repurpose and regenerate a high street with town housing, flats, office space and a mixture of small retail and restaurants—and, hopefully, some pubs, when we exit this lockdown. I hope the Government will add my shopping list to the long list of personal requests that I am sure the Minister has been making, and that they will ensure levelling up is a real opportunity for everyone we serve.
James Gray (in the Chair)
Before I call the next speaker, I congratulate colleagues on their self-restraint: we got 14 in Back-Bench speeches in the time available to us, which demonstrates that self-restraint works better than formal time limits.
Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate the hon. Member for Southport (Damien Moore) on securing this important debate. I heard one or two murmurs as I came into the Committee this morning: “What on earth is an SNP member for the north-east of Scotland doing intruding on a debate like this?” Let me put hon. Members’ minds at rest: it is not to provoke a regeneration of the Wars of the Roses. I think some Members have been quite capable of stirring that up all by themselves, and I take no sides; I am strictly neutral in that. However, it quite simple for me: whether Scotland is inside the UK, as everybody else in this room presumably hopes, or outside the UK, as I earnestly hope it will be, the infrastructure—particularly the transport infrastructure—in the north of England matters to us as well. There are extensive business and family connections between Scotland and the north of England—or not-the-north-of-England, depending on whether we include Stoke-on-Trent, and where we draw the demarcation.
The north of England lies between us and markets in the south of England, as well as crucial markets in Europe, so it matters to us that the A1 is so poor after Berwick, and between Berwick and Newcastle. It matters to us that the A66 between Penrith and Scotch Corner, which gives access to Yorkshire and the east midlands, should be accessible in all weathers. In that respect, what matters to people in Scotland probably matters as much to the communities all along those corridors. Particularly important is the discussion about what goes where, to what timescale and, crucially—as noted by the hon. Members for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) and for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury), who is no longer in his place—who gets to decide. It is not just about existing infrastructure; future infrastructure in Scotland is also affected by what is or is not decided for the north of England and the rest of the UK.
Let me return to the subject of HS2. It is clear that there are diverse views in the governing party on the merits or otherwise of HS2, perhaps governed in some part by how close MPs are likely to be to a station on the route that is chosen. For us in Scotland, however, it is quite simple: there is a real benefit in relation to climate. If we can get the journey from Edinburgh, Glasgow and other parts of central Scotland to London below four hours, that is an absolute game changer. Nobody would fly, unless they were going somewhere close to the airport. If somebody is going from central Scotland to central London, of course they would take a high-speed train. It is a game changer.
Alec Shelbrooke
I have a genuine question. The hon. Gentleman will have heard the speculation about a link between Northern Ireland and Scotland, and what strikes me is the ability to build a high-speed railway between Belfast and Glasgow, and then down the west coast to London. I am genuinely interested in the hon. Gentleman’s thoughts on that.
Richard Thomson
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Not so much in Scottish politics, but certainly in Northern Irish politics, it is a bit of a standing joke that whenever a bauble needs to be dangled, there is talk of a bridge between Scotland and Northern Ireland. There are tremendous technical challenges with that going over Beaufort’s dyke, which is exceptionally deep and full of munitions. Technically, it would be extraordinarily challenging. However the Green Book formula works out, I do not think we will ever see a benefit-cost ratio that will make such a project work, but I am content to let the accountants and number crunchers work that one out. Certainly, in theory, if we could create better connections in the south-west of Scotland and link Northern Ireland to Scotland and elsewhere, I am all in favour of that.
On HS2, if the line is to split either side of the Pennines, it is pretty important to us in Scotland to know on which side of the Pennines it will go. If it goes both sides, logically it is going to head north more slowly than it would otherwise. That matters, because if it goes by Carlisle, we would build a high-speed rail network in Scotland between Glasgow, Edinburgh and Carlisle. If it goes up through Newcastle, we would link Glasgow to Edinburgh and Berwick, and go down that way. Frankly, there is no point spending any money until there is absolute certainty about which way the line will go. That affects the rest of Scotland, because we would be building new infrastructure that would free up train paths capacity and give line speed improvements for the rest of the rail network in Scotland to get into Edinburgh and Glasgow, so the decisions that are or are not taken also matter to us.
There is little doubt that if HS2 had started in Scotland to go to London, rather than t’other way about, it would have happened a great deal faster than it now appears to be happening. That sums up the problem. We can change the formulas in the Treasury’s Green Book, but changing attitudes is another matter entirely. The Prime Minister once notoriously stated that a pound spent in Croydon was worth more than a pound spent in Strathclyde, and I think we can take it that such an attitude also prevails for Merseyside, Manchester and Tyneside. It is quite an embedded mindset in the British Government class—I do not think it is as rare as some hon. Members might wish to think. We will hear later today about the Chancellor’s spending plans and see what transpires.
My final observation is that since 1999, under various shades of political administration, Scottish Governments—whether the Lib-Lab coalition, minority SNP or majority SNP—have moved on investment in Scotland considerably better than in the bad old days of rule from the Scotland Office and Westminster. That is why it is crucial where decisions are taken and why devolution ought to be such an important part of this debate for the north of England.
The UK Internal Market Bill is set to encroach on many of Holyrood’s powers, including the power to set infrastructure spending. Under the guise of “taking back control”, the UK Government are in many respects actually taking away control, and I know it is not just people in my party who regret that that is the case. London clearly receives 60% more per head in capital expenditure than the north-east of England, and 50% more than the north-west. Ultimately, that dial needs to be shifted.
In conclusion, I strongly suspect that it will take a great deal more than today’s announcement to shift that decades-old structural imbalance in where power really lies in the UK, because that power imbalance has roots in politics and the electoral system, and it goes well beyond simple allocations of public expenditure.
Abena Oppong-Asare (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)
Thank you for the opportunity to speak in this debate, Mr Gray. The hon. Member for Southport (Damien Moore) has secured a timely debate. He mentioned the Government’s 10-point plan and nuclear investment opportunities to unleash potential. That was echoed by the hon. Member for Wakefield (Imran Ahmad Khan).
We know that the Chancellor is expected to set out infrastructure spending commitments in his comprehensive spending review today. Given that the north of England has been disproportionately impacted by covid-19 in health and economics, according to the report by the Northern Health Science Alliance, any investment in that region is timely and welcome. We are concerned about the disproportionate economic consequences of covid-19, which make the Chancellor’s announcements on infrastructure spending so important today. Therefore, as shadow Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, I must ensure that the Government’s actions are closely scrutinised. The north needs real investment, not just empty promises and half-finished projects.
The hon. Member for Southport mentioned that there was a lack of Labour Members at this debate. A similar debate was held on 11 November, led by my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis), on support for the economy in the north of England. A number of my colleagues have been vocal on this issue but are unable to attend this debate due to covid-19.
To be the bearer of bad news, the Conservative Government have failed to deliver their promise to deliver infrastructure investment. The right hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) said that she had asked for local investment for local transport, where people were waiting two hours for a train and it was hard to find a bus route. She also mentioned digital infrastructure. My hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) talked about closing the economic divide, dealing with economic inequality and powering up the north, as well as the unfinished business of devolution.
The right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) talked about short, medium and long-term projects, which must be transformational. The hon. Member for Leigh (James Grundy) talked about congestion and air quality—I know that he was also at the last debate. He spoke about connecting his constituency to Greater Manchester. I agree with him that the time for talking needs to stop.
Six years on from the announcement of Northern Powerhouse Rail, that line has still not been approved, let alone started. Transport for the North’s website states that the project will be the region’s single biggest transport investment since the industrial revolution. Far from something to brag about, that is a damning reflection of the Government’s commitment to investing in the north.
Abena Oppong-Asare
I am afraid that I will not, as time is short. I ask the Minister to tell me when the northern regional economy will be taken more seriously. When will the Government deliver investment in projects in line with other regions of the UK?
When it comes to delivering projects, the Prime Minister’s portfolio is one of failure. The failed London garden bridge project cost the taxpayer £53 million. The Olympic orbit tower, which was forecast to make a profit of £1.2 million in its business plan, has produced a debt of £13 million, which grows by £700,000 every year. We have seen a theme of failed projects played out in the regions of the UK. In the west midlands, people are still waiting for the Midland Metropolitan University Hospital, which will eventually open four years too late and cost taxpayers £700 million. The Royal Liverpool Hospital is more than five years late and projected costs are now expected to reach £1.063 billion after the collapse of outsourcing giant Carillion, and the taxpayer is still on the hook for £739 million of the overall figure.
I sincerely hope that, for people living in the north of England, the Government’s pledge to level up is successful, but I believe it would be much more fruitful to focus on ongoing projects, a point that has been made by other hon. Members in this debate. That would enable the Government to draw on the great research and infrastructure that is already available in the north and to consult with people living in the region on what they need to see from the Government, rather than announcing a new shopping list of proposals that are unlikely to come to fruition and that will not benefit those who are most in need.
Abena Oppong-Asare
I am afraid that I am unable to.
We know that people living in the north of England have suffered the worst impact on their mental wellbeing, are more likely to have lost their jobs due to covid and have had much higher rates of covid-19 fatalities. The north needs social, economic and health recovery from covid-19 that will address the immediate issues. Labour has consistently called for support for mental wellbeing, including a schools recovery curriculum. We have called for investment in local authorities so that they can provide services that locals are proud of. We need to see the return of youth clubs, libraries open seven days a week, access to leisure facilities and community hubs.
With regard to creating sustainable, high-quality jobs, we have already done the work for the Government and set out to create 400,000 clean, green jobs across the country over the next 18 months. The plan requires three simple steps. If the Government knuckle down and agree to work with MPs across the House, businesses big and small and members of the public, we will be able to create not only a sustainable economy, but a sustainable future for our planet.
We need to recover jobs, with investment and co-ordination to secure up to 400,000 additional good green jobs. We need to retrain workers—something I think we all agree on—and equip them with the skills needed to deploy the green technologies of the future. We also need to rebuild businesses, with a stronger social contract between Government and businesses to tackle the climate crisis and ecological deterioration, while promoting prosperity and employment. I urge the Minister to recommend this plan to the Chancellor and to ensure that yet more money is not thrown at projects that are unlikely ever to be completed.
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Jesse Norman)
What a delight it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate you, if I may, on the extremely elegant and deft way in which you have managed the Back-Bench contributions to this debate, with a lightness of touch that has brought great joy to everyone. It has been a good-natured debate, and I thank everyone for the comments, questions and arguments that they have put.
I would particularly like to single out, on behalf of colleagues, my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Damien Moore) for hosting and calling this debate and for the fact that, in doing so, he has brilliantly selected a day on which the Chancellor himself will be stepping forward with some answers to the specific questions that he is putting. I must say that, as an example of influence in the Chamber, I do not think that is to be bettered; I am very impressed indeed that someone of such tender years in the Chamber and in this Parliament should be able to bring about such a state of affairs, so I congratulate him on that very much indeed.
I also congratulate colleagues across the House on the astonishing fiscal rectitude that they have shown, by and large. At this point, we are normally into the tens of billions in requests from my thrifty Conservative colleagues, as well as from those in other parties, so I am very grateful that they have managed to restrain their appetite—possibly because they are looking forward so intently to the festivities this afternoon.
As my hon. Friends and colleagues across the House will know, I am responding because I am the Minister responsible for the national infrastructure strategy, the National Infrastructure Commission and the Infrastructure Projects Authority. If I may, I will come to many of the comments that were raised and talk a little bit about not just the what, but the how of infrastructure, because that has been well flagged in today’s debate.
I do not think that it needs to be stated too often, and it should not be forgotten, that the desire to invest for the long term and to level up this country is the driving force of this Administration. It is an absolutely central part of what the Prime Minister, the Cabinet and colleagues across the Government stand for. The advent of this pandemic virus has only strengthened and increased the appetite to push forward, and the urgency of that mission. To that, the quality of our infrastructure and the speed of its delivery are absolutely essential.
If I may, I will just rewind a little bit. Colleagues will recall that in the March Budget we announced historic increases in capital spending, setting out plans for more than half a trillion pounds of investment over the next few years. It is important to remember that that investment is not just public investment; it is also private investment. It is very easy to forget the central importance of private investment. This country—through the quality of its regulation, its rule of law, its openness, its ability to set up a business, its accessibility, its language and its culture—remains extremely attractive to international investment, as a place to put hard-earned cash, and rightly so.
In June, the Government explained how they plan to accelerate the delivery of infrastructure schemes. In July, they said they would be bringing forward £8.6 billion of capital spending, focusing on shovel-ready projects, and this afternoon we have not just the spending review statement, but the publication of the national infrastructure strategy and some ancillary documents around that. That will set out the plans for the ambitious acceleration of investment in our country’s infrastructure and, of course, its relation to the levelling-up agenda. If it does not perfectly address all the questions that my hon. Friend the Member for Southport raised his speech, then that is only because if he had given us a couple more days we would have been able to reshape the thing even more precisely.
Let me also talk a little bit about what has been achieved so far. The hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare), whom I again welcome to her place on the Opposition Front Bench, talked about what has been achieved so far. It is important to flag up what has been achieved, and then we can talk about where we want to go. The first thing I would say is that there is an enormous amount of investment already going into the ground, particularly in the north of England. In his summer economic update, the Chancellor unveiled the great get Britain building fund. Already Mayors and local enterprise partnerships across the north have received some £319 million from the fund, to deliver jobs, skills and infrastructure. That money is pushing forward a range of projects, from the roll-out of electric vehicle charging points in South Yorkshire to a new garden village in Liverpool.
Colleagues will be aware of the towns fund, which is already under way and which, if I may say so, is a great example of collaborative cross-party local engagement, designed to liberate energies, bring forward projects that were not necessarily on local councils’ radar screens and bring them into a coherent, long-term relationship with each other and as part of a single plan for particular towns.
That fund is paying for infrastructure schemes that will unleash the economic potential of smaller communities across the country. It has been rightly said by colleagues that we should not be purely focused on cities. This is a very important aspect of that, and I commend it to them. I am delighted that the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Southport is among the places that are benefiting. We have also accelerated the issuance of some £96 million from the fund, to pay for the roll-out of even more projects that will fuel economic recovery after the coronavirus.
Of course, it is hard to think about infrastructure without thinking about transport. That will continue to be crucial to unlocking the productivity of this country, in particular in the north. That is why we are investing very substantially—indeed, record sums—into improving it. The transforming cities fund has provided city regions across the north, including Greater Manchester, Liverpool and Tees Valley, with over £800 million to make their transport networks even better and greener. At the last Budget, we also announced a £4.2 billion investment across eight city regions, including Greater Manchester, Sheffield and the Tees Valley, for five-year consolidated transport settlements, starting in 2022. In addition, we are spending billions of pounds on upgrading the north’s major strategic road network.
As colleagues will be aware, I negotiated the road investment strategy 2 with the Treasury when I was on the other side of the fence at the Department of Transport, with my hon. Friend—my beloved friend—the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard). In RIS2, we were able to negotiate a substantial investment in roadbuilding on a strategic basis across the country, including a lot of schemes in the north.
That is not just about new roads, but about making our existing road network more effective and ready for electric vehicles and, in due course, autonomous vehicles. That is an important part of the development of our overall infrastructure. Those schemes include dualling the A66 across the Pennines and of the A1 from Morpeth to Ellingham in the north-east, and upgrading the A63 and Castle Street in Hull and the Simister island junction in Greater Manchester.
The same is true for investment in the north’s railways. As colleagues will be aware, we are going to publish an integrated rail plan that looks at the scope, form and phasing of rail investment in the north and the midlands. We will also seek to reverse some of the Beeching cuts of the 1960s, so that we can get more community connections in place.
I spoke earlier about the importance when we invest not just of the what, but of the how, and colleagues were absolutely right to raise that question. I single out the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis), who was right to focus on that. Through the national infrastructure strategy, which we are publishing this afternoon, and through the work that goes on around it, with the National Infrastructure Commission that we set up and the Infrastructure and Projects Authority, we are thinking harder about how to choose, integrate and deliver schemes as best we can and better than any other Government for a long time.
I will give a little example that is close to my heart: the ministerial training programme that I set up for colleagues, who will be pleased to know that it is now in its second phase. We have taken the view that Ministers can benefit, as can senior civil servants and anyone who aspires to be in the senior civil service, from becoming better clients of major projects and better able to ask searching questions about timing, schedule and budget of delivery. That important programme is something that we have put in place. As colleagues will know, we plan to set up a new economic campus in the north of England, with a substantial number of civil servants and people from across the economic parts of Government, to give not just a local presence, but a change of mindset that responds to colleagues’ concerns.
If I may pick up on a couple of other points about the “how?”, colleagues will know that we recently established the northern transport acceleration council, which is designed to get those projects up and running more quickly. We are pressing harder on the devolution agenda—colleagues have rightly flagged that—and have just agreed a devolution deal with West Yorkshire for £1 billion of investment and a directly elected Metro Mayor from May next year. We fully implemented the Sheffield City Region deal, including £900 million of new funding, along with substantial devolved powers over transport, skills and planning. We intend to go further still through the forthcoming devolution and local recovery White Paper.
I am lucky that, thanks to your genius, Mr Gray—
Jesse Norman
—I have a bit of time left to spend talking about the specific comments that have been made, which have been extremely helpful and interesting. My hon. Friend the Member for Southport was absolutely right to encourage us to look at rural areas as well as cities. He painted an almost garden of Eden-like picture of life in Southport, where people stroll airily from flower shows to comedy festivals to air shows, while striking a mean four iron on Royal Birkdale. I thought that an exquisite moment in his speech. He rightly highlighted the importance of railway, the stronger towns fund and the freeports, which he will know we have announced, and from which the north could benefit hugely in this competition.
The hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) is no longer in his place but I thought that he was right to focus on devolution, which I touched on in earlier remarks. The point about the capillaries and arteries of infrastructure was well made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey). My right hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) was absolutely right to focus on the short, medium and long term. As he will know, one of the great unsung heroes of transport policy over the last few years has been Sir Rod Eddington. His report was very much about managing smaller schemes—often enormously important and not to be forgotten—that move people, particularly in suburbs and areas of large volumes of traffic, by rail, road or other means, and it was absolutely right.
My right hon. Friend’s call for a new Rhine system of navigation in the north was optimistic, but I respect the intent and energy behind it. My hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (James Grundy) was right to pick up on light rail. When I was in the Department for Transport, we did a consultation on light rail, which has such great potential. It is extremely inexpensive compared with some of the heavier rail alternatives, and it could be a beautiful new industry for the UK to develop. We have a tremendous amount of relevant skills in the supply chain, and I very much look forward to hearing more about that from colleagues.
Alec Shelbrooke
If my right hon. Friend will indulge me for one second, we have had a good debate and many colleagues have participated. I just want to put on the record that some of our colleagues have been unable to contribute. For example, my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew), who was unable to take part due to his commitments, is equally involved in infrastructure in the north, and his ambitions are there. I just want to get on the record that many colleagues in the north were unable to take part—I am sure the Minister will have responded to them—but they are as important in this conversation as the rest of us.
Jesse Norman
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The unheard voices are as important as the voices in the room. Of course, as he knows, my door remains absolutely open for them at any point, in this debate or otherwise.
My dear friend the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys rightly raised the point about BCRs, which is an important technical point and they should not be abused. There is a certain art and craft to effective valuation assessment. The centre for it across Government is in the Department for Transport rather than in the Treasury. We have a great deal of respect for the work that they do there, although there is a very high level of understanding of industry in the Treasury, in a way that has not always been true. That means we get a better client relationship between the two sides, or a better interaction between the Ministries, the Departments, and the centre.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell) raised the idea of a funding pot for MPs, which I have to say raises all kinds of worries in me. We have been there before in our history some 100 years ago, so I am a little bit nervous about that, but the idea that there should be significant political leadership in making choices, and accountability for that, is absolutely right. I think the stronger accounts fund is rather a good way of tying those elements together, so I do not disagree with him about that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bury South (Christian Wakeford) talked about infrastructure of the mind, as I would call it. Skills are so important, but so easy to forget, and only to focus on transport, and he was absolutely right about that. I commend to him the work of the new university we are setting up in Hereford, which does exactly that. The importance of cultural infrastructure was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Mr Holden). I hope I have said enough to recognise the contributions otherwise made, so rather than overrun, I will allow my dear friend the Member for Southport to close the debate.
Damien Moore
I thank all Members for their spirit of conviviality during today’s debate. It is most refreshing when so many colleagues actually agree with one another. The debate was not confined to colleagues from the north of England, although every debate that involves those colleagues always has a Pennines, Lancashire and Yorkshire dynamic to it. It is important to recognise that infrastructure spending in the north not only benefits our communities, but the communities that they touch. The hon. Member for Gordon (Richard Thomson) mentioned communities in Scotland.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis), a passionate campaigner, talked about the midlands and the northern links that we have there. It is often said that the north was built by people of enterprise, talent and ability, and I am pleased that we have seen so many of those attributes portrayed by the representatives of those areas today.
We await with eager anticipation the spending commitments today. I am sure we are even more eager for the Minister to get over to the Treasury to rewrite the spending commitments for all the things that we have asked for. Nevertheless, the commitments that the Government have to the north are clear and absolute, and I am sure we will be in this Chamber and the main Chamber of the House debating what we want to see for our communities. They are more than projects; this is about people.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered infrastructure spending in the North of England.
NHS Dentistry and Oral Health Inequalities
(4 years ago)
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Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered access to NHS dentistry and oral health inequalities.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I am delighted to have secured this debate on access to dentistry and oral health inequalities. I have spoken about this issue many times in this place, and it is more urgent now than ever. I will shortly turn to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on dentistry in this country and, in particular, on access and oral health inequalities, but first I would like to set the scene a little.
In 2017, I held an Adjournment debate entitled “Access to NHS Dentists”. In that debate, I said:
“Millions of people each and every year are being left without access to an NHS dentist.”—[Official Report, 12 September 2017; Vol. 628, c. 812.]
I urged the Government to get on with dental contract reform and bring forward a coherent strategy to tackle the inadequacies and inequalities in the dental health system. That was three years ago, and of course no one could have foreseen the events of this year, but I am making the point at the outset of this debate that NHS dentistry in this country was already in a sorry state before covid struck. It was therefore extremely vulnerable to what has happened since March, the effects of which have been disastrous. The crisis in access that people were experiencing prior to March has been turbocharged. Solving it now requires the Government to dramatically change their approach to oral health treatment and prevention. In discussing the impact of covid on dentistry, I will focus mainly on England.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is a student of the Old Testament, and she will know Proverbs 25, verse 19:
“Confidence in an unfaithful man in time of trouble is like a broken tooth”.
We are certainly in a time of trouble. It is not for me to call the Prime Minister an unfaithful man—
Barry Gardiner
But the lack of support for dentistry and dental technicians has certainly resulted in a few broken teeth. What does my hon. Friend believe is the single most important thing that the Government can do to support dentistry and the oral health of the nation?
Judith Cummins
The single most important thing that the Government can do is reform the dental health contract with a view to more prevention.
During the initial period of lockdown, between March and June, all routine dental care in England was paused and urgent dental care hubs were set up to provide emergency treatment to patients. That period of closure has clearly led to an enormous backlog of patients requiring treatment. The British Dental Association estimates that in April and May only about 2% of patients were able to access dental care, compared with last year, and that between March and October 19 million appointments were lost. One local Bradford dentist told me:
“Our phones are ringing hot with new patients who have no dentist access, which has certainly been made worse by this year’s lockdown. On top of this we are facing significant staffing pressures, due to increased triage requirements and the need to thoroughly clean the practice between patients.”
Just yesterday, I was contacted by one of my constituents who has been trying to get a dental appointment for five months and is living with gum disease and toothache. That is simply unacceptable.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing this debate and for all her campaigning work on dentistry services. In York, it is really challenging to get registered with an NHS dentist, let alone access their services. One of the things that has exacerbated that during the pandemic is access to personal protective equipment for people who are overseeing our oral health. Does my hon. Friend believe, as I do, that oral health has not been seen as an equal partner in the provision of healthcare? We seriously have to address that, including access to PPE.
Judith Cummins
I certainly agree with my hon. Friend about access to PPE and the fact that dentistry is very much seen as the Cinderella service of the NHS.
Clearing the backlog will be a considerable challenge. Even in the best of circumstances it would take years, but unfortunately we are not in the best of circumstances. As people who have tried to get dental appointments since June know, dentists are operating with considerably reduced capacity. About 70% of practices are operating at less than half their pre-pandemic capacity. The primary reason for that is the requirement for a period of fallow time after each appointment to allow any aerosols that may have been produced by treatments such as drilling or even scale and polish to settle, and then for a long deep clean to take place. The fallow period can be for up to one hour.
In October, the number of NHS treatments carried out was a third the level of the year before. In the BDA’s members survey published earlier this month, 87% of dentists in England cited fallow time as a top barrier to increasing patient access. That could be significant reduced. The number of patients seen could be increased by installing high-capacity ventilation equipment. However, the price of such equipment and ventilation is estimated to start at about £10,000, and the cost is considerably more for larger practices with a high number of surgeries.
The British Dental Association members survey shows that the majority of dental practices in England are not currently in a financial position to afford such an outlay for investment. However, the practices least likely to have had the appropriate equipment tend to serve the most deprived communities, and are also the least likely to be able to afford that investment, increasing oral health inequalities further. That vicious cycle of underinvestment in our most deprived communities feeds inequalities in health outcomes.
Scott Mann (North Cornwall) (Con)
I thank the hon. Lady for securing this very important debate. It sounds like Bradford has a similar challenge to Cornwall. We have had a longstanding shortage of provision for NHS dentistry in Cornwall, particularly around recruitment and retention. I had a very constructive meeting with the Minister on this issue recently. Can we work together across the House to put together a programme of work that the Government can adopt to ensure that places such as Bradford and Cornwall get proper NHS provision?
Judith Cummins
Of course, I welcome cross-party work on this. I am vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for dentistry and oral health. I would very much welcome the hon. Member as a member of the APPG, and look forward to sorting out dentistry, including NHS dentistry, once and for all, with a particular view to addressing the difficulties his constituents face.
I ask the Government to step in now and provide capital funding to invest in new ventilation equipment to help to reduce these fallow times. It is simply not good enough to say that dental practices must fund this themselves. We all know how precarious their funding is, and how hard it has been hit by the pandemic. This is a matter of public health, and it is the Government’s responsibility to safeguard and protect that. To avoid that responsibility would be a matter of gross negligence on the Government’s part.
In recent years, neither NHS England nor the Department of Health and Social Care has extended any capital funding to dental practices. The situation we now find ourselves in requires a change of approach. Local dentists have contacted me about the importance of maintaining temporary contract provisions that have been in place during the pandemic. Alan McGlaughlin, a dentist in my constituency, told me:
“Our fear is that NHS England may ask us to achieve more than the notional level of 20% of contracted targets for next year. This will be impossible due to allowable body flow in through the door and the cleaning and fallow periods required. I hope the NHS will allow for this issue and only then can we settle into a positive routine for the care of our patients.”
Can the Minister confirm that this target will not be increased, putting practices under impossible pressure?
Turning to secondary care, the pandemic has had a significant effect on waiting times for dental procedures in hospital. Thousands of children and vulnerable adults who require dental treatment under general anaesthetic are waiting in pain for treatment. There have been countless horrifying reports in recent months. The BBC has reported on a patient who suffered eyesight damage after not receiving treatment for a fractured tooth, which became an abscess. Meanwhile, the Daily Mail has reported the case of a seven-year-old girl who was left in severe pain for months after she was unable to get an appointment. Even before the pandemic, the waiting time for this kind of treatment was around one year. That is set to become significantly worse, given the backlog and reduced operating capacity.
I recently tabled a question asking for how many children planned dental admission to hospital has been suspended or cancelled since the start of the covid-19 outbreak. The Department responded that data was not available in the format requested. I find it simply unbelievable that the Department of Health and Social Care does not hold this information, so perhaps the Minister can answer that question. If she cannot do so today, I would welcome an answer later on.
As well as the pain and suffering that such delays cause patients, including problems eating, speaking and sleeping, they contribute to the impending public health crisis of resistance to antibiotics, as people require multiple courses of antibiotics while waiting for surgery. I understand that eight organisations, including the British Dental Association, Mencap, the Royal College of Surgeons, and the British Society of Paediatric Dentistry, wrote to the Secretary of State about this in mid-September, but have yet to receive a response, so would the Minister ensure that they receive a response as soon as possible?
I have focused on the practical problems that dentists and patients are facing as a result of the pandemic, but I would now like to turn to the effects that this is having on oral health inequalities. The covid pandemic has exacerbated socioeconomic, ethnic and regional inequalities across the country, and will worsen oral health inequalities too. According to the Association of Dental Groups, access to treatments for poorer patients has fallen by 39% over the past 10 years. Regions such as Yorkshire and the Humber have struggled for years with an acute crisis in access to NHS dentistry. I have raised this many times with various public health ministers, and while we have taken some small but important steps to improve things—especially when the hon. Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) was Minister—for which I am very grateful, the situation is still fundamentally inadequate.
Inequalities in access to dentistry inevitably lead to inequalities in oral health outcomes. A child in Yorkshire and the Humber is five times more likely to be admitted to hospital for a tooth extraction than a child in the East of England. In Bradford, 36% of children have tooth decay, compared with just 7% in the best performing area of the country.
Robbie Moore (Keighley) (Con)
I thank the hon. Lady for securing this debate. This has been a big issue for many of my constituents across Keighley and Ilkley, in terms of the outreach programmes that are done by dentists and hospitals, ensuring that those children with tooth decay get the appropriate education about how to treat and look after their teeth. Does she agree that the Government could provide more emphasis on that?
Judith Cummins
I absolutely agree that prevention work is key to solving much of our dental crisis, particularly for children. I am also concerned about the effect of the pandemic on the oral health of vulnerable groups, including pregnant women, people who have been shielding and people with dementia. They are highly unlikely to have received any dental care since March. Inevitably, problems will have built up. In the case of pregnant women, who under normal circumstances would be able to receive treatment for up to 12 months after the birth of their baby, will the Minister outline what provisions are in place to ensure they will be able to receive their NHS dental treatment free of charge despite the backlog in treatment?
Finally, I would like to make a few points about the long-term future of dentistry in this country. Dental practices across England—and with them the very fabric of dental care for millions of people—are facing an existential threat. We are at a crisis point for dentistry. Most British Dental Association members believe they can survive only for 12 months or less in the face of lower patient numbers and higher overheads. The Government could take several immediate steps to protect dental practices and improve oral health outcomes.
First, the Government should look at what immediate financial support can be given to dentists and dental practices. For instance, why are dentists among the only businesses on the high street that continue to pay business rates? Secondly, in terms of access to both primary and secondary care, dentistry is severely limited for the foreseeable future, and emphasis on investment in oral health and prevention is needed now more than ever.
The Government must now commit to investing in preventive schemes that are proven to work. That includes supervised tooth brushing for children, which the Government committed to consult on by the end of 2020. I would welcome the Minister’s assurance that that will still go ahead.
On the topic of prevention, I must mention the dental contract. For some time, there has been widespread, cross-party agreement that the dental contract needs reform. Units of dental activity have always been a poor way to measure meaningful dental health care. Their continued presence in the contract would be a disaster in the present circumstances. Despite the wider challenges the Government are facing, now is the right time to do this. Working with the BDA and others, Government must introduce a new contract that focuses on prevention, supports best patient care and improves access, especially for those who need it most.
I have spoken about the real challenges dentists are facing as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, but the problems in our dental health system reach back far beyond that. The pandemic has shown how fragile the system is and the effect on patients when it collapses. I urge the Government to invest in dentistry, prioritise prevention and work to close the inequalities that I have outlined. Anything less than that will let down the most vulnerable people, who need an NHS dental service that is fit for purpose.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Jo Churchill)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins) on securing this important debate. I know her long-standing and grounded interest, shared by many across the House, in helping individuals access better health care broadly and in particular for their oral health. She has much support, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Scott Mann) showed.
This is a challenge which, as the hon. Lady neatly articulated, has become much worse under the pandemic. I hope to go into more detail about the fact that dentistry has faced specific challenges while delivering what care it has been able to. There are particular long-standing concerns about access to dental treatment in Yorkshire, including the hon. Lady’s area. She gave credit to my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) for the work that he did with her, because flexible commissioning has been operated in that area, and it is agreed that most dentists would prefer to move in that direction. As she said, there are challenges with units of dental activity, and arguably an evolution towards capitation, looking at dentistry in the round, and highlighting prevention would start to address those. The Department, NHS England and NHS Improvement are committed to the growth of access to dental services. There have been a number of actions, and seeing them come to fruition in Yorkshire is helpful in understanding how they might benefit a wider population.
As I said, the pandemic had a significant impact on dentistry. That reduced drastically, as the hon. Lady explained, the number of patients whom dentists can safely see each day. The dental risks were new. At the start of the pandemic we stopped dentistry because of the risk of transmission being much higher, owing to the aerosol-generating procedures used. That applies to extraction, but there is even such a risk in scaling and polishing.
During spring, urgent dental care centres were quite rapidly set up. Up to 635 centres were set up across the country and the remainder of high-street practices were asked to deal with the three As—telephone advice, antibiotics and analgesics. I understand that that was a challenge for patients, but I am sure that the hon. Lady will agree that it was vital to ensure the safety of dentists, dental technicians, nurses and entire teams at the beginning of the pandemic.
Barry Gardiner
It is really good to hear the Minister giving a straight response to the questions raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins). She mentioned dental technicians. Is she as concerned as many of us are that because of the lack of work for them now, people are leaving that employment, and the skills base is being lost in such a way that it will be difficult to cope with the expansion of demand once we move from present circumstances beyond the epidemic?
Jo Churchill
I believe that the workforce, more broadly, is something we must look at properly in the round.
Aerosol-generating procedures present a high risk, as I said, and under initial guidance issued by Public Health England, infection control required that rooms should be rested for up to an hour, as the hon. Member for Bradford South said, to allow the airborne spray to settle. NHS dental practices were allowed to start offering services from 8 June providing that they had appropriate PPE and infection prevention and control measures in place.
In response to the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) I would say that all NHS dentists can access the portal. Registration is voluntary, and 5,500—equating to about 81% of all NHS dentists—have signed up, and 50 million items of personal protective equipment have been dispensed. Making sure that our frontline services have what they require is vital, but the e-portal is being used, and I urge the remaining dentists to sign up.
There are more than 6,000 NHS practices in England that should now be offering face-to-face care, in other than exceptional circumstances. Guidance to practices has made it clear that during the difficult period they should prioritise care for vulnerable groups and then address the delayed routine check-ups; but that remains a challenge.
I recognise the comments that the hon. Member for Bradford South made about expectant mothers; I have asked my officials to look at that at speed, and I will come back to her on that. I am determined that we mitigate widening oral health inequalities as much as we can during this difficult period because, as we have alluded to, we know we had a problem beforehand.
NHSEI is keeping more than 600 urgent dental centres stood up to provide additional capacity in the system. My hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall said he has problems too—and we have them across the country—so making sure that we have that universal coverage with UDCs is important. I must put on record my gratitude to dentists, dental nurses, technicians and all the team, because this has been a really difficult period. Dentists and their staff have kept vital care going through the initial peak, both remotely and in frontline urgent dental centres; many also volunteered to be deployed if needed on the frontline of covid services, and their contribution was very much appreciated.
It is important to ensure that NHS dentists are financially supported as businesses. NHSEI has continued to pay dental contracts in full, minus the running costs for downtime in the initial lockdown, whatever the volume of service to be delivered, and NHS dentists holding NHS contracts have welcomed that support. However, I am mindful that that support was for NHS dentists, and there are challenges in the private sector—and many practices are a mixture of both.
The focus now is on increasing dental provision as fast and as safely as possible. Key work has been done to establish ways to reduce room resting times, and that advice has been made available to the profession. I regularly meet with the chief dental officer, the BDA and other stakeholders, because it is vital that we keep looking at how we can get volumes up. That also means updating the existing dental infection prevention and control guidance, but it does not solve the challenge of delivering dental care at volume through the pandemic. It is an important step forward, but part of the problem is the variability in the estate, as the hon. Member for Bradford South alluded to—the different sizes of practices, where they are located, and so on. NHSEI is in discussion with the profession and is taking clinical advice on the expectations for delivery of services to the end of March.
I met the BDA and other dental stakeholders last week to progress conversations further, and I heard those messages. The challenge is to make sure that we can get the optimal amount of care for our constituents and patients while safely ensuring that dental teams can be protected, but we do need to see increased provision. I am keen to understand what further work can be done to solve the challenges in dentistry and how it faces the pandemic, and I have asked officials and NHSEI to look at potential solutions, including testing, increased use of ventilation and the financing thereof.
I understand the constraints under which the profession is operating and how vital services are. We know without doubt that oral health inequalities are likely to have increased over the period of the pandemic and NHSEI is working hard to ensure that caring for vulnerable communities is prioritised. Poor oral health can have a devastating impact on somebody’s quality of life, particularly a child’s, and dental disease is entirely preventable. In the Green Paper published in 2019 we committed to looking at those barriers, to fluoridation and to consulting on rolling out supervised tooth-brushing schemes in more preschool and primary settings. We are working as hard as we can to make sure we hit the consultation dates, but there are challenges.
Jo Churchill
I am all but out of time.
Sugar plays a crucial role as well, and dental professions are important in healthcare more broadly: diet, spotting oral cancers, diabetes and so on. NHS England is working on a number of key initiatives to reduce inequalities for children, the elderly and the frail. I know that all dentists seek to put prevention at the heart of what they do, recognising that good oral hygiene and diet are the foundation of a lifetime of good oral health.
Through more flexible commissioning, dentists can be partially remunerated for carrying out initiatives such as outreach to schools, care homes and other settings—the homeless are often very compromised with their teeth as well. I hope that provides some reassurance that we are determined to tackle both the long and short-term issues with dental access and the continuing and very concerning inequalities around health, and I am happy to continue this conversation informally.
Question put and agreed to.
Football Governance
(4 years ago)
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Yvonne Fovargue (in the Chair)
I remind hon. Members that there have been some changes to normal practice to support the new call list system and ensure that social distancing can be respected. Members should sanitise their microphones using the cleaning materials provided before they use them, and dispose of the cleaning materials as they leave the room.
Members should speak only from the horseshoe and can speak only if they are on call lists. This applies even if debates are under-subscribed. Members cannot join the debate if they are not on the call list. Members are not expected to remain for the winding-up speeches. I remind hon. Members that there is less of an expectation that they stay for the next two speeches once they have spoken, to help manage the attendance in the room. They may wish to stay beyond their speech, but they should be aware that doing so may prevent Members in seats in the Public Gallery from speaking—I think we are all right with that today.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the future of football governance.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Fovargue. There is nothing new about a debate in this place calling for change in the governance of football; too many of us have been here before. Times have changed, however, and there are many now joining the call for change. Covid has turned a spotlight on the weaknesses in the game’s governance and the inequity of the distribution of the game’s wealth.
Football is our national game: 14.5 million people attended premier league matches in the 2018-19 season, and 18.4 million attended matches in the championship. Premier league clubs generated £3.3 billion in tax revenue to the Government and contributed £7.6 billion to the economy in 2016-17. Throughout the country, football trusts play a role in supporting our communities. They lead in tackling racism, deprivation, sexual discrimination and many other social issues, and I pay tribute to every single community trust for the work they have done to support people in need during the covid epidemic.
The English leagues have a huge international following. Their popularity is the envy of many other countries and of the UEFA. I want to go on record as congratulating the premier league on its success, not just here in the UK, but by becoming a global brand of which we should all be proud. Football is so important to the nation, from local communities to being a major contributor to our national economy, that it is important on so many levels that we do not stand by and watch the pyramid that sustains it crumble.
Despite there being such enormous wealth in the game, that money is not distributed fairly—too much is absorbed at the top in players’ wages. The wage bill for the 14 premier league clubs, aside from the big six, is bigger than that of all the Bundesliga clubs put together. The salary arms war waged is entirely contained within the premier league and those championship clubs that overstretch themselves to try to get to the top division. It is unacceptable that premier league clubs can spend £1.2 billion on transfer fees while English Football League clubs are dangling over the abyss during this crisis. We cannot go on with this casino attitude to football’s success, and the time for regulation has come.
Although the Bury debacle showed that the professional game needs saving from itself, we also need to recognise that the money in football attracts some bad actors. Bury also showed that we must strengthen the rules to empower the authorities to keep corruption out of the game. Corrupt individuals circle around football looking for opportunities to make fast money. These people move in on vulnerable clubs and wait for their moment; when a genuine owner comes along, they tie the club up in knots, become an impediment to progress and then offer the would-be owner a deal to get them out of the way.
The football authorities and the Government must work together to change the rules and to legislate, if necessary, to protect football clubs and other sports clubs from this kind of criminality. The manner in which they operate might be within the law, but let us be clear that this is a fraud to extort money, and it must be stopped before more clubs fall foul of these crooks.
These problems existed before covid, but the pandemic has exposed weaknesses in the governance of the game. The solutions extend far beyond what is needed to respond to the immediate crisis. There is no going back to business as usual, and the Football Association must become the regulator that it is meant to be. I commend the Football Supporters Association and Our Beautiful Game for the work that they have done in this area.
We need an independent review of the governance of the game, in which fans and all other stakeholders can participate. The Premier League has initiated a review on the back of the controversy surrounding Project Big Picture. The Government were wrong to dismiss Project Big Picture out of hand; it raised many issues that we will have to take on board and that are worthy of further consideration. Any future review will have to address issues such as future funding for women’s football, football for people with disabilities and football for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities.
The Premier League has chosen to reject Project Big Picture and conduct a strategic review that will have implications for the whole of football—for the FA, the English Football League, fans and players. Richard Masters, the chief exec of the Premier League, told the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee on 10 November that the 20 clubs on the PL board have agreed the terms of reference for the review. I wonder whether the Minister has seen the terms of reference, because I cannot find them anywhere. We are told that the review will involve fans, the English Football League and the FA. Have they seen the terms of reference? Can the Minister confirm that the Premier League’s review will be voted on by the 20 premier league clubs alone?
The current 20 shareholders of the Premier League find themselves in their respective positions of power by an accident of history, and it does not qualify them to make important decisions on behalf of the future of the game. By the time that the Premier League strategic review is voted on, three of them might have been replaced through relegation. Only five of the original 12 clubs that started the Football League are currently in the premier league. Should they have a say? Should the other seven that started the Football League have a say in the future of the game? Some 49 clubs have been in the premier league, which shows the extent to which the English Football League clubs have a stake in the premier league. Should they have a say in the strategic review?
The short-termism and self-interest that club owners have shown over the years excludes them from making decisions on behalf of the wider football family. I understand that premier league clubs will vote on the recommendations of the Premier League exec. I have nothing against the people in the Premier League exec, but I think they genuinely believe that they know best for the rest of us. They are unable to see the bigger picture, however, because they are blinkered by the business that they have to defend. They see the premier league, but we see football and its entire family. They believe that football is best run by the richest and most powerful clubs in the land, which have demands that go far beyond the domestic game—we would be foolish to ignore that fact.
The financial gains to be had from playing matches across Europe against similar clubs, packed with more of the biggest names in the game, are irresistible. The Champions League will grow in 2024, when the pressure on domestic fixtures will increase. We have already seen youth teams used in domestic cup competitions. We need to plan for that, not bury our heads in the sand and pretend business as usual will work.
In the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee hearing on 10 November, we were told by Greg Clarke, who was still the chair of the FA, that for the big six clubs to break away from the premier league, they would need the approval of not only the FA, but FIFA and UEFA. The threat that comes from the big clubs moving away to some super league is not as great as some people would make it out to be, because they cannot dictate the terms of any future review of the game.
James Daly (Bury North) (Con)
Both MPs for Bury are here, who have very strong views in respect of the Bury situation. When we are talking about governance, we have to decide who the footballing authorities are governing on behalf of. The problem with the Bury situation was that the EFL had no interest in protecting the interests of thousands of Bury fans. It had no interest in the social and economic impact that simply abandoning Bury to the wolves was going to have. We have to think very hard about what the fiduciary or first interest of the regulator is if we are going to have a new regulatory system.
Clive Efford
I do not entirely agree with the hon. Member’s version of the events around Bury. I think the Football League would have taken action against individuals involved in Bury if it had the power to do so. I had long discussions with the Football League about a similar situation that arose at Charlton Athletic, which could have quite seriously gone down the same route as Bury. What the Taylor review really demonstrates—I have a copy of it—is that the rules need changing, so that the EFL has the powers to deal with those individuals. Some of the problems that arose with Bury arose before the individuals that we might have concerns about became involved, so it was a complex situation. This is the sort of thing that needs a fundamental review, so that we can ensure that the regulators of the game have the right powers to be able to deal with these situations.
We also need to consider whether clubs should have to register their accounts, with a projection showing how they will finance themselves for not just the current season, but the future season, including any contracts they have in place, such as players’ wages, during that period. There is a lot that can be done to improve the amount of information that clubs must provide to the regulator so that it has a racing chance of being able to oversee the game, and see where problems might arise.
The situation in the championship, where they spend 107% of their turnover on players’ wages, is ridiculous. That clearly needs regulating. It is driven, to some degree, by clubs that come from the premier league and have the solidarity money. However, the fact remains that to get into the premier league, some clubs are running huge risks, and we do not have the power in the regulations at the moment to prevent that from happening.
These changes have been highlighted by the Taylor review into Bury and things that have happened to other clubs, which shows that this is an area of regulation that needs serious looking into and needs change. I know how the EFL struggled to deal with the situation at Charlton Athletic, and it was on the side of the club all throughout that process, in my opinion.
The Football Supporters Association manifesto for change, “Saving the Beautiful Game”, the Premier League’s strategic review, the Taylor review into Bury and Project Big Picture—albeit that some people oppose some of the ideas in it—all highlighted one undeniable truth: that reform is necessary. Given all the competing interests that there are in this subject, the suggestion of an independent panel to take on the task of resetting the governance of the game is very attractive. The FA clearly needs fundamental reform, and the FA Council itself has passed a motion that commends the work of the Football Supporters Association and its manifesto for change.
The opportunity is there to bring about change in the governance of the game in this country. If the Government do not act, I suspect there is a Back Bencher in this room who will bring a Bill before Parliament to bring about that change. The Government can either be dragged along on the coat-tails of a private Member’s Bill, or they can lead the charge for change.
It is no longer acceptable to allow the Premier League to dominate the game in the way that it currently does. The Premier League has consistently and throughout this covid crisis shown that it is incapable of looking at the bigger picture, without looking first to protect its own interests. The time for change has come, and I hope the Government will support that call, get on board and help lead that change.
Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairwomanship, Ms Fovargue. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) for securing this debate. Although I was born and grew up in the west midlands, my family, my friends and now my social media followers will know that I am a die-hard Liverpool fan. I have my dad to thank for that. That means that I know what it is like to care about the club and to go through the highs and, of course, the lows. While I am a Liverpool fan and I bleed red, I am also very proud to represent thousands of passionate Sky Blues fans, I am here today for them.
Coventry City has a long, loud and proud history. They were FA cup winners in 1987 and an inaugural member of the premier league. Following some difficult years, the club is again on the rise, having been crowned league one champions last season and now competing in the championship once again.
However, the club is also an important example of the need for fans to have a greater say in the running of their clubs. Although the club was initiating the plans to build a new, modern stadium at the turn of the millennium, its financial position meant that it did not own the newly built Ricoh Arena. That led to the club playing home matches at Sixfields Stadium—a 70-mile round trip to Northampton—in the 2013-14 season, before returning to the Ricoh the following season, thanks to a fantastic campaign led by supporters and the local paper, the Coventry Telegraph.
The club was once again forced to play home matches outside of Coventry in 2019, this time at St Andrew’s in Birmingham—a 38-mile round trip from the city. That is where the club plays its home matches now. Fans are forced to travel out of the city to watch their club. For them, it is an absurd, ridiculous and, frankly, disgraceful situation. The solution is simple. Coventry City football club should be playing football in the city of Coventry. Since being elected, I have been determined to do everything I can to help resolve this situation.
That is not the only issue affecting the club. The financial hit of the pandemic and the restrictions has been severe for football clubs across the country, including Coventry. The sport winter survival package announced last week failed to provide any support for the English Football League. As the Sky Blues chief executive, Dave Boddy, said this week, that puts the national sport at severe risk. He has written to the Prime Minister to say that the club, along with all English Football League clubs, has been hung out to dry by the Government. While premier league clubs have the wealth to weather the storm, and while there is hope that the Government will bail out the English Football League, clubs should not be in this position of financial insecurity.
There have to be guarantees and financial support for all of our clubs to survive. None of them should be at risk, and it should not be sink or swim. A football club is more than a business: it is part of the community, and for many people it is part of the social fabric that ties us together. That is why I wrote to the Secretary of State calling for this financial support.
The financial troubles of the English Football League clubs is part of a bigger problem and a bigger story. That story is about how the beautiful game has become divided between very wealthy clubs, brought up by billionaires and often used as public relations to sanitise their public image, and poorer clubs that struggle to survive and that often face collapse, as we have seen with Bury and Bolton.
Our football clubs are too important to be left in the hands of the likes of Mike Ashley and other bad owners, and too important to be at risk of financial collapse. I call on the Government to step in and ensure that Coventry City is given financial support to weather the storm, but I also call for more far-reaching reforms. Clubs should be run in the interests of the people who sustain them, who watch them week in, week out, who stick with them when times are good and also when they are not. They should be run for their fans.
I call on the Government to give fans control and a say in how their clubs are run, to give accredited supporters’ trusts representation on club boards, and to promote fan ownership models, because that is ultimately the only way the beautiful game will work for the people who love it the most. We must put control in the hands of fans, not of the wealthy few who seek only to enjoy its spoils.
Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana), and the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford), who I will call my hon. Friend from our time working on the Select Committee together.
It is 10 years since, as a newly elected Member of Parliament and a new member of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, I attended a Westminster Hall debate on football governance in the wake of the financial collapse of a number of big clubs. The room was packed, and on the basis of the tenets discussed in the debate and the impassioned speeches given, the then Chair of the Select Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), initiated the inquiry into football governance that reported in 2011 and then again in 2013. During my time as Chair of the Select Committee, we looked at football governance in the context of player welfare in the case of Eni Aluko’s complaint against the Football Association. We also looked at the collapse of Bury football club just before the general election last year. The debate in this place has been running for many years, and remains unresolved.
We should be clear why we have this complaint about football governance and what it is that we are seeking to reform when we talk about improving the governance of the game. We want clubs to be financially sustainable because they are community assets. They temporarily belong to a businessman or an owner, but then someone else will acquire them. Most of the clubs have been going for more than 100 years; they have survived two world wars, the great depression and every crisis this country has faced in that time, and they have kept on going throughout, at the centre of their communities.
We want to ensure that fans have a voice in the way that their game is run. We want to ensure that player welfare is central to the administration of the game and that there are good systems of redress and complaints processes. One thing we learned from Eni Aluko’s case against the Football Association was that there were no proper processes for someone making a complaint of unfair treatment against the Football Association. We want to respect the fact that these are community assets. Their importance to the community goes far beyond putting on matches on match days. They are involved in all sorts of community support through player development, community welfare, adult education and training, and they are incredibly valuable to the communities they serve. That is what we are trying to preserve.
Why is the game is so badly run? It is because it is so fractured. We believe that the Football Association is the national governing body of the sport, but unlike in almost any other sport, in football the national governing body is not the financially dominant player in this country. In most sports, it is the national governing body and the revenue it gets from the England national team that provide the bulk of the revenue that that sport enjoys. In football however, it is the Premier League.
When we talk about the football family, as the Minister and the Secretary of State often do, it is from a belief that these are a community of interrelated clubs; they play competitions against each other but all ultimately sit under the Football Association, so they must be interlinked. In fact, they are not: the Premier League has its own set of rules, the Football League has its own set of rules, and the FA takes responsibility for the National League. They all have their own rules and procedures, and they are run in their own way.
The revenue from broadcasting is negotiated separately by the Premier League and the Football League—it was a bad decision that the Football League made many years ago to do that, but nevertheless, that is the case. Clubs in the Premier League, particularly in the lower part of the league, consider that they are competing against clubs in the Championship, particularly clubs that might get promoted and take their place. That is why it is so difficult to get a financial settlement for football from football during the covid crisis. Football does not behave like a family. Football behaves as different entities competing against each other.
In a typical season, a Premier League club will play under Premier League rules in the Premier League, under FA rules in the FA cup and under Football League rules in the League cup, and will probably also hold a UEFA licence in case it is in or wishes to qualify for UEFA competitions. All have their own different rules and procedures. No one is bringing it together and no one is ultimately responsible.
There are certain rules that are put in place to try to ensure that clubs are run sustainably, but whenever there is a crisis, we see how ineffective those rules are. The case of Bury football club and other clubs demonstrates that. If the clubs were made to trade within the rules of the league they play in, most clubs would not go bust. The fact is that they do not do that, because no one checks. There is no requirement to produce accounts in real time; the Football Association and the Football League do not have the ability to inspect and audit the clubs to ensure they are not overspending on salaries and that they are being run in a financially sustainable way. When there is a problem, there is no regulator to step in and say, “That club is being run in an unsustainable way, in breach of the rules, and we are going to intervene to put it back on track.” The club is allowed to be run in a bad way, often by a bad owner, until such point as it goes bust. The role of the league is to then make sure that if the club does not come out of administration, that club is suitably punished. In cases such as Bury football club, the first cry of the fans is always, “Why didn’t someone intervene earlier?” The fact is that there is no body that has the power and the authority to do that.
Many times people pray in aid an owners and directors test, to keep bad owners out of the game and out of clubs. The fact is that there is really no such test. That was demonstrated by Massimo Cellino, a convicted fraudster in Italy whose conviction was considered to be spent under UK company law. The Football League had no more right to stop him being a director of the club than they had to stop him being a director of any company under UK company law. There is no special test, but even if there were, the Football League does not have the resources to enforce it. In the case of Bury when it was in the Football League, the last owner took over the club without having to demonstrate proof of funds or being subjected to any test at all.
Why are things allowed to be this bad? It is principally because there is no national governing body or regulator overseeing all these rule books and how they are enforced, so the clubs effectively do it themselves. The Premier League is run by the 20 clubs in the Premier League, plus the League itself, which has one share. They make decisions collectively, without the involvement of the Football Association. The Football League is run in the same way, by the 72 chairmen of the clubs. They are less interested in intervening to help each other than they are in competing against each other. They are run in that way, which is unsustainable. No one is ultimately in control, which is why the rules do not get enforced properly.
There is a strong argument that we should have a regulator with statutory powers—one that has the right to insist on access to financial records to make sure clubs are playing within the rules, as Ofcom has when broadcasting licences are issued. It would have a discretionary power to tell an owner who cannot demonstrate proof of funds, or who is not suitable or credible, that they cannot take over a club.
We have called for that before. The fan-led review, which was in our manifesto and which the Government are committed to, should give a view on whether we have an independent regulator with statutory powers at the centre of the game, even if all that regulator does is make sure that the leagues properly enforce their own rules and have access to clubs’ finances to make sure they are doing that.
Some people say, “Well, you can’t have a statutory regulator, because FIFA rules don’t allow it,” but that is not true. In 2015, the FIFA rules allowed the Spanish Government to legislate to say that Barcelona and Real Madrid could not sell their TV rights separately. In France, the country of the current world football champions, the national governing body is a statutory body, effectively given a licence by the French Government to carry out its responsibilities. In Germany there are rules on club ownership that require 50% plus 1% to be owned by the fans and the community. All clubs are licenced by the German football league, which can withdraw the licence if the club is trading in breach of the rules. Other countries do this already, so there is no reason under FIFA rules why we would be sanctioned if we created a regulator with statutory powers. I believe that is what we should be looking at in this review.
The Government have a great deal of leverage at the moment because football needs their help. There is still no deal between the Premier League and the Football League to provide financial support for clubs. As many Members know, the Football League has warned that clubs will go bust. I know the Minister and his colleagues say that the Premier League has guaranteed to bail out clubs that go bust, but at the moment there is not enough money available to do that. Indeed, the tax liabilities of the Football League clubs are now around £100 million owed to the Treasury, so the Government already have skin in the game. They are owed money, as are other people.
The Government are in a position where, if they were to put money on the table alongside money from the Football League, they could do so with strings attached. They could demand reform, such as proper financial accountability overseen by an independent regulatory body. That should be at the heart of the proposal considered in the fan-led review, and it is what football needs now. Rather than having a series of warring competitors, competing and fighting against each, we would have a structure with a proper governing body at its heart that has power to take action against clubs that are being run badly and unsustainably. The covid-19 crisis has challenged many aspects of our life and exposed the systemic weaknesses in the governance of football in this country. We now have the opportunity to put that right.
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Fovargue. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) for bringing this debate. As he said, football is our national game. We invented the modern sport of football, and it is popular around the globe with millions of people watching.
Despite covid-19, the Premier League remains in a strong position. Those running the Premier League have managed to generate previously unthinkable levels of income through commercial deals. Yet much of that money leaks out of the game, to agents or, more pertinently for this debate, to owners. Much of the money washing through the game does not get reinvested in it. Although we have had some £600 million invested in grassroots football over the past couple of decades, thanks to the Football Association and the Premier League, that is less than premier league clubs spend in one transfer window. While my constituency has benefited, with great new facilities at Neston High School and the Vauxhall Sports Club, which, for the record, I occasionally play on when circumstances allow, there is still a long way to go. Beyond that investment, we have too many second-rate pitches, which are rendered unusable by a day or two of heavy rain. Our grassroots facilities still compare unfavourably with those in top footballing nations. Only one in three of our grass pitches are of adequate quality. We only have half the number of 3G pitches that Germany has.
We know the pressures local authorities are under to balance the books. There is little left for discretionary spending on improving sporting facilities, which means that pitches are often left with poor drainage, resulting in some areas of the pitch having more mud than grass, and little or nothing in the way of changing facilities. In many ways, the pitches of today are worse than the ones I played on as a child. More of the money in the game needs to reach the grassroots level.
The money does not reach the fans either. It does not manifest in cheaper entrance tickets or support for other clubs. One only needs to look at my team, Manchester United, to see where a lot of the money goes. Since they took over in 2005, using money to buy the club that they subsequently attached to it as a debt, the Glazers have taken over £1 billion out of that club in dividend interest and finance costs. If ownership models are to be reformed, I would like to see that model of ownership banished for ever. That £1 billion did not have to leave the game. Perhaps some of the struggling clubs we have discussed would have survived if the money had been more equitably distributed.
We need to think about the wider health of the game. A few clubs at the top are getting richer and richer, or, as in the case of my club, the owners are getting richer and richer, but at the other end we hear of clubs that are struggling just to survive day to day.
James Daly
Does the hon. Gentleman think there is a strong case for financially powerful and sustainable clubs, such as Manchester United, taking a charitable view with neighbouring clubs that are struggling financially and need direct help? Bury is approximately half an hour from Old Trafford. Does he think we should put in place mechanisms for premier league clubs to help clubs in financial difficulties lower down the pyramid, especially if they are geographically close and have other links?
Justin Madders
There is nothing to prevent that from happening now. Manchester United’s reserve games used to be played at Gigg Lane, providing a financial benefit for the club. I have been persuaded that we need to formalise this help, because I am concerned about some of the strings attached to the recent discussions on support for league clubs. I think the inequality of distribution of money has highlighted clearly why the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee said earlier this year that the current business model for football is unsustainable.
As the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) highlighted, the governance of football in this country is unlike any other. The financial muscle of the Premier League, which has an income 12 times that of the FA, distorts everything else. The financial power it has must be used more widely for the greater good. Recent developments suggest that the Premier League understands that and recognises it has a financial responsibility to the rest of the game. However, I hope I will be forgiven for being a little cynical about Project Big Picture and what it really meant.
The extra cash for Project Big Picture would have been welcome in the short to medium term, but the strings attached to it and the further concentration of power that were part of the deal could only, I think, come with a huge health warning. What was being proposed would have baked in an uneven playing field, because the price of that extra cash was preferential votes for longer serving clubs, thereby ensuring that the interests of football as a whole would forever be dictated to by the biggest clubs. The proposals would have meant a reduction in the size of the Premier League, and so naturally less opportunity for promotion to it. The league cup and community shield would also have been cancelled. Premier League clubs would have been playing fewer games overall—except that they probably would not have been.
The reduction in the number of fixtures might have been designed not to ensure that elite athletes in the Premier League got extra rest between games, but to pave the way for a European super-league that, in the long run, would hoover up all the power, all the attention and all the money. My hon. Friend the Member for Eltham said that it would not be easy to establish such a super-league, but in the last 25 years we have seen enough in football to know that, in the end, money talks. The Premier League clubs would have got their way.
I fear that the proposed change in voting rights would ultimately have meant that the domestic game would have become subservient to the interests of the 20 or so clubs that would have been part of the European super-league. Entry to that super-league would, of course, be by invitation only. The massive financial imbalance that already ensures that the biggest clubs tend to participate in the champions league each year would also have had an additional lock on it to make sure that the biggest clubs could never fall out of it. I could, of course, be wrong about that. The Premier League could offer the support without any strings attached. Discussions are ongoing so let us see what happens.
There is no doubt that a new strategic review is under way, and that may result in some of the benefits without some of the downsides. The concern highlighted in the debate demonstrates the reason we need an independent body to regulate football and ensure that all decisions made are in the interests of the game as a whole. We have all expressed that concern. As my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana) said, every team is a big part of the community. The owners are transient, but fans and supporters are there through thick and thin, in good times and bad, whoever is the owner. Football clubs need to be treated much more as a community asset and less as a business as they have been for far too long.
My final point, Ms Fovargue, relates to agency reform and control. A study of agency fees paid by Premier League clubs between October 2015 and January 2016 revealed that £46.5 million was paid to agency intermediaries. That is money that is leaving the game altogether. Frankly, I would like to outlaw agency fees altogether, but I am sure that will not happen. Those figures demonstrate there are huge sums in the game that do not benefit even the highly paid players; the money certainly does not benefit the clubs or the wider community. Let us do something about that as well when we reform football governance, which I hope we are going to do.
James Daly (Bury North) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Fovargue, I congratulate my friend, if I can call him that, the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) on securing the debate. I have had the opportunity to speak to him about Charlton Athletic before, so I know he is a very learned and experienced man in these matters.
It goes without saying that this is a raw subject for us in Bury. It is genuinely hard to put into words what the loss of Bury football club has meant to the community. It has had a detrimental impact on thousands of people’s lives, and very few things can do that. Very few things link people, regardless of their age, sex or background, and people came together each week in a collective, positive atmosphere to support Bury. That has been taken away from them.
This is a debate about football governance. We have a system in place, but if we as MPs are going to look at what should be there or what we would recommend, we have to ask, “What is the purpose of governance?” Other points have been well made about how we see football clubs: are they just individual businesses like WH Smith or Barclays bank? Are they simply businesses to be regulated on that basis? I am a supporter of Bury football club but not a fan—there is a difference. They are entities that survive because of that loyalty and an emotional connection between them and their supporters. One can hardly argue that we go to WHSmith because of an emotional connection.
I am only using that as an example, but it is an important example. Earlier I asked the hon. Member for Eltham—and it was a genuine question—who any governance would be on behalf of. He said it would be on behalf of the game, but the game is a very wide thing and lots of people have very different interests in it. One person could be involved in supporting Manchester United, which plays in the premier league and all the other things it competes in, whereas Bury’s major ambition is essentially to stay afloat—to simply survive in the league it is in and have a sustainable business model to support its local community. If we as MPs were to recommend statutory regulation, we would say that the first duty of the regulator must be to the fans: the people at each and every club in the country who pay their money every week to go and watch their team. This is about what is in their interest. Bury is the example, right or wrong, of the monumentally detrimental effect of the loss of a football club.
As with everything else, the pandemic has had a huge effect on EFL and non-league clubs—I will leave the premier league to one side for a second. I agree with everything my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) said. Although I am tempted to read out his comments about Bury football club from when he was Chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, I will restrain myself from doing that, because I think we all know what they are. However, football clubs in the lower leagues have been run in an incredibly bad manner. There were players at Bury football club earning £10,000 a week when the crowds were 3,000 or 4,000, which simply is not sustainable.
We have a badly run model that has not been regulated. Indeed, I wonder why the EFL exists if it cannot step in and question these business models, which it knows are unsustainable, including before the pandemic. Half the clubs are running at monumental losses. I mention Rochdale football club only because prior to the pandemic, or certainly at the start of it, it had to have a £1 million loan from its local council, while issues with the ownership of Wigan, Ms Fovargue, have clearly come to the fore in recent months. These are ongoing issues.
We therefore have to be clear that the EFL, or whoever the regulator is, needs to take a strident and stringent approach and must have access to the financial records of a football club and also the financial background of the owner. Cursory examination of the business history of Steve Dale, the current owner of Bury football club, may well have rung some alarm bells with any regulator. In a normal, functioning system, Mr Dale would clearly not have been allowed to take over Bury football club.
Damian Collins
Does my hon. Friend agree that the problem with the Football League system is that it is run by people like Mr Dale? It is run by the chairs of the clubs, regulating each other. They do not want people sticking their noses into the way they are running their clubs because if it is done for one club, it will be done for another.
James Daly
Absolutely, and that is why I would very much support statutory regulation, if that is a possibility, because I see it as the only way of protecting the interests of fans such as those of Bury.
My last point is that, while the pandemic has also shone a light on that business model, the question is how we can work within the system to create football clubs that are not merely the businesses that predatory owners and others have viewed them as, but become community assets that sit within their communities and have direct links to other important facilities. I have had the opportunity since I became an MP to speak with my hon. Friend the Minister on a regular basis. My view, which might not be a palatable suggestion for many owners, is that we have to look at a partnership model whereby football clubs work hand in hand with, for example, the local college or statutory services of some kind so as to bring as many things as possible into the club, because of its unique position at the centre of the community, and allow as wide a group of people as possible to benefit from being able to see their local football club, with the loyalty and pride in their area that that gives them, while also using it as a force for social change.
I was in a meeting yesterday where we talked about youth hubs, armed forces hubs and mental health hubs, so why do we as politicians not work with local people to get facilities set up and ensure that the models are financially stable? I hope that that is a sensible suggestion that people will consider. For someone from a Conservative background, the idea of going in and imposing rules and restrictions on what are private enterprises is not something that comes easily to me, but I know that it is necessary based on my experience of the impact that Bury’s closure has had on its poor fans.
My final comment is that getting Bury AFC, the phoenix club, to where it is has been a wonderful achievement, and I give due credit to those involved, but the Bury Football Club Company Ltd still exists. The club that has been there for 130 years and won the FA cup still exists. We and the EFL, as the regulator, should do everything to help Bury get back to Gigg Lane at the earliest opportunity. Thank you, Ms Fovargue, for allowing me to speak for this length of time.
Christian Wakeford (Bury South) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Fovargue, and I thank the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) for suggesting this important topic for debate, particularly as the MP for Bury South. I will echo many of the comments of my constituency neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly) about not only the demise and expulsion of Bury, but the heartbreak caused to the community.
I speak today not only as a football fan, but as a former referee, so I already know a bit about the hatred in the game. However, the hatred that I was victim to was mainly the result of a wrong red card or penalty, and it was forgotten shortly after the game. What we have seen with Bury goes deeper, and at its heart is the absence of the game and the absence of a community hub. Our football clubs are not just there for a Saturday afternoon when we long for the hope of promotion or a cup victory, but somewhere we congregate and meet friends. Supporters feel a sense of identity through being part of a club.
I was at a meeting yesterday about saving the beautiful game and the future of football and—I say this as a Manchester United fan, and I think it was highlighted by the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders)—certain methods of ownership clearly are not for the benefit of the club or the fans. While I would love to say, “Glazers out,” it is clear that they have taken far more out of the club than they have ever put in or ever intend to put in, and that is happening at the height of the premier league. When we get to the lower leagues—Bury being a prime example—we have owners who should not even be running a local company, let alone a football club, yet they are allowed to do so much to the detriment of our community. The Steve Dale fiasco will not be forgotten—it can never be forgotten —and should never be repeated.
We all talk about the fit and proper person test, but my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) highlighted that there is no fit and proper person test. Providing they have the money, almost anyone can own and run a football club. However, there was no evidence that Steve Dale even had the money in the first place, so what real reason did he have to own the club other than wanting to make a quick buck at a town’s expense? We need to ensure that not only is there regulation behind the fit and proper person test to begin with, but that it permeates down to the lower leagues.
We must focus on what is arguably the most important thing about football: the fans. Without the fans, there is no football, because no one will go to watch the games. If we are not watching the games, there is no money. The review of football needs to be driven by fans. Every club’s supporters trust needs to have a voice and a meaningful say. As a Manchester United fan, the past few years have not been particularly easy, so I have focused much more on grassroots football and Bury AFC. While those involved in the phoenix club should rightly be proud, it is not the same. It is not Gigg Lane, and it is not getting football back in the heart of the whole community. I go to Radcliffe and the Neuven Stadium whenever I can. Although I am yet to see Bury AFC, when fans are allowed back I am sure that I will go one Saturday with my constituency neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for Bury North.
We need to recognise that there is no football governance if there is no football. As we come out of lockdown and enter new restrictions, there are huge parts of the country where fans might not be able to go to games. If football is about the fans, is there any point in resuming those games? We have to start thinking about how to get fans back in a meaningful way—not only home fans but away fans, too. For a supporter, there is nothing quite like getting up at the crack of dawn to go on a nice, long journey to the north-east, only to then see their team get beaten. We need to get the fans back ASAP. My hon. Friend the Minister and I have spoken about football many times, including previously when he was my Whip and now that he is a Minister. I emphasise that we need to get the fans back, because if they do not have a club to go back to, what is the point in discussing governance? That is the message I want to get across. In tier 1 and tier 2 there is hope at the end of the tunnel for the future of clubs, but in tier 3 we are still in the tunnel and there is no light. We need to address that.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Fovargue, and to speak in this debate alongside so many expert Members, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford), who secured it. When I first entered the House in 2010, my football club, the champions Liverpool, were experiencing turbulence with their ownership, and my hon. Friend gave me expert advice. I was a new and, probably, naïve Member, but I have always listened to everything he says about football, particularly on the subject under discussion, not least because he, as my predecessor as the shadow sports Minister, wrote all of our policies in 2015, and they remain our policies. There is no better person in this House—[Interruption.] It would have been nice if we had won an election, but that is another story.
It would have been good, as the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) said, if action had been taken on some of the policies when the cross-party coalition was formed all those years ago, but that did not happen. As the years have gone by, there has been no improvement in the regulation of football, despite that very clear cross-party coalition, which is represented in this debate. I think that we are now on the same page.
My hon. Friend the Member for Eltham also mentioned the importance of regulation in the women’s game and in disability and LGBT+ football, and I think that has cross-party support, too. We are on the same page now. All parties are calling for it and every manifesto in the December election mentioned it. Labour and Conservative Members are as one in wanting it to happen.
I will briefly summarise the arguments made by colleagues across the House, but before doing so I want to flag to the Minister the very important question the hon. Member for Bury South (Christian Wakeford) asked about the return of supporters to stadiums. This is a crucial moment for football supporters, for clubs and, indeed, for players, most of whom I think are desperate to have fans back in stadiums. We all understand the public health situation. I want to flag to the Minister—he will be thrilled to hear this—that I have sent him a letter with a number of questions. He cannot answer them now because he has not seen the letter, but I am sure we will discuss the issue in the coming days, as it is a very high priority.
We cannot talk about this subject without discussing the serious, detrimental impact that the covid-19 pandemic has had on football. Nobody looking at the current situation would conclude that we do not have a crisis on our hands. I repeat the point made by Members across the Chamber that football is not a business like any other. There are some in our country who still want to think that it is a business like any other, but they are not to be found here today and I do not think they would be found anywhere in the House of Commons. If we look at what has happened during the pandemic, we know that that is not the case. Football has a public purpose. We have seen that in the commitment that football and its community trusts have shown in their dedication to their local communities.
I think it was the hon. Member for Bury North (James Daly) who said that if a football club goes bust, it is not like any other shop. People do not just go and support another one. It is part of an individual’s identity—part of who they are. So many people in the country know that.
I have seen the vital work that football clubs do in my own borough of Wirral. All our grassroots clubs are amazing. They are led by our very own Tranmere Rovers, which is phenomenal. It was up and running with a food delivery service before anyone else had got their boots on, when we were all worried about people who were sheltering. I take great pride in all the work that it does and I know that everybody in the Wirral feels the same, but we are not alone. Everybody in our political world and our community would acknowledge the role that football clubs play in building that sense of identity and community spirit, and we have to make sure that these vital community hubs survive the crisis.
The other thing that covid has done to our national game is to reveal, if we did not know it already, the deep financial problems at the heart of the game’s structure. It has exposed the vacuum of constructive leadership across the game. We need to sort that out in the public interest, for the fans that the game serves. They deserve it. They put a lot of time and effort into supporting football and they deserve action from us.
I am worried that if we do not get on with that task quickly, the process will be kicked into the long grass and that would not be to the benefit of fans. The covid pandemic makes the fan-led review more urgent, not less. There is no point coming up with a temporary fix solution and then for all of us to be back here—no doubt my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham will be bringing another debate—next year and the year after that and in five years’ time, and still be saying, “We have a problem at the heart of the finance and the governance of the national game.” Now is the right time to bring this forward and I would like to see the Government prioritise it now.
Hon. Members have mentioned all the clubs that have seen challenges. I know that you, Ms Fovargue, will no doubt be full of anxiety for the future of Wigan Athletic. It is an important and historic footballing institution in our region in the north-west of England. That situation has really made the case.
Other Members have talked about Bury. I visited Bury in December, for reasons that will be obvious. I was struck then at the absolute devastation at the idea of football not returning to Gigg Lane. There is, of course, the other side to the Bury story—AFC Bury—which shows how capable football fans are, given the chance.
We are now in a situation where clubs are losing between £30,000 to £100,000 per game on gate revenue in the lower leagues. As the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe pointed out, they owe some £77 million in unpaid taxes, so the Government absolutely have skin in the game and need to sort this out. It has been reported that nearly 10 clubs are in danger of not being able to pay their staff on an ongoing basis.
We need a radical overhaul. Only a fan-led review can do it with the right people at its heart. I really think that the fans are capable of doing such a review and should be given a leading role.
The other reason why the fans and the public need a leading role is that if we think that this situation will be sorted out from within football, we would be engaging in a collective fantasy. It is not going to happen, partly for the reason that was discussed in response to the hon. Member for Bury North, who is no longer in his place. He said that the EFL or whoever the regulator is needs to sort it out, but as the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe pointed out, most football is run by the owners of the clubs, many of whom are not unrelated to the problem that we are trying to deal with.
This is not a unique situation. Football is not the only industry in our country we have ever had that has had such structural problems. In 2008, many people said that the problems within the banks were very complicated, which they were, that our banking sector is part of a global industry, which it is, and that it would be very challenging for the UK to deal with the re-regulation of the banking industry—but we did it. We took global institutions that had lost track of their local community purpose, and we put new regulations in place to make them much more stable. The question is this: for football, who is the Bank of England, and what is the counter-cyclical buffer that we need to require of clubs to stabilise them? Honestly, I do not believe that it is beyond the wit of the UK Government to do that.
This pandemic has profoundly shocked all aspects of our country—football as much as any other part—and we will all be judged on how we facilitate and encourage recovery. We have said that Members have been at this for a decade. For nearly 10 years we have been unable to resolve it. Finally, we are all on the same page and have the real possibility of absolute cross-party agreement. I believe it is incumbent upon us to just get on with it.
There are plans developed and written, not least by the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, which has done an excellent job of work. We just need to pick them up and run with them. We need political will for that, and I believe that between us the Minister and I could show that political will. In such debates, it is customary for the shadow Minister to give the Minister a long list of detailed questions. I do not have a long list of questions about this; I have just one. Conservative MPs promised the electorate a fan-led review of football in their 2019 manifesto. Where is it?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Nigel Huddleston)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Fovargue. Hopefully, I got the pronunciation broadly correct—perhaps it is easier to say Madam Chairman. I am very grateful to the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford)—hopefully I got that correct as well—for introducing the debate, and for the contributions that he and other hon. Members have made on what is broadly a consensual, cross-party matter, as the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) just articulated. Of course, everybody today, as always in these debates, has spoken with great passion and great knowledge, reflecting how important this issue is right across the country to all of our constituents.
Football is of course our national game. It is a vital part of many of our lives, from playing the game in our local parks to watching our favourite teams on the terraces. However, it is not just on the pitch but off the pitch that football plays such an important role. The incredible work, as the hon. Lady and others mentioned, that football clubs have done during the pandemic has demonstrated that importance once again. From turning their car parks into NHS testing centres through to delivering food packages to the vulnerable, they hold a very special place in our local communities. It is vital that they are protected, as my hon. Friends the Members for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins), for Bury North (James Daly) and for Bury South (Christian Wakeford) mentioned. Indeed, everybody mentioned the importance of these clubs in our local communities.
Many football clubs have benefited from the Government’s support packages over the past few months in this incredibly difficult period. The Treasury estimates that around £1.5 billion of public funds has gone into sport since the beginning of the pandemic. As well as the £300 million sports winter survival package that we announced last week, over £200 million from Sport England has gone into grassroots sport, and additional money has gone into various other schemes, such as furlough, grants and reliefs over a period of many months.
However, I do not underestimate how many sports clubs, including football clubs—even some in the highest tiers—are still in incredibly tight financial circumstances. Of course, we have worked closely with football throughout the pandemic, getting it back behind closed doors and getting live premier league matches on the BBC for the first time. The premier league is, as the hon. Member for Eltham and others mentioned, one of our most important soft power assets. It is the most watched and supported football league in the world. English clubs have been some of the most successful in the game, and I hope that continues.
However, that success is built on the strength of the entire football pyramid. Just look at the 49 different clubs that have played in the premier league since its inception in 1992. Everybody will be aware, as has been mentioned several times, that the Premier League and the EFL are currently in discussions about a support package. I am pleased that the Premier League has made it clear that it will not let any EFL club fail due to the pandemic—something that I hope the hon. Member for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana) particularly notes. I have had assurances, including just this morning, that significant progress is being made on an agreement for a financial support package for EFL clubs. While Premier League and EFL executives are in close and regular contact, ultimately it will be up to the individual clubs to approve any deal. I encourage and appeal to them to play their part, because ensuring that a support deal is in place is vital for English football.
A crucial step toward sports recovery is the return of fans, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury South mentioned. I was therefore delighted that we were able to announce on Monday the return of spectators in tiers 1 and 2 from 2 December, with capacity limits and social distancing.
Christian Wakeford
Although I welcome the announcement on tiers 1 and 2, areas such as mine are anticipating going into tier 3, with further easements planned for household bubbles over Christmas. Will the Minister ensure that football can come home for Christmas, and make sure that the good, long-standing tradition of a Boxing Day derby can continue?
Nigel Huddleston
Everybody wants to make sure that football can come back in as many places as possible; my hon. Friend and others have made similar appeals. We are all waiting to find out the tiering system over the next few days, and the implications then for each of our regions, but the intent is to open as much as possible. I look forward to receiving another letter from the hon. Member for Wirral South, and I shall be happy to respond to her. We have regular correspondence, formally and informally, and I think it is good for sport that we have this open communication. I have no problem with her asking questions, and I will do my best to answer them as fully as I can.
Damian Collins
I think we are all pleased to hear the Government say that there are conditions under which fans can come back, but does the Minister agree that it could be unfair for clubs that do not have their fans in the background to compete against those that do, particularly when those clubs are in a very distressed financial position? What financial compensation will be available to clubs that may play most of the season without any fans in their grounds at all?
Nigel Huddleston
My hon. Friend makes a fair point, but we do need to start taking these baby steps toward opening as much of the economy, and of course football and sport, as possible. Logic would dictate that if we cannot open everything everywhere, then we should not open at all. Of course, we need to open as much as possible where we can, and support measures were announced last week for the national league. Fans have been able to attend non-elite sport for some time; we have allowed fans in stadiums and that will continue. On the elite side, I think as much as possible is absolutely key.
The deal between the EFL and the Premier League will be an important part of the dynamics of financial support. Nobody knows exactly where will be open when, or to what extent it will help with the financial circumstances, but I hope and have confidence that those elements and considerations will be part of the support package determined by the EFL and the Premier League; it must have some element of dynamism in that.
Another vital step is the resumption of grassroots sport from 2 December across all tiers, including the highest risk areas with some mitigation. Grassroots sport will return, and this will benefit the health and wellbeing of people right across the country. Further guidance on this will be published shortly.
While the pandemic has exacerbated some of the issues within football, it has not created them. Several hon. Members have expressed frustration about the groundhog day element to the discussion we are having today. It is absolutely clear that reform is needed in the national game, and has been needed for some time. That is why the Government are committed to a fan-led review of football governance. I will come to the question asked by the hon. Member for Wirral South in a moment.
The pandemic has highlighted the problems of football governance and finance—I have said repeatedly that the two are intrinsically linked. We cannot divorce governance from the finances, and I can confirm that we will look into this relationship as part of the governance review. The Secretary of State and I started this conversation last week, when we hosted a roundtable of key football stakeholders to discuss the future of the game. That discussion was lively and constructive, and it raised a number of ideas. Informally, therefore, the review of governance has already started, and this debate is contributing to it. We will announce the formal governance review in due course, but we certainly have no intention of kicking it into the long grass.
Alison McGovern
Is the Minister therefore able to put the review’s terms of reference into the public domain?
Nigel Huddleston
When we determine the terms of reference and the actual scope, we will obviously let the House know; it is vital that we do so. At this moment in time, we are considering all options and ideas. Many entities have come forward with suggestions that have good and bad elements and strengths and weaknesses, but it is important that we keep an open mind. I will certainly ensure that I am open to any constructive ideas as I go into the review. We will be working on the scoping, timing and remit of the review, and we will announce that in due course. I am well aware of the huge interest in it. As the hon. Lady said, all parties are keen to support it.
Clive Efford
In the review that the Minister talks about, where does the strategic review that has been announced by the Premier League sit? It said that it is going to be drafted by its executive and voted on by the 20 member clubs. Has the Minister seen the terms of reference for that review, and does it cut across these discussions?
Nigel Huddleston
Of course, the strategic review of the Premier League, which is a separate private entity—it is not an arms-length body—is rightly and justifiably entirely down to it. Its ideas and suggestions, and whatever the outcome of that review is, will be of great interest to me and the Government, but it is separate from the grassroots review of governance that we committed to in our manifesto and that others support. It is down to it to determine the scope of the review. I understand that it will be consulting with the English Football League. I absolutely commit that our review will involve and engage the Premier League, the EFL and many other stakeholders. The precise scope of that review is entirely down to the Premier League, and it is right that it does that.
At the roundtable last week, I was particularly keen to hear the thoughts of the Football Supporters Association, with which I have had constructive conversations. It is crucial that any reforms to the game have the backing of the fans, who, after all, are the lifeblood of the sport. It is interesting that Project Big Picture did not have the support of the Football Supporters Association, although, as I said earlier, I recognise that any proposals coming forward will have strengths and weaknesses.
In 2016, the Government set up an expert working group on football supporter ownership and engagement, which led to some great improvements in club engagement with fans, and the Premier League and EFL now require clubs to meet supporters at least twice a year to discuss strategic issues, giving fans the opportunity to shape the direction of the club. I am well aware that this is a great passion of the hon. Member for Eltham. He has contributed to the debate over many years and campaigned for greater involvement and engagement of fans. Of course, there is still a lot more to do, and that will form an essential part of the governance review.
Damian Collins
I appreciate that my hon. Friend says that the full terms and conditions of the review are yet to be agreed, but if the fan-led review recommends an independent regulator, will the Government give proper consideration to that recommendation?
Nigel Huddleston
It is very important that I do not predetermine the outcome of the review, but all reasonable and sensible ideas are welcome, as I have said. I would not like to say that we will look favourably or unfavourably at any individual component part at the moment, because that would be pre-empting the outcomes of the review, and of course circumstances could change things.
Damian Collins
I will phrase it slightly differently. What I want to know is whether the idea of an independent regulator outside the scope of the fan-led review, or are fans free to submit ideas about that to which the Government will at some point respond?
Nigel Huddleston
My hon. Friend will forgive me for not pre-announcing, before we have it written anything down, the scope of the review or the outcome of it. What I can say is that I am personally very keen to make sure the scope of the review is broad. Any sensible, viable and reasonable ideas will be welcome. I know that is a somewhat obscure caveat, but we all know that some proposals can be unrealistic or bizarre. I suspect that any realistic and sensible proposal, looking at models that are deployed and adopted by other countries, for example, will form part of the review. I am coming into the review with a very open mind, as is the Secretary of State. I can assure my hon. Friend of that, but he will forgive me if I cannot really be pressed any further on the scope of the review before it is announced. I am well aware of the strength of feeling and the enthusiasm across the House to make sure that we get the scope determined as soon as possible.
Alison McGovern
I thank the Minister for his tolerance. Just to give those who are following this debate closely an idea on the terms of reference, the scope and the important issues that have just been mentioned by the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins), are we thinking of a month, two months, or after Christmas? Can the Minister give us an idea?
Nigel Huddleston
I sincerely appreciate and understand the hon. Lady’s persistence in this matter, but I have to say that we will be announcing the scope of the review in due course. She knows as well as anybody else the enthusiasm in this House for getting that review going as soon as possible.
On the issue of women’s football, which has been brought to the front during the coronavirus situation, there are many other long-term issues facing the game as well as governance. The roundtable that we had last week had a real focus on women’s football and tackling discrimination. The pandemic has shone a light on inequalities in football and, indeed, many other sports. The women’s game had built up significant momentum over the past few years, with both participation and interest growing rapidly, and the England Lionesses are inspiring a generation of girls, and indeed boys, including with their superb run-up to the World cup semi-finals last year. It is crucial that that momentum is not lost.
The women’s game must be central to any discussion on the future of the sport, and I was therefore glad that representatives of women’s football were able to attend the football roundtable we held last week, including Baroness Sue Campbell, the FA’s director of women’s football. I have also had a follow-up conversation with her and look forward to many further conversations. This week I am also meeting with Jane Purdon, the chief executive of Women in Football, to examine the issues facing the women’s game further.
Another issue that sadly remains to the detriment of the game is discrimination. There is still much progress to be made to improve diversity within football. I welcomed the announcement of the FA’s new football leadership diversity code last month, which is a step in the right direction to improve diversity and inclusion in both the men’s and women’s games. From the pitch to the boardroom, football must be welcoming and inclusive for all people from all backgrounds.
Sadly, players are still receiving abhorrent abuse online. I am absolutely clear that players should not be suffering from such abuse, and this Government are committed to taking action to tackle it. As set out in the online harms White Paper, we intend to establish a new law with a duty of care on social media companies towards their users, which will be overseen by an independent regulator. However, there is still a lot more to be done to rid football and society of this scourge. I welcome the football authorities’ commitment to tackling these issues at the roundtable and in other conversations, and will continue to work with them to deliver further action.
Very briefly, I will answer a couple of other points and then make sure the hon. Member for Eltham has plenty of time to make further comments. On the point raised about Project Big Picture, the Government’s response was that the timing was not right. We have said all along that any proposals coming up from football at the moment, if they are to be adopted by football, quite clearly and transparently need the support of the entire family—an issue that my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe raised and that I will come to in a moment. The Football Supporters Association did not support that proposal, which I think was a great failing. However, all proposals have strengths and weaknesses, and we are open to many ideas. My hon. Friend raised an important point about the great challenges of the dynamics of football—whether we call it the football pyramid or the football family—and I think we all recognise that, while it is a family, or has elements of being a family, it is certainly a very dysfunctional one, as he articulated very clearly, hence the need for a significant review of governance.
The hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) mentioned facilities. Of course, it is also a medium and long-term goal of the Government to significantly improve facilities, and not only for football but for many other sports across the country. I will take this opportunity to highlight the fact that Sport England has funds available to help enhance facilities; in fact, there is a live fund available at the moment, the Return to Play fund, to help with sports facilities, and I encourage grassroots clubs across the country to apply to it. It is relatively small amount, but, boy, will it make a difference.
My hon. Friends the Members for Bury North and for Bury South raised the particular circumstances in Bury, of which I am aware—we have had many regular conversations. They have asked for Government support. As well as rich tea and sympathy and enthusiastic support for Bury FC to sort its difficulties out, there are areas for potential Government support, but it would have to be in the remit of a broader offering. That could be a sport offering, in which we could get Sport England involved, or part of potential funds towards broader community development, recognising the important role that the club plays in the community, as my hon. Friends mentioned. I am well aware of the challenges faced by Bury FC at the moment, and I hope and have confidence that project phoenix will arise from the ashes. Bury deserves a very positive future.
My opposite number, the hon. Member for Wirral South, raised many points. She did not give me a full list, but I look forward to her letter and to further dialogue. I am very grateful for today’s wide-ranging debate. The Government have started the conversation on the important issues facing the future of football. Many Members have contributed to that discussion, and I am very appreciative of that. We remain absolutely committed to driving progress and will continue to work closely with all stakeholders in football to ensure a stable and strong future for our national game.
Clive Efford
I deliberately focused on the need for change in governance rather than rehashing and dwelling on all the arguments about the financial state of clubs. As the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern), said, at the moment there is a drive towards change. I am delighted to hear that the Government are now holding their own roundtables in preparation for a review into the governance of the game—that has to be welcomed. The momentum is there now, and that is why I tried to focus my comments on governance.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) mentioned facilities. We have the richest football league in the world, but we lag behind other countries such as Spain, Germany and France. It is no coincidence that those countries have enjoyed so much success in football when they have invested at the grassroots level as they have done. Look at the statistics comparing the number of coaches and the number of all-weather pitches with floodlights per head of population. Let us not forget that if a facility does not have floodlights, it is not useable for large parts of the winter. Those are important factors.
We are all told by the Premier League—I am sure that the Minister gets this as well—how much our constituencies get, how much it has spent and how much it supports the local football trust. If we step back and look at the bigger picture, though, it is a sorry situation for such a rich football league to have such poor facilities. I remember that when I was on the shadow sports beat, I learned that in Liverpool there was no all-weather football pitch in the city, apart from at Liverpool FC and Everton FC. For a city that is so imbued and associated with football, that was quite a shocking fact.
I welcome that the fact the Government are reviewing the governance of the sport. Now that the Minister has stated his commitment, I think there is no going back. We will have to move forward, because we cannot leave it to the structures in the game. As the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) and others have pointed out, the owners of clubs are so blinkered in their views that they look at the matter only through the prism of their own clubs. They see their clubs as their own businesses and they do not want outside interference. We will not get the fundamental change that we need if we allow the focus of the decision making to come from those in the game.
We can make the game sustainable. The amount of money in Project Big Picture was minuscule compared with the overall income generated by the Premier League, and it could have put the English football league on a sustainable footing. I did not support all the proposals in Project Big Picture—I had issues with many of them—but I supported the debate because it put the dead cat on the table and made everybody talk about what we would do about football. Nobody else was putting anything on the table, and at least the project started to address the issues.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston raised concerns about the super league. I suspect that the talk about the super league is overblown, but the increase in the number of games in 2024 in the European champions league is a big issue. There will be more games, and they will have an impact on the domestic game. Project Big Picture tried to address that issue, and it will come up when the Minister sits around the table with other stakeholders to discuss the future of the game.
We have to embrace this moment and make sure that we get change. I favour an independent panel, and I hope that the Minister’s roundtable will frame the panel’s terms of reference and make-up. I would certainly volunteer to be on that panel, and I am sure the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe would, too. The fact is that change is coming. If it does not come from the Government, it will come from elsewhere in Parliament, because the mood is that we have to deal with this now.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the future of football governance.
Parole Board: Maintaining Public Safety
(4 years ago)
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Alberto Costa (South Leicestershire) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the effectiveness and transparency of the Parole Board in maintaining public safety.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Cummins. I thank Mr Speaker for granting this debate, and I welcome the Minister to her place. I thank colleagues for joining me this afternoon to debate what is a pressing issue for our constituents and for the wider country in maintaining and ensuring public safety.
Although this debate will focus on the wider parameters and aspects of the Parole Board’s effectiveness and transparency, I would like to draw the House’s attention to a specific and notorious case, which is a matter of considerable concern to my constituents in South Leicestershire—the case of Colin Pitchfork. In 1988, Pitchfork was sentenced to life imprisonment for the brutal rape and murder of two young girls in my constituency. On 31 November 1983, 15-year-old Lynda Mann was raped and strangled by Pitchfork in the village of Narborough in Leicestershire, and on 31 July 1986, 15-year-old Dawn Ashworth was raped and strangled by Pitchfork in the nearby village of Enderby.
Although those crimes were committed over three decades ago, the murders of Lynda and Dawn continue to live long in the memories of my constituents. I regularly hear from those who still live in the villages of Narborough and Enderby who have fond memories of growing up with these two young women and will never forget their tragic and untimely deaths.
As hon. Members may be aware, Pitchfork’s case is not only notorious for these heinous and abhorrent crimes, which tragically ended the lives of two young girls; it is also known as a pivotal moment in English criminal justice history. He was the first person in the world to be convicted using DNA fingerprinting evidence pioneered by Sir Alec Jeffreys at the University of Leicester.
Following the tragic deaths of Lynda and Dawn, which made headline news across the country, Leicestershire Police conducted one of the country’s largest manhunts for the perpetrator. In an attempt to find those who were responsible, Leicestershire Police took the unprecedented and innovative step of blooding over 5,000 men—asking them to volunteer their blood and saliva for the purposes of DNA testing—in the hope of finding a match to the evidence that was left at the scenes of those awful crimes.
In a painstaking six-month process, the University of Leicester, the Forensic Science Service and Leicestershire police combed through the samples given by local men, but no matches were found. Only after he was overheard bragging that he had asked a friend to donate a DNA sample in his place was Pitchfork discovered, arrested and tried for his crimes, during which he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment.
The brutal and callous nature of Pitchfork’s crimes raises questions as to whether such a person should ever be released from prison or could ever be truly rehabilitated. There is little doubt among professionals, among my constituents in South Leicestershire and in my own personal opinion that, had Pitchfork not been caught, he would have taken yet another young life; that Pitchfork wilfully deceived the authorities during their investigations; and that he continued to exercise his freedom and live his life when his victims could not—a further indictment on this individual’s character.
Mrs Cummins, I would like to inform you and the House of the representations that I have made to the Parole Board regarding Pitchfork’s case on behalf of my constituents and the families and friends of the victims. I also commend the Secretary of State for Justice, the Minister with responsibility for prisons—she is in her place today—and the chief executive of the Parole Board for England and Wales, Mr Martin Jones, for their work and assistance on this matter. Their willingness to assist my constituents and me, and their devotion to this particular case, should be commended. I would like to put on record my sincere thanks to them.
The Parole Board’s purpose is to carry out—independent of the Government, the legislature and the judiciary—risk assessments on prisoners to determine whether they can safely be released into the community. As such, it can be regarded as the final barrier between prisoners and us in wider society.
As I have mentioned, the Parole Board’s independence from the judiciary, the legislature and Government is key. For the most part, prisoners who have served their sentence and can demonstrate their successful rehabilitation should be properly assessed ahead of their release. Their eventual release, if granted, is a crucial part of their rehabilitation and sentence, so that they can go back into the community as a person who is changed for the better and who will be able to make a positive contribution to our society.
Rehabilitation is a cornerstone of our criminal justice system and a hallmark of our tolerant, forgiving society. Although our country has one of the highest prison populations in Europe, we are a freedom-loving, rules-based democracy and I accept the need for our country to recognise that a person’s historical actions do not define them for all time. A person’s historical failures do not mark them for the rest of their life. We, as a country or a people, do not lock up individuals and throw away the key. When we remove people’s liberty, we invest time and taxpayers’ money in prisoners under a duty of care to work with them to rehabilitate them, and to consider an avenue towards their potential future release, a new start in life and a return to being safe, productive members of our society.
Questions, however, will remain for those who are perhaps not capable of being rehabilitated. It is not my place to pass judgment on the suitability of an individual’s character or their ability to re-enter society as a changed person. The rates of further serious offences among those who are deemed to be safe and who are released by the Parole Board are so low that it is clear that the Parole Board has robust practices in place to make those judgments from a specialist point of view. It is tasked by all of us and by all our constituents to ensure that those it deems fit for release no longer present a danger to the public. To the Parole Board’s credit, it does not often get those decisions wrong, but if it does, the wider public pays the price.
Conor McGinn (St Helens North) (Lab)
I endorse everything that the hon. Gentleman has said thus far, and I congratulate him on securing the debate. The circumstances he outlines in relation to his constituents and the arguments he advances resonate strongly with me and with people in St Helens, particularly the village of Billinge, where Helen McCourt was murdered in 1988. Her mother has fought a successful campaign for the introduction of the rule that if a murderer does not give information about the whereabouts of their victim’s remains, that will strongly affect the criteria for their release by the Parole Board. I pay tribute to the Government for putting that on the statute book in recent months.
Picking up on what the hon. Gentleman said about when the Parole Board gets it wrong, Marie McCourt had to watch her daughter’s killer be released from prison under parole. I accept the argument about public safety, but this is about public decency, too. Releasing someone who murdered a woman and never gave information about her remains is an affront to public decency.
Alberto Costa
I entirely agree that it is at the very least questionable when someone who has not shown contrition for their crimes, and over decades of custody, has not assisted investigators but is deemed fit for release.
I ask Members kindly to cast their minds back to 2018 when it was reported that John Worboys, a man convicted of 12 serious sexual offences and suspected of approximately 100, was proposed for release by the Parole Board, having served 10 years in custody. His proposed release caused considerable and understandable outcry among the public, press and, indeed, parliamentarians. Worboys’s case was a watershed moment for much needed reform of the parole process. Victims were not advised of the proposed release, and little information was provided about the reasoning behind the decision, and the then Secretary of State for Justice acted swiftly to bring new, welcome levels of transparency to the system.
I was pleased to feed into some of those changes to the parole process, having a link to the Pitchfork case, and like others I greatly welcomed the changes that were made. The announcement of a new mechanism two years ago for victims and families to request that decisions be reconsidered, and for summaries of decisions to be issued to the public, helped to bring the parole system into the 21st century and, crucially, helped to provide victims and families with a greater say in the criminal justice process, to help them seek the justice they deserve. From being a detached and at times obfuscated process, the parole system appears largely to have learned its lessons from the Worboys case. It has become more open and transparent to those who matter most, but it must continue its challenging work of ensuring public safety.
The Parole Board must have all the necessary resources to arrive at the correct judgment. I encourage the Minister to continue to ensure that it has all the necessary resources to carry out its important task.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for introducing today’s debate. In 2018-19, there were 8,272 hearings that were not concluded at the time, including about 2,500 cases that were deferred on the day, or adjourned, because of a lack of sufficiency of psychologists’ and probation reports. Does he recognise that we need proper resourcing throughout the criminal justice system to ensure that victims in particular are not let down when hearings do not go ahead?
Alberto Costa
I agree that there is always a strong argument to be made for more resources. In an area such as the criminal justice system, and, specifically, the Parole Board, there is always a good argument to be made to the Minister, who I am sure is listening, about the need for more resources.
The Parole Board has, however, demonstrated its effectiveness in a majority of cases, with a most welcome low level of serious reoffending by those released. Through measures passed in the House, the system has given victims more of a voice, and a clearer view of the process and the decisions made in cases. I ask the Minister to consider how that process can be maintained, and indeed strengthened, to ensure that a balance continues to be struck between releasing those who are fully rehabilitated and halting the release of those who might still present a danger to my constituents and those of every other Member.
Laura Trott (Sevenoaks) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Cummins, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa) on securing this incredibly important debate. I echo his comments on the importance of Parole Board discretion in serious cases such as the one he described, and its ability to keep people in prison when they represent a danger to the public.
The single point I want to make is that of the importance of Parole Board involvement with rape cases in particular. Some 84% of rape convictions are dealt with by a standard determinate sentence. That means that the Parole Board is not involved at all in the release of those criminals. A key question to me is what the Parole Board is for, if it is not to determine whether rapists are going to reoffend. The reoffending rate for sexual offences is around 14% and we need to look again, seriously, at the level at which the Parole Board gets involved to make sure that every single serious sexual offence is looked at and that there is the discretion to decide whether someone is released among the public, as well as some analysis of how effective it has been. As my hon. Friend said, the issue has existed for many years and we have an opportunity to get it right.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lucy Frazer)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Cummins, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa) for introducing this important debate.
I start by extending my sympathies to the families of Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashworth. I cannot begin to understand what they must have gone through over the years, with the victims being so young. My sympathies are with them at this time. My hon. Friend mentioned the impact on the wider community in Leicestershire and I am deeply aware of his interest in the case, the support he has given and continues to give to the victims’ families and his constituents more widely, and his personal efforts to bring the matter to the attention of the Ministry of Justice and to liaise with the Parole Board, meeting with its chief executive and providing a letter to be included in the parole dossier outlining his concerns so that those may be considered at the right time.
As my hon. Friend mentioned, the Parole Board fulfils a significant and fundamental role in protecting the public from harm. In providing a fair way to consider the release of those held in our prisons on indeterminate—and in some cases determinate—sentences, the expertise of Parole Board members is thoroughly to assess the risk and take effective decisions. That expertise is clear, with public protection absolutely at the heart of every case.
My hon. Friend was right to mention that there are only a limited number of cases in which the Parole Board allows a release and the offender goes on to reoffend. Serious further offences are rare. Less than 0.5% of offenders under statutory supervision are convicted of serious further offences, and I believe that this very low level shows that the Parole Board is reaching the right conclusions when it comes to release. None the less, each one is taken extremely seriously, and a review is carried out of all to identify any lessons for the better management of future cases.
As my hon. Friend pointed out, over the past two years, we have taken a number of steps to improve the effectiveness, and particularly the transparency, of the Parole Board system. We introduced two key changes. First, in 2018, we worked with the Parole Board to amend its rules to allow it to provide decision summaries. Previously, the rules prevented the Parole Board from revealing any details of the reasons for its decision. The provision of those summaries allows victims and the wider public to understand why the board has made a decision in a case. To date, around 4,000 decision summaries have been issued, mainly to victims.
Secondly, following last year’s case of John Worboys, whose release decision by the Parole Board was overturned by the High Court, we developed a reconsideration mechanism for decisions made. Where there is evidence that a decision is irrational, or procedurally unfair, the reconsideration mechanism allows the Secretary of State, or the prisoner, to apply for the decision to be looked at again. Victims may ask the Secretary of State to apply for reconsideration on their behalf, and since July 2019 the Government have submitted 23 applications for that, five of which followed victim requests.
Prior to that introduction, there was no way to challenge flawed decisions without resorting to costly and time-consuming litigation. Now, as set out in the 2015 victims code, victims have the right to make a victim personal statement to the Parole Board and the entitlement to apply to attend the hearing to read their statement. Last week, we published a revised code of practice for victims of crime, which reinforces those rights by stating that the Parole Board must agree to the statement being read at the hearing by the victim, or someone else on their behalf, and provide a summary of its decision on application, unless there is a good reason not to do so.
Those important steps have increased the transparency of the process and decisions made by the Parole Board, but we believe there is still more that can be done. We recognise that the Parole Board is responsible for considering the release of prisoners who have committed some of the most serious and violent offences, and who have sometimes caused unimaginable harm and distress to victims and their families. It is entirely understandable, therefore, that members of the public, particularly victims, might struggle to comprehend how prisoners can ever be assessed to be safe to release.
I believe that for victims’ families really to understand the decisions, it is important for them to be more involved in the process. However hard it may be to accept, the board’s difficult role is not to decide whether the offender should continue to be punished for the crimes that they have committed; its decision is about the current risk and whether the offender would pose a danger to the public if they were released. Greater openness and transparency will enable us to increase that understanding, and that will build trust and confidence in the system.
Conor McGinn
I believe firmly and passionately in the rehabilitative nature of our penal system, and that rehabilitation is a cornerstone of the system. The Minister has outlined that the threat to the public, or the compromising of public safety, is the first and foremost consideration. Does she accept that for a lot of victims’ families, there are issues around truth and justice, and that in cases where families do not feel as though they have had that, it is an affront to them and to common decency, and it only exacerbates their pain, to see people who were committed for the most heinous crimes being released without showing a shred of remorse?
Lucy Frazer
I completely understand that point, and I cannot imagine how it must feel to be in that situation—if someone had taken away a loved one, or done serious damage to me as the victim of a serious crime, such as rape. The justice system requires the person who committed that crime to go before a court and a sentence to be pronounced, and that is the sentence the person serves when they go to prison. The Parole Board must determine whether that person, having served their sentence—having done their time—is safe to be released.
Of course, the point that my hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire raised then comes come into consideration: is that person safe to be released, or are they manipulating the process? Are they telling the truth? Are they really committed to going forth and not committing further crime? That is when truth and deception come into play.
We are very aware of the importance of victims having their say, so that they have a right to be heard and feel that they have participated in the process. That is why we announced on 20 October—just over a month ago—the launch of the root-and-branch review of the parole system. That will build on the reforms that I have talked about today, and it will look at whether more fundamental reform of the system is required. One of the key things that we will consider in that review is whether we can increase openness and transparency to continue to improve public understanding, so that there is more confidence in the system.
We are running a consultation on whether parole hearings should be open to the public in some limited circumstances. The Parole Board is required to hold hearings in private, so public hearings would be a really significant step towards improving openness and transparency. We recognise that although there would be benefits in that, there are complexities and challenges around protecting the privacy and the safety of all involved—that would include victims—and ensuring that witnesses provided the candid evidence that the board would need to make effective decisions. That is why we are consulting on the process to ensure that any changes are made safely and responsibly. The parole process is extremely difficult for victims and their families, and we are determined to do as much as we can to give them the support and information that they need.
I will pick up further on the point that my hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire made about sentences, and whether it is appropriate to release someone who has committed a crime such as the crimes committed by Colin Pitchfork, or other horrific crimes, where people are not rehabilitated. If Colin Pitchfork were to be sentenced now, he would likely receive a whole-life order, because under provisions introduced by the Criminal Justice Act 2003, the murder of a child that has a sexual or sadistic motivation attracts a whole-life order as its starting point. The Government recognise the particularly abhorrent nature of cases where a child has been murdered, as set out in the sentencing White Paper, and we intend to go further by making a whole-life order the starting point for any premeditated murder of a child.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott) made an important point about the significant effect of rape on victims and what a dreadful crime that is. She will know that if a judge determines that an offender is dangerous, it is possible to hand down an extended determinate sentence. She will also know about the changes that we are proposing in relation to people who are sentenced for more than seven years—they will have their sentences increased, because we are recommending that they serve two thirds of their sentence, rather than half. However, I appreciate the important points that she made on the question whether such offenders should go before the Parole Board.
The hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) made a point about resources. I hope she spotted that in today’s spending review, our Department’s finances went up by 8%. The Government are committed to ensuring that the justice system has the necessary resources to ensure that we can deliver justice. She will know that demand in relation to the Parole Board has increased significantly and dramatically over the years, with 30 times more cases—that is 8,000 more—being heard each year compared with 20 years ago.
The increase in demand has led to the need regularly to review systems and processes, but also to invest in increased provision. In 2017-18, we injected additional funding to enable the recruitment of over 100 new Parole Board members, so that more hearings could be held. I pay tribute to the Parole Board for managing not only to ensure that it keeps up with the rate of determination during this covid crisis, but to increase the number of matters that it has managed to determine in this difficult and challenging period.
The system is effective at protecting the public from dangerous criminals—it is a thorough and sophisticated process for carefully assessing an offender’s risk—but I want to look at whether it is the most effective model to deliver the parole function over the longer term. The root-and-branch review, which I mentioned, will look at whether we can go further to deliver justice. Together with the Parole Board, we have already made great strides to improve the effectiveness and transparency of the parole system. I am pleased that, through the root-and-branch review, we are now able to take the next steps to ensure that the future delivery of this critical public protection function is the best it can be, with fairness and public safety at the forefront of its focus.
Question put and agreed to.
Judith Cummins (in the Chair)
To allow for the safe exit of Members participating in this debate, and for the safe entry of Members arriving to take part in the next, I am suspending the sitting for two minutes.
Levelling-up Agenda: Tees Valley
(4 years ago)
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Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the Government’s levelling up agenda and Tees Valley.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship—for the first time, I believe, Mrs Cummins. It is good to see so many people interested in our debate this afternoon, particularly my neighbouring MPs, my hon. Friends the Members for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald), and for Hartlepool (Mike Hill).
We have all grown weary of hearing about how unprecedented these times are, so I hope Members will indulge me in a short trip down memory lane. Nearly 10 years ago, I spoke in a near-identical Westminster Hall debate on the topic of regional development in the north-east. I said:
“We wait to see whether there will be a Budget for real growth, backed by substantial resources when the Chancellor stands up tomorrow. Resources must be the key. A jobless recovery would be a disaster for our region, and without growth there will not be enough new jobs… I hope that they have finally realised that without a genuine plan for growth and real resources, the economy will continue to be sluggish.”—[Official Report, 22 March 2011; Vol. 525, c. 223-224WH.]
Well, the Government’s buzzwords may have changed, but after a decade, what strikes me is just how precedented and familiar this situation is. A scene of long-term under- funding of the Tees Valley has meant that unemployment there is still far higher than the national average. Health inequalities have widened, and the number of families in poverty has increased. Unless the Government take serious action soon, we will once again be in the dire situation where our communities are made to pay the price of a Tory Government’s failings.
The toxic combination of Brexit, the pandemic, and Tory incompetence has been catastrophic for our area. Last month it was announced that the UK unemployment rate has surged to its highest level in over three years, now at 4.5%. In the north-east, the unemployment rate has soared to 6.6%—the worst in the UK. The region now has the highest unemployment rate, the lowest employment rate and the lowest average hours worked of all British regions. The Chancellor said this afternoon that an economic emergency had “only just begun”. Well, tell that to our constituents, whose economy has been neglected for the last decade. The numbers have been getting worse for years in our region, since long before the pandemic, as a result of Tory neglect.
At the end of his announcement, the Chancellor dangled a new twinkling pot of money in front of our noses: a levelling-up fund. But we do not need more wasteful bidding processes that pit deprived communities against each other for scraps. Now more than ever, we need a serious and concerted effort to bring the Tees Valley in line with the rest of the UK. You do not have to take just my word for it, Mrs Cummins. WPI Strategy has created the levelling-up index, and in its analysis, six of the seven Tees constituencies are marked as priorities. Middlesbrough is the constituency second most in need of levelling up in the whole of the UK, with Hartlepool sixth. My constituency of Stockton North comes in 14th. In six out of seven of the Tees constituencies, deprivation soars above the national average, climbing to 50% above the UK average in Redcar, 52% in Stockton North, and a startling 110% in Middlesbrough.
For the Tees Valley, levelling up means job creation, and I welcome today’s news of a new power plant to be built at the port. However, while the unemployment benefit claimant rate across the UK is 6.3%, across the Tees Valley it is 8%, and it rises as high as 12% in Middlesbrough. There have been 12,565 extra jobs lost since March across the Tees Valley, and we are haemorrhaging more each day. Last week OSB, a major monopile supplier in my constituency that has been active in offshore wind since 2015, announced that it is closing down at the end of the month because it has not got enough orders. This is happening while the biggest wind farm in the world, Dogger Bank, is being constructed in British territorial waters. What benefit is that bringing to the Tees Valley? Just last week, on the eve of the Prime Minister’s green economy announcement, news came that all—yes, all—the monopiles and transition pieces for Dogger Bank wind farm will be manufactured in Holland and Belgium.
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point, but is he aware that the Government have said that with future subsidy regimes around offshore wind, there will be a requirement for a higher percentage of the wind turbine parts to be made by UK manufacturers?
Alex Cunningham
That is great news, but that is jam tomorrow. We definitely need jam today.
Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)
Does the hon. Gentleman realise that public procurement rules can change only after Brexit? This is a very good example of why the decision that he described moments ago as toxic, and which his own constituents overwhelmingly supported, was of course the right one.
Alex Cunningham
Again, we get jam tomorrow. It is all about jam tomorrow—something that is going to happen in three or five years’ time.
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)
Can we just nail this business about state aid? It was pleaded for in Redcar. We can do that. This is a critically important point: the Tory Government decided that they would sit on their hands and let 9,000 jobs go down the pan. Do not kid me that suddenly there will be this conversion to intervention in our economy—that is absolute nonsense. The French did it; the Germans did it; the Italians did it; and the British Government sat on their hands, and we lost jobs.
Alex Cunningham
My hon. Friend does not need an answer from me on that point. Why has our area lost out? Where was the Tees Tory Mayor when the orders were being handed out? He was nowhere to be seen.
No doubt some will claim that jobs have been boosted in the area, but it is going to take a few more media pictures of the Mayor in a hard hat to convince me of that. The cost per job created in the Tees Valley Combined Authority area is calculated at £96,093. That means that for every job created in the last three years, the Mayor has spent nearly a hundred grand. How on earth is an approach like that going to deliver the sustainable job growth our region so desperately needs? The figures are astronomical. We urgently need a fully independent audit of exactly where the millions of pounds of taxpayer money have gone.
Alex Cunningham
I will not at the moment. Even if we put aside the costs, the number of jobs that have been announced barely scrape the sides of the black hole of unemployment in the Tees Valley. For every job announced in the last three years, five have been lost in the last seven months. Sadly, we cannot even get the Mayor to tell us whether those jobs are being filled, or even where they are.
The Tees Valley’s gross value added per hour worked, an indicator of productivity, continues to lag 9.1% behind the UK average. On top of that, research by iwoca has shown that businesses in the north-east have been particularly hard hit by the pandemic. As a result, the region is forecast to lose 11.7% gross value added in 2020. That will wipe out all the economic growth in the north-east since 2004. We will be back to where we were 16 years ago.
Opportunities presented by the possibilities of carbon capture and storage, a freeport and civil service relocation may be part of the answer, but they are simply not enough. I welcome incentivising businesses to come to the Tees Valley, but it will not be much comfort to local businesses that fall outside the free port area and are anxious about the potential loss of EU trade and new tariffs.
This is not just about jobs. While I am all for planning for the Tees Valley’s future, the impact of Brexit and the pandemic is felt by our communities now. A 10-year plan is no good to my constituents, who contact me worried about how they are going to pay their bills this month. Last month, statistics released by the End Child Poverty coalition showed that the north-east has seen the biggest rise in child poverty in the UK. In my constituency, the proportion of children living in poverty has risen to 34%; in others in the Tees Valley, the figure is higher still. It is a tragedy and a scandal.
In Stockton North, 3,109 families with children received universal credit in May 2020, and 1,700 families with children received working tax credit. Behind those numbers, there are thousands of living, breathing children, plunged below the breadline as a result of having poorly paid jobs—or no jobs at all in their family. I am deeply disappointed that today the Chancellor has not listened to calls to retain the increases in universal credit and working tax credit, so that families with children could keep that small but vital economic support. Across the Tees Valley, 79,000 families are affected. This is a Government who would rather spend millions on the festival of Brexit than bring children out of poverty by retaining even small benefit increases, or than feed them during all school holidays. This is not levelling up; it is grinding down.
We all know that where economic inequality thrives, so do health inequalities. Stockton-on-Tees is often used as a case study to highlight health inequalities in the UK. Men who live in the town centre are expected to live 18 years fewer than their peers just a couple of miles down the road. I have lost count of the number of times I have heard Tory Ministers promise to tackle these worrying inequalities, but nothing has happened. The people of Stockton were promised a new hospital building, but 10 years later, it is yet to materialise. We just get occasional scraps that do nothing to plug the gap.
The Health Secretary visited the University Hospital of North Tees recently. I prayed he was going to announce its replacement, as I knew a statement was coming up within a few days. The statement came, but North Tees was not on the Health Secretary’s list. Surely any commitment to levelling up the Tees Valley must have addressing health inequalities at the core of its mission, and a new hospital has a major role to play in that.
A proper levelling-up agenda would be such a boon for Teessiders, but while the Tories claim that that agenda is already under way in the Tees Valley, there are serious obstacles that will prevent its delivery. Just last week, the think-tank Demos published a new report, “Achieving Levelling-Up: The Structures and Processes Needed”. It concludes that while levelling up is possible,
“there is zero chance of achieving it without…changes to the current system”
of devolved politics. One barrier it identifies is that the work of local enterprise partnerships and combined authorities is largely invisible, making real accountability to the public impossible.
The situation in the Tees Valley Combined Authority area is much more concerning than that, because the Tory Administration are not just invisible in terms of accountability, but are actively obstructing proper scrutiny. The Mayor has created a web of different companies and organisations through which he spends public money, but is shielded from vital public scrutiny. There are even reports that donors to his campaign have been appointed to significant positions in those companies and organisations. Decisions are often made outside formal meetings, through a complex network of political and business relationships and friendships, informed by advice from expensive consultants.
Alex Cunningham
I will not at the moment. This is a chumocracy on a local scale that mirrors the widespread and despicable cronyism we have seen play out on the national stage in the Government’s constant privatisation of the response to the pandemic. It is shameful cronyism that I am worried will bear more fruit in the administration of any Tory levelling-up fund. If the management of the £3.6 billion towns fund is anything to go by, we have serious reason for concern. Billingham, in my constituency, was deemed more in need of support than towns in Tory MPs’ patches, including a town in the Secretary of State’s constituency, which was 270th on the list, but Billingham missed out and the Secretary of State’s constituency did not.
It is clear from the Chancellor’s announcement today that the Government are not going to invest the money that the Tees Valley needs to overcome the destabilising impact of Brexit and the pandemic on our communities and industries. While he splurges on whizzy defence gadgets and Brexit festival guff, public sector pay and benefits are largely frozen. These freezes will actively discourage the growth that we need in the Tees Valley, and they will level down, not up.
Locally, the Tory combined authority is the one public body in the Tees Valley with money to spend, but despite that, there is no comprehensive support package for our constituents. Instead, there is the £1 million Houchen gate—£1 million of taxpayers’ money that could have done so much good, wasted on a gate. The Mayor bought the loss-making airport for about £80 million, but he has secured a few flights; some people will be grateful for that. I heard one person say today, “What use is it being able to get on a flight to Alicante when local people still can’t get a bus home after 7pm?”.
Mr Clarke
Clearly, the Labour party opposed the rescue of Teesside international airport; it is probably the only example I can recall of the Labour party opposing taking something into public ownership. Is the hon. Gentleman still saying today that it was the wrong decision? I think people across Teesside would be amazed by that.
Alex Cunningham
Personally, I am still a little surprised that it ever happened. Labour-led authorities at that time supported the purchase of the airport. The Mayor was elected on the promise that he would buy the airport; it was in his manifesto and others facilitated his doing it. He is the person who will have to bear the brunt of the problems that we will face in the future, including the many millions of pounds that we are going to lose, year on year.
Andy McDonald
Does my hon. Friend agree that it might assist us if the various companies that have fallen under the umbrella of this organisation voluntarily agreed to be subject to the Freedom of Information Act 2000? What we have here is a raft of public money, and a public body, put beyond the gaze of the public. Does he agree that that does not help scrutiny and transparency?
Alex Cunningham
Most certainly. I cannot understand why anybody wants to hide where the public money has been spent. I know that there are different people involved in all these different companies. I would like to know what their agenda is. Is it the agenda of the people of the Tees Valley?
The failure of the Government, both nationally and locally, angers and saddens me. The Tees Valley is fit to burst with potential. We are ripe and ready to be levelled up; we are calling out for it. We have the potential to exploit the amazing opportunities for green industry, including carbon capture and storage. We have a high skill base, tight-knit communities and local authorities that, despite political changes, have a track record of working together, and achieving great things when they do. Sometimes, local Tories try to claim that Labour politicians are talking down Teesside.
Alex Cunningham
I almost have to laugh. Talking down Teesside? It is the greatest honour of my life to represent the amazing and diverse citizens of Stockton North, and to champion the vibrant history and culture of the Tees Valley. The real problem is that for the past 10 years, the Tories have been booting down Teesside. Their mind-boggling incompetence in handling the covid crisis is yet another catastrophic kick to the region. Pointing out the heartbreaking inequalities that affect our constituents is not talking down our area. It is standing up for our area in the face of a national Conservative Government who have neglected the north-east for years. The Tees economy is on the cliff edge of a hard Brexit, and the lack of investment and post-pandemic rebuilding will push it into the abyss.
The North East England chamber of commerce policy director, Jonathan Walker, got it exactly right when he said:
“The human, social and economic cost of this is appalling. Levelling up has to mean more than just shiny projects. It must mean giving young people in our region the same life chances as they’d get in other parts of the country.”
He came out with another statement today; he said that the Chancellor’s announcement today was a missed opportunity:
“On the face of it a levelling-up fund sounds good but it is far too small in scale and ambition to be effective.”
I want our young people to get the benefits, but sadly I see no prospect of them getting the support they need. There are plenty of these shiny projects, but the absence of substance breaks my heart, because they could have so much more. Our constituents deserve better than this. They need better than this.
I appeal to the Minister to stress to his colleagues the need for true levelling up; for help sustaining jobs and creating new ones; to be open, honest and transparent when dealing with public money; to end the health inequalities that continue to blight our communities; and, perhaps above all, to give our young people real hope that they can have the careers they want and a future they can look forward to. Let us make the expression “levelling up” more than a cliché. Let us make it a demonstration of action.
Judith Cummins (in the Chair)
I ask Back Benchers to keep within five minutes to start with. I am planning to call Front Benchers at around 5.15 pm. Simon Clarke.
Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Cummins. I congratulate the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) on securing today’s debate. I just wish he could have been more generous in his speech. It was, I am afraid, a quintessential example of talking down Teesside, the phrase he rightly used. Indeed, it contained a series of remarks that are deeply disparaging of what is going on in our area, and some half-baked innuendo around impropriety by the Mayor that he would be ill-advised to repeat outside the House.
What is happening in the Tees Valley will, of course, transform the life chances of his constituents and mine. Under successive Governments, our area has never been supported properly to adapt to a changing world, so our traditional strength in heavy industry became a new-found weakness. That is changing under the Conservatives. The solutions the Labour Government offered were the wrong ones; there was an unsustainable reliance on public sector jobs, a culture of welfare dependency, and a lack of thought about how to instigate proper, sustainable, private sector growth.
What is required for the Tees Valley? Opportunity, investment, and leadership—and that is what we now have. The hon. Gentleman denigrated the fact that there is a 10-year plan; I am glad there is a plan. It is a plan that has been agreed in partnership between Government, local government, our councils and industry. That is an example of precisely the kind of successful devolution that we need to see more of in this country.
Andy McDonald
The hon. Gentleman mentioned over-reliance on public sector workers. Are those the same public sector workers for whom we came out from our houses and clapped on a Thursday night in appreciation of the work that they do and in acknowledgement of how much we rely on them, or is he now casting them to one side as well?
Mr Clarke
We do, actually, and we have defended the lowest paid in today’s statement, but it is very important to note that in the end we need to have sustainable private sector-led growth in the Tees Valley and that was not what was delivered under the last Labour Government. What we need to see is growth, and how will that growth be delivered? There are five key aspects to that.
The first is the regeneration of the former SSI steelworks site at Redcar, supported by £233 million from the Government. It is the largest redevelopment project in the United Kingdom. What will go there? In February, I had the pleasure of speaking at the launch of Net Zero Teesside at the Riverside stadium. As we heard last week, carbon capture, usage and storage will be at the heart of the Government’s green industrial revolution. It is backed by £1 billion of Government investment, and the Tees and the Humber CCS clusters—
Mr Clarke
I will not, because of lack of time.
This is an important part of that piece. CCS will sit alongside other clean energy projects, including the national hydrogen transport hub and the offshore wind industry. The hon. Gentleman said that there is no good coming to the area from it. An application is being made for the new £90 million quay at South Bank, which will create hundreds of jobs. It is all set to be built next year.
The second feature of our vision for Teesside is, of course, a freeport. Despite Labour doing everything it could to stop Brexit—which is the reason why Teesside is now represented by more Government than Labour MPs—we will leave the transition period and regain full national independence on 1 January. Freeports are one of the best examples of how we can drive growth and jobs. [Interruption.] Some of my colleagues are having to self-isolate, but if Members look at the electoral geography of Teesside, they may notice that it has changed.
The third aspect of our plan is, of course, an infrastructure revolution. It cannot be overstated how important it is that the Mayor saved our airport in the teeth of the hon. Gentleman’s opposition and that of his colleagues. We have had the announcement today of the new flights to Alicante and Majorca—something that both his constituents and mine will enjoy next summer. That is on top of the new service to London Heathrow, the UK’s global transport hub, and the multimillion-pound regeneration of Middlesbrough station and Darlington station.
Of course, the fourth strand of levelling up comes in the form of skills. The Government have already committed £450 million to the Tees Valley Combined Authority’s plans to give young people access to skills training, introduce high-quality broadband and overcome barriers to work. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s kickstart scheme, part of the emergency response to coronavirus, has already surpassed 500 jobs for local 16 to 24-year-olds, with applications still open.
The fifth and final element of levelling up is, of course, direct investment through the £3.6 billion towns fund. Middlesbrough, Redcar, Thornaby and Hartlepool are all awaiting the outcome of their bids. Darlington has already had £22.7 million from the fund. And that comes on top of bids to the future high streets fund, which I hope will benefit both Middlesbrough and Loftus.
We all know that levelling up is the task of at least a decade. None of this will be achieved easily. None of it comes simply. But it is happening precisely because we have confidence in Teesside, in the people of Teesside and in the future of Teesside. Rather than talking it down, we talk it up, and that is being rewarded for the people of the area, who see hope, growth, jobs and optimism. They see that from the Government side of the House, from the Conservatives, and long may it continue.
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)
It is an absolute pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mrs Cummins. I thank my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) for securing the debate, and Mr Speaker for granting me permission to speak on behalf of my constituency of Middlesbrough.
Ten years of Tory austerity have been utterly devastating for our people, and for none more so than for the people in my town of Middlesbrough and for our communities across the Tees Valley. That the Government are now talking about a levelling up agenda is the result of the inequalities that have taken hold across the regions over recent years because of their policies. The prolonged period of underfunding and not providing communities with the powers to help themselves has left us in a state where the disparity in funding levels across the UK is stark.
Let us look at transport. Last year, London got £903 per head and the north-east £486. The Government do not have the interests of the whole nation at heart. The Middlesbrough to King’s Cross rail service has been put back and back and back. The latest estimated time of arrival is December 2021, and further delays would not surprise me.
Kevin Hollinrake
Let us try not to be too party political about this. Does the hon. Member not recognise that under-investment in the north, which we all suffer from, has happened under Governments of all persuasions, for decades, and this is the first Government who are doing something tangible about it?
Andy McDonald
I would like to think that was true. I hear that trotted out ad nauseam from the Government Benches: “When you criticise me or hold me to account, you’re being party political.” That is our job. The Conservatives have had 10 years in Government and have done nothing but give us false promises and hard hats. We are not into it. Of course, there was nothing about Northern Powerhouse Rail in the Chancellor’s statement and there is nothing at all on the horizon for the much-needed electrification of the line from Northallerton through to Middlesbrough and beyond.
Sadly, the social, economic and health crises brought about by covid-19 have only exacerbated the existing inequalities. It is no surprise that Middlesbrough, as one of the poorest parts of the country, with 40% of children growing up below the poverty line and where four out of five workers have to leave home to go about their work, was also one of the areas of the UK worst hit by the virus.
There are, however, things that can be done to address some of the impacts of years of neglect and the ravages of covid. Many of us are old enough to remember Margaret Thatcher in ’79 cancelling the transfer of the Government’s property service agencies from London to Middlesbrough—3,000 jobs cut at a stroke. Over recent years of Tory rule, high-quality Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs jobs have been ripped out of Middlesbrough and Stockton, among them experienced civil servants who were tax inspectors and whose debt recovery performance was the best in the country. I pleaded with the Government not to rob us of those high-quality jobs, but did they listen?
That is why I am hugely disappointed that the Chancellor has not come forward today with a decision regarding the campus for the north. Over the past year I have repeatedly urged him to bring forward plans to establish that campus and bring with it 22,000 Government jobs for our communities, making the case for Middlesbrough and the Tees Valley to be chosen as a site for the new campus. Again—lots of press releases, but no action.
My hon. Friends the Members for Stockton North and for Hartlepool (Mike Hill) and I recently met senior representatives of BP and Net Zero Teesside. For many years, we have been pressing the case for carbon capture, use and storage on Teesside, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friends’ work. We very much welcomed the discussion about further work on the plans, which have been a long time in development. However, the funding behind the Government’s 10-point plan for the green industrial revolution does not come anywhere near addressing the immediate climate and employment crisis.
There is no engagement or consultation with trade unions when we secure very welcome major capital expenditure projects, totally consistent with the ambitions of the green industrial revolution. That cannot continue. I have begged the Government to listen to Frances O’Grady of the TUC and her call for a national recovery council, with Government, businesses and unions working together. We want good jobs and good industrial relations from the off. We want union engagement at the start of the process, not desperate attempts at retrofitting. On Teesside, as across the entire country, if there is to be any substance to the constant drip feed of rehashed announcements and hollow promises, it has to mean something for Teesside workers, with a clear path to delivery.
There is an opportunity here to create new, well-paid unionised jobs. There is insufficient focus on jobs and ensuring that we have the skills to secure those jobs. Sadly, Tory Governments do all that they can to undermine the strength and bargaining power of trade unions that are fighting to protect jobs. President-elect Joe Biden said the other day:
“I want you to know I’m a union guy”,
and that under his presidency unions will have increased power. He said:
“It’s not antibusiness. It’s about economic growth, creating good paying jobs.”
I do not know why the Tory Government cannot comprehend that.
The benchmark of the promise to level up will be my Middlesbrough constituents having those good jobs and being able to enjoy the benefits of economic growth with their families. As for the promise to boost skills, are the Government serious? They have just cancelled the union learning fund on the basis that it is not fair because all receiving workplaces are union workplaces. They should encourage workers, as I am doing today, to join a trade union. That is the way to secure better terms and conditions, safer workplaces, a better work-life balance and better pay and spending power to put demand back in the economy and taxes in the Treasury. Scrapping the union learning fund is levelling down, not levelling up, and it is a kick in the teeth for working people.
Sadly, far too many people in Middlesbrough and across the Tees Valley will not be looking forward to 2021 and levelling up, but they will be looking at the pork barrel Tory politics delivering for their friends, their party and their donors. It was ever thus, but it does not have to be like that. We can build back better if there is the political will, but my Middlesbrough constituents see very little evidence of it.
Mike Hill (Hartlepool) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Cummins. The deindustrialisation of the north began long before Margaret Thatcher closed the pits. For Hartlepool, the closure of our shipyards and steelworks provided an economic shock that we have barely recovered from. Since the 1980s, the town has gradually fallen behind other places in the UK for job prospects, life expectancy, health and economic growth. Where there was once a vibrant, highly skilled workforce and a strong industrial sector, there are now high levels of unemployment and a low- wage economy.
For far too long, levelling down has been the agenda for Hartlepool. One in three households are jobless, one third of our children are obese when they leave primary school, life expectancy continues to decline, and such is the level of need that there are currently an estimated nine known food kitchens. The same goes for the rest of the Tees Valley. Once the industrial powerhouse of the country, it has been systematically ground down by years of Government austerity and under-investment, and the dismantling of infrastructure designed specifically to tackle local economic and regenerational needs such as One NorthEast.
When the Redcar steelworks closed recently and the blast furnace was capped, the beating heart of a centuries-old industry stopped. For many at the time it was as if life had been choked out of Teesside and the project’s decimation was complete. Most certainly it led to thousands of highly paid skilled workers entering the jobs market. Fortunately, because events are so recent, we have retained that skills base in the Tees Valley. In fact, right across the piece, we have a disproportionate number of skilled workers in the labour market ready to work, desperate for work, and in prime position to pass those skills on to the next generation.
When we consider the levels of in-house poverty on Teesside, third-generation unemployment in our communities, and workers desperate for jobs looking on in anger as big industry replaces local jobs with cheaper agency workers, we know that levelling up is more than an economic challenge. It is a generational life saver, which is why the work of the Tees Valley Mayor and the combined authority is so important.
What remains of our industrial infrastructure is unique. We are the most compact offshore oil and gas, petrochemical and pharmaceutical industrial cluster in the country. We are in prime position to convert the old heavy polluting industries into powerhouses for the so-called green industrial revolution. The people of the Tees Valley have the skills, the knowledge and the know-how to embrace the new challenges, but we need the right level of investment from the Government, the banks and industry to make it so.
The Tees Valley Mayor is undoubtedly ambitious and vocal. Nobody can argue against the need to embrace new green technologies and the push for net zero carbon emissions, so he is right and we are right to champion carbon capture, usage and storage, wind technology, hydrogen technology, and to push for the aims of initiatives such as Net Zero Teesside to become a reality. Some would argue that the Mayor is ahead of the curve on many aspects that now fit with the Government’s levelling up ambitions, but what we do not need are pledges and plans and promises of jam tomorrow. We need action, new money and real investment to realise our ambitions. For Hartlepool, that must include securing a firm commitment from the Government on the future of our nuclear power plant. Nobody has mentioned nuclear energy in this debate: it not only provides a low-carbon bridge to net zero but makes a significant contribution to the national grid and produces hydrogen as a by-product.
New nuclear is listed in the Government’s 10-point plan for a green industrial revolution, which my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) mentioned, so it is clearly a priority. Rather than see more high-skilled jobs go, let us have a firm commitment to supporting the industry on Teesside.
Paul Howell (Sedgefield) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in today’s debate. I welcome the Chancellor’s promises in the spending review, which will go a long way to kick-start the Government’s levelling up agenda. As recently as this morning, in a debate on northern infrastructure, which was notably ignored by the vast majority of Labour Members, I mentioned the need for a fund that MPs could use to secure funding for local projects to commit to levelling up.
Andy McDonald
It is on that point. If MPs have to get in a queue to get to the Chancellor or any other Minister to say, “My constituency, please”, does the hon. Gentleman see any flaws with that process?
Paul Howell
Prior to coming to this place, I sat as a Durham county councillor, and the local councillors had a local fund to help local projects at a small level. It is a very similar concept. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman, like me, knows of things on which he would like to spend money in his constituency.
The project of levelling up the Tees Valley is ambitious and attainable. We have already seen great successes in levelling up the valley, including the saving of Teesside International airport in the south of my constituency, which has flights to connect the world to Teesside. It was announced this morning that Ryanair will be joining us. Teesside International airport and its estate is a flagship for levelling up and shows what can be achieved quickly with the correct capital investment and implementation plan. I look forward to further investment.
Under the stewardship of Ben Houchen, levelling up the Tees Valley looks to have an exciting future, with plans for a new freeport that could create 32,000 jobs and add £2 billion to the regional economy, and the UK’s largest industrial zone in Teesworks will create extra jobs there. This is an exciting time for the region, and I hope this debate allows us to discuss how we can move it on further.
My constituency of Sedgefield sits on the edge of the Tees Valley, and I assume that I am the eighth of the seven that the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) mentioned—there are eight of us in the Tees Valley, and a third of my constituency is in the Tees Valley Combined Authority. Because of that, we are in a unique position. Many of my constituents travel to the Tees Valley for work every day, and many from the Tees Valley travel to Sedgefield. Because of that, hon. Members might expect good transport links between the two, but that is not the case. Out of 228,000 people in County Durham, only 13,000 use the bus and 2,000 use the train. Cars are obviously the main thing. It is not good that 164,000 people opt to use a car to get to work. I obviously support the Darlington bypass, which would link Newton Aycliffe business park, with 10,000 jobs, to Teesport.
Andy McDonald
The hon. Gentleman is making a very good point about the public transport links. I wonder whether he might want to have a word with the Tees Valley Mayor about embracing the powers under the Bus Services Act 2017 to re-regulate our buses so that the hon. Gentleman can deliver the services that wants in his constituency.
Paul Howell
The Tees Valley Mayor’s initiatives, such as the Tees Flex bus service, are a very good step in the right direction. I wish that that service would come up to the north of my constituency.
We must remember that, in order to level up, the benefits and successes of regeneration from freeports, green jobs and so on must be distributed across the region. The critical advantage is connections to those projects by air, bus, train, bike—whatever. I welcome the Chancellor’s decision to provide funding to start a feasibility study on Ferryhill station and include it in the national infrastructure plan. The residents have been asking for it for 24 years. When a certain Tony Blair was the MP for Sedgefield, there was no progress whatever. The comment we got from the local Labour group was, “Thatcher stopped that.” Well, 24 years is plenty of time to fix it.
My point is that we need a long-term plan focused on connectivity. It is important to have an integrated transport system and short, medium and long-term commitments to encourage optimistic investment by business and housing in places where it is needed. We look forward to further benefits of opening this rail connection, which would open the door and provide a foundation to better connect Teesside with Tyneside and Wearside and improve connectivity.
Alongside the levelling up of our physical infrastructure, we must also level up our social infrastructure. This funding will be vital in the medium to long-term response to covid, since research shows that the pandemic is likely to exacerbate existing social and economic problems in left-behind neighbourhoods. What I mean by levelling up our social infrastructure is building social capital and investing in our communities and community projects.
I am co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for “left behind” neighbourhoods, and we have identified 122 constituencies with left-behind communities. We define those by using the community needs index and taking the bottom 10% of the wards in England. Some 30% of those were in former—I say again, former—red wall constituencies, and seven of the eight constituencies in the Tees Valley include left-behind neighbourhoods.
One proposal, for a community wealth fund, would provide investment and put left-behind communities in charge of the spend, enabling them to build the social capital and civic infrastructure they need. I welcome the Chancellor’s commitment in the spending review to a levelling up fund and the new community fund, and I hope to work with all local colleagues to maximise its application in our area.
Judith Cummins (in the Chair)
Before I call the last two Back Benchers, I remind them that I want the Front- Bench speeches to start at a quarter past.
Dehenna Davison (Bishop Auckland) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Cummins. I thank the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) for securing this debate. Before I start, I have had messages from my hon. Friends the Members for Darlington (Peter Gibson), for Stockton South (Matt Vickers) and for Redcar (Jacob Young), who really wanted to be here but are doing their duty and self-isolating, so I just want to put that on record.
Just last week I was in this Chamber emphasising the importance of levelling up, and I am delighted to be able to do so again. The levelling-up agenda is really at the heart of my politics and the reason that I am in this place. It means changing lives for the better, allowing businesses to flourish and those held back by the circumstances to fulfil their potential and grasp opportunities.
Yet time and time again, when we are talking about levelling up across the country, including in the north-east, we see the Opposition talk it down. While we drive investment in transport, in industry and in green technology, the Opposition talk it down—[Interruption.] They are trying to do it right now. We focus on creating opportunities for the future, but instead, the hon. Members for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) and for Hartlepool (Mike Hill) hark back to the past, talking about Margaret Thatcher and events under her premiership—things that happened before I and many of their constituents were even born.
We are about the future; Labour are about the past. For too long, the Opposition have taken people such as my constituents for granted. They believed it was their right to represent seats such as mine in the north-east, yet for decades under local Labour leadership our region saw nothing but decline—but then came the light. Leading the Tees Valley Combined Authority, Ben Houchen has shown that the levelling-up agenda is also at the heart of his mission.
The Tees Valley has an extraordinary champion in Ben Houchen, someone who has been fighting for the area from day one. Though my constituency is not within the Tees Valley Combined Authority area, Teesside’s success means more opportunities for constituents of mine in Bishop Auckland, and although geography means that they cannot vote for him, my constituents certainly have a lot of very kind words to say about Ben Houchen, and Labour needs to take note of that.
I was planning to say a lot more, but I want to keep it brief to allow my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) a go. The short point is that we are delivering, after years and years of Labour’s talking the area down and doing little to deliver for the communities it claims to represent. We are delivering, and that is the reason why Opposition Members hate it so much.
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Cummins. I congratulate the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) on bringing forward this important debate.
The key message from my very brief words will be that if we want to level up—as we all do, and this should be a constructive debate about how we do that—the reality is that for decades Government after Government have left our region behind. I call Tees Valley our region; I am probably only hon. Member speaking whose constituency is not directly covered by the geography of Tees Valley, but I am a neighbouring Member of Parliament, and we have Woodsmith Mine, which has important economic connections with Redcar.
The reality is that it will be a huge task to level up. The best analogy I can make for levelling up this country—the north and the midlands particularly—would be the reunification of East and West Germany. That took three decades and $2 trillion to do. It is a huge undertaking. The key thing we should learn from Germany is that it was not just about public sector investment. It was public sector and private sector investment. Members on both sides of the House have made that important point. We must accept that there is a natural spending bias towards London and the south-east because of things like the Green Book and the housing infrastructure fund. We should be championing against that, and it has been the same for Governments of many persuasions. On the back of that, of course, the Government is ensuring that hundreds of billions of pounds of infra- structure will be spent in our region.
I will provide an example of why this matter is: Mark Littlewood from the Institute of Economic Affairs said that if the issue is just about infrastructure, then why is Doncaster not more prosperous? It is about more than just connections. There must be private sector investment. We must incentivise the private sector and we need super-enterprise zones across the whole of Tees Valley with business rate discounts, good treatment of capital allowances and incentives to invest more. We need that on the back of the excellent programme of investment we will get from the Government.
Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)
It truly is a pleasure to be serving under your chairmanship, Mrs Cummins. I thank and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) for securing this timely debate.
Other Members have already said that we have been hearing the message of levelling up from consecutive Conservative Governments since 2010. I take the point made by the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison), but this is not about looking in the rear-view mirror. The truth is that if a child does not have the absolute right start in life, that child’s chances for the future are depleted. That is the point that Opposition Members are trying to make. It is absolutely right that we refer back to the era of Margaret Thatcher, which desecrated the north. That was the foundation for where the north finds itself today.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North and other Opposition Members are right to talk about poverty, and as a Member of Parliament for a fellow northern city constituency I share with him the same concerns. We need to level up in education funding, unemployment rates, transport funding and much more. Whether someone comes from Bradford West or Stockton North or Middlesbrough, the barriers in life created by Conservative Governments are, sadly, the same.
Despite the Government’s claim, regional inequality has deepened under the conservatives. A decade of low investment has left the country deeply imbalanced, with towns and cities outside London losing out. My hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) mentioned the 22,000 potential jobs that could have been created with the campus in the north. The list goes on. The north has heard all the promises from the Government, and is still waiting for the current pledges of infrastructure funding to be fulfilled before we turn to the new commitments made.
Today, the Chancellor promised a bank, but the north is still waiting for its rail. Six years on from first being announced, Northern Powerhouse Rail has still not yet been approved, let alone started. The people of Stockton were promised a new hospital building, but it has yet to materialise 10 years later. Today the Chancellor spoke about creating jobs, but we have heard all of that before. At national level, employment figures across the country recovered in the decade following the crash, but there is a big imbalance in where the jobs were created. For every job created in the north-east, 13 jobs were created in London. The record over the last three years of the Conservative Mayor of Tees Valley—creating a single job at a cost of £100,000—is such a disastrous waste of public funding that only his colleagues in Whitehall could do worse with taxpayers’ money.
Time and again, the north of England has been governed by Whitehall and been left second to London. As already outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North, the health inequalities in Stockton-on-Tees are such that the lives of men living in the town centre are expected to be 18 years shorter than their counterparts just down the road. These existing inequalities have put those from the north at higher risk from the pandemic. Even in the pandemic, people in the north have been more likely to have their working hours reduced or to have lost their jobs altogether. As our shadow Chancellor put it,
“They have, bluntly and tragically, been more likely to die of covid-19.”
From the outset of the pandemic, we have continually called for local test and trace. Regional Mayors and local councils have been prepared from day one to assist the Government in building local infrastructure to deliver a localised service. The country was in a time of need and an opportunity to build locally presented itself, but the Government decided to dish out millions to private companies without competition, and without penalty clauses for poor performance. Those with connections were 10 times more likely to get a deal.
As if Tory cronyism could not get any worse, today, the Chancellor’s infrastructure fund is based on agreement from MPs—yet again Tory MPs get in ahead to lobby for their own areas. The 2019 towns fund is just one example that was meant to support struggling towns but, instead, one Minister signs off the next Minister’s request for funds. Out of 101 towns funded, only 40 were on a needs basis, and the other 61 were chosen by their own Ministers. While our nation is facing the largest fall in output for 300 years, the choices this nation needs to make are based on the country’s needs, and not the needs of Conservative MPs and their friends. We have been listening to Conservative jargon on redistribution since 2010. It is just another term now—levelling up—but despite the north and the poorest in society falling further behind, we are still waiting for delivery.
We need high-quality businesses in every town that provide well-paid and secure jobs, so that people do not just survive but thrive. With rising unemployment, lower average wages than the national average, and the biggest increase in child poverty in the past five years, the time is now for this Government to act on the north-east. The Government have a clear responsibility, and it is finally time for them to deliver on it. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mike Hill) outlined, this is a generational life-saver.
The Minister for Regional Growth and Local Government (Luke Hall)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mrs Cummins, and to be back in Westminster Hall after such an absence. I congratulate the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) on securing this debate and all Members on their contributions. It has been an important and passionate debate, and certainly a timely one following the Chancellor’s statement earlier today. I also put on record my gratitude to my hon. Friends the Members for Redcar (Jacob Young), for Stockton South (Matt Vickers) and for Darlington (Peter Gibson) for their continued representations on behalf of their constituents. They are rightly doing their duty in self-isolating, but I am sure they would have wanted to be here today.
The thing that has bound everyone in this debate together is their passion to get the best for the future of Tees Valley and the communities they represent. The shared ambition that they have, working with Ben Houchen and the leadership teams at the Tees Valley Combined Authority, is to get the best for their constituents.
Levelling up is a central part of this Government’s agenda. That is why we have set out a clear commitment to unlock economic prosperity across all parts of the country. It is about providing the building blocks and momentum to address those long-term structural regional inequalities, and providing the means to pursue life chances that, for too many people, have been out of reach for far too long. This is hugely important for Tees Valley, where deindustrialisation and the pace of economic change have created challenges to growth and social mobility. Levelling up is about enabling places to determine and support their own economic priorities. That is why we are working so closely with the Tees Valley Combined Authority and the local enterprise partnership, and it is why we have invested £126 million of local growth funding in Tees Valley based on local evidence and local prioritisation.
The fund has improved access to Billingham train station, and improved infrastructure to allow that critical private sector expansion in Stockton’s biopharmaceutical campus—both of these are, of course, in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. I want to thank Ben Houchen, who has become a leader in showing the potential of devolution across our country. I do not make that point on a party-political basis—other Mayors across the country have done a fantastic job, too—but Ben Houchen has been a model for what devolution can achieve. If we look at the devolution deal, which is already enabling new spend and will deliver £450 million over that 30-year period, it has established a regional investment fund supporting the plans by the Mayor for sustainable economic growth.
We are delighted that one of the Mayors’ flagship initiatives has been transforming the industrial site that includes the former SSI steelworks at Redcar into Teesworks through the mayoral development corporation. We have supported that with £233 million on siteworks over the past five years, and recently handed full control over to the combined authority. Work is now well under way to develop Teesworks as a pioneering business park, which will create 20,000 highly skilled jobs over the next two decades. It is a shining example of what effective partnerships between central Government and devolved powers with effective local Mayors can achieve. I echo the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell) about achievements around the airport, and even the announcements we have seen today about new routes from Teesside International airport and new operators from the summer. I congratulate colleagues in this House, the Mayor, and everybody involved.
We should also welcome and look at the towns fund investment. We have invited five of the region’s towns to submit proposals for towns deals as part of our £3.6 billion towns fund. We have now agreed the heads of terms with Darlington—that is £22.3 million to boost employment and skills, as well as to make improvements to how the town looks and feels. Prospective deals can follow in Middlesbrough, Thornaby-on-Tees, Hartlepool and Redcar. The objective of the deals is to drive the regeneration of towns and to deliver long-term economic and productivity growth. Across the Tees Valley, the towns deal boards are already working with the community, businesses, investors and local government to do just that.
A number of Members have mentioned the Chancellor’s announcement today about the levelling-up fund. We think that is a further positive example of what can be done with levelling up. Such projects will have a real impact on people’s communities. They can be delivered within this Parliament, and it is right that they should command local support, including from Members of Parliament. It is wrong to suggest that MPs do not speak to local government, because they are able to input valuable information about the projects that their constituents want to see. The levelling-up fund will support the infrastructure that people want in everyday life and that they contact MPs about, from new bypasses and upgrading railway services, to traffic, libraries, museums and cultural assets—all the important issues that our constituents raise with us. The levelling-up fund will be open to all local areas and will be allocated competitively. Next year, £600 million will be available in England.
It is also right to point to the investment in high streets, because the need for the regeneration of high streets is evident in so many of our towns and communities across the country. We have seen considerable challenges for high streets in the past decade, which is why our future high streets fund will revitalise high streets, helping them to adapt and evolve and to remain vibrant places at the heart of our communities. We have submissions from Loftus, Darlington, Middlesbrough and Stockton, and of course we have Hartlepool, which has been selected as the high street taskforce pilot. We will announce the successful future high street fund places before the end of this year, and we will contact places once decisions have been made. That is a hugely important part of the work that we are doing.
We should also recognise the unprecedented challenges that the pandemic has thrust upon us. To counteract some of the impact on businesses and productivity, the Prime Minister announced the £900 million Getting Building fund in August, to deliver jobs. The Tees Valley received £17.4 million of that money, and it is worth noting that that was the highest amount per capita anywhere in the country. Those funds have been supporting the development of high-grade business accommodation at Darlington’s flagship research and development site at Central Park, and they have also helped accelerate the redevelopment of Middlesbrough railway station by improving its facilities and strengthening its connectivity.
The hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mike Hill) made an informed and passionate contribution about the future of green energy and its importance for growth in the Tees Valley. It is undoubtedly right that that has to be an important part of the area’s future growth. We absolutely recognise the urgency of a green industrial revolution that will deliver an economic resurgence and meet our 2050 target, which is why the Prime Minister’s 10-point plan commits to invest up to £1 billion to support the establishment of carbon capture and storage clusters in pioneering places such as Teesside. I am pleased that the Tees Valley is set to host the UK’s first hydrogen transport hub, helping to create hundreds of green jobs. It will help establish the Tees Valley as a hive of research and development activity, advocating the prospect of using green hydrogen to power our buses, heavy goods vehicles, rail, maritime transport and aviation around the country.
I am conscious of the time, so I thank the hon. Member for Stockton North for securing the debate and for his contribution. I know that he is rightly passionate about the levelling-up agenda, and I stand ready to support him if he wants to work with the Government on these issues. However, it is right that towns and communities around the country will be powering our economic recovery, and it is clear that the Tees Valley will be at the heart of this country’s renewal.
Alex Cunningham
I am grateful to everyone who has taken part in this robust debate. I am pleased that the Minister at least recognises that we are here because we believe in our areas; we are not talking them down. We believe in them, and we are speaking up for them. I appreciate the fact that he is now nodding.
I have 20 seconds left, so as for the Minister’s answers: no new hospitals, and no reference to health at all. I have one final point to repeat: five jobs have been lost in the past seven months for every job created in the past three years. We need to do much, much better for the Tees Valley.
Written Statements
Covid-19: UK-Wide Christmas Arrangements
(4 years ago)
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The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office (Michael Gove)
On 24 November 2020, agreement was reached between the UK Government and the devolved Administrations in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland on a time-limited change to social contact restrictions over the Christmas period.
Christmas is an important time of year for many people in the UK. Regardless of faith, the Christmas period is a time spent with family and friends while schools and offices are closed. Covid-19 continues, however, to pose a very real and ongoing threat. It will not be possible to take full advantage of the winter holiday season and to celebrate Christmas in the normal way. There will be some hard choices for families and friends, and there will be situations where it is not possible to gather in the way many usually would.
In this context, the UK Government and the devolved Administrations have reached agreement on a single set of UK-wide measures to help people come together with their loved ones in a way that is as safe as possible.
Between 23 and 27 December, up to three households will be able to join together to form an exclusive Christmas “bubble”.
Everyone can be in one bubble only, and cannot change bubble during this time period (the only exemption to this being children (aged under 18) of separated parents).
People (e.g. nannies, cleaners, tradespeople) can continue to work in someone’s home where necessary during this period. To reduce risk, they should observe social distancing wherever possible, and where it can be avoided should not go into homes that are hosting Christmas bubbles.
A Christmas bubble will be able to spend time together in private homes, attend places of worship, or meet in a public outdoor place.
Travel restrictions across the UK will be lifted to allow people to travel to form their bubble. Beyond this, people should follow local restrictions in the area they are staying.
Students who move home from university for the holidays will count as part of their family’s household, and in England an existing support bubble will count as one household.
Even where it is within the rules, meeting with friends and family over Christmas will be a matter of personal judgement for individuals, mindful of the risks to themselves and others. People should reduce unnecessary contact socially with people they do not live with as much as possible in the two weeks before they form their Christmas bubble. Everyone should think carefully about what they do during this period, balancing some increased social contact with the need to keep the risk of increased transmission of the virus as low as possible. This is particularly important when considering those who are vulnerable and elderly.
The clinically extremely vulnerable can form a Christmas bubble, but it is a personal choice and should be balanced against the increased risk of infection for those people. Given the additional risks, visits out of care homes should only be considered for care home residents of working age, where the home is in agreement, and when an individual risk assessment has been completed.
Parents should continue to send their children to school, and students should continue to attend college, in line with local guidance. The UK’s four chief medical officers continue to advise that the best place for children and young people is in education. There is no need for children to be taken out of school early.
It is essential that everyone follows the rules applicable to where they are in the UK. In England, that means continuing to follow the local tiers that will apply from 2 December. It will be particularly important for everyone to follow the social distancing guidelines in the new year and the start of January 2021. Historically, this period is when the NHS sees the greatest pressure on services such as accident and emergency, and the highest rates of bed occupancy, and this year the NHS is dealing with covid-19 as well.
While it will not be a normal Christmas, this UK-wide agreement should offer hope for families and friends who have made many sacrifices over this difficult year.
Guidance on the UK-wide Christmas arrangements and how they apply in England can be found on gov.uk; the devolved Administrations will similarly be updating their guidance—at gov.scot, gov.wales, and nidirect.gov.uk.
[HCWS601]
Contingencies Fund Advance: Covid-19 Business Support
(4 years ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)
I hereby give notice of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy having drawn an advance from the Contingencies Fund totalling £2,262,587,000 to enable expenditure on covid-19 support packages for business to be spent ahead of the passage of the Supply and Appropriation Bill in March 2021. The schemes are: Local Restrictions Support Grant (closed) scheme Local Restrictions Support Grant (open) scheme Additional Restrictions Grant scheme RDEL Total £m 1,005.4 126.3 1,130.9 2,262.6
Local Restrictions Support Grant (LRSG) (closed) and (open) schemes
Additional Restrictions Grant (ARG) scheme.
The funding is urgently required to support businesses during the coronavirus pandemic.
Parliamentary approval for additional resources of £2,262,587,000 will be sought in a supplementary estimate for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. Pending that approval, urgent expenditure estimated at £2,262,587,000 has been met by repayable cash advances from the Contingencies Fund.
The cash advance will be repaid upon receiving Royal Assent on the Supply and Appropriation Bill.
[HCWS604]
Contingencies Fund Advance
(4 years ago)
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The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Jesse Norman)
HM Revenue and Customs will incur new expenditure in connection with the Government’s response to the covid-19 pandemic in 2020-21.
Parliamentary approval for additional resources of £21,715,000,000 will be sought in a supplementary estimate for HM Revenue and Customs. Pending that approval, urgent expenditure estimated at £21,715,000,000 will be met by repayable cash advances from the Contingencies Fund.
In line with the latest OBR forecasts, further requests to the Contingencies Fund may be made as necessary to fund covid-19 activity delivered by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.
[HCWS603]
Tax Credits, Child Benefit and Guardian's Allowance
(4 years ago)
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The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Steve Barclay)
The Government will bring forward regulations that will increase most tax credits rates and thresholds and will increase the Child Benefit and Guardian’s Allowance rates in line with the general rise in prices as measured by the September 2020 Consumer Price Index (CPI). CPI has been the default inflation measure for the Government’s statutory annual review of benefits since 2011.
The annual uprating of benefits will take place for tax credits from the start of the new tax year and for Child Benefit and Guardian’s Allowance in the first full week of the 2021-22 tax year. In 2021, this will be 6 April for tax credits and 12 April for Child Benefit and Guardian’s Allowance.
The Government are committed to supporting those who need it most. The annual up-rating process takes into account a variety of measures:
The majority of elements and thresholds in Working Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit will be increased by September’s CPI figure (0.5%) from April 2021. In line with established practice and the Office for Budget Responsibility’s expectations in their welfare forecast, the maximum rate of the childcare element, the family element, the withdrawal rate and the income disregards will remain unchanged.
The 0.5% increase will be applied to the rate of the Working Tax Credit basic element announced by written ministerial statement on 4 November 2019 (£1,995). The statutory annual review of benefits is separate from the temporary £20 per week uplift to the Working Tax Credit basic element and the Universal Credit standard allowance, which was announced as a temporary measure in March 2020, and enacted for one year under different legislation in response to the public health emergency. As we have done throughout this crisis, we will continue to assess how best to support low-income families, which is why we will look at the economic and health context in the new year.
Child Benefit will be increased in line with CPI (0.5%) from April 2021.
As set out in legislation, Guardian’s Allowance will be uprated in line with prices, measured by CPI (0.5%).
The full list of proposed benefit and credit rates will be placed in the Libraries of the House in due course.
[HCWS599]
Retail Prices Index Methodology: Government and UK Statistics Authority Joint Consultation Response
(4 years ago)
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The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (John Glen)
Today, the Government and UK Statistics Authority have published the response to their joint consultation on the reform to Retail Prices Index (RPI) methodology. The consultation response document can be found at the following address: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/aconsultation-on-the-reform-to-retail-prices-index-rpi-methodology.
A copy of the consultation response has been deposited in the Library of the House.
[HCWS602]
Social Security Benefit and Pension Up-rating 2021-22
(4 years ago)
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The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Dr Thérèse Coffey)
I have concluded my statutory annual review of benefit and state pension rates. The new rates will apply in the tax year 2021-22, and come into effect on 12 April 2021. The Social Security (Uprating of Benefits) Act 2020 enables me to increase the basic and new state pensions and the standard minimum guarantee in pension credit by providing a discretion to increase them for one year even though there has been no growth in earnings.
State pensions will be increased by 2.5%, in line with the Government’s manifesto commitment. The full rate of the new state pension will now be worth £179.60 per week. The standard minimum guarantee in pension credit will also increase by the same cash amount as the basic state pension, rising by 1.9%.
All other benefits will be increased in line with CPI —which was 0.5% in the relevant reference period. This includes working-age benefits, benefits to help with additional needs arising from disability, carers’ benefits, pensioner premiums in income-related benefits, statutory payments, and additional state pension.
Separate to the uprating review, I can confirm that the increase to local housing allowance rates in April this year will be maintained in cash terms in 2021-22. The assumption in the forecast is that rates will remain at these levels in future years, subject to the Secretary of State reviewing annually in the usual way.
All of these pensions and benefits are transferred to Northern Ireland, and corresponding provision will be made there. Some of these benefits are devolved to Scotland; in respect of these, the Scottish Government will bring forward corresponding legislation in the Scottish Parliament.
The statutory annual review is separate from the temporary £20 per week uplift to universal credit and working tax credit, which was announced by the Chancellor as a temporary measure in March 2020, and enacted for one year under different legislation to support those facing the most financial disruption as a result of the public health emergency. As the Government have done throughout this crisis, they will continue to assess how best to support low-income families, which is why we will look at the economic and health context in the new year.
I will place the full list of proposed benefit and pension rates for 2021-22 in the Library of the House.
[HCWS600]
Grand Committee
Arrangement of Business
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride) (Lab)
My Lords, the hybrid Grand Committee will now begin. Some Members are here in person, respecting social distancing, others are participating remotely, but all Members will be treated equally. If there is a Division in the House, the Committee will adjourn for five minutes.
Nutrition (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020
(4 years ago)
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Lord Bethell
That the Grand Committee do consider the Nutrition (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Bethell) (Con)
My Lords, nutritional-related labelling, composition and standards are regulated to protect public health. It is essential that food businesses and enforcement officers understand the specific nutrition-related rules that must be complied with. This instrument enables that, making technical amendments to ensure that the regulatory framework remains functional throughout the UK from 1 January 2021. It implements no policy changes.
Trade from Northern Ireland to the rest of the UK will take place as it does now. At the end of the transition period, businesses in any part of the UK may continue to place their goods in any part of the UK internal market without new restrictions.
Primarily, this instrument reflects the Northern Ireland protocol by amending the Nutrition (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 and revoking the Nutrition (Amendment) (Northern Ireland) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019. It also remedies deficiencies in retained European Union nutrition legislation which have come into force since March 2019. It delivers continuity for businesses and consumers by allowing nutritional products to be manufactured and sold to the same world-leading standards.
By way of background, I am sure that everyone will welcome a brief summary of the 2019 regulations. Made in preparation for our exit from the EU, those regulations make technical amendments, changing redundant EU-specific references and transferring functions and powers currently held by the European Commission to the appropriate authorities in each of the UK’s constituent nations. This is with the explicit aim of mirroring the existing regulatory system following the end of the transition period.
However, this instrument is now needed to give effect to the Northern Ireland protocol, which was agreed last year. The protocol requires that EU legislation is continued in its application in Northern Ireland. Consequently, the instrument removes Northern Ireland from the scope of the 2019 regulations and changes UK-specific references to Great Britain, preventing functions being transferred from the European Commission to the Department of Health in Northern Ireland.
Furthermore, the instrument revokes the 2019 Northern Ireland regulations, which amended domestic nutrition legislation in Northern Ireland in preparation for the end of the transition period. These amendments and revocations see that EU nutrition legislation continues to apply in Northern Ireland and that our obligations under the protocol are met. The instrument also remedies deficiencies in retained EU nutrition legislation that have come into force since 2019. These concern infant formula and health claims that can be made about foods.
The devolved Administrations have been involved in this instrument’s preparation and have consented to it. Further to this, we have provisionally agreed a common framework for nutrition that will maintain existing standards and promote common approaches to nutrition policy in the future. I am grateful to the Administrations for their continued collaboration.
Scrutiny by the House of Lords Common Frameworks Scrutiny Committee and committees in the Northern Ireland and Welsh Assemblies have now been completed, and their valuable input is currently being considered.
Furthermore, the draft instrument was the subject of a four-nation public consultation in July. Respondents represented sector stakeholders across the UK, including trade bodies, local authorities and businesses, with the majority supporting our approach. The Government’s response to the consultation was published on 24 September. Since then, my department has updated guidance for businesses regarding practical changes to nutrition legislation from 1 January 2021. That, too, was tested with stakeholders and published on GOV.UK on 17 November.
This instrument proposes no significant changes and, consequently, we estimate that there will be no significant impact on industry or the public sector. I assure noble Lords that the SI will provide continuity for business and consumers following the end of the transition period and uphold our obligations under the Northern Ireland protocol. I beg to move.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth (Con) [V]
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Bethell for setting out these regulations very clearly and for dealing with the consultation on them. As he rightly said, the essence of these EU exit regulations relates to the Northern Ireland protocol and the withdrawal agreement. The EU nutrition legislation will continue to be applicable in Northern Ireland, while in Great Britain we will be able to set our own regulatory regime.
As my noble friend said, a consultation was carried out between 9 and 30 July 2020, inviting participation from food manufacturing and nutrition industry representative groups and the public more generally. Perhaps I may ask my noble friend, first, why the consultation period was so short. There were only 18 respondents. The responses seem quite probing and informative, but such a short period meant that inevitably those participating were relatively few in number.
I turn to some questions based on the consultation. Some 71% of respondents thought that the wording and technical details of the process needed clarification. That is a relatively high percentage, admittedly of a small number of respondents, but perhaps my noble friend can say what Her Majesty’s Government are doing in response to that. There were also requests for simplification of the process.
With regard to access to information on the process, trade bodies requested more regular updates than the current quarterly BEIS updates. What are the Government doing in response to that? Is there to be a more frequent response from BEIS to help trade bodies and those who need these updates?
In the consultation, the impact of the Northern Ireland protocol was also raised by many, expressing concern about the divergence. The consultation response —in, I have to say, a rare example of it perhaps not hitting the nail on the head—talked about how people were unable to estimate exactly how they would be impacted individually. That is scarcely surprising; it is not really evident at the moment, so I do not think that that is a sufficient answer to that concern.
On the consultation process, 82% expressed themselves satisfied, although there was some concern about the short period of the consultation, to which I have already alluded.
Perhaps I may compliment the Government on the consultation response that we see here. All too often over the years, as I am sure other noble Lords will agree, the quality of consultation responses has perhaps not always been what we would have wished for. However, in my view, this consultation response was set out in a very lucid and straightforward way. It was, in many ways, a model. In most cases, it also acknowledges shortcomings and seeks to address concerns, and that is to be welcomed. For example, on divergence, it highlights the common frameworks approach, which my noble friend also referenced, as successful. I agree entirely with this part of the consultation response, and I hope that we are able to pass that outcome and make this compulsory reading for the ministerial team dealing with UKIM. The common frameworks approach is successful and works, and it will be increasingly important, given that so much has now returned from Europe and we are dealing with—
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth (Con) [V]
It is somewhat ironic that I was just stressing the importance of devolved arrangements when we were called to a vote on the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill. I was concluding my remarks, but I want to say that I am very pleased that the guidance has now been published—I think my noble friend said—on 17 November. I hope that has given those concerned sufficient time to become acquainted with the guidance and the impact of the regulations. I welcome that, given the impending nature of the new system that is coming into force.
I welcome the statement that officials across the four nations will continue to work closely together to prepare the United Kingdom for the end of the transition period. As I say, it is becoming very apparent that our devolved arrangements within these islands will be increasingly important in the years ahead, and that is now looming with the new period starting with 1 January 2021. I welcome that and support the regulations, subject to the remarks that I have made.
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Non-Afl) [V]
My Lords, I declare my interest as a member of the Common Frameworks Scrutiny Committee and thank the Minister for his explanation of the regulations which are being introduced primarily to implement the protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland and to address the deficiencies in retained EU law. I agree with the Minister that it is important to protect public health.
I will concentrate on the areas that have an impact on the Northern Ireland protocol and the intersection with that particular common framework. I have certain questions that I would like the Minister to answer. If he cannot provide answers today, perhaps he will provide them in writing to me. I underscore the point again that public health is of vital importance. Therefore, where do the regulations intersect with the Nutrition Related Labelling, Composition and Standards common framework, which is currently subject to ongoing consultation? Was cognisance taken of this provisional framework in drawing up this statutory instrument? From what I gathered from the Minister, that was the case. I contend that there are issues and therefore a need for ongoing scrutiny and parliamentary reports where such intersections occur.
While Northern Ireland officials, Ministers, and particularly in this instance the Department of Health and Social Care and Minister Swann will no doubt participate fully in this framework, does the Minister anticipate any issues related to policy divergence between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK at the end of the transition period? I note that the noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, referred to certain issues to do with divergence in relation to the protocol.
What was the nature of the consultation with the Northern Ireland Executive and particularly the Department of Health and Social Care and the Food Standards Agency regarding the content of this statutory instrument? It is interesting to note that although Annexe 2 of the Northern Ireland protocol states that EU nutrition rules will continue to apply to Northern Ireland, I could not find any reference to that in the initial documents in the provisional common framework. That may have been corrected in the further documentation on this. Why is that the case? The likelihood of divergence will increase over time and could potentially have serious implications for the future operation of the UK-wide framework as well as for public health.
I come at this from a position of not wanting a border in the Irish Sea, and I come politically from the point of view that I do not want a border on the island of Ireland between the UK and the European Union. But issues thrown up yesterday by the Northern Ireland Retail Consortium have been amplified by the First Minister and Deputy First Minister in letters to the European Commission. There are currently two lists of foods: prohibited and allowed. If we want to ensure that public health is promoted in Northern Ireland, it is important that those foods on the prohibited list, such as seed potatoes and other types of seeds, can go on to that allowed list to ensure a continuation of a varied diet and varied access to foodstuffs and food supplies for all consumers in Northern Ireland. That is vital.
Two weeks ago at Oral Questions, I asked the Minister for the Cabinet Office, the noble Lord, Lord True, about this issue, and he said that it was a matter of ongoing negotiations. As we are just five weeks from the end of the transition period, I ask the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, whether there has been any progress on those negotiations or any definite outcome. It is vital to not only our retail industry, but to public health, diet and food standards in Northern Ireland.
It is important that flexibilities are introduced to ensure that certain foods are moved from the prohibited to the allowed list to ensure good public health as well as a buoyant economy, and that local consumers have access to affordable food supplies and are not forced to resort further to food banks.
I am as guilty as the next person in these debates in traversing and travelling in various directions. As well as this statutory instrument on nutritional matters, there is the other common framework about food and feed policy approaches that throws up issues about the Northern Ireland protocol. I am simply asking for equality and access to all the same foodstuffs that we currently have, so that all consumers can access a good-quality diet at an affordable cost.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride) (Lab)
My Lords, the next speaker, the noble Lord, Lord Bhatia, will be followed by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton.
Lord Bhatia (Non-Afl) [V]
My Lords, this instrument was prepared by the Department of Health and Social Care and laid before Parliament. Its purpose is to reflect the Northern Ireland protocol by amending and revoking the nutritional regulations 2019 and to remedy deficiencies in retained European Union legislation on nutrition.
The NIP was designed as a practical solution to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland, while ensuring that the UK, including Northern Ireland, could leave the EU as a whole. It necessarily included a number of special provisions which apply in Northern Ireland only for as long as the protocol is in force.
Nutrition law is a devolved competence; however, this policy area has been designated by the UK Government for consideration for a common approach. The justifications for a common approach are twofold. First, as these laws originally relate to the cohesion of the EU single market, it is appropriate that similar consideration is given to the UK’s internal market. Secondly, the statutory instrument will ensure a swift, smooth and orderly EU exit that minimises disruption for business and consumers, which is why I support it. Nutrition is an important part of our daily life. In this pandemic era, there are many families unable to have nutritious food, so the health of the family suffers, causing long-term harm, particularly to the children.
Baroness Thornton (Lab) [V]
I thank the Minister for introducing these regulations. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, that the documentation was both clear and comprehensible. I also compliment her on her command of these issues, which is of course entirely to be expected.
As the Minister set out, these are important regulations that largely make technical changes to retained EU law so that references to the UK become references to Great Britain instead. This is because the Department of Health in Northern Ireland will not have the same functions transferred to it as the rest of the UK, and the amendments will therefore ensure that EU law continues to apply in Northern Ireland and that EU retained law in England, Scotland and Wales will therefore be effective.
Needless to say, while we recognise that these regulations are necessary and reflect the Northern Ireland protocol, they contravene some of the countless commitments made by the Conservative Government on the treatment of Northern Ireland. What would be the effect of this SI if the Government had their way on the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill, currently being voted on in the Chamber, and threw the international agreement and protocol out of the window? What would happen to measures such as this statutory instrument?
I understand that the devolved Administrations were involved in the drafting of this instrument, as is quite correct. Can the Minister confirm whether the UK is centred on maintaining existing standards and promoting common approaches to nutritional policy going forward? I agree with the important questions posed by all noble Lords, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Bourne. What assessment have the Government made of other potential future divergences which might arise from, for example, UK food labelling? What safeguards are in place to prevent regulatory divergence? We know that labelling specifically is a critical concern for food and drink manufacturers in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. As has been outlined, we will have different trading rules in Great Britain and Northern Ireland from 1 January. There is a great risk that labelling use in Britain will no longer be legally recognised in Northern Ireland or on the continent. I hope that the Minister can assure the Committee that that will not be the case. This is because it is quite possible that there may be food labelling regulatory divergence between the EU and Northern Ireland and Great Britain after the end of transition. Much will depend on trade deal negotiations, which may very well require regulatory alignment, including requirements for food manufacturers exporting across the channel to update their food labels for products placed on the UK or EU market.
This is not a long lead-in time. Does the Minister recognise the impact that delays in negotiations have had on operators? Is he confident that operators will have enough time to apply these changes, especially given the additional workplace challenges many have faced due to Covid?
It is also conceivable that there would be the political will to change current EU laws where there are particular public health concerns in the UK, including measures around, for example, addressing the obesity crisis by requiring calorie contents in alcoholic drinks. Given the link between Covid-19 risk factors and obesity, for example—and that is a good example—will the Minister confirm whether the Government have any such plans to deal with that kind of eventuality?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their extremely valuable contributions to this important debate. This statutory instrument is incredibly important. However, I reassure noble Lords that it does no more than is absolutely necessary to reflect the Northern Ireland protocol in law, ensuring that our obligations under the withdrawal agreement are met and to remedy some deficiencies in retained EU nutrition legislation, and that its passage is critical to ensuring a functioning regulatory system across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
My noble friend Lord Bourne asked why the consultation occurred over such a short period and why it had seemingly so few responses. The engagement was as expected. It reflected probably the contentiousness of the proposals or otherwise, and it very much followed Cabinet Office consultation and guidelines. As such, it completely met the expectations of those who managed the consultation process. It was none the less an incredibly valuable process and we are extremely grateful to all those who participated in it.
I pay my respects to the expertise of the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, in this matter and thank her very much for her kind comments about the arrangements and the process. In essence, her questions were largely about what provisions we were making for policy divergence. I reassure her that no divergence is anticipated. We are not putting in place mechanisms for divergence, because we are not planning to create it. We are simply reading across the current legislation and putting in place through this SI mechanisms to ensure that it can stay in place.
The noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, asked about prohibited foods versus allowed foods. The list of prohibited foods to which she refers is out of scope of this instrument. However, the UK is proud of its world-leading food, health and animal welfare standards, not least those which relate to nutrition. We will neither lower our standards nor put the UK’s biosecurity at risk as we negotiate new trade deals. I can assure the noble Baroness that the Government remain committed to promoting robust food standards nationally and internationally and to protecting consumer interests to ensure that consumers can have confidence in the food that they buy.
The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, also asked about maintaining standards. I reassure her too that we do not currently envisage divergence. Were divergence ever to hove on to the agenda, we would of course consult on any new regulations, and that would be the time to take on board comments from industry. If a common approach cannot be agreed or would not be appropriate for one or more nations, and divergence between the UK nations occurred, the UKIM Bill provides for goods made and labelled in any of the UK nations to be recognised and sold in any of the others, subject to the NIP, without discrimination.
I hope very much that I have been able to answer the questions raised by noble Lords, and with that in mind I commend these regulations to the Committee.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride) (Lab)
The Grand Committee stands adjourned until 3.45 pm. I remind Members to sanitise their desks and chairs before leaving the Room.
Arrangement of Business
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)
My Lords, some Members are here observing social distancing, others are participating remotely, but all Members will be treated equally. I must ask Members in the Room to wear a face covering except when seated at their desk, to speak sitting down and to wipe down their desk, chair and any other touch points before and after use. If the capacity of the Room is exceeded or other safety requirements are breached, I shall immediately adjourn the Committee. If there is a Division in the House, the Committee will adjourn for five minutes.
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Coronavirus Act 2020 (Expiry of Mental Health Provisions) (England and Wales) Regulations 2020
(4 years ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Bethell
That the Grand Committee do consider the Coronavirus Act 2020 (Expiry of Mental Health Provisions) (England and Wales) Regulations 2020.
Relevant document: 33rd Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Bethell) (Con)
My Lords, I am pleased to speak in support of the regulations, which were considered and agreed to in another place on 18 November. During the debate on the six-month review of the Coronavirus Act held in September in the other place, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care announced the Government’s decision to sunset the emergency provisions to allow for temporary easements of the Mental Health Act 1983 in England, as they are no longer necessary. These provisions may be found in Schedule 8 to the Coronavirus Act. The regulations therefore seek to enact this decision and so expire provisions in Schedule 8 to the Coronavirus Act 2020.
The emergency provisions, which these regulations seek to remove, were introduced to protect the safety of patients by ensuring that mental health services could continue to provide vital care and treatment if there were extreme staffing shortages during the pandemic. The need for them has been kept under continual review, particularly as the Government are extremely conscious that the provisions, had they been commenced, would have had serious consequence for individuals involved.
We are pleased that, due to the resilience and resourcefulness of the NHS in England and its staff, the provisions have not been commenced as they have not been needed. It is huge testament to the dedication and dynamism of NHS staff that mental health services continue to be able to provide support to people detained under the Mental Health Act, while under the extensive pressures resulting from the pandemic.
The Government, NHS England and NHS Improvement have taken a huge range of steps to support mental health services so that, despite ongoing workforce pressures resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic, they can continue to deliver vital care and treatment to individuals. The department and NHS England and NHS Improvement issued Legal Guidance for Mental Health, Disability and Autism, and Specialised Commissioning Services Supporting People of All Ages during the Coronavirus Pandemic. That guidance set out how the Act’s code of practice may be interpreted during this period. For example, it allows for the delivery of statutory forms electronically to allow mental health staff to work more flexibly and reduce risk of Covid infection. It also set out how video technology can be used for medical assessments to be carried out remotely under the Act, to make it easier for two doctors to examine a patient during the pandemic period.
The department has also supported the Care Quality Commission in bringing in a modified second opinion appointed doctor—SOAD—service, which allowed this service to work remotely. This enabled procedures around assessing and approving the medical treatment of patients detained under the Act to continue as normal, rather than enacting powers that would lessen this important safeguard. These measures, coupled with the resilience and innovation of mental health staff, have been effective in mitigating pressures on mental health services, avoiding the need to commence the emergency powers.
In reaching their decision to remove the provisions, the Government have listened to stakeholders and to Parliament. Three parliamentary committees have recommended that we take this step. The Joint Committee on Human Rights report on the Government’s response to Covid argued that the need to maintain robust safeguards for patients detained under the Mental Health Act was heightened, and cautioned that if we enacted the provisions they would weaken the protections available. The Women and Equalities Committee noted concern that the provisions went against the direction of travel towards reform of the Mental Health Act, to
“a more balanced system with more safeguards, more choice and less restriction”,
as set out in the independent review of the Mental Health Act 1983. Further, the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee report on the Government’s response to Covid and the Coronavirus Act noted the concerns of the mental health charity Mind and its call for the removal of these temporary powers.
The decision to expire these provisions has been positively received by a wide range of stakeholders—including the Law Society and Rethink Mental Illness, which said that the decision came as a relief to many people living with mental illness and their loved ones—and by the House of Commons.
The Secretary of State was not persuaded, even during the initial Covid peak, that switching these powers on was necessary because our mental health services have shown incredible strength and ingenuity, for which I express immense gratitude to NHS staff. These powers are no longer required, and these regulations seek to expire them.
I will take a moment to briefly remind noble Lords about the contents of the provisions that these regulations seek to expire. The provisions would have enabled an approved mental health professional to apply to detain an individual under the Mental Health Act following the advice of one registered medical practitioner, where securing two recommendations was considered impractical or would have led to undesirable delay. The provisions would also have allowed for an extension of the time that hospital in-patients could be temporarily detained, pending an application for longer detention under the Mental Health Act.
For those in contact with the criminal justice system who have a mental illness, the provisions in the Act would have extended the amount of time a person can be remanded to hospital, allowed an accused or convicted person to be sent to hospital on the recommendation of just one registered medical practitioner rather than two, and extended the procedural time limits for transferring a prisoner to hospital.
Since the Coronavirus Act was enacted, the Government have remained committed to keeping all its aspects under close review and have stated that any provisions no longer necessary will be sunsetted. The Act will expire in its entirety two years after the date it was passed, but also contains a power allowing for the expiry of some provisions to be brought forward ahead of that time. It should be noted that these regulations will not expire the transitional provisions within Schedule 8 to the Act; however, those will have no legal or practical effect.
The Mental Health Act 1983 applies to both England and Wales. The application of the regulations differs for each country. I will therefore seek to clarify their effect on Wales. First, those easements which relate to health services in Wales will remain available to Wales. Health is a matter devolved to the Welsh Government. But, secondly, those easements concerning the operation of justice under the Act—that is, for patients under sentence or subject to criminal proceedings—will be removed for both England and Wales. These remain matters reserved to Her Majesty’s Government. With the exception of provisions relating to the Welsh mental health review tribunal, none of these provisions has been commenced. Should it ever be deemed necessary to return to these provisions, the Government will seek to introduce new legislation.
I thank the staff of NHS mental health services, who have coped without the need to turn on these emergency powers through their hard work, supported by the department and NHS England and NHS Improvement and through innovative approaches. I beg to move.
Lord Blunkett (Lab)
My Lords, I unequivocally endorse the Minister’s words of appreciation of the work of everyone, at every level, who has maintained a degree of service that has avoided the use of the powers under Schedule 8. It is an unalloyed pleasure not to be giving the Minister a hard time, given that, as far as I can see and looking back in history, no other Minister in the Lords has taken more flak for the Government as a whole for so little reward. It is therefore a pleasure to be able to say that this is a very welcome move.
Noble Lords will remember, because they were either in the Chamber or, more likely, watching, the powerful speech made by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, back on 25 March, when the Minister was putting the Bill through this House. On both disability and mental health, she understandably warned of the danger to the rights of so many people from the measures that were felt at the time to be needed to ensure that functioning services could continue, albeit without the safeguards that all of us would wish. This afternoon we acknowledge that those safeguards are being put back in place—their erosion has not been needed—and, as the Minister said, that is due to so much hard work and ingenuity by so many people. I am sorry that the Welsh Administration feel that they still need the measures as a backstop. I hope that they will not, after their two-week lockdown, feel that they still need to be used.
I just ask the Minister in a friendly way whether he can identify—if not this afternoon, perhaps he can write to me—any service level agreement from the Treasury in relation to the £3 billion announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in respect of mental health services? While the withdrawal of the powers under Schedule 8 is entirely welcome, the capacity within the system before the Covid pandemic was under enormous strain, and that has obviously been made worse by the number of people who have experienced mental health and stress issues over the past nine months. Many more will experience these over the winter until we have the vaccine onstream and can get back to some sort of normality.
Capacity will remain a major question for all of us, and I hope that the Minister will be able to confirm that a proportion of the additional resource being allocated to getting the health service back onstream and undertaking the diagnostic and treatment requirements that have so often been delayed will also apply to the capacity of the mental health services. With that, I welcome the regulations very strongly.
Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD) [V]
My Lords, removal of the mental health provisions from the Coronavirus Act, which represented a significant reduction in protection and safeguards for people subject to the Mental Health Act is, as the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, said, very welcome. Serious concerns have been raised about whether it would ever be human rights-compliant to enact the provisions. Even before the Covid-19 crisis hit, mental health services were severely stretched, with waiting times and barriers to access which would be considered unacceptable in any other area of medicine.
Turning to the scale of need, psychiatrists have reported an increase in patients needing urgent and emergency care during the crisis, and the latest NHS Digital figures show the highest recorded figures for mental health contact. According to the Centre for Mental Health, there are approximately 10 million extra people with mental health needs due to the pandemic. A survey conducted in late spring by the charity Rethink showed that almost 80% of people with pre-existing mental illnesses reported that their mental health had got worse or much worse as a result of the pandemic, and the ONS found that almost one in five adults in Britain experienced depressive symptoms in June 2020—roughly twice the number before the pandemic. Against this backdrop, it is crucial to the nation's Covid-19 recovery that existing mental health funding commitments in the NHS long-term plan are delivered in full and that services are resourced to support those who had new or worsening mental health difficulties because of the crisis. It is not either/or, it is both/and.
It is of course welcome that eventually an extra £500 million was promised in the mental health winter plan, published on Monday, to help with discharge to community care, workforce issues and addressing waiting times. This is a good start, but unlikely to be sufficient and, crucially, does not come onstream until the next operational year, leaving a gaping hole in the tough winter period ahead. What commitments can the Minister give that some of this new money will be spent on preventive work and early intervention to stop mental health issues escalating to crisis point and putting additional pressures on expensive police, A&E and in-patient services?
In the long term, it is not just a case of mental health services surviving the pandemic; they will need drastically to expand and improve to deal with the long-term impact of social isolation, mass unemployment and pandemic-induced anxiety.
The powers we are debating weakened an Act that was already in need of major reform. The independent review of the Mental Health Act put forward proposals to improve the system and increase patient rights. Can the Minister update the Committee on when the Government will provide a full response to the independent review and publish their proposals to take forward reform of the Mental Health Act, with a clear implementation timescale? The two-year anniversary of the publication of the Mental Health Act review will be 6 December 2020. I strongly hope that the Government’s response will not be delayed beyond that point.
Lord Bilimoria (CB) [V]
My Lords, the coronavirus and the isolation of lockdown are impacting not just our physical health but our mental health, as people deal with loneliness, stress and anxiety. Whether we are working from home, furloughed or travelling to our workplaces, the drastic changes to our workday can take a toll. Employers must play a vital role in supporting the mental health of their workforce by prioritising and promoting a positive well-being culture.
The CBI, of which I am president, has been working with firms of every size and sector to help tackle the challenge of mental health in a pandemic. The Law Society, a member of the CBI, supports these regulations, which will expire provisions in Schedule 8 to the Coronavirus Act 2020 which would weaken Mental Health Act 1983 protections if brought into force. The Law Society states that it recognises that, at the onset of the pandemic, these exceptional emergency provisions were considered potentially necessary to support healthcare professionals in responding to the immediate crisis, but that, as they have not been used in England to date, as the Minister said, they should be expired so as to restore the full certainty of important statutory protections for vulnerable people.
The Law Society also recommends that the Government consider expiring the provisions under Schedule 12 to the Coronavirus Act alongside the expiration of those under Schedule 8 being implemented by these regulations. However, if Schedule 12 remains in force, the Law Society recommends that the Government publish improved guidance clarifying how to conduct the required process under these easements and provide detailed guidance to assist local authorities in making human rights assessments. Do the Government intend to expire the provisions under Schedule 12 to the Coronavirus Act, which weaken statutory protections for vulnerable people under the Care Act 2014 and the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014, alongside the expiration of those under Schedule 8? Will the Minister commit to providing improved guidance on the easements under Schedule 12, clarifying how local authorities should conduct relevant processes and make human rights assessments?
Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, I thank everyone whose kindness has made taking on my new role so straightforward. I thank the doorkeepers and attendants who have guided me more than once along different corridors. I thank the parliamentary staff who have supported my induction, and my party colleagues and the Front Bench team who have guided me through the rules and practices of this House. I must also thank my noble friends Lady Blower and Lady Osamor for supporting me at my introduction. Finally, I owe particular thanks to John McDonnell MP, who encouraged me to take up this new challenge, and my family, who have given me their support despite the disruption in their lives.
I aim to be an asset to this House, contributing my particular skills and knowledge. There is my lifetime of activity in the trade union movement, where I am glad to join a number of old colleagues. More notable is that I am an actuary, the first in this House for more than 70 years. The only other was the first Baron May of Weybridge. He was a prominent public figure and a formidable character, so it is odd that during his 11 years in the House he never made a speech. That means, I am proud to say on behalf of myself and my profession, that this is the first time an actuary has ever spoken in Parliament. I can certainly say that it will not be the last.
One thing that Lord May did was to play a significant role in bringing down a Government. Unfortunately, it was the 1931 Labour Government. I may not be able to go that far, but I shall use to my time to hold the Government to account.
A key skill that you must learn as an actuary is to explain what you do. The application of higher maths to finance sounds too technical, yet the assessment of mortality sounds too gloomy. As an actuary who specialises in pensions, my role has been to provide advice for trade unions when seeking to improve or, increasingly, to defend the pensions provided for their members. I am sorry to have missed the debates on the Pension Schemes Bill, but I have followed them and know that there are many pensions experts in the House. I look forward to joining them, particularly when we consider the further pensions Bill that the Pensions Minister has promised for this Parliament.
Turning to the statutory instrument before us today, I must state my keen and continuing interest in mental health. We know that these extraordinary powers were not required during lockdown, which is testament to the hard work of our mental health staff. They have coped without recourse to such drastic emergency measures and it is clearly right that they should now be expired. Mental health difficulties need to be discussed during this pandemic. We should understand the importance of social and financial stability in the face of the virus. We now realise that resilience lies not within an individual but within our community. Given the dire economic effects of both Brexit and the pandemic, it is vital to consider the NHS response to the increase in mental health difficulties. The proposed investment in mental health services is welcome, but it is still inadequate and barely makes up for the loss of support over the past 10 years. We need more investment. We also need to modernise the Mental Health Act. Public attitudes have improved markedly in the past 10 years, but the law has failed to keep pace. Of course, the pandemic has slowed progress, but we need the promised White Paper. Can the Minister promise to bring it forward as a matter of urgency?
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab) [V]
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow my noble friend and I congratulate him on a fine maiden speech. As he said, he brings to your Lordships’ House a wide range of experience in the trade union movement, service on the GLC and as chair of ILEA, where he was a forceful champion of comprehensive education. However, I rather think that his being the first actuary to enter the Lords for more than 50 years will cause the most challenge to your Lordships. He will discover that we float figures around the House like confetti to justify whatever position we happen to take. Happily, this usually goes unchallenged, yet with my noble friend in place I suspect that we will need to be on our mettle and to expect robust scrutiny in the future.
As my noble friend said, it has not been necessary to use the powers in the regulations and their removal is warmly welcomed. Although the regulations are concerned with the requirements under the Mental Health Act 1983, this debate inevitably raises wider issues in relation to mental health provision during the pandemic and beyond.
We know that the pandemic has had a significant impact on the country’s mental health and well-being. What is the Minister’s assessment of this and what measures are being taken to restore services and deal quickly with the backlog of patients? Does he agree with the assessment of Scientists for Labour that there has been a stark decline in the availability of services? Research by Mind from May 2020 reported that the restrictions on seeing people, being able to go outside and worries about the health of family and friends are the key factors driving poor mental health. The Centre for Mental Health predicts that at least half a million more people may experience a mental health problem as a result of the pandemic. Does the Minister agree?
As part of the lockdown in March, dramatic changes were made by NHS mental health services, including discharging patients from in-patient community services and moving to online provision. Has the impact of that been measured? Does he accept that eye contact often plays an important role in cognitive behaviour therapy? We need to reflect on that before assuming that services can always be online in the future. Will the Minister agree to publish a comprehensive plan to restore levels of service, including a thorough assessment of what changes in demand for services are arising from the pandemic?
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, has withdrawn from the debate and so I call the next speaker, the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
I warmly welcome the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton. I know that he is well respected by trade unionists outside this place and he will bring to us a refreshing brand of politics. We will not always agree, but I like someone who gives us a feisty challenge. He cannot possibly have got lost here as often as I have done as a new girl in the past few weeks, so if I find the noble Lord, I will try to put him on the right track, although that will probably get him even more lost.
For once, I want to congratulate the Government on rolling back a piece of legislation. Indeed, I hope that we will see a lot more of this because it seems that so much of the Coronavirus Act 2020 is draconian, disproportionate and frighteningly illiberal. Even the assurance that it is temporary or for an emergency is of little consolation. I would personally expire the whole Act, but perhaps the Minister could start by looking again, as has already mentioned, at the provisions in Schedule 12 that also severely weaken the statutory protection for the vulnerable.
The need to protect the vulnerable against an overweening and arbitrary state power is exactly why Schedule 8 was always such an egregious and frightening position. For good reason, sectioning people is made difficult. The power to deprive individuals of their liberty under the aegis of mental health and for their own good has a sinister history: think of the lunatic asylums of the past, the Soviet use of psychiatric hospitals, and so on. We are right not to section people lightly, but perhaps the Minister could reflect on a number of unresolved ironies.
Lockdowns themselves are an example of the state depriving the whole citizenry of their liberty under the veil of public health. Locked up and locked down is a thin line in my view. Can the Minister assure us that when the lockdown ends on 2 December, it will not happen again? One worry about Schedule 8 has been the extension of the length of time that the mentally ill can be incarcerated on the say of one doctor. My worry is the endless and never-ending extension of the length of time that society is incarcerated on the say of one—dare I say?—Matt Hancock.
Will the Minister comment on the devastating impact that we have heard about so eloquently from fellow noble Lords that lockdown measures have caused a lot of damage to mental health in the community. Many, both young and old, are consumed with anxiety, deprived of their autonomy, subject to a form of solitary confinement and feel lonely and isolated. There is also fear not only of the virus but about the cataclysmic effect of lockdown on jobs and livelihoods.
Sufferers of dementia in care homes are locked away from families and stimulation, leading to a deterioration in their mental capacity, and in some instances, tragically, to premature death. In other words, lockdown and its ugly sister, tiering, are bad for the mental health of the well, let alone the mentally ill.
I have a final question. I note with horror that the Welsh Government are not expiring Schedule 8. Will the Minister do what he can to cajole or persuade his counterparts in the Senedd as soon as possible? I declare an interest as I am from north Wales, but I find it rather shameful that the mentally ill in Wales seem to need safeguarding from their own Parliament.
Lord Walney (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I add my praise to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, on making an accomplished maiden speech and I welcome him to the House. He notes that he is the first actuary ever to speak in the House of Lords. I guess that it is something of a coincidence that at least two former Ministers in the Department for Work and Pensions will have had a great deal of contact over the years with actuaries: the noble Lords, Lord Blunkett and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath. I served as a special adviser with the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and we had a number of conversations with actuaries over the years. I hope that this does not damn him with faint praise, but the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Davies, was the most engaged and enlivening to be given by an actuary that I have yet had the privilege of listening to. I know that he will enlighten the House in many ways in the years ahead, and I welcome him.
Let me praise the Minister and his colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care for taking this early step to remove these provisions. It is an unusual and commendable act to take swift action on a measure that was due to expire anyway, and it sends a welcome message about the Government’s attitude to mental health issues in that they have clearly heard and understood the grave concerns of many advocacy groups and individuals about the draconian level of these powers. It will help vulnerable individuals at an incredibly difficult time in their lives because of the trauma of lockdown restrictions to know that these provisions are no longer hanging over them. Let me give credit where it is due.
I will echo a number of previous speakers in raising concerns about the overall system. It is a symbol of the way that public services tend to act in that they have a bare level of functionality at the crisis end but remain desperately lacking at the preventive and therapeutic end of mental health provision, which remains a yawning gap. As many speakers have said, including the NHS Confederation, the peak has probably not yet come, and I hope that in the months ahead we will hear far more from the Government and the Minister about what action can be taken on that front.
Baroness Barker (LD)
My Lords, I warmly welcome the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, to your Lordships’ House and congratulate him on his speech. I was unaware of his professional background, but his explanation has led me to understand why there is such a sense of excitement among those Members of your Lordships’ House who are mere accountants. I look forward to the noble Lord joining the long-standing gang of Members who take a considerable interest in mental health and who often act as a bulwark against Members of the House of Commons who feel unable to take action on mental health legislation because of the grief they get from the popular press.
I declare an interest as a member of a special advisory panel for Rethink Mental Illness; I am indebted to it and to Mind for their briefings. When the Coronavirus Act went through, the mental health provisions were among the most controversial and the most feared, not only by lobby groups and patient groups—there was also a considerable amount of discomfort on the part of mental health professionals about what was being done. Under the Mental Health Act 2007, there is already a lack of patient involvement in decision-making, specifically in mental health. That is a fundamental flaw.
It was, on that basis, wrong to take away the safeguards that are the subject of these statutory instruments, and I am very glad that they have not had to be used. They have not had to be used because of the extraordinary efforts of both staff and indeed patients in the early part of this year. Both Mind and Rethink have done a considerable amount of work talking to people who were in acute services in particular. The surprising finding was the extent to which patients were deeply grateful to staff for continuing to look after them when the staff might well have been putting themselves in danger.
The extent to which patients were comfortable with incarceration during Covid was directly related to two factors: first, their ability to contact friends and family remotely and, secondly—because they are people just like the rest of us—the extent to which they were enabled to get out into the grounds and get fresh air. It is worth noting at this point that, in the recently announced hospital-building programme, only one of the new hospitals will be a mental health hospital. Given that we are likely for some considerable time to be going in and out of periods of physical restrictions because of the virus, we should do well to look at the physical estate of mental health services.
I agree with others that the £3 billion announced is very welcome, but there is a grave danger that it will be stretched way too thinly. A lot of it was earmarked before we entered the current situation. As others have said, and as the studies done by Mind and Rethink have shown, it is evident now that people are coming into community services with a greater degree of severity of mental distress and agitation. This is a clear signal that we will, in the coming months, see a much greater level of more severe illness if we do not put money now into rapidly accessible community services—patients are telling us that they cannot access those services. What efforts will be made to ensure that input of both staff and resources into a greater degree of community services?
In all the Government’s lockdown announcements, I have never seen anything acknowledging that those areas of the country that have been under severe lockdown for several months might have a greater need of mental health services than those that have not. Is that part of the analysis that the Minister’s department is undertaking? This is part of the question that I really wish to put to him. We are sitting waiting for the Government’s response to Sir Simon Wessely’s review. To what extent will the things that been learned during these last six months go into that review? For example, what have we learned about disproportionate levels of mental illness and lack of services among black and minority-ethnic communities, and what are we doing about children and young people? Can he tell us to what extent we have learned the lessons of the last six months and whether they will be in that new legislation?
Baroness Thornton (Lab) [V]
I am very pleased to agree with the Minister on this statutory instrument, but I first welcome my noble friend Lord Davies of Brixton and congratulate him on his maiden speech today. He and I have known each other for many years, but have not really seen each other for probably the best part of 30 years. We hark back to the days when I was the chair of that venerable Labour institution the Greater London Labour Party, and my noble friend was a leading member of the GLC and the Inner London Education Authority. A couple of abolitions, many general elections and a Labour Government later, here we are in the House of Lords, and in probably its strangest state in its whole history. I welcome my noble friend; he is one of the very smartest people, and an actuary, as he says—the first here—and will, I am very sure, bring great value to our deliberations. And he should not worry: there will definitely be another pensions Bill along very soon.
When we were putting this emergency Covid legislation on the statute book in March, the easements that are the subject of this statutory instrument were the cause of much concern, because they concerned people’s liberty and human rights, which should not be put aside lightly, if at all. That is what we were saying at the time. They would have increased the amount of time that someone could be detained, decreased the number of qualified people required in the detainment procedure and weakened the Mental Health Act 1983 protections, if brought into force. I am grateful, like other noble Lords, for the excellent brief by the Law Society and its support for these regulations.
We recognise that, at the onset of the pandemic, these exceptional emergency provisions were considered potentially necessary to support healthcare professionals in responding to the immediate crisis. As they have not been used in England to date, they should indeed be expired—so I congratulate the Minister—and thus restore the full certainty of important statutory protections for vulnerable people. I add my thanks and gratitude to the mental health staff who have made things work so successfully under the most difficult conditions that we are able to put aside this part of the Coronavirus Act.
Are the Government considering expiring the provisions under Schedule 12 to the Coronavirus Act alongside the expiration of the provisions under Schedule 8 to the Act implemented by these regulations? As noble Lords will know, Schedule 12 makes modifications to provisions under the Care Act 2014 and Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014, allowing local authorities to suspend their statutory duties to assess, develop and review individuals’ care plans, carry out financial assessments, and meet care and support needs. Local authorities must still carry out the above where a failure to do so would breach obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights but, for the majority of vulnerable people in the care of local authorities, this high bar provides little to no protection.
Six months on, it is deeply worrying that the Government still envisage the need to enact this watering down of conditions. Can the Minister provide an update on the number of times that these provisions have been used, why they were enacted and what impact they have had on residents? Can he provide assurances that provisions within this Act for care homes are not currently being enacted and describe the conditions under which they might be used?
We are of course still finding out the mental health cost of Covid, and it is disturbing that the Chancellor and Secretary of State for Health refer to the additional funding that the NHS needs to catch up on the cost to patients and treatment of Covid, but do not make the same commitments for social care or mental health. That is of great concern and is very short-sighted, as my noble friend Lord Hunt said. When will we see the results of the Mental Health Act review and promised reform, as the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, mentioned? We need to give more attention and resources to mental health.
A study from researchers at Oxford University found that nearly one in five people who has had Covid-19 was diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder—such as anxiety, depression or insomnia—within three months of testing positive for the virus. Not only do we have immediate issues, there are many coming down the track.
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for a thoughtful and at times very generous debate, for which I am enormously grateful. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, for a remarkable maiden speech and offer him a sincere welcome. He laid out his stall very clearly, first as a man of numbers—as many have noted, the debates of the House of Lords benefit from those who are numerate and articulate with numbers as well as words—secondly, as a supporter of the trade union movement, and I look forward to his interventions as a trade unionist; and thirdly, as a man of compassion. He spoke movingly about mental health and the provisions in these regulations, and has marked himself out as someone who I hope will make an important contribution to our health debates—he will be extremely welcome indeed.
We are aware that many people are facing unprecedented strains due to the pandemic and the measures to contain it. The mental health of everyone is absolutely critical in these unprecedented times. We know that some people will experience exacerbated mental health problems as a result of the pandemic, as has been noted by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker. Moreover, people with existing mental health conditions and front-line workers are particularly susceptible.
The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, noted that self-reporting has gone up. Public Health England’s Covid-19 mental health and well-being report concluded that the UK population’s self-reported mental health and well-being worsened during the pandemic. The largest decline was in April 2020.
Average levels of mental distress have been reported as going up, as the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, noted, although by 8.1% measured by GHQ 12, not the high levels that some noble Lords have referred to, indicating an increase in the severity of mental health problems overall. A robust follow-up survey from July 2020 of children and young people aged five to 16 who were interviewed for the national mental health prevalence survey in 2017 suggests that rates of probable mental health disorder have increased from one in nine in 2017 to one in six in July 2020—a very regrettable development.
We understand that there is increasing evidence of significant mental health consequences for people who have contracted Covid and evidence that Covid itself impacts the central nervous system, which can affect mental health and well-being. Survivors of Covid appear to be at increased risk of psychiatric disorder. For patients with no previous psychiatric history, a diagnosis of Covid was associated with increased incidence of a first psychiatric diagnosis in the following 14 to 90 days, compared with six other healthcare events.
I reassure all noble Lords who have spoken that mental health continues to be a priority for this Government. We are doing our utmost to ensure that our mental health services are there for everyone who needs them during the pandemic. I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, that that is why in today’s spending review the Government have announced £500 million more for mental health support for new specialist services for children and young people, plus extra assistance for people with severe mental health illnesses and faster help for those afflicted by depression and anxiety.
The well-being and mental health support plan for Covid-19 published this week is a demonstration of the Government’s firm commitment to support the mental health of everyone throughout this winter and beyond. It outlines the support available to people over the coming winter. This is just one element of our work to deliver a modern mental health service and meet the demands created by the pandemic. We have announced two new commitments to support individuals: first, a winter discharge support package backed by £50 million, which will boost capacity and support good-quality discharge from mental health in-patient settings to help reduce pressures on in-patient beds and keep patients safe over the winter. Secondly, we are taking action to support the physical health of individuals with serious mental illnesses this winter, including support for systems to deliver local, system-level tailored engagement with patients and to develop national thought leadership on outreach.
We are absolutely committed to continuing our investment in expanding and transforming mental health services in England. This will amount to an additional £2.3 billion of extra funding a year on mental health services by 2023 to 2024. I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, that we are taking a range of steps to support mental health services to be able to manage pressure over the winter period.
Above all, it is essential that the message is heard loud and clear across the country that NHS mental health services remain open for business and will be available throughout the winter. The earlier people receive support on their mental health, the more likely they are to benefit. However, in April this year, only 57,000 referrals were made, compared to 133,000 in April 2019. While figures for more recent months show that referral rates are recovering, they are significantly below last year’s. To help address this, last week we launched a new phase of our NHS Help Us, Help You campaign to encourage anyone suffering from anxiety, depression or other issues.
We will continue to make sure that mental health services, including hospitals providing in-patient treatment get equal access to PPE. All health and social care staff can access priority testing when they show symptoms, including those providing mental health services in hospitals. NHS staff without symptoms can also be tested at the discretion of their NHS trust. Hospitals can test patients, including those admitted with mental health conditions, even if there is a higher prevalence of Covid-19 in their area.
GP surgeries have been requested by NHS England to make improvements to ensure that the physical health of those living with severe mental illness is protected this winter. This includes asking practices to identify people with severe mental illnesses who are clinically vulnerable and offering those people comprehensive physical health checks and follow-up interventions, free flu vaccines to those eligible and a care plan review as appropriate.
The NHS has worked hard to keep mental health services going during the first peak, using technology where needed, but also face-to-face appointments where appropriate. All mental health trusts have established 24/7 urgent mental health helplines, where people experiencing a mental health crisis can access support and advice. In addition, we have provided £10.2 million of extra funding to support mental health charities, including the Samaritans and the Campaign Against Living Miserably.
Talking therapies will continue to be made available remotely, so that people can access help safely from home. The NHS will work to ensure that the option of face-to-face support, quite rightly alluded to by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, and the noble Lord, Lord Walney, is provided to people with serious mental health illnesses where it is clinically safe to do so.
Public Health England has published its surveillance tracker to monitor the impact of Covid-19 on the population’s mental health. This is a proactive step which will help to ensure that our response to the effects of Covid-19 on mental health and well-being is shaped by emerging data.
The Government have committed more than £400 million over the next four years to refurbish mental health facilities, getting rid of dormitories in mental health locations and benefiting the patients of 40 trusts across the country. We are committed to supporting our staff and investing in the workforce. NHS England and NHS Improvement are also investing £15 million to ensure that all staff get rapid access to expanded mental health services. Staff who are referred will be assessed rapidly, will be treated by local mental health specialists and, where appropriate, will be referred to specialist centres of excellence.
A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Davies, and the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, asked about Sir Simon Wessely’s independent review of the Mental Health Act. I reassure noble Lords that work is well under way to respond to the review, and we will publish our White Paper in due course. This will pave the way for far-reaching reforms to the legislation and practice, strengthening the rights of patients and upholding the principles of dignity, autonomy and choice, which were enshrined in the review’s recommendations.
Since the Coronavirus Act was introduced, the Government have remained committed to keeping all elements of it under close review and to sunset any provisions that are no longer needed. As I set out earlier, the emergency modifications to the Mental Health Act made by the Coronavirus Act were designed to protect patients by supporting services to be able to continue if unprecedented constraints in the mental health sector put patients’ safety at risk during the pandemic. These provisions were only ever to be used as a backstop, as I told the Committee earlier.
The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, referred to the very moving speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. I remember her words extremely well. Decisions, over which we have no control whatever, about our uselessness will be taken by someone else in the next few months. I am very pleased that the provisions have not been switched on. I reassure noble Lords that at all times the Government have remained conscious of the need to balance those provisions against the rights of individuals detained under the Mental Health Act.
Those provisions have not needed to be switched on due to the adaptations that have been made because of the resilience and commitment of NHS staff. As a result, we believe that now is the right time to remove them so that it is clear to patients, carers, staff and stakeholders that they will not be used. The approval of these regulations by this House to remove these emergency provisions is an important milestone on the journey towards much-needed reforms to the Mental Health Act. These reforms—
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)
The Division Bell is ringing. I wonder whether the Minister is coming to the end of his remarks.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)
If the Minister would like to finish, I will then adjourn the Committee and there will be plenty of time for noble Lords to vote.
Lord Bethell (Con)
These reforms, which will see that patients have greater autonomy and control over their care and treatment, will be set out in the Government’s forthcoming White Paper on this subject.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)
The Grand Committee stands adjourned until 5 pm. I remind noble Lords to sanitise their desks before they leave the Room, and to vote, should they wish to do so.
Arrangement of Business
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)
My Lords, the hybrid Grand Committee will now resume. Some Members are here in person, respecting social distancing, while others are participating remotely, but all Members will be treated equally. I must ask Members in the Room to wear a face covering, except when seated at their desk, to speak sitting down and to wipe down their desk, chair and any other touch points before and after use. If the capacity of the Room is exceeded or other safety requirements are breached, I will immediately adjourn the Committee. If there is a Division in the House, the Committee will adjourn for five minutes.
The microphone system for physical participants has changed. Members’ microphones will no longer be turned on at all times in order to reduce noise for remote participants. When it is your turn to speak, please press the button on the microphone stand. Once you have done that, wait for the green flashing light to turn red before you begin speaking. The process for muting and unmuting for remote participants remains the same. The time limit for debate on the following statutory instrument is one hour.
European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (Relevant Court) (Retained EU Case Law) Regulations 2020
(4 years ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Stewart of Dirleton
That the Grand Committee do consider the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (Relevant Court) (Retained EU Case Law) Regulations 2020.
Relevant document: 32nd Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee
The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Stewart of Dirleton) (Con)
My Lords, the instrument before the Grand Committee today relates to the question of which courts should be able to depart from retained EU case law. From January, UK courts, rather than the Court of Justice of the European Union, or CJEU, will be the final arbiter of laws that govern our lives. In order to promote legal clarity and certainty in our law following our departure from the EU, Parliament has provided that EU law that we have chosen to retain is to be interpreted in line with EU case law which we have also chosen to retain.
The way in which our law is interpreted by courts and tribunals does not remain static over time. Our departure from the EU has, naturally, brought with it a change to the context in which the law is considered, and we want our courts to be able to reflect that in their decisions where appropriate. Without the ability to depart from EU case law, there is a risk that UK law will remain tied to an interpretation from the CJEU that is no longer appropriate in the UK.
For that reason, the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 vested in the UK Supreme Court and, in Scotland, the High Court of Justiciary, in specified cases, the power to depart from retained EU case law, applying their own tests for deciding whether to depart from their own case law when doing so.
This instrument will extend the number of UK courts with the power to depart from retained EU case law to include courts at Court of Appeal level across the UK. In making such decisions, the test to be applied by these courts is to be the same as that used by the UK Supreme Court in deciding whether to depart from its own case law—namely, whether it is right to do so.
The instrument will achieve our aim of enabling retained EU case law to evolve in a more timely way than otherwise might have been achieved through the status quo. It will also help to mitigate the operational impacts on the UK Supreme Court and the High Court of Justiciary that would have arisen if the power to depart from retained EU case law were reserved solely to those courts. It will further assist those courts by providing prior judicial dialogue on these complex issues from the Court of Appeal level.
I am sure that your Lordships are familiar with the terminology but, first, I shall briefly explain what I mean by retained EU case law. Retained EU case law is defined in the 2018 Act as, broadly, any principles and decisions of the CJEU as they have effect in EU law prior to the end of the transition period. This includes cases which were referred to the CJEU by the UK, as well as those referred by other member states. This is a vast and complex body of case law that spans many different areas of law.
In amending the 2018 Act through the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020, Parliament provided the power to make regulations to extend the list of courts which may depart from retained EU case law, to set the test to be applied by those courts and to specify any considerations that courts should take into account in coming to such decisions. This instrument extends the list of courts that can depart from retained EU case law to: the Court of Appeal of England and Wales, the Court Martial Appeal Court, the Court of Appeal of Northern Ireland, the High Court of Justiciary, when sitting as a court of Appeal in relation to a compatibility issue or a devolution issue, and the Inner House of the Court of Session, the Lands Valuation Appeal Court and the Registration Appeal Court in Scotland.
The instrument also sets out that the test to be applied by these additional courts when deciding whether to depart from retained EU case law will be the same test used by the UK Supreme Court in deciding whether to depart from its own case law. This test is well established and is capable of being easily understood and applied without any further guidance. It is anticipated that applying the same test to that used by the UK Supreme Court will foster a consistent approach across the jurisdictions and, in turn, on appeal to the UK Supreme Court. There is a wealth of case law underpinning the UK Supreme Court’s test which has evolved over time to ensure that courts consider changing circumstances and modern public policy.
The Government have decided against specifying a list of factors to be considered by the courts with the power to depart from retained EU case law, as the UK Supreme Court’s test is underpinned by a significant amount of case law, which provides considerable guidance. The instrument does not change the operation of the doctrine of precedent, which, practically speaking, means that when a court reaches a decision on whether to depart from retained EU case law, that judgment has the same precedent status as other judgments from that court.
As required in statute, the Government have consulted senior judiciary across the UK, a consultation process that was also extended to the devolved Administrations, as well as to representatives across the legal services sector, businesses and other organisations, and was open to the public. The consultation ran from 2 July to 13 August, with a response published on 15 October. That consultation sought views on whether to extend the power to depart from retained EU case law to the Court of Appeal and its equivalents across the UK, or to the High Court and its UK equivalents.
Having considered the responses fully, the Government have concluded that extending the power to Court of Appeal level courts strikes the appropriate balance between enabling retained EU case law to evolve more quickly, where appropriate, and providing legal clarity and certainty. It also assists in managing the operational impacts by ensuring cases are considered in a timely way. Furthermore, extending the power at this level will mitigate the impacts of potentially large volumes of divergent decisions, both within and across the UK jurisdictions, as decisions of these courts are binding on themselves and courts below as well as being persuasive across the UK’s three legal systems. Where such divergence occurs, this can be resolved more quickly by the UK Supreme Court if it is not required to consider all questions of whether to depart from retained EU case law.
I know that there was significant interest from your Lordships when the power to make this statutory instrument was introduced during the passage of the 2020 Act. I hope that your Lordships will be reassured by the consultation that has taken place and the careful approach that is being taken in extending the power to Court of Appeal level courts only.
An impact assessment has been published alongside the consultation response. Any impact is heavily dependent on both litigant behaviour in bringing proceedings seeking a departure from retained EU case law and, of course, the outcome of that litigation. However, based on a qualitative assessment, we assess that any impact on an increase in case volume as a result of this instrument is manageable at Court of Appeal level, helps to maintain legal certainty and mitigates pressure on the UK Supreme Court.
This instrument enables our courts to be better able to consider whether to depart from retained EU case law than the status quo provided in the 2018 Act. Providing these seven courts with the ability to depart from retained EU case law will allow timely evolution of our case law. It will relieve pressure on the UK Supreme Court and avoid our case law becoming fossilised. We are taking an approach that balances the importance of legal clarity and certainty with the need for the law to evolve with changing circumstances.
Lord Beith (LD) [V]
My Lords, when the EU withdrawal agreement Bill was being considered in the House, the Constitution Committee had serious concerns about the provisions under which this statutory instrument is being made. We were concerned that the Bill left it to Ministers to decide which courts could depart from previous European case law on retained European law and what test they should apply when doing so. That has quite serious rule of law implications that were neatly illustrated by the Minister when he described the possibility of a range of factors being specified when courts are considering such matters, an option that helpfully, the Government in the end did not take. That is one of the good features of this statutory instrument.
These are not powers that we were content to leave in the hands of Ministers. There is the added problem that the powers could be extended to the lower courts whose judgments could not bind other courts—even to magistrates’ courts. This would lead to legal confusion. In a powerful debate in the House at Report, I moved an amendment drafted by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, that we would return to the matter. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie, offered to table a compromise government amendment very much along the lines of this instrument, restricting the extension so that it would cover only the Appeal Court or its equivalents, and specifying that the test to be applied when deviating from previous case law was the same test that the Supreme Court would apply. But he was embarrassingly overruled by a higher authority in No. 10, apparently because the Prime Minister wanted no amendments to the Bill at all, presumably for broader political reasons.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, indicated in a speech in that debate that the Prime Minister had in fact committed himself in the election to every court in the land being able to deviate from retained EU law. Anyway, we won the vote, but it was overturned by the Commons, so we were left with Ministers holding the power to choose the courts to which this would be extended and to choose the test that would be applied. Everything would depend on the regulations. As the Minister has pointed out, there was a consultation that revealed differences of view. The results were open to different interpretation depending on how you count those respondents who wanted no deviation from previous case law. That is not my view. While based on precedent, law has to evolve over time. For my part, the statutory instrument brings us to the outcome that I sought in my amendment, albeit by a very long way round.
I accept that these provisions may have avoided what could have been a bottleneck in the Supreme Court, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, warned. However, I am bound to question some curiously chosen words in Paragraph 7.5 of the Explanatory Memorandum:
“Extending the power to this limited list of additional courts will help to achieve our aim of enabling appropriate and timely departure from retained EU case law.”
Is that phrase in place to please the Brexiteers? Is it meant to be a signal to the courts that they should deviate as much and as soon as possible?
If so, I think that it creates false expectations, because I do not think that that is what the courts will actually do. The scale of activity will depend on how much litigation is brought forward and the courts can be expected to abide to apply the test of the Supreme Court with due regard to the facts, to precedent, and to the need to keep the law up to date with changing circumstances. I do not believe that the courts will be drawn into a rush to get rid of as much European case law as possible as quickly as possible. However, all in all, I think that the instrument is what is needed.
Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con) [V]
My Lords, it was of great interest to me to listen to my noble and learned friend explain so clearly the origin and scope of this instrument. As the noble Lord, Lord Beith, said, the House of Lords was very interested in this particular provision when it came forward in this year’s withdrawal Bill. The Prime Minister had apparently said during the election that every court would be able to entertain this question of whether a decision of the European Court which was part of the retained case law should be departed from.
This House noticed that the provision in the Bill did not contain any machinery for taking a case from, for example, the magistrates’ court to a court that could decide the issue. In the amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Beith, referred to—which I proposed—there was a provision for a method of doing that, so that the Prime Minister’s wish, or answer, that all courts would be able to do it would be met by, for example, the magistrates’ court referring the matter in the way that I had proposed to the Supreme Court or whichever court might then be able to deal with it.
That amendment was, as the noble Lord, Lord Beith, said, passed by a substantial majority in this House but, because of the rush to get the withdrawal Act approved, it was decided to not give effect to it in the House of Commons. There is, therefore, no method in place for reaching from, for example, the magistrates’ court in England to the Court of Appeal. I raised this point with my right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor when he sent me a copy of the instrument. The truth is that there is no way of doing that effectively.
This leaves me with a question which I would be glad if my noble and learned friend could answer. If a point is to be raised about the validity of a judgment of the European Court that is part of the reserved EU case law and it needs to be dealt with in a case coming forward in the magistrates’ court, would the magistrates’ court be allowed to consider that case at all, or is there some provision in the jurisdiction of the other courts to allow a case that would normally be within the magistrates’ court’s jurisdiction to be referred instead to another court that is not of the same level but which is able to deal with this particular problem? It was suggested to me that there are various methods of going from the lower courts to the higher court, but I am not aware—I would be glad if my noble and learned friend could make me aware—of whether there is a mechanism to get, for example, from the magistrates’ court in England to the Court of Appeal. If not, it means that the Prime Minister’s answer to the question at the election may not be open for a result at the moment unless and until primary legislation can be introduced in order to make such arrangements. I would have thought that such arrangements could possibly be made using the rule powers of the various rule-making committees, but I am not sure whether that it so. Anyway, I am glad to raise it in order that my noble and learned friend is able to deal with it.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)
My Lords, I think a Division is about to be called and I therefore recommend that we do not call the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, until after the Division in order not to have to interrupt him. Is the noble Lord content to wait until the Division has been completed?
Lord Thomas of Gresford (LD) [V]
My Lords, it is an allergy—an itch that has to be scratched. This bumbling Government are allergic to the very sound of the name “the European Court of Justice”. It sends a shiver down the spine—if they have one at all—of a significant section of the Conservative Party. I have never understood this, since, as I have pointed out on a number of previous occasions, the United Kingdom was remarkably successful in developing the procedures of that court and in conducting cases successfully before the court on behalf of the UK Government, with a success rate of over 90% of contested cases.
In 1966, Lord Gardiner, then Lord Chancellor, made a Statement on behalf of the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords to the effect that the committee was prepared to modify its previous practice and to depart from a previous decision when it appeared right to do so. He added the very important rider:
“In this connection they will bear in mind the danger of disturbing retrospectively the basis on which contracts, settlements of property and fiscal arrangements have been entered into and also the especial need for certainty as to the criminal law.”—[Official Report, 26/7/1966; col. 677.]
Some time ago the Minister told us that that Statement is well understood; I am not so sure that that is right.
That need for certainty could not be more important than in the context of commercial dealings between this country and the EU, over which we are agonising at this crucial time—this very day. Retained EU law will remain part of our domestic law after the transition period, in five or six weeks’ time. What could be more disturbing to contractual arrangements, trade and to prosperity than to have differing interpretations of the same provisions, set out in the same terms, in both UK domestic law and EU law as it is understood by our near neighbours?
I have direct experience of the way in which the Judicial Committee, now the Supreme Court, exercised its power to modify a previous decision. In 1982, I appeared for the appellant before the Judicial Committee in the case of Caldwell. My case was that recklessness as an ingredient of a criminal offence involved a subjective state of mind. My argument was defeated by 3:2 in the Judicial Committee on the basis that recklessness could be established objectively even if the defendant gave no thought at all to the risk. Lord Diplock delivered the majority opinion but Lord Edmund-Davies was on my side. The result of the case drew intense academic criticism, led by Professor Glanville Williams, whom some of us will remember with affection, if only for his magisterial textbook on the criminal law. Some 20 years went by, until in the case of R v G&R, the Judicial Committee reversed that decision. Lord Bingham, who delivered the unanimous opinion of the committee, said:
“Despite its power under Practice Statement … [1966] … to depart from its earlier decisions, the House should be very slow to do so, not least in a context such as this.”
However, to return to the present and being “reassured by the consultation”—I take it that that is a touch of wry Scots humour on the part of the Minister. From the Government’s point of view it was a complete failure. The Explanatory Memorandum shows that only 20% of the consultees agreed with this proposed extension of the power to depart from retained EU case law to other courts and tribunals. Further, only 9% believed that these proposals strike the right balance between legal certainty and the evolution of the law. Only 5% thought it maintained the necessary degree of predictability in the law and provided certainty.
On the contrary, a decisive majority of those consulted about the changes proposed in this statutory instrument were against any change at all, on the basis that it was a recipe for uncertainty. Why did the Government go on with this SI? Allergy—it is that nagging itch.
The clue to the problems which arise is in paragraph 7.4 of the Explanatory Memorandum, which states:
“Without the ability to depart from retained EU case law, there is a risk that retained EU law remains tied to an interpretation from the Court of Justice of the European Union that is arguably no longer appropriate in the UK.”
I stress “arguably”. I was wondering whether I should say anything adverse to this SI at all, since it will undoubtedly make good money for lawyers. The Minister will know that certainty of the law assists the settling of disputes without litigation. Uncertainty breeds litigation, from which, frequently, only the lawyers benefit. I would have thought that, under current practice, the Supreme Court’s power in the ultimate to depart from European case law would be more than enough to satisfy the Tory itch in the rare cases where the need for departure arises, but now litigants will argue at Court of Appeal level for a departure from settled EU case law. If the protagonist of a departure is successful, it is inevitable that the losing party will take the case for a final decision to the Supreme Court, which could hardly refuse leave to appeal if our Court of Appeal or its equivalent had introduced an ambiguity into the law. The changes will not reduce the burden on the Supreme Court, as has been suggested.
Whoever drafted this SI and the Explanatory Memorandum is not in touch with the real legal world, the world that responded to the consultation. Paragraph 10.9 of the memorandum states:
“The risk of driving large volumes of cases and legal uncertainty was the main reason cited in opposition to this proposed approach. It was also noted that the risk of divergence in decisions between jurisdictions was greater with this approach.”
The Bar Council submitted to the consultation that
“departing from the CJEU precedent is pointless unless the lower court has power to depart from the domestic precedent as well—but a power to depart from precedents set by high courts (or, in the case of the Court of Appeal, its own past judgments) would be a major disruption of the system of precedent on which legal certainty depends in a common-law system.”
In response, the Government have preferred specifically to stick with the current system of domestic precedent, thereby making the policy behind this SI, to quote the Bar Council, “pointless”.
Another area which introduces a sense of unreality is the courts to which this power to depart is extended. I know nothing of the land valuation court in Scotland nor am I anxious to know, but, as chair of the Association of Military Court Advocates, I cannot conceive how the decisions of the European Court of Justice are relevant to courts martial proceedings in any way whatever, yet the Court Martial Appeal Court heads the list. Was the drafter of this SI confusing the European Court of Human Rights, which has had a great deal to say on military justice and, as a result of its decisions, has considerably improved our system, with the European Court of Justice? It is frequently done. Perhaps the Minister can enlighten me. I do not suppose that he has, as yet, caught the itch.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab) [V]
My Lords, the Labour Party does not support these regulations. When responding to the government consultation, both the Bar Council and the Law Society expressed a strong preference for the power to depart from retained EU case law to be reserved only to the Supreme Court and the High Court of Justiciary in Scotland. In its response to the proposed changes, the Law Society clearly stated that
“the power to depart from retained case law should not be extended to UK courts … beyond the Supreme Court ... Any change from this position constitutes a major shift in the administration of justice. This could result in a lack of legal certainty through the emergence of novel judgments that are either not binding on other courts or are inconsistent with precedent.”
Those serious concerns should not be overlooked by the Government.
On 2 July this year, the Government launched a consultation on whether the extension would be the right thing to do. The noble Lord, Lord Thomas, went through the findings of that consultation, and he teased the Minister about his wry Scottish sense of humour, because of course the results of the consultation were very different and far more negative than he intimated.
My honourable friend Alex Cunningham, when speaking in the other place, explained that granting the power to depart from retained EU case law to the lower courts is likely to encourage litigation by parties who hope to overturn an earlier judgment that relied on EU case law, and subsequently will increase the volume of cases. That will inevitably put additional pressure on the courts, which already face a significant backlog due to both the pandemic and the cuts that we have seen in the courts system over the past 10 years.
Both the legal sector and trade unions expressed their opposition to the Government’s proposals. Unions are hugely concerned about the impact that a mass departure from retained EU case law would have on workers’ rights. Unions were also clear that the Government should not go ahead with the plan because it would undermine the doctrine of precedent and cause significant uncertainty and disruption to both employers and employees.
We accept that the courts should have the power to divert from EU case law vested in UK law, but that power should remain exclusively with the Supreme Court. We request that the Minister address all the concerns expressed by the legal profession and the trade unions. Will he outline why the Government have chosen to proceed with these regulations? Can he help outline what they plan to do to ensure that the courts under the Supreme Court are able to operate effectively, and to ensure that the changes do not simply result in increased litigation and, ultimately, in even more appeals to the Supreme Court? What reassurance can he give to trade unions that their fears are unfounded and that workers’ rights will not be compromised as a result of the changes proposed in this statutory instrument?
We believe that, based on current evidence, the Government cannot truly justify the changes brought in by the statutory instrument. The Labour Party has sought to work constructively with the Government as they have embarked on their programme of introducing necessary secondary legislation across all areas for use after the transition period. However, on this occasion, we do not feel that the changes to be implemented by these regulations are justified. We will not vote against the regulations, but we do not support them.
Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful for the contributions to this debate and I would like to respond to the points made.
First, I acknowledge the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Beith, who pointed out that consultation has taken place. I emphasise that the terms of the legislation seek to strike a balance which is intended to prevent an overwhelming rush of work to the court at the highest level. We also intend to maintain judicial independence.
My noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern raised the matter of the approach which he had urged at an earlier stage whereby there should be a means of referral from the lower courts to the higher—to those courts which are capable of taking a decision in these matters. There is no provision for any courts to refer below the Court of Appeal, including the magistrates’ court. Matters will find their way into the appellate level of courts capable of hearing these matters in the normal way by decisions being taken and themselves appealed against. It seems very likely that appeals in these contexts would be more or less inevitable given the novelty of the situation but also acknowledging the likely temporary nature of the situation as the law recovers full independence.
The noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, spoke about there being an allergy on the part of the Government and the Conservative Party against mention of the CJEU. Having gone over my notes and counted four occasions when I mentioned that court in the first two pages of my notes, I am driven to conclude that the noble Lord was speaking figuratively, although at the end of his speech he said that I had perhaps not yet developed the allergy.
On the matter of the response of the consultees, the noble Lord said that I might perhaps be exercising something of a sense of humour when I spoke positively of it, given the overall terms in which the consultation had been responded to. However, I take from the consultation that there was support for the cautious approach taken in terms of the SI, balancing competing needs between access to the courts, the need to avoid a particular higher level of court being overwhelmed with applications and the need for legal clarity. In the circumstances, it seems inevitable that there will be some increase in the burden of work on the higher courts resulting from the unprecedented decision of this country to leave the European Union. That degree of disruption is, as I say, inevitable. However, I submit that the terms of this SI admit a useful and productive method by which that new burden of work can most readily be assimilated over time.
On the noble Lord’s point about the range of courts capable of taking on this function with regard to the statutory instrument, he made reference to the Lands Valuation Appeal Court in Scotland. The seven courts were chosen specifically for their appellate status, the availability of appeals to them and the absence of availability of appeals from them.
The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, indicated the Labour Party’s position and sought reassurance with regard to the concerns that were raised by trade unions and the legal profession. Nothing in this statutory instrument seeks to impose at all on any of the courts any view which the Government may hold. Indeed, the statutory instrument may be read as emphasising the importance that the Government place on the independence of the courts and of judicial discretion. Other than through reiteration of the 1966 test laid down by the House of Lords, there is no prescriptive list of factors to be taken into account by the courts taking on this function.
The Government see this instrument as an important part of the United Kingdom’s future standing to ensure that more courts are able to depart from retained European Union case law but in a timely and appropriate manner. We consider this to be a proportionate and sensible approach to this unprecedented and novel situation as the United Kingdom becomes the first country to leave the EU. We consider that extending the power to courts at the Court of Appeal level, to the Court of Appeal and to its equivalents, strikes the right balance between the provision of legal clarity and certainty and enabling the law to appeal more flexibly.
I am grateful for your Lordships’ learned contributions to the debate. I hope that your Lordships agree that the statutory instrument is a necessary one, therefore I commend this draft instrument to the Committee.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Fookes) (Con)
The Grand Committee now stands adjourned until 6.15 pm. I remind Members to sanitise their desks and chairs before leaving the Room.
Arrangement of Business
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Fookes) (Con)
My Lords, the hybrid Grand Committee will now resume. Everyone taking part is here in person, but I must ask Members in the Room to wear a face covering except when seated at their desk, to speak sitting down, and to wipe down their desk, chair and any other touch points before and after use. The microphone system for physical participants has changed. Your microphones will no longer be turned on at all times, in order to reduce the noise from remote participants. When it is your turn to speak, please press the button on the microphone stand. Once you have done that, wait for the green flashing light to turn red before you begin speaking. The process for unmuting and muting for remote participants remains the same. The time limit is one hour.
Business and Planning Act 2020 (London Spatial Development Strategy) (Coronavirus) (Amendment) Regulations 2020
(4 years ago)
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Lord Greenhalgh
That the Grand Committee do consider the Business and Planning Act 2020 (London Spatial Development Strategy) (Coronavirus) (Amendment) Regulations 2020.
Relevant document: 34th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee
The Minister of State, Home Office and Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Lord Greenhalgh) (Con)
My Lords, these regulations were laid in draft before this House on 2 November. If approved and made, they would roll forward the existing temporary disapplication of the legal requirements for the Mayor of London to keep his current spatial development strategy available for public inspection and to provide a hard copy on request. Of course, the strategy must be available for inspection free of charge online.
These regulations are part of a wider package of government measures to ensure that the English town planning system can continue to play its role and operate safely and efficiently during the coronavirus pandemic. The Plain English translation of the Mayor of London’s spatial development strategy is the London Plan—that is how it is referred to in local government.
The rules that authorities must follow when preparing plans, including consultation and the documents which must be made available at each stage, are set out in law. Earlier this year, in response to the coronavirus pandemic and with the support of stakeholders, the Government amended these rules. In the interests of public safety and to ensure that plans could progress through the system and support economic recovery, we made some changes.
We temporarily removed requirements for authorities to make plans and other related documents available for inspection at council offices and other places, since these offices are either closed or restricted in terms of who can access them. We also removed the requirement for hard copies of these documents to be provided on request. Documents are still required to be made available on the authority’s website.
We also published government guidance on how authorities should consider how they can continue to promote effective community engagement by means which are reasonably practicable, in particular, to reach those sections of the community that do not have internet access. Because of the current level of uncertainty about the future spread of coronavirus, we have proposed to roll these measures forward for 12 months, from the point they expire on 31 December 2020.
My officials have discussed the current measures with the Local Government Association’s planning advisory service and the Planning Officer Society. Neither organisation had heard of any issues or concerns. It is important to stress that we all hope the Greater London Authority and other authorities will be able to discharge these duties sooner than 31 December 2021.
These changes do not prevent authorities displaying documents in public buildings or sending out hard copies. We are simply continuing the existing disapplication of the former requirement while coronavirus remains prevalent. These are proportionate and pragmatic changes that have been widely welcomed by public and private sector alike. I commend this instrument to the House.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Fookes) (Con)
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulescoomb, has withdrawn, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for setting out the purpose of these regulations. At this point, I always look with admiration at the skills of many Members of your Lordships’ House who manage to deliver a witty, entertaining speech on a measure of the type before us today. I do not have those skills and I have no questions to ask. I am happy with the regulations.
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
I have to disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark—I think he has an immense degree of humour. I have really enjoyed my time at the Dispatch Box, and in this rather strange cubicle, because he does have a great sense of humour. Most importantly, he cares, and he wants the best legislation to come out of this place. It has been a pleasure working with him so far. I agree that this measure is very uncontroversial; we can both conclude that it is good that this is taking place and that it is proportionate.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Fookes) (Con)
That completes the business before the Grand Committee this afternoon. I remind Members to sanitise their desks and chairs before leaving the Room.
House of Lords
Arrangement of Business
The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)
My Lords, the Hybrid Sitting of the House will now begin. Some Members are here in the Chamber, respecting social distancing, others are participating remotely, but all Members will be treated equally. Oral Questions will now commence. Please can those asking supplementary questions keep them sensibly short and confined to just two points. I ask that Ministers’ answers also be brief.
Covid-19: Vaccines and Medical Equipment
(4 years ago)
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Baroness Goudie
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure equitable access (1) to vaccines, and (2) to medical equipment, to address the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Bethell) (Con)
My Lords, the UK is at the forefront of efforts to drive global collaboration on the development of new vaccines and has committed to procuring a Covid-19 vaccine for the UK, the Crown dependencies and the overseas territories. We are collaborating with international partners on vaccine development, manufacturing scale-up and future distribution. The NHS has allocated and assigned more than 28,000 items of critical care equipment across the UK and Crown dependencies and the remainder is available for allocation across England according to NHS regions, based on future need.
Baroness Goudie (Lab) [V]
My Lords, equitable access to vaccines has a number of dimensions and all must be secured across the world and in the UK. The Covid-19 pandemic respects no lines: if we neglect the developing world, we neglect ourselves. A lack of global access will hamper global health and development. Inequitable access would impede the unity of the United Kingdom.
Lord Bethell (Con)
The UK has pledged more than £1 billion in aid to counter health, humanitarian and economic risks, including £829 million on the development and delivery of vaccines. I thank all those involved in the COVAX Facility, a multinational mechanism administered by Gavi which pools funding. The COVAX scheme is an emphatically impactful scheme. Britain has taken a leadership role in it, and I thank all those involved in its development.
Lord Mendelsohn (Lab) [V]
My Lords, it is essential that those at economic and social disadvantage be given proper access to a functioning distribution strategy. Can the Minister reassure the 200,000 people with blood cancer in the “extremely vulnerable” classification that they can rely on proper evaluation of the suitability of vaccines, treatments and equipment for their distinctive condition, and provide some insight into how construction of the prioritisation list will be undertaken to address the acute problem those in such circumstances face? In this regard, would the Minister be prepared to meet with representatives of Blood Cancer UK to take these matters forward?
Lord Bethell (Con)
The noble Lord raises an important point about those with blood cancer. In fact, many who are in the “extremely vulnerable” group have conditions that may or may not be affected by the vaccine. We are working extremely hard to accommodate their particular needs. The JCVI has an extremely thoughtful prioritisation process. I would be happy to meet the group the noble Lord describes.
Lord Dodds of Duncairn (DUP)
I warmly welcome the agreement that was reached yesterday between Her Majesty’s Government and the three devolved Governments on Christmas household arrangements. That is a good example of working together across the United Kingdom. I press the Government to continue that approach with the rollout of vaccines across the United Kingdom. Nothing would be worse than to have one area or region ahead of another when it comes to vaccinating clinical staff, care workers and vulnerable people.
Lord Bethell (Con)
I entirely endorse the sentiment the noble Lord expresses. I offer my profound thanks to the devolved authorities for the immense spirit of collaboration which has characterised the response to the pandemic. Often, it would seem from the headlines that the nations are at odds with each other; that is not my experience. The Christmas negotiations he cites are a very good example of that, and I hope the vaccination arrangements will be the finest moment.
Lord Scriven (LD)
My Lords, on 25 September the JCVI reported the serious risk of disease and mortality from Covid according to deprivation and ethnicity. These issues have to be taken into consideration in the vaccination programme, so why does the present list of priorities for the vaccine ignore those factors completely?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, the noble Lord is entirely right that deprivation and ethnicity are key considerations in the morbidity of Covid; we are all acutely aware of them. The JCVI has looked extremely closely at a variety of different models for prioritising vaccination. Prioritisation based largely on age gives the most accurate and thoughtful prioritisation of the vaccine and is also simple to understand and deliver. That is why it has gone down that route.
Lord Dobbs (Con) [V]
My Lords, I congratulate AstraZeneca and Oxford University on their triumph in developing this vaccine. I hope that my noble friend agrees that without the exceptional input from the private sector, this game-changing treatment simply could not have been developed. What plans do the Government have to cope with the anti-vaxxers? Some of them will simply be individuals exercising their right to say no, but others will be deliberately spreading lies and misinformation that can only undermine trust in the vaccine. Do the Government have any specific plans to deal with this challenge?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, we have extremely detailed and energetic plans to deal with misinformation, which is based on confusion, and disinformation, which is based on malice. It would not be right for me to go through those plans in detail at the Dispatch Box, but I reassure my noble friend that they are in place and are being characterised by a degree of consideration for those who have concerns about the vaccine. It is a grave undertaking to have an injection such as that. People naturally have searching questions they would like to ask, and we are trying to meet those questions with a degree of thoughtfulness and to answer them in the spirit in which they are asked.
Lord Patel (CB) [V]
My Lords, my question follows on well from the previous one. The development of highly effective vaccines against Covid-19 is a remarkable scientific advance. It is crucial that the public have absolute confidence and trust in their use, which they should. This will be reinforced when the scientifically-led process of market approval by the regulator and scrutiny by the wider science community is completed, following publication of the peer-reviewed data. Can the Minister assure the House that there will be no political interference in any way to speed up that process before the vaccines are made available to the wider public?
Lord Bethell (Con)
I thank the noble Lord for the opportunity to make this crystal clear: the MHRA is an independent regulator, its work on vaccine approval has no political interference whatever and there is no pressure on either time or outcome. I pay tribute to those at the MHRA, who are extremely dedicated to the cause. We are going to approach the entire process with a spirit of transparency for exactly the reasons the noble Lord identified. Public trust is essential, and the only way we can gain the public’s trust is by being open and honest about how we go about these approvals. That is the way we will pursue the process.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, on COVAX, which the noble Lord mentioned, has there been any contact with the new US Administration to encourage its participation? Will the UK use its position within Gavi to ensure that the facility pays no more than cost price for future doses of Covid vaccines? What assessment has the noble Lord made of the impact of the further and substantial cut to ODA, after the £2.9 billion reduction earlier this year, on our global response to the pandemic?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, our forthcoming chairmanship of the G7, at the beginning of next year, is giving us a good opportunity to engage with our partners, including the United States, on issues such as the vaccine. We are grateful to Gavi, which is doing a terrific job at buying the vaccine; it is being characterised by what I would term commercial savviness. The spending review implications for ODA have yet to be published fully, but I reassure the noble Lord that funding the global response to the pandemic and the equitable distribution of vaccines, in particular, remains a massive commitment for the Government.
Baroness Sheehan (LD)
My Lords, notwithstanding the good use of UK aid via the WHO’s COVAX initiative, evidence shows that treatment providers and Governments have had to grapple with intellectual property barriers to essential products such as therapeutics, respirators and reagents for test kits. Do the Government maintain the position they held at the WTO TRIPS council meeting of 16 October that IP barriers to the Covid-19 response are hypothetical and will not stand in the way of scaling up vaccine manufacture?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, the question of vaccine intellectual property is a delicate one because, as was mentioned earlier, we rely on the private sector for a lot of funding and research, and for supplying the research. So, we are respectful of intellectual property as a principle. None the less, we are also grateful to vaccine manufacturers that have taken an open-source approach to vaccine intellectual property and have made local manufacturing available, so that there can be an extremely wide distribution of vaccines, including to those in the developing world who would otherwise struggle.
The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)
My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed.
Wales: Customs Sites
(4 years ago)
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Baroness Humphreys
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress they have made in (1) finding potential, and (2) establishing new, lorry customs sites that are close to ports, in particular Holyhead, and near strategic road networks in Wales, before 31 December.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office and the Treasury (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)
My Lords, for January 2021, HMRC decided that Warrington and Birmingham inland border facilities will provide interim transit facilities for goods requiring inspection through Holyhead. Holyhead will also have a limited facility for ATA Carnets. Neither Birmingham nor Warrington is near capacity; they are on the strategic road network for traffic using the mainland as a land bridge. For July 2021, an enduring site has been identified, and we are moving towards completion as quickly as possible.
Baroness Humphreys (LD) [V]
Given that we now know that the border in the Irish Sea will be moved temporarily from Holyhead to Warrington and Birmingham, in a move described by an industry expert as a recipe for smuggling, and, given that Holyhead has been described as a “soft spot” for people trafficking, how will the movement of goods and people be monitored on the 100-mile journey to Warrington, or on the 175-mile journey to Birmingham, for their customs checks?
Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)
My Lords, we absolutely accept that Warrington and Birmingham will be interim solutions to the challenge of having these facilities much nearer to Holyhead, and we are working at pace to deliver that.
Baroness Altmann (Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend share my disappointment that it has not been possible to find a site local to Holyhead for customs checks, which clearly will be needed when shipments come in from the Republic of Ireland and could create jobs and boost the economy on Anglesey and the surrounding areas?
Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)
I am pleased to tell my noble friend that yesterday we agreed verbal heads of terms for a site on the island of Anglesey. It is not a done deal by any means, but I am confident that we will do that deal, and that it will give the answers that my noble friend is asking for.
Lord Loomba (CB) [V]
My Lords, uncertainty about how Holyhead as a major gateway out of the European Union will operate raises concerns about jobs and livelihoods for local people. Can the Minister say if the levelling-up agenda applies to Wales, too, or is it just for Northern Ireland? Does he agree that this is an opportunity to help the local economy and Wales as a whole by ensuring that customs checks are carried out on the island, as well as alleviating security concerns inherent in checks done as far away as Warrington and Birmingham?
Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)
I agree with the noble Lord, which is why we have made the decision to move at pace to acquire the site on the island of Anglesey. That will bring jobs to the island and will ensure that security checks are as close to the port as possible.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab) [V]
My Lords, at all stages of the Brexit process we have urged the Government to formalise their engagement with the devolved Administrations, for example by putting the Joint Ministerial Committee on a statutory footing. Ministers said that this was unnecessary, yet the Welsh Government say that Whitehall made a formal approach regarding an inland site to serve Holyhead only in August. Why do the Government find it so hard to work constructively and proactively with others? Does it stem from the Prime Minister’s recent and very damaging comments on devolution?
Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)
My Lords, I want to reassure the noble Lord that we have had extremely collaborative and constructive discussions with the Welsh Administration; indeed, it was only yesterday that I agreed with the Welsh Minister to go for the site for which we agreed the verbal heads of terms yesterday. I gave that choice to the Welsh Minister and I was delighted when he agreed with the proposal that we put forward to him. So we are working very closely with the devolved authorities, and, as I say, with Wales in particular I have had a very constructive relationship.
Baroness Randerson (LD) [V]
Yesterday the French border control started trialling new controls, and immediately a five-mile lorry queue built up on the M20. If lorries to Holyhead have to travel via Warrington or Birmingham, how much longer do the Government believe the additional journey is likely to take, and what estimate have they made of the percentage increase in food costs as a result?
Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)
My Lords, if 100% of the Holyhead traffic had to go to Birmingham, it would take up 40% of Birmingham’s capacity. If it had to go 100% to Warrington, it would take up 20% of its capacity. So we are very unlikely to see any congestion at those two interim inland ports. In terms of distance delay, the Warrington site is located for those trucks going to the eastern ports and the Birmingham site is located for those going to the short-straits ports, so we do not anticipate delay or cost in relation to that.
Lord Wigley (PC) [V]
My Lords, I am sure the Minister accepts that Warrington is totally inappropriate, and I am glad that a location has been found on Anglesey and hope that it moves forward very quickly. But perhaps I may press the Minister on another question. As I understand it, the digital infrastructure for border checks at Holyhead from 1 January still has not been fully tested, and, if things go wrong, it will have massive implications for the flow of trade and for local congestion. What urgent measures are being taken to deal with that scenario?
Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)
My Lords, I can reassure the noble Lord that we are on track to have the digital infrastructure up and running by 1 January. I completely accept that we are running on a very tight timetable, but if we take, for example, the GVMS system—which I think is the one that he is referring to—that has been available for testing by hauliers and carriers since September and will be released to all hauliers on 8 December.
Lord German (LD)
Putting aside the issue of having to drive 100 miles or 175 miles in order to have your load checked, meaning that you have to go to one of two places, I am interested to know the Minister’s answer to the question that was put to him earlier about working at pace. Am I right to understand that the first communication on the siting of a potential site on the Isle of Anglesey was yesterday; and, if so, is that what the Government call working at pace?
Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)
I can reassure the noble Lord that we have been working on this solution for some time. There was an alternative proposal several months ago that most people were in favour of, which was RAF Mona, but unfortunately that was not acceptable to the local community. But, no, we have not just started work on this this week. In terms of the inland sites, to reassure the noble Lord, not every lorry has to go to them. About 2% of loads will be diverted for formal checks. So, although I accept that in the interim, before the enduring site is created on the island, there will be some inconvenience, it will be only for a very small number of loads.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, following on from the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, concerns were raised this month about the readiness of IT systems, including the Customs Declaration Service, in oral evidence to the EU Select Committee’s EU Goods Sub-Committee. Is it the case that key personnel for developing the CDS are still being recruited? Does the Minister agree that, the rest of the UK aside, the particular problems facing Wales will be compounded if IT systems are not ready on time?
Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)
My Lords, the CDS is the system that is being rolled out specifically for Northern Ireland from 1 January, because that is the one that enables a dual-tariff mechanism. The development is well under way. We have one or two more upgrades to make to it, with the last one on 21 December. I am not going to pretend that that is not tight, but the development is moving at pace, and the most recent upgrade enabled the dual-tariff operating model to work. The CSPs—the community service providers that provide the link into the CDS for traders and hauliers—are working at pace. The main one, the Trader Support Service, is working at particular pace, and I am confident that the system will be connected by the due date.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]
My Lords, further to the questions from the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, and the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, the head of Stena Line’s head of UK Port Authorities told the BBC yesterday that it was preparing for no deal and was confident that it was in the right place for that. As far as I am aware, the Government are still looking for a deal. That means that big companies such as Stena, and also small companies, will have to deal with the uncertainty, with 36 days to go. What help is being provided to enable small independent businesses, in particular, to interact with that extremely late-arriving IT system?
Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)
My Lords, the difference for the vast majority of traders between a deal and no deal is simply the level of tariffs that will have to be put into the HMRC and DIT systems. So their readiness needs to be at the same level, whether it is a deal or no deal.
The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)
My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed. We now move to the third Oral Question.
Nuclear Weapons
(4 years ago)
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Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the ratification by 50 countries of the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, what plans they have to review their policies towards nuclear weapons.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Baroness Goldie) (Con)
My Lords, Her Majesty’s Government keep their nuclear deterrents policy and posture under continual review, taking into consideration their commitments to maintaining the United Kingdom’s nuclear deterrent for as long as the global security situation demands, and to the long-term goal of a world without nuclear weapons.
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD) [V]
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her reply. There is common ground with the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons because that is the shorter term goal, too. However, with the collapse of so many non-proliferation treaties and the failure of the 2015 round of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty to reach a consensus, is the Minister confident that the next round of the non-proliferation treaty, which must take place before April, will reach some consensus as a way forward? The 122 countries that signed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons are desperate that nuclear weapons states are not making sufficient efforts to fulfil their obligations under pillar 3. What dialogues have the Government had to date on achieving a consensus and success at the next round of the NPT?
Baroness Goldie (Con)
The Government remain constantly engaged. There is probably a fundamental difference of philosophy between an attitude towards a non-proliferation treaty and an attitude towards a prohibition treaty. Certainly, the Government believe that the non-proliferation treaty has been successful because it is built on foundations of consensus and delivers tangible benefits for all its signatories. It continues to make a significant contribution to international security and stability, and that is what this Government want to promote and support.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, recently I and a number of other Bishops issued a public letter welcoming the important ratification of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Can the Minister comment on the moral inconsistency, whereby we have rightly taken a stand on outlawing cluster bombs and landmines but not outlawing nuclear weapons, which, as we know, are far more destructive when they are used?
Baroness Goldie (Con)
At the heart of the question asked by the right reverend Prelate is the relevance of the term “deterrent”. Very often people measure the deterrent a failure because it has not been used. I would argue the exact opposite—that the measure of a deterrent’s success is that it has not been used, because it is doing its job of deterring.
Lord Trefgarne (Con)
Can the Minister confirm the Government’s continued adherence to a policy of continuous at sea deterrents—namely, one of our Trident submarines, permanently on patrol and ready to reply, should our supreme national interest so require?
Baroness Goldie (Con)
Yes, I can confirm to my noble friend our commitment to the continuous at sea deterrent. When the Prime Minister launched the integrated review, he specifically reaffirmed the UK’s commitment to that deterrent and the UK’s support of NATO.
Lord Ramsbotham (CB) [V]
My Lords, bearing in mind how much the cost of the nuclear deterrent has destabilised the defence budget, have HMG considered relieving it of this cost as part of the welcome recent addition to the resources allocated to defence and security?
Baroness Goldie (Con)
I would respond to the noble Lord by observing that the Government recognise that the cost of maintaining and renewing the deterrent is substantial. Equally, the Government are clear that the safety and security of the United Kingdom is a long-term issue and immediate economic pressures are not sufficient rationale for taking risks with the security of the nation and British public far into the future. The costs have been and will continue to be subjected to cross-government scrutiny, but the underlying rationale for the deterrent is the safety of the country and its citizens.
Baroness Blower (Lab) [V]
I refer noble Lords to my interests as reported in the register, as chair of the Nuclear Education Trust. As the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, said, the TPNW comes into effect on 22 January 2021. The list of prohibitions includes use, stockpiling, testing, production, manufacture, stationing and installation of nuclear weapons. In that context, can the Minister tell us what current government thinking is about the possibility of defence diversification to provide alternative good-quality jobs for those currently engaged in the process of replacing the existing nuclear arsenal? We know that science and industry can respond very quickly when necessary, as we have seen during the Covid pandemic.
Baroness Goldie (Con)
I simply observe that the commitment to the deterrent is very significant in terms of defence capability, planning and cost, and is a long-term commitment. We deploy our best scientific and technical skills to that programme, and there is no proposal to distract from that activity.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD) [V]
My Lords, the Minister suggested that there is probably a different philosophy between those who believe in a non-proliferation regime and those who believe in a prohibition regime. Can she tell the House what work the Government are doing to take us down the nuclear ladder and reduce the amount of nuclear capabilities, because surely the aim we all have is a multilateral solution to ending nuclear weapons?
Baroness Goldie (Con)
Let me offer some cheer to the noble Baroness by agreeing with her last point. The difficulty lies not so much in the objective, which is shared by many people, but in the journey to reach it. That is why the United Kingdom believes that the non-proliferation treaty not only offers focus but is a treaty entered into by all the nuclear states. I am not aware of any nuclear state joining the prohibition treaty. It is entered into because those nuclear states believe that the non-proliferation treaty provides focus and verification, and that it has a record of delivering.
Lord Bates (Con)
On 24 January 2021, it will be 75 years since the General Assembly of the United Nations first pledged to rid the world of nuclear weapons, while meeting at Central Hall, Westminster. Is my noble friend aware that many of us who have argued vigorously against unilateral nuclear disarmament feel passionately about the need for greater progress in multilateral disarmament? I welcome the UK’s leadership in reducing our nuclear stockpile. Will the Government use the upcoming 75th anniversary to urge other nuclear states to follow suit?
Baroness Goldie (Con)
As always, my noble friend makes an interesting and informed contribution. He underlines my earlier point about why we have the deterrent and what the test of a successful deterrent is. I assure him that the United Kingdom Government support multilateral nuclear disarmament, but we believe that the non-proliferation treaty is the most effective means of progressing that objective.
Lord Touhig (Lab) [V]
We welcome the long overdue commitment on defence spending announced last week but, according to the National Audit Office, poor management of Britain’s nuclear weapons programme has led to infrastructure projects being delayed by six years and costs increasing by £1.3 billion. Can the Minister say how much of the £16 billion increase in spending will be used to complete the nuclear programme upgrades?
Baroness Goldie (Con)
I cannot attach specific sums of money to the particular components to which the noble Lord refers. He will understand the Government’s commitment to the Dreadnought programme, an extensive, ambitious and challenging programme. We remain on track to deliver the first of class into service in the early 2030s, which we will do within the costs envelope announced in the National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review 2015. That estimated the cost to be £31 billion and set aside a £10 billion contingency fund.
Viscount Waverley (CB) [V]
Which makes for better policy, and why, when there are force expansions by adversaries in capability, capacity, doctrine and battle-readiness: on the one hand, reinforcing our seat on the Security Council, NATO leverage and special relationship status, or, on the other, recognising our new status as a lesser-tier country but with a strategy of balancing the extent of the threat with nuclear disarmament and adopting more of a practical focus on IT capabilities and retaining 0.7% as our foreign aid contribution?
Baroness Goldie (Con)
Responding from the perspective of defence, I do not accept the premise of the noble Viscount’s question. When we are dealing with threats to security and the safety of our country and our citizens, we go down all routes—security routes, MoD roots and diplomatic routes—and they are all vital. The recent settlement offered by the Government to the MoD reflects the importance that we attach to that.
The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)
My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed.
Covid-19: Vaccination Prioritisation
(4 years ago)
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Baroness Campbell of Surbiton
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to ensure that high-risk adults under the age of 65 are prioritised for access to any Covid-19 vaccination ahead of adults less at risk who are over the age of 65.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Bethell) (Con)
My Lords, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has found that mortality increases exponentially with age and has published interim advice accordingly. An age-based programme captures many with underlying conditions. None the less, the sub-committee is reviewing evidence on clinical risk factors, including the clinically extremely vulnerable, and the committee will update its advice if necessary after review.
Baroness Campbell of Surbiton (CB) [V]
I thank the Minister for his Answer. As someone who has been shielding since early March, I celebrate those involved in producing the vaccines in such a short time. However, I am concerned to learn that those under 65 in the clinically high-risk categories have been given a lower priority for the vaccine, knowing that 59% of people who have died from the coronavirus have been high-risk disabled people. Can the Minister please provide the JCVI’s evidence that informed the Government’s decision that those in high-risk categories under 65 are less vulnerable to the virus? Disabled people tell me that they have not felt shielded or protected throughout this pandemic, and this priority decision seems to confirm that belief. I urge the Government to think again.
Lord Bethell (Con)
I reassure the noble Baroness that no final decisions have been made; this is only interim advice. I point out in particular that the behaviours of individual vaccines might be quite different for different groups of people. It is only when we have the final phase 3 data on the vaccines that we will be able to make the decisions that she alludes to. We are considering the extremely vulnerable carefully. As I mentioned, a review is under way to see whether clinical factors should play a greater role in prioritisation.
Lord MacKenzie of Culkein (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I could not agree more with the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell. Motor neurone disease is an example of a fatal illness with a very short life expectancy after diagnosis. The Minister might well have seen recent publicity about the case of a six year-old child being unable to attend school in case he brings the Covid-19 virus home to his dad, who is living with motor neurone disease. I hope the Minister will agree that no family should be in the position of having to choose between their child attending school and the risk of shortening the already short lifespan of his father. Will he further agree that people living with motor neurone disease, as well as those with many other life-limiting illnesses, must be on the priority list for very early vaccination?
The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Evans of Bowes Park) (Con)
I ask noble Lords to keep their questions short.
Lord Bethell (Con)
I hear loud and clear the conundrum expressed by the noble Lord. These prioritisation questions are very difficult. I hear his plea loud and clear and I undertake that these kinds of considerations will be considered in the prioritisation process.
Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]
What provision is being made for another group who feel totally forgotten by this Government—namely, extremely vulnerable children, whether they have medical conditions or physical or learning disabilities, many of whom have been unable to access carers or schools since March? When is the review that the Minister just spoke about likely to publish its results?
Lord Bethell (Con)
It will not be possible to publish any results until we have the clear data on the vaccines. Individual vaccines may behave quite differently with different groups of people. There may be some vaccines that work well with the elderly, some that work well with those with clinical conditions and some that work well with children. It is only when we know that data that the final prioritisation can be published.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, on 12 November I asked my noble friend’s ministerial colleague, my noble friend Lord Greenhalgh, if he would recommend to the JCVI that rough sleepers and those who work with them should be a priority for vaccination. He said he would. Does that remain the case, and will they indeed get priority?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My noble friend has made the case for rough sleepers extremely well. It is one that we are deeply concerned about. When it comes to the prioritisation list, what has been published so far is an interim and indicative list. It will be reviewed, and a more detailed list will be published in time.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB) [V]
As the Government keep the priority list under review, will they also look at the results of the New York vaccine rollout prioritisation? Younger adults who have been shielding are often already on a list, are at high risk and have children at school or college who are also their carers. These children are already stressed, if they attend education, knowing that they risk being asymptomatic virus carriers into the home and that Covid could kill their parent or sibling.
Lord Bethell (Con)
I am extremely grateful to the noble Baroness for suggesting the New York precedent. It is not one that I was aware of and I will look into it. I reassure her that we are liaising with all our international partners over the vaccine rollout to ensure that we put in the best possible practice that we can.
Baroness Thornton (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I have read the JCVI priority list. As the Minister has indicated, some granularity is going to be vital. There is so far no mention of vulnerable BAME communities, who have borne the disproportionate burden of the pandemic. How will the Government approach those vulnerabilities in setting the priorities and their implementation?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, the underlying principles of the advice of the JCVI are to reduce mortality, to improve population health by reducing serious disease and to protect the NHS and the social care system. The basic insight is that the risk of serious disease and death from Covid increases exponentially with age and increases in those with a number of underlying health conditions. Those are the basic principles of the interim advice and they will evolve over time.
Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD) [V]
My Lords, what consideration will be given to the vaccination of up to 250,000 care assistants employed by disabled people under the direct payments scheme who are not on the radar of any care providers or local authorities?
Lord Bethell (Con)
The noble Baroness makes the case extremely well for care providers. The prioritised list starts currently with older adult residents in care homes and care home workers, but she makes the case for the 250,000 who may not be on that principal list. That is something that I will take away with me.
Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I add my voice to the plea that those sleeping rough on our streets are not forgotten when vaccination occurs. I ask the Minister to rule out any government-assisted moves to stop people who decide, just as they do not want vaccination for flu, that they do not want to be vaccinated for Covid from travelling, certainly within the UK.
Lord Bethell (Con)
I hear loud and clear the case for rough sleepers made by both the noble Baroness and my noble friend. The case was made to my colleague, my noble friend Lord Greenhalgh, as well. That is a really important part of the vaccination programme and we will look into the most effective way of doing it. On the noble Baroness’s second point, I am not aware of any moves to try to limit or create mandatory situations for vaccines within the four nations.
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne (Con)
Might my noble friend consider setting up a network to catch and bring back into circulation those young people technically in care between the ages of 14 and 21 who have none the less been trafficked out of their unmonitored council care homes, given that the vaccination publicity is so enormous that they might well be able to be tempted back into life again?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, the vaccination holds the prospect of returning to some form of normality very quickly. It is exactly the kind of situation that my noble friend points out that will be most welcome. There are a large number of people in various types of care who have not been able to be looked after in the way that they might have been previously. It is extremely valuable that the vaccine will be able to return people to that kinds of support, which they both deserve and need.
Lord Bilimoria (CB) [V]
My Lords, the Question of the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, shows very clearly that flexibility will be needed, and I think the Government are hearing that. Now that we have three vaccines, including the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, how soon does the Minister think we will be able to roll out vaccinations at a target of 1 million a day? Will he confirm that target? Will that be from January onwards? In the meantime, the need for rapid mass antigen lateral flow testing is all the greater.
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, the noble Lord tempts me to commit to schedules that I am simply not in a position to commit to, I am afraid to say. The performance of the various vaccines is extremely complex: each one of them needs a different delivery plan. In collaboration with the NHS, we are putting in place an extremely energetic and thoughtful deployment programme. Those in charge have been instructed to have that ready to start from 1 December, but I will not hide it from the House that it may well be after the new year that the very large numbers begin. I reassure the House that we are super-focused on this deployment plan, and, as soon as the vaccines become available, we will be trying to get them to the public as soon as we can.
The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)
My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed, and that brings us to the end of Question Time.
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Act 2015
Baroness Sheehan
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to amend the International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Act 2015.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, I cannot speculate ahead of the Chancellor’s Statement, which I believe he is currently giving in another place. The Government remain firmly committed to helping the world’s poorest people. We are always looking at how the aid budget is spent to ensure that it serves the UK’s priorities and represents value for money.
Baroness Sheehan (LD)
My Lords, whatever the outcome of the Chancellor’s statement, the target of 0.7% of GNI to help the world’s poorest is a proud Lib Dem achievement in coalition, spearheaded in your Lordships’ House very ably, if I may say so, by my noble friend Lord Purvis of Tweed. It serves moral, economic and political imperatives. Polling shows that it is not the British people pushing for cuts to the aid budget; it is ideologues within the governing party and a weak Prime Minister who seems unable to deny them anything.
I have two questions. First, does the Minister agree that, if there is a willingness to break international law, as set out in Part 5 of the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill, coupled with a willingness to break a manifesto pledge on international aid, this is not a good look for global Britain as a “force for good”? Secondly, how does he think that the £4 billion cut to the aid budget, scrutinised to within an inch of its life, compares to the £12 billion haemorrhaged over the last five months by the Government’s test and trace programme, which is tainted by failure and mired in fraud and corruption?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
The noble Baroness is right to pay tribute to her noble friend Lord Purvis of Tweed, who took this Bill through your Lordships’ House. She is right to say that it is a proud achievement of the coalition Government, composed of both the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives. This is an issue on which all parties have worked over many years. I believe the target was first adopted by a British Government in the year in which the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, was born—it took us a long time to reach it.
I am afraid the noble Baroness’s two questions are both hypothetical, and I cannot pre-empt what my right honourable friend the Chancellor is saying at the moment.
Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale (Lab)
My Lords, in 2020, we have been informed by a virus that did not start in this country and will not end in this country of just how interdependent our world is in the 21st century. What possible justification could there be, in such a world and at such a time, to reduce by two-sevenths, or £2 in every £7, the budget that we spend—that we invest—around the world in tackling climate change, extreme poverty and preventing conflict and ill health?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
The noble Lord is right to point to the current circumstances of the pandemic as a forcible reminder of the importance of assisting people around the world: these are global problems. That is why the United Kingdom is one of the largest donors to the international Covid-19 response. We have already committed up to £1.3 billion to combat the pandemic and to reinforce the global effort to find and equitably distribute a vaccine.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, the Act in which I had a role—the Minister kindly referred to it—was as a result of consensus. Now, as the Chancellor has finished his Statement and it has been released, the Minister no longer needs to speculate; he can read from his brief what the reality is to the House. That reality could well be the biggest reduction in UK overseas assistance in a generation. Can the Minister look me—the sponsor of the International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Act in this House—in the eye? There is no provision in this Act for a Secretary of State to proactively and deliberately miss the 0.7% target; it is the law and a duty. Will the Government uphold the law, and can the Minister confirm to me, personally and directly, that Secretaries of State will continue to uphold their legal duty under that Act?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
The noble Lord has an advantage over me in knowing what the Chancellor has said; he had not risen to his feet when I came into the Chamber. His Statement, like all Statements on fiscal events, will be released when he has sat down. There is a Topical Question in your Lordships’ House tomorrow, when all of us will be able to debate these matters, having acquainted ourselves with what my right honourable friend has said or is saying.
Baroness Coussins (CB) [V]
My Lords, does the Minister accept that a cut in aid spending would risk undermining the leadership the UK has shown in supporting the H2H Network, which allows dozens of small independent groups to provide vital technical help, such as logistics, security and language services, in refugee camps, disaster zones and conflict areas? Will the Minister agree to persuade the Government to protect the budget for these organisations through the H2H network?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, the Government rely heavily on the capacity, expertise, resilience and flexibility of a number of organisations, such as the ones that the noble Baroness cites. We certainly pay tribute to them for their work and will, I am sure, be engaging with them as they see what my right honourable friend the Chancellor is saying today.
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey (Con)
My Lords, if the newspapers are right, it is a sad day. I believe that, having supported and worked with the Liberal coalition to put the 0.7% commitment on the statute book, there is now a proposal from the Conservative Government that this might be changed. As noble Lords will know, I go back a very long way in this area. When I think of what could be done with that amount of money—particularly now, with the spreading of Covid, the continued spread of malaria and the spread of so many other diseases in Africa, which might well end up coming to Europe even if they are contained in Africa, the far east and South America at the present time—it seems to me madness; that is the only word I can use for it. I hope the noble Lord, who is quite newly facing the Front-Bench duties, will explain in words of one syllable just how bad this is, not only for the Government but for the country, which will have been seen to have let down the developing world.
The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)
I ask noble Lords to keep questions reasonably short so that we can get in all speakers on the list.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, I hope my noble friend understands that I cannot comment on speculation in newspapers. Tomorrow, we will have an opportunity for an informed discussion after noble Lords have heard what my right honourable friend the Chancellor has said. I certainly pay tribute to my noble friend’s work as a Minister and the work she has done since in forcefully making the case for the increase in spending. I believe that when she left her role as Minister, we were spending 0.2% of GNI or thereabouts. It is to the great credit of successive Governments and all parties that that amount has since been increased.
The Lord Bishop of Worcester [V]
My Lords, the 2019 Conservative general election manifesto said:
“We will proudly maintain our commitment to spend 0.7% of GNI on development”.
That was before Covid, of course. On 16 June, the Prime Minister said in the other place that spending 0.7% remained the Government’s commitment. On 18 June, the Leader of the House reassured the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Peterborough of the Government’s continued commitment to the 0.7% target. In this House on 2 September, the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, reassured the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bristol, with these words:
“I assure her that we will continue to be guided by our responsibilities under the International Development Act”.—[Official Report, 2/9/20; col. 354.]
In a letter to the Prime Minister last week, I drew attention to Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s words:
“A promise to the poor is particularly sacred.”
Does the Minister agree with him?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, the right reverend Prelate mentioned a large number of things said in Parliament in recent months. As I speak, my right honourable friend is saying something further; we will all have the opportunity to acquaint ourselves with it. The right reverend Prelate is also right to point to the fact that this pandemic has hit us since the last manifesto was written.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, this year, we have seen £2.9 billion cut from the ODA budget, so whatever the Chancellor announces this afternoon will be on top of that—and could be as much as £4.8 billion. In September, only a short while ago, Dominic Raab told an FCDO staff meeting that
“the prime minister has been clear he wants aid to be at the beating heart of our foreign policy”
and that his “good pal” the Chancellor would not be cutting it. Can the Minister tell the House what the Foreign Secretary may be saying to his good pal this afternoon?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
The noble Lord will understand that I cannot speculate on what my right honourable friends may be saying to one another. My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary led a thorough process to identify a package of necessary savings for this financial year, as the noble Lord said. That package prioritised the UK’s global response to the Covid-19 pandemic, including on poverty reduction for the bottom billion, climate change and reversing biodiversity loss, championing girls’ education and protecting our operational capacity. That work speaks for itself.
Baroness Northover (LD)
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, said yesterday that she was proud of the United Kingdom, with its commitment to 0.7%, as a “development superpower”. Last night, the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury said that reaching 0.7% was one of the
“great moral achievements in this country of the past 20 years.”
I am proud to have been the Minister who took my noble friend Lord Purvis’s Bill through the House of Lords with cross-party support. I can tell the Minister that it has been announced that aid has been cut from 0.7% to 0.5%. Is he proud of that?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
I share the noble Baroness’s pride. I was an adviser in the coalition Government and worked with my noble friend Lady Sugg; in that capacity, I shared the words that she said in your Lordships’ House yesterday. Unlike the noble Baroness, I have not had the opportunity to hear what my right honourable friend the Chancellor has said. His speech, like all fiscal events, will be released later; I will listen to what he says. Your Lordships’ House will have an opportunity to debate the Topical Question tomorrow.
Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Con) [V]
My Lords, I appreciate that my noble friend can say little or nothing today, but I put on record my support for the current spending level. Can my noble friend confirm that, whatever the result of the review, the department will continue to prioritise gender equality, especially girls’ education and family planning, which is the most effective way of raising women, families, communities and countries out of poverty?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
I am very happy to give that reassurance to my noble friend. Since 2015, the UK has supported more than 15.5 million children in gaining a decent education; over 8 million of them were girls, to whom that is so important. On sexual and reproductive health and family planning, between 2015 and 2020, DfID reached a yearly average of 25.3 million women and girls with modern methods of family planning.
Lord Dannatt (CB) [V]
Does the House accept that the influence that the United Kingdom can exert in the post-Brexit world will come largely through the integration of our hard power—our defence capabilities—with our soft power, which is the combination of our diplomatic skills and the focused use of our international development budget? Does the Minister therefore accept that the potential reduction in our international development budget that has apparently just been announced will significantly reduce our soft power and thereby reduce the impact of so-called global Britain? Will the Minister ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer to think again before flouting the 0.7% figure, which is part of the law?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
The noble Lord raises important issues about the interconnectedness of these things, which is part of the integrated review that the Government are considering. He will have seen the announcements on defence spending, and I will certainly read with interest what my right honourable friend has said in another place.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
What the Chancellor has said has now been made public, so will the Minister confirm for the House whether new legislation will be introduced to repeal the Act that we have been discussing, which commits us to 0.7%? If not, who will be prosecuted: the Chancellor of the Exchequer or the Secretary of State for International Development?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, my brief does not contain a copy of my right honourable friend’s speech. As is normal with fiscal events, that will be made available to Members in another place and your Lordships after he has sat down, which he may or may not have done. That will be the right opportunity for noble Lords to acquaint themselves with it.
Baroness Stroud (Con) [V]
I hope that my noble friend the Minister will be able to answer my question today. A 2019 National Audit Office report highlighted that the FCO had failed to match DfID’s transparency when it came to reporting on its ODA spending, and that it had spent a disproportionate portion of its aid transfers on administrative costs. With the formation of the FCDO, how do Her Majesty’s Government plan to improve transparency on the allocation of development spending and work bilaterally with developing nations to build capacity and complement domestic development programmes?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
I hope that I can answer my noble friend’s question. The Government are certainly committed to ensuring the robust scrutiny of our aid. In August, my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary announced the continuation of the Independent Commission for Aid Impact and plans to conduct a review, to be concluded by the end of this year. That will ensure that the ICAI’s remit, focus and methods are most effectively scrutinising the impact of UK aid and the good that it can do for the world’s poorest people.
The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)
My Lords, the time allowed for this Private Notice Question has elapsed.
DHSC Answers to Written Questions
(4 years ago)
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Baroness Thornton (Lab) [V]
My Lords, earlier this week, there were 149 outstanding Written Questions addressed to the Department of Health and Social Care on the Lords business paper. My first question, therefore, has to be: when will they be answered?
One has to wonder about the quality of the Answers. On 21 July, my noble friend Lord Bassam asked a perfectly reasonable Question about
“how many COVID-19 tests have been sent by post and subsequently returned to laboratories, for each day since the scheme began; and how many of the tests sent by post have been discounted because swabbed material was not collected correctly.”
The Answer arrived today—25 November. It says:
“The information is not collected in the format requested”.
You have to wonder why a non-answer took so long to arrive. Does the answer possibly lie partly in the existence of the Cabinet Office clearing house? Are Written Questions subject to a clearing house process—something that many regard as part of a wider obstructive approach to disclosing information? Can the Minister tell the House whether he and his department are involved in referring things to the clearing house at the Cabinet Office?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Bethell) (Con)
My Lords, the very large number of questions which have been put to the Department of Health is completely unprecedented. We had 577 in the whole of 2019. So far in 2020 we have had 1,783, of which 799 have been answered on time and the rest are late. I apologise for that; it is a matter of huge regret. I ask for the forbearance of the House, as the pandemic has put enormous pressure on the department.
The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, quite correctly alluded to one aspect of the answering of questions: the questions themselves often address novel challenges. Traditionally, we get questions about things that the department has been doing for years and years, where it is easy to pluck out an answer from the database or from the encyclopaedia of answers. The noble Baroness gave a good example of a question where it is difficult to elicit an answer. I know the exact question she referred to, because I have sought really hard to provide an answer to the noble Lord, Lord Bassam. The question of how many swabs have not been returned by post is much more complicated than it might look. There are different types of swabs; different schemes—ONS, REACT, clinical trials—send in the swabs. Inconveniently, they do not pool all the answers. Also, some swabs may sit on a bench or in a cupboard at a house for a long time and it is not possible to know when they are, or are not, sent back.
I cite that as an example of the kind of challenge that we have faced in answering questions from noble Lords. I am not trying to detract from the inconvenience of questions not being answered on time, but I assure the House that we have put in considerably more resources. We have upgraded the quality of the people who are answering the questions and have an absolute commitment to trying to answer them on time.
The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)
My Lords, I remind Ministers that the instruction to be brief applies to their answers, as well as to questions from other Members.
Lord Robathan (Con)
My Lords, I do not underestimate the pressure under which the Department of Health has been put and pay tribute to my noble friend for the number of times that he comes here to answer Questions. However, the data behind this virus is hugely important. I put down a Question asking about the number of NHS workers—doctors and nurses—who have been killed by the virus. The answer that came back was: “We don’t know”. Surely, we must know this. I have also asked a question in this Chamber, not a written one, about what the strategy is without vaccinations. A vaccine has now come, but we must know what the strategy is. Are we going to go into another lockdown if the infection rate rises again? Perhaps the Minister can answer that now?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, matching the data on deaths with the HR records of the NHS is actually very difficult. It cannot be done easily, or even accurately. Our strategy is crystal clear: to protect the NHS, keep the schools open and encourage the economy while we wait for the vaccine to be deployed.
Baroness Whitaker (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I am grateful for the answer from the health department on 24 November to my letter of 8 June about the disparity of health outcomes from Covid-19 for Gypsies, Travellers and Roma, although it did not answer our specific questions and was sent only to my cosignatory, Kate Green MP, not me. Will the Minister please answer my question of 21 October, due to be answered on 4 November, asking whether the Government would recognise International Stammering Awareness Day, now long past, with better technological provision for speech and language therapists, which is sorely needed?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I would be glad to track down the noble Baroness’s letter and get her the answer that she so desires.
Lord Wills (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I have every sympathy with the unique pressures being placed on the Minister and his department this year. It was inevitable that mistakes would be made, but the crucial thing is to learn from them, not least because, however encouraging recent news has been, there are still considerable challenges to be overcome before the country can return to normal. When Ministers refuse even to address questions asked of them, it hardly encourages belief that they are prepared to learn lessons from recent months. I have asked many questions about the failure to utilise efficiently the much-needed capacity provided by the partnership between the private sector and the NHS. The responses were a masterclass in a wilful refusal to answer questions. Does the Minister not recognise the damage done by such public denial of the facts?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I regret enormously that the noble Lord feels that we have, in any way, avoided the facts. We are absolutely committed to learning the lessons of Covid, which will be profound. I note that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State was in front of the House of Commons Select Committee on health for two and a half hours yesterday, answering exactly those questions. It was an illuminating and important discussion and I very much hope that this House will have an opportunity to do the same.
Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con) [V]
My noble friend is, I am sure, aware of the frustrations that the House has just heard. Here is a question to which I do not expect an answer, perhaps, at the moment. How many officials are actually involved in having to provide these answers? Does my noble friend agree that accuracy of responses is more important than speed?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, before the pandemic the parliamentary affairs team was made up of nine people; it has grown to 15. The ministerial correspondence and public inquiries team has grown from 51 people to 111. I think the noble Lord would agree that, at a time when we are trying to deal with test and trace along with programmes on therapeutics, restart, seasonal flu, PPE and vaccines, having 111 people working on correspondence seems the outer limit of what would be proportionate.
The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)
My Lords, all questions in this section have now been asked. We will come to the next in a moment.
Leaseholders and Cladding
(4 years ago)
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Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, I refer the House to my relevant interests, as set out in the register. We are clearly making some progress with this Statement, but we need absolute clarity that no leaseholder or tenant will face any cost as a result of this scandal. Does the Minister accept that tenants and leaseholders are the innocent victims here? Does he also accept that redress for this scandal has to be by the builders who built the unsafe buildings, the people who signed them off as safe, and those organisations which provided insurances, warranties, guarantees and protections? It is regrettable that some of these companies are now trying to wriggle out of obligations that they gave.
The Minister of State, Home Office and Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Lord Greenhalgh) (Con)
My Lords, the Government do accept that leaseholders are victims in this situation. We recognise that the £1.6 billion of public funding that has been put up so far to pay for the costs of cladding remediation go some way to protecting leaseholders from the costs they face. We also recognise that this public funding does not absolve the industry from taking responsibility.
Baroness Pinnock (LD) [V]
My Lords, I draw the attention of the House to my relevant interests in the register. I echo what the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, just said about the growing public concern over this issue. The Health and Safety Executive gave evidence to the House of Commons scrutiny committee on the building safety Bill, which includes some clauses on cladding and fire safety of buildings. It said in the committee’s report that leaseholders should not
“have to worry about the cost of fixing historic safety defects in their buildings that they did not cause.”
Does the Minister agree with the Government’s own Health and Safety Executive?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, with the greatest respect, the bill for remediation of historic cladding defects cannot simply be passed to the taxpayer. We expect developers, investors and building owners who have the means to cover remediation costs themselves to do so without passing on costs to leaseholders.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB) [V]
How many freeholders have been asked to pay for this remedial work on the buildings they commissioned on their land, and how many of those who built these dangerous dwellings, who all gain profit from the sale of leasehold properties? What legislation do the Government plan to bring forward to move from leasehold to co-ownership for multioccupancy buildings?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, in addition to other ministerial responsibilities, I am now responsible for looking at leasehold reform. This is not the place to opine on that, but just over 50% of private sector developers and freeholders with aluminium composite material in high-rises funded it and did not pass on the costs to leaseholders—a significant proportion stepped up to the plate and did the right thing.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, I declare a possible interest as someone who might be affected. One million leaseholders will still be ripped off by landlords, freeholders and agents who will carry out all possible so-called remediation works and gold-plate them to increase the value of their holdings and make leaseholders pay through the nose for them. Will my noble friend confirm that the Government will bring forward an amendment to the Fire Safety Bill stating that leaseholders will not pay a penny for remedial works but will deal with the genuine anomaly of wear and tear and service charges, for which they should pay? Will he also bring forward urgent legislation on leasehold reform and the full abolition of this iniquitous, prehistoric law which should have no place in a levelled-up society?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend—that will be about five minutes’ work. I agree that leaseholders must be protected from unaffordable costs, particularly if these are driven by unnecessary gold-plating. I agree that leasehold reform needs to be an absolute priority, and it is a priority for this Government.
Lord Polak (Con)
My Lords, I am pleased to be able to follow my noble friend Lord Blencathra. The HCLG report published yesterday argued, correctly, that leaseholders should not be expected to foot the bill for failures not of their own making. Some property owners have taken the necessary steps, supported by the Government—and therefore the taxpayer—through funding, but sadly so many others have not. Can my noble friend tell me what I can say to Charlie, Rebecca and their baby, who bought their new build leasehold flat five years ago? The block failed the ESW1 process and the review found flammable cladding, combustible insulation, timber balconies and more. They are trapped in a flat that could go up in flames and have repair bills that could break them financially.
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, my noble friend must point out to them that this Government have an iron resolve to make sure that developers step up to the plate. They have made significant profits on those developments and will want to make profits in the future. We need to make them pay; we need to reason with them and say that it is no good laying this at the door of the taxpayer. They will have to step up to the plate. I will ensure that this Government make every endeavour to make them do so.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, 36 years ago, when I had my noble friend’s job at the then Department of the Environment, I put on the statute book the Housing Defects Act 1984. In a nutshell, it compensated homeowners who found that their homes were unsaleable, through no fault of their own, and had no other form of compensation coming from the Government. Does my noble friend think that that legislation has relevance to today’s leaseholders? Would he welcome my advice on how to persuade the Treasury to pay for it?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, there is no problem in public life that has not been seen before. My noble friend makes a valuable point and I will indeed ask my officials to look into the ways in which the Housing Defects Act of 1984, when I was doing my A-levels, and the Housing Act of 1988, when I left university, were used to address the issues we face today.
The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)
I call the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe. There is no reply.
Arrangement of Business
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)
My Lords, the Hybrid Sitting of the House will now begin. Some Members are here in the Chamber, respecting social distancing, others are participating remotely, but all Members will be treated equally. If the capacity of the Chamber is exceeded, I will immediately adjourn the House.
I will call Members to speak in the order listed in the annexe to today’s list. Interventions during speeches or “before the noble Lord sits down” are not permitted and uncalled speakers will not be heard. Other than the mover of an amendment or the Minister, Members may speak only once on each group. Short questions of elucidation after the Minister’s response are permitted but discouraged; a Member wishing to ask such a question, including Members in the Chamber, must email the clerk.
The groupings are binding and it will not be possible to degroup an amendment for separate debate. A Member intending to press an amendment already debated to a Division should have given notice in the debate.
Leave should be given to withdraw amendments. When putting the question, I will collect voices in the Chamber only. If a Member taking part remotely intends to trigger a Division, they should make this clear when speaking on the group. We will now begin.
United Kingdom Internal Market Bill
Wednesday 25th November 2020
(4 years ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 View all United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 150-III(Rev) Revised third marshalled list for Report - (23 Nov 2020)
14:38 - Division conducted remotely on Amendment 62A - Ayes: 155 / Noes: 249 - Amendment 62A disagreed.
16:39 - Division conducted remotely on Amendment 64 - Ayes: 323 / Noes: 241 - Amendment 64 agreed.
17:17 - Division conducted remotely on Amendment 68A - Ayes: 298 / Noes: 257 - Amendment 68A agreed.
18:24 - Division conducted remotely on Amendment 69 - Ayes: 315 / Noes: 230 - Amendment 69 agreed.
19:31 - Division conducted remotely on Amendment 75 - Ayes: 134 / Noes: 247 - Amendment 75 disagreed.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)
My Lords, I should inform the House that, on Monday, Amendment 34 was agreed in error. It was pre-empted by Amendment 31.
Clause 39: Enforcement
Amendment 62
Lord Callanan
(a) each relevant national authority, and(b) such other”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would provide that the domestic administrations must be among the bodies consulted by the CMA in relation to its policy on enforcing information-gathering notices.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lord Callanan) (Con)
My Lords, during the Bill’s progress through Parliament, we have engaged extensively to ensure that it, and the Office for the Internal Market in particular, work for all parts of this country. We have always been clear that the Competition and Markets Authority will ensure the devolved Administrations are consulted on all important matters relating to the OIM. Following significant discussions with our devolved counterparts and noble Lords, we are pleased to introduce these two amendments, which will underscore the importance of the devolved Administrations in the operation of the OIM. The Government have emphasised throughout the introduction of the Bill that the UK internal market needs to work for all parts of this country, and these amendments are a testimony to this aim.
Amendment 62 ensures the CMA must consult the devolved Administrations when preparing or revising its policy on enforcing information-gathering notices. Alongside this, Amendment 63 will require the Secretary of State to consult the devolved Administrations over the level of fines that can be placed on bodies that do not comply with a CMA request for information. Both amendments give the devolved Administrations a significant say in the key operations of the OIM. These amendments will put beyond doubt this Government’s commitment to ensuring that the interests of the devolved Administrations are reflected in the governance of the OIM and that the OIM will continue to meet the interests of all parts of the United Kingdom.
I turn now to Amendments 62A, 63A and 63B, which seek to alter the CMA’s ability to effectively gather information. I reassure the House that, as highlighted in previous debates on the Bill, these penalty powers in Part 4 will not be commenced unless there is a clear and credible need for them—for example, to ensure that the OIM can gather credible and accurate information for its reporting and monitoring purposes. I believe this goes some way to addressing many of the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, regarding the design of the information-gathering and enforcement regime. This will ensure that such a regime will be well considered, based on clear evidence of need and proportionate to fulfil the OIM’s duties. I emphasise that the need for accurate, and up-to-date information is essential to ensure that the OIM’s reports and advice are credible, evidence-based and meaningfully capture the UK internal market landscape.
Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD) [V]
My Lords, I thank the Minister for some of the considerations on which he elaborated around some of the penalties, but I find it hard to accept this in principle. The information-gathering procedures in the Bill seem without any limit on them in the Bill—an unreasonable measure. To try to find a way to tackle that, I tabled three amendments. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, and the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, for signing Amendment 62A on the small business exemption. From among the amendments, we hoped the Minister might consider adopting that one or come forward with a version for Third Reading.
Understanding why the penalty provision is unreasonable requires analysis of the background. Section 5 of the Enterprise Act 2002 gives the CMA an information-gathering function for obtaining, compiling and keeping under review information about matters relating to the carrying out of its functions; it does not give a fining power in order to compel businesses to respond. Such compulsion can come later, at a stage when a market study is undertaken, but the circumstances then are that some suspicion exists that businesses themselves have contributed to failures in the market. In contrast, Clause 38 of this Bill gives the CMA, in connection with reports under Clauses 31 to 34, or under Section 5 of the Enterprise Act when it concerns those clauses, the power to collect information and impose penalties on individuals and businesses in order to make them respond.
This power exceeds what the CMA can do for ordinary information gathering, and the provisions are a copy and paste of the powers that accompany the stronger measure of a CMA market study. But there has not been any corresponding copying of the other conditions that surround a market study; nor is it a comparable situation to a market study, because there is no suggestion that the things being investigated might be happening because of what businesses themselves are doing.
The powers in this Bill are about investigating regulations, which is entirely beyond the control of business, and there is no wrongdoing by business. These investigations are about circumstances created by legislatures and which legislatures wish to investigate. It is more comparable to a departmental consultation than to a market study, so what is the justification for coercing and burdening businesses, even if the Minister says there will be rules making that perhaps a bit less onerous? In Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Tyrie, said of these powers:
“The argument that they were derived from legislation the purpose of which was very different is well taken and might point to further amendment.”—[Official Report, 4/11/20; col. 726.]
That is the view of the recent, former chair of the CMA.
One of my amendments would delete the penalties clause, which is really what I think should be done, although I see little hope of persuading the Minister. My second attempt, Amendment 63B, tried to recreate some of the circumstances of a market study, but as the Minister recently confirmed that only regulations can be investigated, not business cases, it does not fit and it does not work. So my third attempt—Amendment 62A—concentrating where it really matters, exempts small businesses from the penalties. It uses the small business definition from the Companies Act, expanded to cover non-company structures. The Companies Act recognises that small businesses should have a lesser public interest burden by exemption from some filings and it recognises that in primary legislation—it does not rely upon regulations or codes of conduct. Why not apply similar logic here?
Small businesses do not all have the wherewithal to respond to onerous consultations, although many will help when they can, but the information requirements in this Bill can require work to be done or attendance at a given place, both causing financial loss. There is no compensation save travel expenses. Yes, there is a “without good reason” defence, but the smallest businesses cannot afford a legal challenge even if they knew of the defence.
Perhaps the CMA will be reasonable itself in setting its code of practice. The Minister hopes so, but there is no certainty, and a notice detailing applicable penalties is a frightening thing. Of course, it belongs to another culture, in which the CMA’s core functions require confrontation with business and suspicion that businesses and companies are doing wrong.
In Committee I asked the Minister what would constitute a reasonable excuse, giving a wide range of examples relative to small businesses. I got no reply, nor have I had a written reply despite having asked for one—although I know the Minister is very busy, not least writing to colleagues.
This is a huge encroachment on civil liberties and the freedom to conduct business. I hope that, at this 11th hour, the Minister will listen and come back with something at Third Reading to put in the Bill that reinforces the statements he has made. But, if there is not that prospect, this is a matter of deep principle—and I speak as somebody who ran a small business for 30 years—and I must give notice of my intention to call a vote on Amendment 62A if negotiations cannot proceed at Third Reading.
Baroness Altmann (Con) [V]
My Lords, I am delighted that my noble friend has listened to many of the concerns raised in Committee. I also welcome his saying that the Government will consult carefully on penalties, and the penalties will be limited. I thank him for saying that the needs of small businesses will be taken into account as well.
However, I cannot help but continue to support the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, which I have added my name to, alongside the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, because the points she made seem most persuasive. She has clearly explained that the proposed penalty regime is not comparable with that of the current CMA, despite my noble friend indicating that it is.
The penalties under the CMA would apply in cases where firms are suspected of wrongdoing or unfair competition or practices. But it has already been acknowledged by my noble friends Lord True and Lord Tyrie that the Bill is concerned here merely with data gathering itself, such as would occur in consultations or calls for evidence, rather than information requests that follow from suspected failures. Therefore, I urge my noble friend the Minister to reconsider the position that many small businesses could find themselves in if information is demanded of them under these powers. It would take scarce corporate resources away from operating the business and is likely to pose significant difficulties for firms that do not have lots of employees available to comply with such an information request.
I point out to my noble friend the Minister from these Benches—as a member of a party that has always been the friend of small business and has promoted the value and virtue of people starting up businesses and running small firms themselves—that there is a significant risk here of imposing unreasonable burdens. I echo the call from the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, for a meeting with him before Third Reading to see if we can find a form of words that the Government could accept, to avoid the need for a vote on Report.
I hope my noble friend understands that this is about a fear that the Bill imposes unreasonable and abnormal demands. For example, on pensions, the Pensions Regulator has not previously had the power to demand information from schemes unless it suspected wrongdoing. I hope we can find a way in this Bill to exempt small businesses from this burden and the potential threat of penalties.
Lord Vaux of Harrowden (CB) [V]
My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 62A, proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles. We owe her our thanks for bringing this important wrinkle in the Bill to our attention. She and the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, have already eloquently set out the reasons why this amendment is needed, so I will not detain the House for too long.
The Bill creates draconian powers of investigation for the CMA, with associated penalties which, as we have heard, are much more suited to its duties of investigating market abuse. Indeed, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, pointed out, the wording has actually been lifted from those duties. However, the purposes of the investigation set out in this Bill are very different from market abuse investigations. In this Bill they are investigations into the impacts of regulations or provisions made by the various national authorities. Businesses are not in this case being suspected of, or investigated for, market abuse, yet the Bill will mean that they will have to respond to notices subject to penalty as if they were.
Even if we reluctantly accept that these powers and penalties are appropriate—and I do not—we must surely ensure that the powers, and in particular the penalties, do not become an undue or unfair burden on business. I listened carefully to what the noble Lord the Minister had to say in this opening speech, and I am afraid that I do not think that the protections and the consultations that he mentioned go far enough in this case.
While larger businesses may be able to cope with such an investigation, small companies do not have compliance departments or in-house legal teams. They do not have the excess capacity to be able to deal with such investigations. Even in normal times, these investigations would be burdensome for small companies, and it is even more the case when they are trying to recover from the Covid crisis and at the same face up to the challenges that leaving the EU single market will create. This is no time to load additional burdens on to small businesses. Therefore, I urge the Minister to accept this simple—and, I had hoped, uncontroversial—amendment, or at least to come forward with some protections for smaller companies, as has been suggested.
Lord Liddle (Lab)
My Lords, I very much welcome the opening statement from the noble Lord, Lord Callanan. I think he has proposed an improvement in the Bill, by adding further requirements for consultation with the devolved Administrations. That is for the good. I also have a great deal of sympathy with the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles. I can see the argument that, if there are impediments to the internal market in a particular sector, the new body will require an information-gathering power, and if you have that power you have to have an enforcement power. It is welcome that the Minister says that these powers will be exercised in a voluntary and proportionate way. Yes, maybe—but I do think that there is a special concern about small businesses, to which I hope the Minister can find a way of responding positively in his reply.
I have to say—and I cannot resist the temptation to poke fun at the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, on this—that if such clauses had been proposed by the European Commission, we would have heard his screams of protest from the committee rooms of Brussels to the banks of the Tyne, which he represented, and he would have raised the roof on the wonderful auditorium of the plenary in Strasbourg. I can hear him now in excellent Brexiteer mode. Of course, now that Brexit has happened, these concerns are of no consequence. The truth is—and I think this is going to become clear—that for business Brexit means more and more bureaucracy, and this is what we are seeing in terms of the new customs arrangements and in terms of this Bill. There—I cannot resist making that point.
Having said that, there are many serious issues with this Bill. I regard it as a treaty-breaking, devolution-wrecking, United Kingdom-unravelling Bill. These are serious points for debate and many of the amendments we are considering this afternoon, I am afraid, contribute to those consequences. So I hope that a compromise can be reached on this matter before Third Reading and, on that basis, I will abstain in the Division.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Lexden) (Con)
The next speaker on the list, the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, has withdrawn. I call the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord. Like him, I was surprised at the level of the penalties for these infringements. I join noble Lords who congratulated and thanked my noble friend the Minister for listening to concerns expressed at an earlier stage of proceedings and bringing forward Amendment 62. I will just ask: what form will the consultation by the CMA with the devolved Administrations take? How long will be allocated to it generally, along with the other bodies that are to be consulted?
Has the CMA taken a policy decision not to have on its board currently, as I read it, any representatives of the devolved Administrations? I notice that Jo Armstrong, for whom I have the highest regard, is represented. She is currently a commissioner with the Water Industry Commission for Scotland with whom I have had the pleasure to work for four or five years. But I do not see that any specific representatives of the devolved Administrations are there. Given the thrust and context of this Bill, it will be interesting to know if there is any policy principle as to why there are not. I know that my noble friend will say that that is a matter for the CMA, but it works under the guidance of the Secretary of State and the department, so I ask him to comment in that regard.
I echo the concerns raised by other noble Lords and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, for her Amendments 62A, 63A and 63B. I ask my noble friend to consider to what extent the ask under Article 39 goes much wider than is currently envisaged in, I think, the Enterprise Act that forms the basis for these provisions. Against the background that these are quite substantive penalties, will the Minister be mindful of the debate that we have had, noting, in particular, the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, my noble friend Lady Altmann and the noble Lords, Lord Vaux and Lord Liddle? Will my noble friend have regard and perhaps pause at this stage and come forward with a further government amendment at Third Reading?
Baroness Noakes (Con)
My Lords, I support the government amendments in this group, but I put my name down to speak in order to address the other amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles of Berkhamsted. Like her, I am concerned about the heavy-handed penalties that could apply in respect of the CMA’s information powers under the Bill.
The CMA has extensive information powers under the Enterprise Act 2002, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, explained, which are needed so that it can carry out its competition functions effectively, in particular in the face of companies or sectors that are resistant to one of the CMA studies. However, there has to be a serious question about the information powers put into the Bill in respect of the office for the internal market. It should be remembered there was no clear consultation on this during the summer, so the proposals have not had a lot of serious attention.
The OIM will of course be focused on the effectiveness of the internal market rather than the behaviour of companies or sectors. I understand that the OIM needs to build up a picture of intra-UK trade flows in order to understand the scope of what it is looking at, and it should have the ability to request that information. However, to back up that kind of information gathering with extensive penalties is not right. It stands in stark contrast with the Trade Bill, which sets up the possibility of requesting information from businesses in respect of international trade—but it is very clearly a request, with no compulsion. My noble friend Lord Grimstone of Boscobel confirmed that in Committee on the Trade Bill.
The office for the internal market may well want to gather information from the devolved Administrations or regulatory bodies within the devolved territories. For example, it could be looking at whether particular provisions have a detrimental effect. That sort of information gathering is largely within the public sector, and the enforcement provisions in Clauses 39 and 40 do not make sense in that context.
Can the Minister say who the “persons” in Clause 39, whom the Government expect to be served with a penalty notice, are? Could one of them be, for example, the First Minister in Scotland, or one of her Ministers? If not, why not? I suspect that the serious information that may need to be extracted at some stage will come from the devolved Administrations. Why should businesses, which will be the victims of any abuses of the internal market, be treated in the way envisaged in the Bill?
So I support the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, in particular in her Amendment 62A to try to shield small companies from these powers. I listened carefully to what the Minister said in his introductory remarks, which were very helpful, but I remain concerned that the CMA will use inappropriately the powers given to it by the Bill. There are no safeguards against that, so I hope that my noble friend will take this away for further discussions between Report and Third Reading.
Lord Naseby (Con)
My Lords, I should declare an interest in that I have a partnership with my wife to look after 40 acres of woodland in Bedfordshire. I thank my noble friend on the Front Bench. I have worked on a great number of Bills in this and the other place, and it is good that when we discuss things in depth, right across the Chamber, problems are raised and the Minister listens. I welcome enormously Amendments 62 and 63.
However, I share the concerns of some other noble Lords about the implications of Amendment 62A. It raises questions that ought to be considered—although I am not in a position to repeat what my noble friend Lady Noakes said. I hope that the Minister has listened to the concerns expressed from both sides of the Chamber and will find a means of ensuring that what might be very unusual cannot happen. I am sure that my noble friend on the Front Bench is listening. Some consideration should be given to including Amendment 62A, or something comparable, in the Bill.
Lord Rooker (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I have to declare an interest, in the sense that, due to my IT incompetence, my name appeared in error on this list of speakers. Nevertheless, I have listened to the debate. It is not an area that I know anything at all about, but I am much taken with the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles. My views were summed up by my noble friend Lord Liddle. I agree with him. The Minister has obviously tried to meet the requests of the House with his own amendments and, to that extent, we should be grateful. However, as I say, I really was not part of this debate but the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, has my support.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Lexden) (Con)
My Lords, the next speaker on the list, the noble Lord, Lord Flight, has withdrawn, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Fox.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, many noble Lords have railed against the virtual process, but the serendipitous arrival of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, is perhaps justification for having a virtual Parliament after all.
I thank the Minister and other speakers in this short debate. I should like to put this issue into context. Back in the day, when I worked in the real world, in many cases the sort of inquiry that we are talking about would have come across my desk. I worked for large international corporate companies and, even for us, it was difficult to find the resources to respond to some of these requests. So this is a real problem and Amendment 62A seeks to address a real issue that will genuinely cross the desks of small businesses in this country.
The Minister tried to corral these requests, saying that they would occur only when the office for the internal market needed credible and accurate information. Well, I trust that it always needs credible and accurate information, so that is no restriction on the office. He also talked about the word “proportionate”. I should correct the noble Lord, Lord Liddle: the Minister did not use the word “voluntary”. He said “proportionate”. This is not a voluntary process but a compulsory one, as it stands in the Bill. That is the problem. And proportionate to whom? Is it proportionate to the desire of the office for the internal market to get credible and accurate information, or proportionate to the fact that five, six or seven people occupy an important part of the market but do not necessarily have the resources to respond to these requests?
The Minister also said that only in a small number of cases did he expect that a formal information notice would be required. Well, that is where some of the clarification can come. What are the circumstances around which a formal information notice would be required? How do we ring-fence it and make sure that we understand what “proportionate” means in the context of this discussion? The Minister also said that leaving out, or giving this exemption to, small businesses would set a terrible precedent. However, my sense is that precedents have already been set in other Acts. I cannot remember exactly, but I think that the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act has carve-outs for small businesses, and there are many other Acts in which small businesses already have carve-outs. So the precedent already exists; it is just a question of which precedent one chooses to select.
The nub of the problem is that the Minister said that the powers were carved out of the existing powers of the CMA. However, just as the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, said, the powers are used for an entirely different purpose—to investigate and identify potential irregularities and law-breaking. That is not the nature of what we are saying.
When I entered this debate, I expected, for once, to be on the same side of the argument as the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, and the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, and that proved the case. The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, gave a very powerful and detailed explanation about why the Minister should be serious about this issue. It is absolutely true that the Trade Bill has taken a different route; it acknowledges that this information is essential but has gone down the route of gathering it voluntarily. If the Minister is in the business of precedence, perhaps that would be a better precedent for him to take.
It seems bizarre that a Conservative Government would push this level of red tape on the small, enterprising and innovative businesses of this country. It seems strange that we should be the flag carriers of this case, rather than the Minister, and it was important to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, pick this up.
My noble friend Lady Bowles talked about the possibility of something being agreed for Third Reading. I am no expert in body language, but I saw a faint shaking of the head cross the Minister’s personage when my noble friend mentioned the idea of some sort of negotiation or compromise being reached in time for Third Reading. In light of what the Minister has heard, not just from this side of the House but from his staunchest supporters throughout the Bill, making serious and important comments about this issue, I ask that, whatever decision he comes to, he makes it very clear verbally. We are in a hybrid House, and not all of us can benefit from the subtle nuances of the Minister’s demeanour in working out whether he will or will not be negotiating at Third Reading. Can the Minister be clear about his intentions between now and Third Reading, then we can be clear about whether to vote in support of this amendment?
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, partly for the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Fox, has given, this has been an interesting debate, with some flying in without any original intent but also from across the House. It highlights many of the issues facing what was meant to be an “oh so easy” departure from nearly half a century of EU membership. Practices and rules within the EU developed over years, with input and experience from business and consumers and the experience of how things worked, and from Governments, regulators, courts and lawyers. As my noble friend Lord Liddle said, there were umpteen harrumphs, grumphs and complaints from the Minister and others who are not supporters of the EU, but the rules were created in that way. They were created by discussion, experience and by knowing what was needed when. They were not written hurriedly over the summer, as we know the Bill was.
The creation of an internal market, covering four parts of the UK with their own Governments and competences, needs as much careful thought, planning and, especially, consultation and joint decision-making as has worked so well across the EU as its single market developed. It is sad that some of these amendments need to be written into legislation—we hoped they would have been taken for granted. But we need to set down that the devolved authorities should, of course, be consulted at any stage of decision-making, and we therefore welcome Amendments 62 and 63 in the Minister’s name, and welcome this formalising of the devolved Administrations’ rights and roles.
The other issues raised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Bowles, Lady Altmann and Lady Noakes, are clearly accurate in their specific content. Our only problem with them, especially given the vital three issues in the Bill—Part 5, the Henry VIII powers and devolution—is that they are probably not the right subjects on which to ask the Commons to think again, but we would like to ask the Government to think again. There are some really big questions that we need the Commons to consider. Our fear is that sending Amendments 62A and 63B back to the Commons simply would not serve a purpose. It normally takes a nanosecond for them to be overturned there when, actually, we want to get the attention of the Minister and Government.
I have a slight problem with the idea of releasing small businesses from all penalties. We do not do that in other areas, in particular with health and safety. Offering a complete safe haven in all circumstances could be detrimental to consumers and employees—but that is a small point. More serious is the wider issue touched on by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, of whether these information-gathering powers are right. As the noble Lord, Lord Fox, said, the OIM is being shoehorned into the CMA, and the fit simply does not work. As a regulator, the office for the internal market would be better tailored to be independent, so it could develop rules, a code of practice or any penalties needed suited to the task in front of it, rather than brought over from elsewhere. We are going to discuss that later: the big issue of whether the OIM should indeed be part of the CMA.
My plea to the movers is not to put this to a vote today. My guess is that the Minister would prefer that, because he would be able to wait for the other place to overturn it, which is not what we want at all. I worry that it would detract from the big issues, but it would also not deal with the broader issue of how the OIM will work. For that reason, we do not support it. I do not think it is the right way of dealing with an important issue.
I make one further point on how devolution is to be strengthened, which is part of the noble Lord’s amendments. It is about recognising the devolved authorities, as we implement the plan in the Bill to make an internal market work. The Minister has protested throughout that the Government are committed to the common frameworks process and that they have not retreated from the principles under which they were set up in 2017. Ministers have said that they respect the hard work that has gone into making these frameworks over the last three years, and the way in which they are pioneering new ways of working between the four countries and the harmony, as well as harmonisation, that has emerged. They have reiterated praise of the common frameworks, at the same time as saying that they are inadequate, partial and need to be overtaken by the Bill, rejecting all evidence to the contrary and despite public concern that the Bill will lower standards and provide less certainty than the frameworks will.
Lord Callanan (Con)
I thank all noble Lords for their interventions on this subject; I understand the sincerity with which Peers have addressed it. However, as I said in my opening remarks, the amendments on which we have been able to get agreement put beyond doubt that the OIM will closely consult and work with the devolved Administrations on an equal basis, in the interests of all parts of the United Kingdom. These important changes ensure that the OIM’s policy on information-gathering and enforcement, including the level of penalties, will be carefully considered in consultation with the devolved Administrations. This will ensure greater transparency in decision-making and will help ensure that the OIM will be able to gather the accurate information it needs to independently assess and monitor the UK internal market. Of course, the Government have made it clear that reports carried out by the OIM each year will be made available both to this Parliament and to the devolved legislatures.
I reiterate a point I made in previous debates: to be clear, the penalty powers in Part 4 will not come into effect unless there is clear evidence that there is a need to do so in order for the CMA to fulfil its internal market functions. I believe that this provides the necessary assurances that any penalties regime will be proportionate and transparent.
In addressing some of the points made in the debate, I turn first to those made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, and the noble Lord, Lord Fox, on precedent. I can certainly reassure noble Lords that the Bill sets out clearly the maximum limits to the level of financial penalties in Clause 40(6). They do not exceed those which the CMA can currently impose. Penalties and the enforcement regime are based on precedent, as set out in the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013. As I mentioned in my opening speech, the justification for these powers is that, without such a deterrent in place, there is an incentive not to comply with information-gathering requests, and that runs the risk of not having completely accurate information supplied to the OIM.
My noble friend Lady Altmann gave the example of the Pensions Regulator. I can say that excluding an entire class of business from information-gathering requirements such as these does not have as firm a standing in precedent as the she suggests. The CMA acting as a reasonable public body will, of course, in all cases, take into account all relevant factors, whether on the face of the Bill or not, in considering how to act and whether to pursue penalties, if they have been commenced at all.
My noble friend Lady McIntosh asked about reasonable excuses. I am not sure whether it was she who asked me a similar question on Report on Monday, but as I said then, the CMA would set out in its statement of policy the clear steps and procedures regarding the enforcement of its information-gathering regime. The penalties will not be commenced until there is evidence that they are called for, and even then they will not be used except as a last resort, whatever the size of the business. The CMA will consult all relevant persons regarding its statement of policy. I am happy to confirm to my noble friend Lady Noakes that, as I said in Committee, the CMA will not be able to issue a financial penalty against—I am pleased to say—either this Government or any UK Government, or indeed the devolved Administrations.
My noble friend Lady McIntosh mentioned consultations. The Bill requires that Ministers should consult as a matter of fact before they exercise their delegated powers. As is normal for such legislation, it does not spell out in great detail how this must be achieved, but we will engage with the devolved Administrations as part of the process of normal policy development, by, for example, sharing draft SIs and publications, and co-operating on public-facing events wherever that is possible, and, in any case, more formally before a decision is made.
For all of the reasons that I have set out, I hope that noble Lords will accept the amendments that I have tabled and that the noble Baroness will not press hers. However, for the benefit of the noble Lord, Lord Fox, and to be absolutely clear and to put the matter beyond doubt, I am afraid that I have gone as far as I can go on these matters and I will not be reflecting further before Third Reading. Therefore, if the noble Baroness wants to test the opinion of the House, she should do so now.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Lexden) (Con)
My Lords, I have received no request to ask the Minister a short question. I shall therefore put the Question.
“( ) Penalties under section 39(1) or (2) may not be imposed on small companies, as defined in section 382 of the Companies Act 2006 (companies qualifying as small: general), or on partnerships or other businesses with similar criteria.”
Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD) [V]
In moving this amendment, I am sorry that the Minister is not prepared to negotiate further about small businesses. I am also sorry that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and Labour do not seem to think that small businesses—which are the backbone of jobs and the economy in this country—are a sufficiently serious matter. I consider that allowing businesses to have the freedom to conduct their business without obstruction when they have done no wrong is quite a serious constitutional matter. Therefore, I wish to test the opinion of the House and to record my vote and those of my colleagues.
Lord Callanan
“(aa) each other relevant national authority,”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would provide that the other domestic administrations must be among the bodies consulted by the Secretary of State about regulations setting the level of penalties for contraventions of information-gathering notices issued by the CMA.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Lexden) (Con)
We now come to the group beginning with Amendment 64. I remind noble Lords that Members other than the mover and the Minister may speak only once and that short questions of elucidation are discouraged. Anyone wishing to press this amendment or anything else in this group to a Division should make that clear in debate.
Clause 42: Power to provide financial assistance for economic development etc
Amendment 64
Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is intended to remove the provision for a Minister of the Crown to provide financial assistance for economic development etc. anywhere in the United Kingdom.
Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB) [V]
My Lords, I rise to move this amendment to remove Clause 42 of the Bill. This amendment and Amendment 69, to which we shall come later and which stands in my name, deals with two clauses that are in some ways closely related. This clause authorises the UK Government to spend funds on the huge area of government expenditure—indeed, almost any aspect of government expenditure. Clause 44 deals with the quite separate question of state aid, and it is very important to keep them distinct. I make it clear in moving this amendment that I intend to press this to a Division.
First, I shall say a little bit about the clause. What is it for? The Conservative manifesto spoke of a shared prosperity fund which was intended to be a successor to the European Union regional structural funds. I looked on it as something that would strengthen the union by sharing the prosperity of our four nations. However, because it wore the word “shared”, it carried with it the connotation that the Governments of the four parts of the United Kingdom would share in the way in which it was distributed in accordance with the constitutional arrangements in place.
That such a fund would be greatly welcomed does not need to be stated. There are parts of the UK—and being here in Wales it is evident—that are far poorer than other parts of the United Kingdom, and investment is needed. Of course, we need to look carefully and in a structured way at how they are to be dealt with. I think we have—and I shall come to this later—some guidance published this afternoon in the Red Book, at box 3.1 on page 37. It is convenient for me to deal with that when I come to deal with the role of the devolved Governments.
There is one thing I ought to say—and I hate that this is something that will not come to pass. In Committee, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, drew our attention to another term. She pointed out that in the European Union there were rules about funds allocated for the remediation of poverty and for equalling people up which had been made available to parts of the United Kingdom, including Wales. She pointed out that there would be detailed rules, and that Europe operated detailed rules. However, this shared prosperity fund still has no detailed rules, despite what is said in box 3.1, to which I have referred. She pointed out that the Americans have a term, pork barrelling, for this kind of fund. I would like to continue to call it a shared prosperity fund, because I believe in the union and in sharing the way our country is governed, and I hope that we will never have this aspect of American politics brought into our way of doing things but, plainly, there are dangers along those lines.
This clause is best analysed by asking eight questions. The first is why it is included in the Bill? As it stands, it is wholly separate from the other provisions we have been debating, which are to do with the internal market. The Bill is not concerned with the allocation of government powers to spend money between the devolved Governments and the Government of the United Kingdom with England. Secondly, what is its aim? I have addressed that: as was stated in the Government’s manifesto and now in box 3.1, it is intended to level up the divisions of society within the union and to help.
One immediately has to ask why this clause is needed. The Government have done city deals and have provided money, perfectly property, under our existing constitutional arrangements. Why do they need this power? If they were to provide the funds through the existing constitutional arrangements, this power would not be needed. The devolved Governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland would be involved and the spending programmes would go along the way they have always gone along, this fund being an additional fund provided from moneys no longer remitted to the European Union. Indeed, if it were to follow the lines of the city deals or its predecessors in the European Union, the Government would negotiate the other Governments, in the case of the devolved nations, or, in the case of England, the various regions and cities, what they felt the money should be spent on, consider it and make a decision. That is all perfectly feasible. So, yes, it is a very good idea to have a shared prosperity fund, and it needs no legislation.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Lexden) (Con)
I should inform the House that if Amendment 64 is agreed to, Amendments 66 and 67 cannot be called.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, it is a genuine pleasure to follow the noble and learned Lord. I admire how thoroughly he outlined his amendment, to which I have added my name. I inform the House that I believe Amendment 68 in my name is consequential to Amendment 64, so if Amendment 64 is agreed to by the House then I will move Amendment 68.
As the noble and learned Lord concluded his remarks, he hit on a fundamentally important point, about which we raised concerns in Committee and earlier, which have been reinforced by the Chancellor’s Statement today. Both before and during Committee, the concern was that the Government sought these financial powers to override one of the core elements of devolution: that expenditure on devolved areas in our devolved nations should be taken by the bodies accountable to them for those policy areas. As a member of five years’ standing of the Finance Committee in the Scottish Parliament, I know that that spending would come with agreed policy platforms, financial strategies and a degree of accountability.
The Government, I think, believe that the people owe loyalty to those who spend the money, and therefore the main priority is to identify the source of the money—not how it is delivered and not the accountability for it. However, as the noble and learned Lord raised, can the Minister clarify whether that is the case as she responds to the debate on these amendments?
If the Government have indeed announced their intention to override the devolution settlement and to use this Bill to deliver spending on devolved areas without the agreement of the devolved Administrations, that will indeed confirm the fears that we outlined, both at Second Reading and in Committee. I hope that the Minister will be able to say clearly that that is not the case, but I fear from the announcement that has been made today that it is.
The concern started because we had seen very little consultation with the devolved Administrations—or indeed English local authorities—on the spending powers that were to be in this Bill, and we had not been given any indication that these powers had been the result of consultation. There had been consultation on the replacement of EU structural funds, and that consideration was fairly extensive. But there was a mismatch between the consultation on how to repatriate the structural funds and the powers under this Bill, which are catch-all. Not only that, there surely could not have been consultation based on the manifesto commitment of the Government, which was to replace those funds with a skills fund—that was in the Conservative Party manifesto. So the powers that seem to be indicated go far beyond what the manifesto itself said, and indeed the results of the consultation on what the structural funds should be.
There is no reference in the Bill to what the delivery mechanism would be. The noble and learned Lord indicated quite clearly that, under the previous scheme—where, I remind the House, 76% of all European investment had been allocated to the member states—it was to be managed through the devolution settlement, and that management was through our existing frameworks. The current multiannual financial framework, from 2014 to 2020, which is coming to an end, was a UK partnership agreement. It gave granular detail—373 pages of it—of the fund: where it was going, the administration of it, how it was administered and how complementarity would be secured between the legitimate devolved policy areas. The Government have indicated that that approach is no longer fit for purpose because that was the European structural funds. Before we see announcements at a political level about the political intention, surely it is right that the Government publish the respective replacement process.
My party on these Benches and I, as a former Member of the Scottish Parliament, have never been opposed, since devolution, to the UK Government supporting schemes within Scotland. But that was under a recognition that it was linked to the correct competences of the UK Government. For example, in 2018, the UK Government supported the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in supporting artists to promote the United Kingdom around the world in one of the world’s premier cultural events. Local to home in my area, the wonderful Common Ridings used to be very familiar with receiving support from the local authority, the Scottish Government and the UK Government.
The point is not that the UK Government should be restricted from supporting reserved areas in the devolved countries, but that the policies for delivery of the replacement of the structural funds should be done under an agreed process. That agreed process seems to be set on its head now, with the Government believing that they will deliver the programmes, regardless of consultation, regardless of agreement and, more worryingly, regardless of an agreed framework for how these funds can be delivered.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB) [V]
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, who has repeatedly shone a light into dark corners of this Bill, and to follow my noble and learned friend Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd.
I strongly support Amendment 64 and Amendment 65, to which I have put my name. It has become increasingly apparent that Clause 42 would enable the Government to work around, rather than work with, the devolved Governments, in particular replacing the regional development funding, which has been so significant here in my own country, Wales, in addressing endemic problems such as economic inactivity and lack of skills. After all, the Government can already provide funds to support devolved matters, providing they do so in partnership with the elected Governments.
In that surprising article last week in the Daily Telegraph, already referred to, the Secretary of State claimed:
“For the first time, this money will be able to be spent by people who have been directly voted for by the people of Wales. People who know the local communities best, and who can develop coherent proposals that are aligned with broader UK-wide priorities.”
It is astonishing that this Government seem to have ignored the group of stakeholders endorsed by the Welsh Local Government Association and the majority of its members, convened—but not commanded—by those directly elected to the Welsh Senedd to develop a framework for regional investment to determine the spending priorities for this funding.
But of course we now have the Chancellor’s statement and can see in box 3.1, as referred to by my noble and learned friend Lord Thomas, the heads of terms of the UK shared prosperity fund. It states, with reference to additional funding in 2021, that the Government will provide such funding to communities using the new financial assistance powers in this Bill. This seems to bypass the elected Welsh Government by inviting local authorities to directly bid to central government. Perhaps the Minister will confirm whether I have understood correctly or not.
I am afraid this Government’s record is to spend on things that have always been the Government’s responsibility. Think of the rail infrastructure: the electrification of the Great Western main route was cut short at Cardiff, despite all the arguments in favour of extending west. Then there are major energy projects, such as the tidal lagoon or broadband, where the Welsh Government had to invest huge funds, including from the EU—which the Minister seems to loathe—to make good the underinvestment by Whitehall. Some suggest that this looks deliberately timed to be before the elections to the Senedd and the Scottish Parliament, and to drive a wedge through the devolved nations’ ability to consider their whole-population needs.
The history of the £3.6 billion towns fund, which relied on Ministers selecting which towns would receive funding, does not inspire confidence. The National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee were not convinced by the rationale behind these choices. The committee said:
“The justification offered by ministers for selecting individual towns are vague and based on sweeping assumptions. In some cases, towns were chosen by ministers despite being identified by officials as the very lowest priority (for example, one town selected ranked 535th out of 541 towns).”
The Minister may try to provide reassurance that this Government would not use the powers in Clause 42 to undermine the political priorities of the elected Government in Wales. But once on the statute book, this clause would open the way for future Governments of any colour to ride roughshod over an elected devolved Government. Clause 42 undermines the devolution settlement, which has functioned well for the last two decades. The clause should be removed.
Amendment 65 is an intelligent and thoughtful proposal from the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, to depoliticise the allocation of funding to replace the EU structural funds to reflect economic and social need, not political expediency. It gives an appropriate role to the devolved Governments, while recognising that this is UK funding designed to level up regions with weaker economies in line with the Government’s own declared aspirations. If the Minister is unable to accept Amendment 64 and remove the offending clause in its entirety, I call on the Minister to settle for this compromise amendment, which will allay suspicions that the Government want to manipulate regional funding for their own ends rather than address objective, clear economic priorities.
Lord Wigley (PC) [V]
My Lords, I am pleased to support Amendment 64, moved by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, to leave out Clause 42. I agree with him and with the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, in her pertinent comments in support of that amendment. If, however, we do not succeed in removing this provision from the Bill or succeed with Amendment 65, the Bill most certainly needs to be amended to meet the widespread criticism, expressed in the devolved legislatures and, only last Friday, in the Western Mail—if I may quote it rather than the Telegraph—which stated in its editorial’s headline:
“This plan is a direct threat to devolution.”
And it is just that.
I wish to speak to Amendment 67 in my name, which addresses the issue at the heart of the Welsh Government’s misgivings and those of my party, Plaid Cymru. It revolves around the linked questions of what replaces the European regional funding, of which Wales has been a major beneficiary over the past few decades, and who controls the expenditure priorities for any replacement funding coming from the UK Treasury.
The need for this amendment can be properly appreciated only if it is considered in the context of the immense benefit Wales has secured from the European Regional Development Fund and the European Social Fund over the past two decades. Wales is not the only part of the UK that has benefited; Scotland, Northern Ireland, Cornwall, Merseyside and South Yorkshire have also received significant investment. However, it has been Wales—in particular, the area known as West Wales and the Valleys—that has received the most significant level of investment. There is a good reason for this or, I should say, an understandable reason, for it is bad news, not good news: West Wales and the Valleys, the area which includes most of the old coal mining, slate quarrying and marginal land farming in Wales, is, sadly, one of the poorest regions in the entire European Union. The GDP per head of population in this area has been below 75% of the EU average. We were entitled to European funding due to persistent, long-term economic poverty, which the UK Government had, for most of the 20th century, failed to address—and certainly failed to eradicate.
The system utilised by the European Union established the criteria, framework and ground rules of the funding programme, each round of which lasted seven years. The Welsh Government put forward their proposed investment programme, which had to be agreed with the EU authorities in Brussels. The Welsh Government provided matched funding, which had to be additional to the normal spending budgets. That principle of additionality caused some controversy in the early days, with the UK Treasury reluctant to make additional funds available until it was instructed to do so by the EU regional commissioner—one Michel Barnier, God bless him.
The detailed rollout of the programme was, and still is, overseen by WEFO—the Welsh European Funding Office. The funding has been used for a range of projects, two of which I was involved in: the creation of the Galeri performing arts centre in Caernarfon and the management centre of the business school of Bangor University, both assisted by some £6 million of European funding. They could not have gone ahead without it. Both projects have been tremendously successful, as I know both the noble Baroness, Lady Humphreys, and the noble Lord, Lord Hain, can testify.
The third round of this European programme is still running. For the period 2014-2020, the operational programme is worth some £3 billion to Wales. At the time of the Brexit referendum, leave campaigners stressed repeatedly that the funding coming from Brussels would be replaced in full—I repeat, replaced in full—by money from the Treasury in London. I well remember, as I am sure many noble Lords do, being told that the funding emblazoned on that Brexit battle bus—the claimed Brexit bonus of £350 million per week—would, in just a fortnight, fund the annual replacement cost of the European Regional Development Fund and the European Social Fund money coming to Wales. Of course, we were told that the Welsh Government would be fully in control of its use. Those were the promises made, on which basis Wales—regrettably, to my mind—voted to leave the European Union. The time has come to redeem those promises, and Amendment 67 facilitates that commitment.
Amendment 67 seeks to establish the principles that will safeguard the funding coming to Wales and, likewise, to Scotland and Northern Ireland from funds denoted in Part 5 of the Bill. Specifically, the amendment provides that funding should reflect need, not some ad hoc arbitrary criteria, nor a Barnett-type formula, which has been repeatedly condemned by committees of this House yet was used again today in another place by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Autumn Statement. Funding on a needs-based distribution, related to the GDP per head of population, would be the basis. In that way, it respects the pattern of distribution of European regional funding—a pledge made during the referendum. Amendment 67 requires the Minister to bring forward a needs-based formula to be approved by order, subject to the affirmative resolution procedure, and provides for the Minister to secure the agreement of the devolved Governments to the content of that order. The amendment also proposes that each annual figure be presented as part of a three-year rolling programme, to ensure that coherent, long-term investment programmes can be secured and the money is not frittered away on short-term fixes.
We have heard a lot during the passage of the Bill about the fears in Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast of a power grab by the UK Government, taking away from the devolved Governments powers they currently enjoy. The Government respond, of course, that there is no such power grab and the devolved Governments will retain the powers they currently exercise. This amendment puts those assertions to the test. Either the devolved Governments retain the power to determine capital expenditure projects in their territories, or they do not. If they do not, it will be a flagrant violation of the commitments made during the Brexit referendum and the last general election. If the Government insist on retaining the rights to impose capital expenditure projects on and in Wales, it will set alarm bells ringing. There have been press reports of projects such as the construction of reservoirs in Wales, which is an incendiary topic, given our experience over the past century.
Of course, there may be joint projects of mutual interest, but those must be negotiated by the respective Governments, not imposed by Westminster and Whitehall. The days of imperial diktat have long since gone; if there was one dimension which could trigger an avalanche of support for the independence movements, it would be such an approach by Westminster. It is my fear that this Bill, without amendment along the lines that I propose, heralds such a retrograde step—a rolling-back of the freedom we have enjoyed within a European context and its replacement by Westminster central direction of the sort that Wales suffered in the bad old days before devolution. Amendment 67 is in the interest of establishing a stable harmony between the nations of the UK and I urge the Government to accept it.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, I preface my remarks by saying that what will replace the European structural funds is a matter of interest not only to the devolved Administrations but to the regions, such as Yorkshire, as well. I was fairly agnostic about this group of amendments before the debate commenced but now I think that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, and the other noble Lords who tabled these amendments have done the House a great service.
In the briefing on the spending review, the emphasis now appears to be much more on UK-wide spending. It states:
“The Spending Review takes advantages of our departure from the EU to benefit the union. We will ramp up funding, so that total domestic UK-wide funding will at least match EU receipts … for the introduction of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, we will provide additional UK funding to support our communities to pilot programmes and new approaches. We will also deliver £1.1 billion to support farmers in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, £20 million to support fisheries—and we will build one freeport in each part of the UK.”
It goes on to say that the spending review is UK-wide and refers to the UK shared prosperity fund and the shared rural network. Although I welcome the funding that has been announced, it is incumbent on us today to find out whether, in the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, the Government are now working around the devolved Administrations rather than with them.
I am particularly concerned with one aspect relating to economic development, which I hope is relevant to this group of amendments. England and Defra have clearly stated that they are committed to phasing out direct payments to farmers from 2021, but the new system involving an environmental land management scheme will not be in place until 2024. As I understand it, however, the Scottish Minister has announced that direct payments to farmers will be retained for the foreseeable future. That begs the question of what the impact on economic development will be for English farmers as opposed to Scottish farmers and whether that will potentially distort the market between England and Scotland. That would seem to flout the principles of mutual recognition and non-discrimination, which we have heard so much about during the Bill’s passage.
I welcome this debate. I am particularly supportive of Amendments 64 and 67, both of which have been spoken to so eloquently by their authors. I urge my noble friend the Minister to say how the payments under the shared prosperity fund will be distributed. Obviously, I would add a rider that Yorkshire would like to have its fair share of that fund, but it is incumbent on my noble friend to state whether we are departing from what we have become accustomed to under devolution or whether this is simply a red herring.
Baroness Humphreys (LD) [V]
My Lords, I support Amendment 64, which seeks to remove Clause 42 from the Bill. I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, for tabling such an important amendment and for his excellent explanation and analysis of its intent.
Clause 42 empowers the UK Government to provide financial assistance for economic development in any area of the UK. At the outset, I want to make it clear that I have absolutely no objection to the UK Government making investments for economic development in Wales—nor, I believe, would anyone else in Wales. It is the intrusion into devolved powers that is so offensive. Those of us who live in the Objective 1 area of West Wales and the Valleys understand that our economy is weaker than those in other areas of the UK and that we live in one of the poorer regions of Europe. We have appreciated the EU’s investment in the past 20 years; for example, the investment in the A55, which provides such a vital transport link across north Wales, and the projects that we have seen come to fruition under the rural development fund.
In my contributions on Second Reading and in Committee, I said that investment in our region is desperately needed—it was before we received Objective 1 funding and it will be when it ends—but this clause gives the Government extraordinary powers to act in areas of devolved competence and in areas where the EU structural funds have never operated. It is extremely disappointing that, throughout this clause, there is no mention of consultation, joint planning of schemes, joint programmes of work or joint management of projects—all examples of the collaborative approach to investment programmes initiated by the EU that we have become used to. There appears to be no clear setting of objectives, other than, I suspect, that the Government’s prime objective is to see projects in the UK—in the Prime Minister’s words—emblazoned with the union flag. I have no problem with that either. In West Wales and the Valleys we are used to seeing EU blue flags or plaques on projects. They are an indication that the needs of our area have been recognised, and so it would be with the union flag.
There is, however, still no clarity on how needs will be determined and recognised in the UK under the shared prosperity fund, whether projects will be imposed or applications sought and, crucially for us in Wales, what impact there would be on our financial settlement. We still do not know whether a UK Government investment in a road-building programme, for example, would lead to a reduction in the Barnett allocation, or whether projects imposed on us would be financed by loans that require repayment by the Welsh Government. All this curtails the Senedd’s ability to deliver on its objectives and will have an impact on its ability to deliver on its manifesto commitments.
Of all the attacks on the devolution settlements in this Bill, this is probably the most blatant—so much so that the powers and responsibilities of our Parliaments do not even merit a mention. It is another example of the introduction of a new constitutional settlement by stealth, as I referred to in my speech on Monday. It is another item to add to the list of examples fuelling the interest in independence, which, under this UK Government, is reaching a level never seen before in Wales. People are witnessing the performance of an almost colonial Government emanating from Whitehall and comparing it with the more progressive Government and Senedd we see in Wales—a progressive Senedd that voted last week to allow councils to change the electoral system for local elections by introducing the STV system and open up the franchise for local elections to 16 and 17 year-olds in addition to their existing rights to vote in Senedd elections; importantly, it supported voter participation by paving the way for automatic voter registration.
I must admit, I am surprised that, after listening to concerns expressed by the noble and learned Lord in Committee and hearing the support for his stance from other noble Lords, the Government have not come back on Report with an amendment of their own that recognises and ameliorates the impact of this clause on the devolved Parliaments.
In a Bill about the regulation of the UK internal market, this clause and its assault on the devolution settlements has no place, and I support Amendment 64 to remove it. I hope that the noble and learned Lord will be minded to call a Division on the amendment. If he does, he will have the support of these Liberal Democrat Benches.
Lord Naseby (Con)
My Lords, I will speak first to government Amendment 66, on how the power in Section 42 will be used. There is a very welcome statement that there is to be an annual report, which can be fully debated in Parliament. We had some discussions about this in Committee, and this amendment is very welcome.
Turning to Amendment 64, I hope that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, will not find it offensive if I allude to the fact that I used to own ferrets. Ferrets are beautiful animals, very ingenious and very inquisitive—but of course they have one failing. Sometimes they succeed in catching or flushing out rabbits, but quite often they turn around, get distracted and think of something far less important. Listening to the noble and learned Lord’s introduction to his amendment, it was based, according to him, on finding in paragraph 3.1 of the Red Book something that he thought was relevant to this debate on Clause 42.
I am sufficiently brave to suggest that he has perhaps forgotten what the basic elements of this Bill are. On the front page, it says:
“To make provision in connection with the internal market for goods and services in the United Kingdom … to authorise the provision of financial assistance by Ministers of the Crown in connection with economic development, infrastructure, culture, sport and educational or training activities and exchanges”.
This is what the whole Bill is about. So here we have before us an amendment which is a pretty wide-sweeping reversal of that primary purpose of the Bill. A whole new concept is being proposed in this new clause, at a time when the whole country faces massive challenges arising from Brexit.
After five days looking exhaustively at the Bill in Committee, lo and behold, here we are on Report, and this pretty revolutionary amendment is put forward. For me it is basically pre-empting the role of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Government of the day. It does not matter what the colour of the Government is: in structural terms it pre-empts the Westminster Government, setting up a whole new semi-department, with little oversight and, frankly, huge costs. There does not seem to be any constraint on it at all. In my judgment it is way outside the scope of the Bill and should be rejected.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]
My Lords, in his very clear and crisp outline of the reasons for his Amendment 64, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, referred to my speech in Committee about pork barrelling. The noble and learned Lord helpfully informed us about box 3.1 in the Red Book, which I have not yet had a chance to read but which seems deeply revealing about the Government’s clear political intentions. The smell of roast meat is certainly in the air.
Government Amendment 66, offering retrospective annual transparency, is a slight improvement on the Bill, but so slight that I find the words “slightly better than nothing” rather hard to get out. Considerably better improvement is offered by Amendment 65, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, which provides stronger democratic control and devolved Administration involvement. However, that is clearly the opposite of the Government’s apparent intention, as the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, demonstrated, using their own words. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, that this is also of great interest to the English regions, whether Yorkshire, which I hope will soon have a democratic parliament of its own, or Cornwall, which has similar ambitions.
Baroness Noakes (Con)
My Lords, I support Clause 42 and Amendment 66, but I do not support the various other amendments in this group, and in particular I wish to speak against Amendment 64, which seeks to remove the financial assistance power from the Bill.
I have been very concerned, throughout this Bill and again today, at the way in which grievances about devolution have been elevated into some kind of holy crusade which sees only evil in the UK Government. Noble Lords supporting various amendments on this theme have often alleged that the Government are playing a dangerous game with the devolution settlement and that this Bill represents a major power grab which must be resisted. I believe that the only people threatening the constitutional settlement on devolution are those who have set their face against—or at least ignored—the existence and value of our United Kingdom and our precious union.
I have also heard a lot of wishful thinking about the UK as a federation of equal states, which it is not. Many noble Lords have been pretending that “the UK Government” is synonymous with “an English Government”—which is also far from the truth. If there is a gap or weakness, it is that the UK Government and UK Ministers act mainly in the interests of the whole of the United Kingdom, and England gets left a bit to one side.
The Government have been consistent and clear that they intend to act in the interests of levelling up the whole of the United Kingdom. The actions of my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer in today’s expenditure review are testament to that, and I say to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, that it is a very fine blue book—a Red Book, I believe, is normally reserved for a Budget Statement.
The UK Government will always act in the interests of the whole of the United Kingdom, and it is disingenuous of noble Lords to paint a picture of a domineering Government trying to strip powers away from the devolved nations. No powers at all are going to be taken from the devolved nations. Devolved Administrations still have the same powers to spend their money as at present.
Clause 42 creates the power to grant financial assistance across the UK so that it is put beyond doubt that the UK can replicate the sorts of financial flows that existed when the EU took money from the UK and graciously gave a bit of it back to us to use in the way it decided. In future the UK Government will make those decisions about how UK money is directed, rather than Brussels. The guiding light will be the needs of the UK as a whole, although I am sure my noble friend the Minister will confirm that there will be extensive discussions with and the involvement of the devolved Administrations.
Clause 42 talks about financial assistance but let us be clear: this is simply public expenditure. Public expenditure is sourced within the overall fiscal policies of the United Kingdom as set by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It will be financed by UK taxation or UK borrowing, both of which are carried out by Her Majesty’s Treasury as part of its UK-wide economic policies. These are not matters for the devolved Administrations, however much they might wish otherwise.
Noble Lords really should be careful what they wish for. If Clause 42 is removed from the Bill, noble Lords will remove the mechanism the Government have chosen to funnel public money into their agenda to level up the whole of the UK. How do noble Lords think that the devolved Administrations will get the kinds of money that used to flow via the EU without Clause 42?
Of course, the Government have powers, in general terms, under the appropriation Act to decide upon and distribute public expenditure, but it is a well-known rule and general practice to take a specific legal authority for major expenditure that will be made on a recurrent basis. So the result of taking Clause 42 out of the Bill may well be that the large sums that the devolved nations expected to receive will disappear. Is that really what the noble Lords promoting Amendment 64 want to achieve?
Lord Rooker (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I again partly apologise to noble Lords because I intended to speak on later amendments and to support the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, on Amendment 69. I will settle for Amendment 64.
I take exception to the definition of the Long Title from the noble Lord, Lord Naseby. Whichever way we read it, it is about devolved matters in the United Kingdom. We have only to look at the definition of infrastructure in Clause 42 to see that it absolutely covers devolved matters. His was a bit of a cheap shot at the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, to try to imply that this was inconsistent with the Long Title.
My other beef is one I have had in the past regarding Wales and the Barnett formula. I have never understood why the people of Wales, including the politicians, have never risen up. Some years ago I was a member of the Select Committee that looked at the Barnett formula. It was abundantly clear that Wales had been cheated for years. If the Barnett formula was based on need, rather than population, Wales would be on about a third more than it is now. We told leading MPs about this, but I have never noticed any great kickback. Wales has been short-changed under Barnett for years. There is no easy answer to that.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, was absolutely bang on in delivering the information from box 3.1 out of the Red Book at the beginning of the debate. I thought his eight questions were incredibly telling. I would use the term “pork barrel”, because that is what it is about. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, whose Statement I heard earlier, made it quite clear that the spending of this money relied on the consent of the constituency Member of Parliament, although I understand that the Treasury might have disowned this since. I tweeted, saying that it is incredibly dangerous for constituency Members of Parliament to be involved in executive functions. Local councils are always involved in executive functions; Members of the House of Commons are not. It is incredibly dangerous territory for them to get involved in, particularly in view of incidents that arose in the past.
I understand that the Treasury might have backpedalled a little on that, but it shows the thought process of those who constructed the Statement today, which is intricately involved with the Bill: destroy devolution, open up the pork barrel and give money to your friends based on the constituency MP. That cannot be a good form of governance. It cuts across devolution massively, whichever way anyone defines it. I have said before that my experiences have been at Defra and MAFF before devolution, then at the Food Standards Agency, which was a four-nation, non-ministerial department at the time. Whitehall has never really done devolution and never really understood what was happening. It has taken a while even for the House of Commons to become clear about the quite distinct advantages of devolution. It all went wrong, of course, when the proportional electoral system gave a majority Government. That is not supposed to happen, but neither, on the other hand, is first past the post designed to give coalitions, which is what we had in 2010. You cannot base the future construct of the constitution on such whims.
Governments come and go and will not be there for ever, but I very much agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, said: with devolution now under acute and very massive threat, there is no question but that this will push the independence movements of Wales and Scotland wider and further, particularly in Scotland, where it is stronger. I cannot see a solution to it. I think that we are heading headlong towards the break-up of the union. I will fight like hell to stop that and a lot of people will. The problem is, keeping the fight in words and debate. We are heading for the destruction of our country, without any policy announcement, a clear vote or a manifesto commitment. It is being done by subterfuge and backhanders.
In my view this is the direct effect of the Bill, particularly these attacks on devolution. Amendment 69 covers the same for Clause 44; they are two sides of the same coin. I was going to speak about Amendment 65, but I will leave that to my noble friend. This fundamental attack on devolution, with the push to break up the United Kingdom, is a much more serious affair than has been recognised by your Lordships’ House, where it has been recognised more than in the House of Commons. We need to send a signal to the elected House that our country, our constitution and the make-up of the union are under direct threat as a result of the Bill.
Viscount Trenchard (Con)
My Lords, I am very pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, but I could not disagree with what he said more. The threat to our United Kingdom results from the power grab being attempted by devolved authorities, led by nationalist parties, of powers that were never theirs in the first place.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, once again, this has been a very widespread and high-quality debate. To the Minister, who has not had the benefit of the soap opera that you tend to have on Report, I say that we have reached the point that—here I agree with the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard—is the meat of this Bill. At Second Reading, in Committee and on Report, many of your Lordships asked why this Bill was necessary. Of course, there was the political and negotiating posturing that came with Part 5, but I put it to your Lordships that one of the central, driving reasons for this Bill is exactly what we are discussing here today: it is so that central government can get its hands on this money and administer it through whatever means it sees fit, because there is no detail on that administration —here, again, I echo the point made by the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard.
Some people called it pork-barrel; I would perhaps call it a hobby horse. We saw the benefit of the Prime Minister’s attempts at hobby horses when he was the Mayor of London: we saw the amount of public money that was spent on “Boris Island”, the green bridge and the Emirates wire crossing of the Thames. These are just small potatoes compared to what we could look forward to.
In her speech, the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, characterised those of us on these Benches and in Her Majesty’s Opposition as, somehow, thinking that the Government are evil in this. I make it absolutely clear to the noble Baroness and the Minister that I do not think that she is evil, and we do not have a policy of thinking that the Government are evil. However, we do think that the Government are wrong, and we are allowed to do so. Many of the speeches on the Benches opposite have also been factually wrong on the subject of devolution, and I will correct some of those facts.
However, I will err on the side of giving the benefit of the doubt, because I do not believe that the people who drafted this Bill misunderstood devolution in the way that many of the speeches we have heard today have. I believe that there is a very deliberate attempt in this Bill to bypass the processes that have become normal in devolved government and, unless we see actual details as to how this will go forward, this suspicion will only get greater.
Very recently, the Government introduced the notion of the role of local councils. This has come along only in the last 24 to 48 hours in relation to their possibly getting involved in the process of disbursing. I can only assume that it is the antidote to the Prime Minister’s loose lips around devolution, but perhaps the Minister can explain what role the Government see in any future disbursement process for local councils—and, if there is not one, perhaps they can disabuse us of that as well.
My noble friend Lord Purvis set out how the multiannual financial framework works. In answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, who said that the devolved authorities are not having financial powers taken away from them, I say that they most definitely are, because they had functions under EU structural funds and state aid within the fiscal framework which are being withdrawn.
I am afraid that the noble Baroness was similarly wrong on the subject of public finance and tax. If you happen to live in Scotland, as my noble friend Lord Purvis will tell you on many occasions that he does, you pay Scottish income tax, which is set by the Scottish Government: it is a different tax. Perhaps the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, would acknowledge that there are differences across this country in the fiscal arrangements for the people who live in the nations of the United Kingdom. Those differences arise through the devolved process, which, somehow, is now being withdrawn and pulled back by this Government under the misapprehension that, by being seen to spend this money, they will somehow become popular. That is not the way to be popular, and it will fail. The noble Lord, Lord Naseby, spoke about ferrets. My experience of ferrets is that they usually bite the people who are handling them—so perhaps he should be warned.
I have one final point, which is a question that I really do want an answer to—it is not a rhetorical question. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, raised the interesting point about how the markets could get distorted. I would like the Minister to explain the role of the office for the internal market in this. As we have discussed in previous amendments, considerable powers are being vested in the OIM, not least Clause 31 powers, so can the Minister confirm that the OIM will be able to investigate the UK Government’s use of the powers that they seek in Clauses 42 and 43 to investigate whether this distorts the market? Can the Minister also confirm that devolved authorities will be able to request such an investigation from the CMA?
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I am going to say much the same things as the noble Lord, Lord Fox, but I will focus a little on my Amendment 65, which has been supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, as well as offering support from the Opposition Benches for Amendment 64 in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, and—if it is treated as consequential—Amendment 68.
The last time she joined us, the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, responded to my amendment on the shared prosperity fund with a very full and useful speech, part of which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, has already quoted. It was helpful to hear, because it was so clear what the purpose behind the new approach to the shared prosperity fund was to be. Although she may have to slightly change the way she expresses it when she responds in a few minutes, she confirmed, stressing the collaborative nature of the future, that this would
“allow the UK Government to complement and strengthen the support given to citizens in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, without taking away devolved Administrations’ responsibilities.”
That is all good stuff, but she went on to say—this was not quoted by the noble and learned Lord earlier—that
“the response to Covid has shown how the UK Government … can save jobs and support communities. This could only have been delivered strategically and at that scale by the UK Government.”
That interesting formulation has been much explored during this debate. I do not think the Minister will find much support across the House for that statement.
The Minister went on to say:
“The UK Government are uniquely positioned to level up across every part of the UK”. —[Official Report, 2/11/20; col. 596.]
That also needs to be challenged. It is the sort of thinking from which comes the “Westminster knows best” process, which has been criticised, and spending decisions being taken against the advice of those in the best position to know about them. As the noble Lord, Lord Fox, said, this may lead to follies of the type of the garden bridge and, perhaps, the much-mooted bridge between Scotland and Northern Ireland, which seems to be the answer to the Northern Ireland protocol problem.
I will talk a little about Amendment 65. I was grateful to my noble friend Lord Rooker for talking about the work done in your Lordships’ House on a critique of the Barnett formula. He is absolutely right: if that formula had been replaced by something of a different nature, the funding levels in Wales and Scotland would have changed, because of inward immigration to Wales and external emigration from Scotland. There has been a change in the population levels which has not been reflected in settlements. The system does not command much love and affection, let alone support.
The proposal in Amendment 65 challenges the Government to think again about how they might wish to do the shared prosperity fund. If it is not clear, because the drafting is somewhat complicated, it is based on a model to which the closest analogue would be the Low Pay Commission. Despite allegations to the contrary, it weighs heavily on subsidiarity and proportionality as the principles under which it might be set up. Under the proposal in Amendment 65, it is the Secretary of State who sets the level of the fund, it is clearly the Government’s funding and their authority to set a level every year for that is not, in any sense, taken away. What the amendment does is to mandate consultation and provide an alternative, needs-based basis for judging the bids. As set out in proposed new subsection (11), this approach looks at an area’s proportion of children below the poverty line, low income, economic weakness, the age structure of the population, the impact of the pandemic and the impact of climate change—something we might want to consider more fully, though it has also been picked up today.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, for her kind words. For anyone in the Official Opposition to be ruled as “intelligent and thoughtful” is almost too much to take, but it probably rules out any further consideration of my amendment. It would not do to be seen to be endorsing that, would it?
As the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, said, if Amendments 64 and 68 are passed, there will be a bit of a hole in the Government’s thinking on this area. They might want to think again about how do to that by looking at this amendment, certainly in the context of the responses to the now notorious box 3.1. I congratulate the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, on being able to adapt his speech to take account of the fact that he could have had only a few minutes to look at that box. His critique of it was spot on. As the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, said, box 3.1 is based on the assumption that the Government will receive the new financial assistance powers in this Bill—it says so straight out, at the beginning. It is also interesting that this is clearly a top-down approach:
“The government will develop a UK-wide framework for investment in places receiving funding and prioritising: investment in people … investment in communities … investment for local businesses”.
There is nothing exceptional or egregious about the list of things to do, but the idea that there is a top-down approach jars with everything we have been doing in the last 20 years to develop a much more responsive, local environment.
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, I begin by reminding noble Lords of the purpose of this part of the Bill. The power to provide financial assistance supports the Government’s determination to deliver on the commitments on which they were elected: levelling up and delivering prosperity across the whole United Kingdom, and strengthening the ties that bind our union together. It provides for a unified power that operates consistently UK-wide—one which will allow for strategic investment throughout the UK, underpinning the Government’s determination to see all parts of the UK flourish. It makes sure that we meet our manifesto commitment to deliver a UK shared prosperity fund which allows the Government to invest in communities across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Previously, in many of these areas, the EU mandated how our money had to be spent, with little say from elected politicians in the United Kingdom. The UK Government intend to take a much more collaborative approach in delivering any funding that replaces EU programmes.
In this context, I will speak to Amendments 64 and 68, which seek to remove Clauses 42 and 43. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, asked why such a power should be included in this Bill. The ability of the UK Government to invest in and support businesses and communities in all parts of our union, as these clauses provide for, helps to achieve a stronger and fairer internal market. Indeed, this is the argument the EU makes on the role of European structural and investment funds in strengthening the European single market. It is right that, as we leave at the end of the transition period, the UK Government have the right tools to make sure the whole country can benefit from investment which strengthens communities, economies and connectivity within and between all parts of the UK.
Another point of focus from noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Purvis and Lord Fox, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, among others, was the role of the devolved Administrations and other local partners, including local authorities. Let me be clear: this power is in addition to the devolved Administrations’ existing powers. It will allow the UK Government to complement and strengthen the support given to citizens, businesses and communities in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. It does not take away responsibilities from the devolved Administrations. Rather, the power will enable the UK Government to deliver investment more flexibly and dynamically and in collaboration with the devolved Administrations and other partners.
We have taken a collaborative approach to investment with devolved Administrations already, for example through our successful city deals programme, as noble Lords have talked about. The UK Government intend to continue to work in this spirit of partnership with stakeholders. We will make sure that this new power can facilitate UK government support for projects, making it far more responsive and responsible for addressing the needs of communities and businesses throughout the country.
We have seen how important this can be. Colleagues on these Benches and in the other place have already noted that our experiences of Covid-19 have demonstrated the value of a responsive UK Government. The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, questioned the support in this House for that statement; I tend to disagree, unless the party opposite does not support the furlough scheme and the Bounce Back Loan Scheme that have protected thousands of jobs and businesses across the UK during this pandemic. To make sure that the UK Government can deliver on this ambition for all parts of the UK, I hope these amendments will be withdrawn or not pressed.
Turning to government Amendment 66, we listened carefully to the debate by noble Lords on this part of the Bill in Committee, where questions were asked on how the clause would operate. Through Amendment 66, the Government seek to introduce a requirement in Clause 43 to report annually to Parliament on the use of this power to provide financial assistance. This would put a requirement in legislation to provide a summary on the use of the power for scrutiny by parliamentarians, other key partners and the wider public. This is in addition to the scrutiny role that Parliament already performs for public spending through voting on the spending allocations, as part of the estimates process and in line with the principle of the PAC concordat.
This requirement makes sure that key partners, including devolved Administrations, have transparency on where funding under the power has been directed. Any future funding decisions are subject to fiscal events. Accordingly, the requirement added by Amendment 66 requires a summary of the use of the power in the previous financial year. I hope your Lordships’ House will agree that this government amendment improves the opportunity for Parliament to see and scrutinise financial assistance provided under the power in Clause 42.
I will now discuss Amendments 65 and 67. Amendment 65 would mean that this new clause would seek to establish a UK shared prosperity fund commissioner, whose primary task would be to make recommendations for the disbursement of the UK shared prosperity fund. Amendment 67 would mean that financial assistance for economic development would be managed and administered through the devolved Administrations. As I have said, this power to provide financial assistance is wider than any single fund or organisation. It will ensure that the UK Government are well positioned to deliver financial assistance, following the end of the transition period, and to replace EU structural funds. It is crucial that the UK Government can use successor funds to invest strategically and have the additional flexibility needed to invest across the whole UK that this power provides. These amendments, including the establishment of a commissioner, would curtail that flexibility. In addition, decisions on governance for the fund should not be made through legislation.
Noble Lords are, however, right to seek progress on the UK shared prosperity fund. The Covid-19 pandemic presented exceptional circumstances, and it is right that our focus and priorities shift accordingly. The Government have conducted a one-year spending review to prioritise the response to Covid-19 and focus on supporting jobs. However, in these challenging times it is important we do not lose sight of our long-term objectives. I reassure my noble friend Lord Trenchard that investment under EU structural funds peaks next year and will tail off until 2023, with spending in each of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland remaining higher than the annual average.
To ensure a seamless transition from EU structural funds into the UK shared prosperity fund, we announced additional spending today in the spending review to help local areas prepare over 2021-22 for the introduction of the UK shared prosperity fund, supporting our communities to pilot programmes and new approaches. As noble Lords have also referenced, we have published the heads of terms setting out our plans for the shared prosperity fund.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, asked whether the spending would be efficient and effective. The bureaucratic burden of EU programmes meant that places have had to wait a long time before they received any funding. Places typically see no investment in their communities until at least a year after the programmes have started. The provision of additional funding next year will be quick and responsive; it will be phased in as EU investment declines.
The heads of terms also set out that there will be two portions of the fund: one targeting places most in need to support people and communities to open up new opportunities; and a second targeted differently at people most in need through bespoke employment and skills programmes, again tailored to local need. As the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, noted—I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, who had not seen the spending review document, will take some reassurance from this—the terms also state that investment should be aligned with the Government’s clean growth and net-zero objectives.
We have not taken back control over investment to hoard it in Whitehall or to roll over EU prescriptions on how we invest in our local economies. Local places across the UK will be able to shape investment to reflect their needs. This means a strong role for local partners across the UK. The UK Government intend to work with devolved Administrations and local communities to ensure this power is used to best effect and that the UK shared prosperity fund supports citizens across the UK. This includes engaging with local authorities and devolved Administrations, as well as wider public and private sector organisations. I reassure noble Lords that the Government have held 26 engagement events across the UK on plans for the shared prosperity fund, including 16 events in devolved Administrations, and that UK government officials regularly speak with their counterparts in the devolved Administrations to discuss the design and operation of the fund to ensure it supports every part of the UK.
Further details on additional funding for next year will be published in a prospectus in the new year. We will set out further details on the UK shared prosperity fund in the UK-wide investment framework, to be published in the spring. A multiyear profile will be set out at the next spending review.
The short answer to the noble Lord, Lord Fox, on his final question on the role of the office for the internal market is no. It looks only at Parts 1 to 3 of the Bill and relevant effects, so it would not look at decisions under this power.
Given the further details I have set out today, I encourage noble Lords not to press their amendments.
The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)
My Lords, I have received requests to ask a short question from the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, and the noble Lords, Lord Fox and Lord Purvis of Tweed. I call the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, to ask a short question for elucidation.
Lord Liddle (Lab)
My Lords, I strongly support the Government’s levelling-up agenda but, having listened to the noble Baroness, they seem to have a fundamentally different approach to how this should be achieved from what has been a shared consensus for the last 20 years or so. We all thought the way to achieve levelling up, economic development and all the other things mentioned in Clause 42 was through devolution, bringing economic powers closer to the people. That was the logic of Scottish and Welsh devolution and the logic of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Cameron Government, George Osborne, who promoted the northern powerhouse, the Midlands engine and all the rest. The Government now seem to be saying, “We want to run the show centrally”. Is that so?
Do the Government not recognise that all this talk about the EU directing how the funds were spent is nonsense? I was very involved with the North West Development Agency; we directed how the funds were spent from that agency. Are the Government not proposing to weaken the powers that the devolved bodies have over structural funds? Finally, is it not the case, as I have been told—someone made a cursory reading of the Red Book—that next year the Government are allocating £220 million to the shared prosperity fund, which is a far lower sum than was available under the EU structural funds?
Baroness Penn (Con)
I am not sure that the noble Lord’s first questions cover points that we have not covered in this debate already but, for clarity, this does not change the devolution settlements. We are talking about a UK-wide investment programme that will work in collaboration with the devolved Administrations, local partners and local authorities.
I am very happy to clear up the noble Lord’s point about £220 million. That is in addition to money that is still coming through the EU structural funds, which will continue to flow until 2023. As I believe I said in my speech, each of the nations will continue to receive the same level of funding, if not a bit more. That first year of funding is for pilot projects and to aid the transition to the shared prosperity fund, which will then ramp up and there will be a multi-year settlement for that fund in the next spending review.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB) [V]
The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, said to be careful what you wish for. She intimated that, in the event of Clause 44 being deleted from the Bill, the shared prosperity funding being discussed might be withheld completely. Can the Minister state clearly, with a simple yes or no, whether it is indeed the Government’s policy that, without Clause 44, the funding will be withheld or diminished?
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, I do not think that I can go any further than what has been announced in the spending review today: that it is the Government’s intention to use the powers under this Bill to deliver the shared prosperity fund.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for attempting to answer my final question but I fear that she may have been wrongly advised. Clause 31 states:
“The CMA may from time to time undertake a review”.
Subsection 1(b) certainly points to “Parts 1 to 3”, as in the Minister’s answer. However, subsection 1(a) says that such a review can refer to
“the internal market in the United Kingdom”,
which is a far broader swathe than the narrow answer given just now.
While I am up and reading the legislation, subsection (2) states:
“The CMA may receive and consider any proposals that may be made or referred to it for undertaking a review”.
Can the Minister confirm that the devolved authorities are one of the bodies that can request such a review of the whole UK internal market as in Clause 31(1)(a), rather than the answer that was just given?
Baroness Penn (Con)
The noble Lord will probably be unsurprised to know that the advice I have received has not changed in the short time since he asked his further question. I will commit to reviewing that advice; if any part of it was not accurate, I will write to the noble Lord. My understanding is that those reviews do not refer to the powers in this Bill, and whether the devolved Administrations or others can refer matters to the CMA for review relates to other parts of this Bill.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
The Minister gave a number of examples of how the UK Government are currently able, under their powers, to fund UK priorities across all parts of the United Kingdom. The Government do not have the legislative powers to spend on devolved areas within devolved competencies. What powers are the Government seeking to have by January next year for them to spend on devolved policy areas in our devolved nations?
Baroness Penn (Con)
The Government are seeking the power under this Bill to spend across the whole of the United Kingdom in the areas set out in the Bill. The operation of the £220 million announced at the spending review will start from the next financial year and the full shared prosperity fund will begin the year after. More detail on how that will operate will be set out in due course.
Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB) [V]
I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this interesting debate. I apologise to the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, for referring to the document published today as the Red Book instead of its true colour which, as one sees on the screen, is blue. I was misled by the heading Google has for it, which is the Red Book.
However, Google had another use because it took up a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, and alerted me to the fact that the great and late Senator McCain had a member of staff who would go through Bills before Congress and find where there were pork-barrel provisions. He was known as the ferret, so ferrets do have great uses in politics.
To return to the points made, it is clear from the debate that we all share a number of objectives: first, to have a more prosperous United Kingdom; secondly, to spend the money wisely; and thirdly, to spend it in a way that is effective and goes to those areas that need it. We all believe that such spending and levelling up will benefit the union. However, there is profound disagreement as to the way in which this should work with our devolution settlement. It seems to me from the response given to my noble friend Lord Purvis of Tweed and from the Minister’s speech that only one conclusion can be drawn from what the Minister is saying and that these powers are needed not to spend the money outside the areas of devolved competence but to spend it in the areas of devolved competence. That is the aspect that fundamentally divides us and is fundamentally wrong about this clause. It seems to me that, given the Minister’s position and the clarity that comes through her statements, this is a direct attack on devolution under the guise of some other words. Therefore, I seek to press to a Division the amendment that I tabled to remove this clause, which is so destructive of our union.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)
My Lords, Amendments 66 and 67 have been pre-empted.
Lord Purvis of Tweed
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)
We now come to the group consisting of Amendment 68A. I remind noble Lords that Members other than the mover and the Minister may speak only once, and that short questions of elucidation are discouraged. Anyone wishing to press this amendment to a Division should make that clear in debate.
Amendment 68A
“State aid and the Office for the Internal Market
(1) Within the period of six months beginning with the day on which section 30 comes into force, and within the existing budget, the Secretary of State must by regulations establish the Office for the Internal Market (“the OIM”) as independent of the CMA.(2) The Secretary of State must consult and seek the consent of Scottish Ministers, the Welsh Ministers, and the Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland on appointments to the OIM.(3) Following public consultation about the United Kingdom’s state aid provisions and with the consent of the Scottish Ministers, the Welsh Ministers and the Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland the Secretary of State may by regulations make the OIM the competent body for—(a) investigating harmful and distortive subsidies and subsidy races made by any administration within the United Kingdom and relating to harm in the United Kingdom;(b) recommending to the Secretary of State and the Devolved Administrations changes to the test for a harmful subsidy, remedies, the scope of exemptions and time limits on approvals;(c) recommending changes in its powers and functions.(4) After two years and before three years, beginning with the day on which section 30 comes into force, there shall be a review of the competences of the OIM.(5) Regulations under this section are subject to the affirmative resolution procedure.”
Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD) [V]
My Lords, the amendment in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, borrows much from other amendments tabled in Committee and on Report, and credit is due to the authors of those amendments.
This amendment has three purposes. The first is to take the OIM out of the CMA after six months and set it up independently, using the budget already allocated for that purpose. For appointments to the OIM the Secretary of State must consult and seek the consent of Scottish and Welsh Ministers and the Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland.
The second purpose is enabling, not compulsory. It is to allow the OIM to become the competent body to investigate harmful and distorted subsidies and subsidy races made by any Administration within the United Kingdom that relate to harm within the United Kingdom. This can happen only after public consultation about state aid provisions, which the Government have already said will take place, and requires the consent of the devolved Administrations. The OIM will also, subject to the devolved Administrations’ agreement, be empowered to make recommendations to the Secretary of State for changes to the tests for harmful subsidies, and to its powers and functions. Finally, there is to be a general review of the competence of the OIM between three and five years after Section 30 comes into force.
The changes, following the devolved Administrations’ agreement, can be brought about by affirmative regulation. Overall, the amendment solves the problem of the unsatisfactory location of the OIM in the CMA and gives a vision for the consensual evolution of the OIM in its investigations of subsidy effects.
We have already debated, in Committee and since, why the CMA is not the right body. The mismatch stems from three sources. First, the CMA is expert in matters that are reserved, not devolved. Secondly, the CMA deals largely with disturbances to the market caused by market participants, whether that be through anti-competitive activities such as cartels, or through market concentration—which is culturally very different from looking at the actions of Administrations as they affect markets in the context of devolution. Thirdly, the tie to BEIS does not make it neutrally positioned in how it is embedded, or perceived, no matter what its objectives may be.
To some extent this proposal follows the TRA precedent of setting up in one location and spinning off, utilising whatever preliminary work has been done. Furthermore, if there is to be a body to examine subsidies —and it is an ‘if’ that can develop in the light of experience—an independent OIM, specialising in the workings of devolution, would seem the right home. As required, I give notice that it is my intention to test the opinion of the House on this amendment. I beg to move.
Lord Wigley (PC) [V]
I support this amendment, the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, on these matters, and the need to have the OIM and CMA working at arm’s length. I have spoken several times on the need to have an office of the internal market that is at arm’s length from all government and is responsive to the needs and reservations of every nation—Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and, yes, England. I would prefer the OIM to be required to obtain the consent of all four nations, but I accept the wording in this amendment as a significant step in the right direction. I am very happy to support it and to vote for it if a vote is taken.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)
The noble Lord, Lord Flight, does not appear to be present in the Chamber and the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, has withdrawn from this group, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Naseby.
Lord Naseby (Con)
My Lords, I cannot support this amendment. We had a considerable debate on the OIM in Committee. There are already too many examples in the United Kingdom of where a service can be challenged, one way or the other, particularly in the financial services area, where there is the Financial Services Authority and the appeal mechanism of the Financial Ombudsman Service.
My experience is in the area of what are called doorstep loans. There is, of course, a rogue element, and that must be dealt with, but genuine operators have been servicing that market for decades, including the credit unions and two or three other companies of the highest repute. However, at some point the FSA may say that what they are doing is absolutely right, while five minutes later somebody has appealed and the ombudsman says the opposite.
We must have a uniform, single agency to deal with. The decision made by the Government to put the OIM underneath—for want of a better phrase—the CMA is absolutely right. This amendment would be a retrograde step that would confuse everybody.
Baroness Noakes (Con)
My Lords, as the Minister knows, I am a strong supporter of the Bill and believe that it is important to allow the UK’s internal market to function, but I genuinely believe that the location of the office for the internal market is problematic. I fully support the OIM itself, as it will be essential to monitor the effectiveness of the UK’s internal market. However, the CMA is the wrong place for it at the wrong time.
It is the wrong place because monitoring the internal market is a radically different activity from the core functions of the CMA. To oversimplify, the CMA is focused on businesses which can and do behave badly on competition. By contrast, the office for the internal market will not target individual businesses or sectors; its targets will end up being the Administrations of the devolved nations or their regulators if they act in a way that undermines the internal market. Businesses trying to trade throughout the UK should be the beneficiaries of the OIM’s work, not the villains. Most of the CMA’s battles are fought on legal and economic analysis, which are often big battles with a lot at stake but a world apart from the kind of political battle in which CMA may find itself pitted against one of the devolved Administrations.
In Committee, I said that putting two different activities into a single organisation ran the risk of that organisation being a jack of all trades and master of none. Having thought about that further, it is potentially worse. If the CMA and the OIM get embroiled in long political feuds about restrictions on trade within the internal market, it could be very damaging to the CMA’s focus, which may take away from the attention it gives to its core competition-based work. We may end up throwing the baby out with the bath water. It is also the wrong time to put the OIM into the CMA, given the significant increase in size as it takes on additional activities following our departure from the EU. Organisations that try to take on too much and do too many things at once often end up achieving very little.
For those reasons, I support creating the office for the internal market as a separate body. I cannot, however, support the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles of Berkhamsted, because it has gone beyond the simple purpose of setting up an independent OIM and has strayed into state aid, with its own version of how that may be taken on in future. That goes too far.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, I support the main thrust of the amendment, as I explained in Committee when leading a debate on my amendment, for which there was considerable support across the House. There is a good case for establishing a UK office for the internal market, but the CMA is the wrong home, for all the reasons that my noble friend Lady Noakes articulated so well. The CMA operates with values—notably a deep suspicion of the good business can do and an aggressive approach to enforcement—that are not appropriate to the new office.
Subsections (1) and (2) of the proposed new clause come from an earlier amendment which, frustratingly, was not moved, and are on the right lines. However, the proposed subsection (3) is not sensible. If any of the devolved Administrations withhold consent for appointments on whatever grounds, the whole purpose of the new office could be stymied. One is reminded of President Trump and the World Trade Organization, when unexpected and unforeseen actions by an elected officeholder—in this case, the President—in an advanced and democratic country came close to wrecking the operations of a major component of the global economic order. We would be foolish voluntarily to run such a risk.
It may be argued that it is unlikely the devolved Administrations will act like President Trump or that this is an issue of the same order. I would retort that, five years ago, it was deemed impossible by all informed observers that a US President would act as he has towards the WTO. Life can contain surprises, and we act foolishly if we unnecessarily set up arrangements that risk being sabotaged.
Accordingly, I call on the Minister to agree to bring forward an amendment at Third Reading that incorporates proposed new subsections (1), (2) and (5) of Amendment 68A, which seem entirely sensible and widely supported. I regret that I cannot support Amendment 68A as it stands.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Lexden) (Con)
My Lords, I now call the noble Lord, Lord Flight.
Lord Flight (Con)
My Lords, I apologise for having to move my timing, but I had to get something urgently for my wife.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
My Lords, I regret that I do not believe that the noble Lord, Lord Flight, was here for the start of the debate and, therefore, cannot speak. His name has already been called.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Lexden) (Con)
I apologise. The noble Lord, Lord Flight, told me that he was here at the start of the debate, but that is not so. I am sorry, Lord Flight. In that case, I cannot call you, as you were not here at the start of the debate.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, the debate on this amendment has been relatively short, but the Minister should not conclude from that that it is unimportant. The reason why the debate has been short is that it crystallises points that have recurred since Second Reading, through Committee and in various discussions on other groups of amendments, around the basic suitability of the CMA as a home for the OIM. That is the central point.
I am pleased to follow the noble Baronesses, Lady Noakes and Lady Neville-Rolfe, whose analysis of the concerns around the location of the OIM I completely concur with. They conclude that they do not necessarily like the full nature of this amendment, and I respect that point. This amendment is the culmination of several other attempted amendments but, without it, we will not get the focus on this issue that we need from the Minister. Even though it may be a bitter pill to swallow for the noble Baronesses, Lady Noakes and Lady Neville-Rolfe, we need to get somewhere to concentrate minds—and this is the amendment.
It was ably set out by my noble friend Lady Bowles, and I know that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, will also set out a good case, so I will not point to any more issues. I simply say that this is a really important issue, which will colour the culture of the market in this country and how it is run. I had not considered the point brought up by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, that it may also jeopardise the CMA’s current role, which is a good point and well made. This is an important amendment to get behind. Noble Lords on the Liberal Democrat Benches will vote for this amendment when it is put, and I hope that other noble Lords, who find problems with some words in this amendment, will stave that to one side and consider that, without it, we cannot change the culture of how the market will be run in future.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab) [V]
I am going to disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Fox, as I will not go through my arguments at length, because they have been made so well by the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, and the noble Lord, Lord Wigley. I put on record my absolute support for the noble Baronesses, Lady Noakes and Lady Neville-Rolfe, who, while they have comments about the detail of the amendment, support the principle of it. I am grateful to them for that.
It is a simple proposition: the internal market must work and be seen to work for all and, therefore, must have buy-in and support from all. It should not favour one geographical area or country over another. It is important that we do not upset the balance struck in the CMA and its functions. The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, is right that there may be an adverse impact on the CMA, if it is forced to take on something that is not its primary purpose. Thirdly, the devolved Administrations need to be part of the organisation, its process and appointments.
There are reservations about proposed new subsections (3) and (4) in the amendment. It is beyond our hopes, but perhaps the Minister will consider bringing forward an agreed amendment at Third Reading. If he did, we would support it but, if he will not do that, we will support the noble Baroness if she tests the opinion of the House.
Lord Callanan (Con)
I thank noble Lords who participated in the debate, particularly for their brevity. This is, I suspect, a simple difference of opinion, but I will give it a go anyway.
In previous groupings we have discussed the detail of how the office for the internal market would be governed, including the composition of its board, and so noble Lords will be delighted that I am not going to go through all that again. I have set out consistently in this House why the CMA was chosen as, in our view, the most appropriate body to undertake the new UK internal market oversight functions. The CMA has an outstanding international reputation as an independent regulator and is already equipped with highly relevant economic expertise, necessary to undertake its new functions in the context of the operation of the UK market. Moreover, the CMA has well-established relationships with all the Administrations, with offices in London, Edinburgh, Belfast and Cardiff. This UK-wide presence will help ensure that the OIM will work in the interests of all parts of the United Kingdom.
However, we have made it clear that some bespoke arrangements for the OIM will be necessary, in recognition of the focus on devolved matters. As provided for in the Bill, the OIM will be able to benefit from the CMA’s existing expertise and operate within its overall framework, while having its own functions and powers, including distinct governance arrangements such as the OIM panel and task groups. The Government have recognised that some degree of separation is vital and have developed proposals for the OIM accordingly. I wish to strongly emphasise that the distinct statutory objective for the OIM, and for the targeted adaptation in the Bill of the CMA’s statutory framework, enshrines this separation from the outset.
On Monday, we had a good debate on the composition of the board and the role of the devolved Administrations in appointments. The Government have taken a number of reasonable and pragmatic steps to secure the appropriate balance between ensuring that the devolved Administrations have a real say and that the appointment process is not held up unduly—that would, of course, be risked by the amendment.
Finally, I would like to discuss in a little more detail how this amendment would seek to propose a new role for the OIM regarding subsidy control. I recognise that the amendment reflects a desire for reassurance on the enforcement of any future UK subsidy control regime. However, we believe that it risks undermining and prejudging the outcome of the forthcoming consultation that we have announced. This consultation will inform our future approach to subsidy control, including the role of oversight and enforcement.
The Government have been clear that the UK will have its own approach to subsidy control; we want a modern system for supporting British business in a way that fulfils our interests. The amendment is therefore premature, as it seeks to confer specific regulatory functions on the OIM in respect of subsidies before the wider details of any legislative UK domestic subsidy control regime, including the appropriate mechanism for oversight and enforcement, have been developed and brought before this House or the other place.
On another point that we will discuss in more depth in our next debate, the Government’s view is that state aid—the EU’s approach to subsidy control—is a reserved matter. Therefore, the effect of the amendment’s provisions for consent from the DAs would be to create unacceptable uncertainty over the extent to which subsidy control is a reserved or devolved competence. As an issue of national importance, it should be treated in the same way as other nationally significant areas of economic policy, which are reserved. Having a single unified approach to subsidy control across the United Kingdom is vital to ensure that we continue to have fair and open competition across our internal market.
Finally, proposed new subsection (4) would require a review of the OIM’s competences within two or three years after Clause 30 enters into force. I recognise the need to ensure that the CMA’s new functions are undertaken effectively, but the broadness of this proposed review is unprecedented and unhelpful.
For the reasons that I have set out, therefore, I am obviously unable to support this amendment. I ask—perhaps more in hope than in expectation—the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD) [V]
My Lords, I thank all those who have participated in this short debate. Some very telling points have been made, yet again, regarding separating the OIM from the CMA.
As noble Lords will know, this is not the first amendment to include proposed subsections (1), (2) and (5); indeed, we had hoped to be able to vote on that amendment, but the timing did not work. I will not conceal from your Lordships that this amendment was constructed so that we had something to vote on.
It is important. The parts that extract the OIM from the CMA are immediately functional. The rest is written so that it is fail-safe—and perhaps, as the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, astutely pointed out, it may never happen. It does not stop there being some further primary legislation to make it happen, but, of course, there are restrictions on what it is possible to put in when there are identical amendments already tabled. Therefore, this is not the end of the road on the wording of this amendment, but it does a lot more good than harm by inserting it into the Bill at this stage. I wish to test the opinion of the House.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Lexden) (Con)
My Lords, we now come to Amendment 69. I remind noble Lords that Members other than the mover and the Minister may speak only once and that short questions of elucidation are discouraged. Anyone wishing to press an amendment to a Division should make that clear in debate.
Clause 44: Regulation of distortive or harmful subsidies
Amendment 69
Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is intended to remove provisions changing the legislative competence of the devolved legislatures to prevent devolved Acts making provision about the regulation of the provision of certain subsidies by public authorities.
Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB) [V]
My Lords, in a way this issue is much simpler because Clause 44 has been put in with one purpose only: to alter the devolution scheme. I intend to move that it be removed from the Bill and, if necessary, I will press this to a Division.
I ought to say from the outset that the regime of state aid is plainly necessary, and it is necessary to have one for the whole of the UK, as I will explain in a moment. It is necessary first to say a little about the background. Until relatively recently, the British Government’s stated position had been to retain the EU regime and put in place an independent body, such as the CMA, that would police it. Whether it was like the Commission or whether it was advisory was something to be worked out. Obviously, that would not have required any change to the devolution scheme because we would have been proceeding as we had during our membership of the EU.
However, the present Government decided to change that, and they intend to use Henry VIII powers to do so by statutory instrument. That instrument has been drafted and is no doubt to be debated soon. It has been considered by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which has concluded, and I think it important that noble Lords hear its conclusion:
“The House will be aware of the Committee’s concern, raised on several previous occasions, that secondary legislation is being used to introduce policy changes about important issues which should more properly be the subject of primary legislation, thus affording a higher degree of parliamentary scrutiny. This is another such occasion and one on a subject that appears central to the UK’s negotiation position with the EU. We take the view that it is neither a welcome nor indeed acceptable use of secondary legislation”.
That is a clear intimation that we should look at this in a proper debate on state aid.
Obviously, that is for another occasion, but if that instrument is passed and the EU regime is revoked, the Government’s position is very simple, and we will live under this regime for the next several months—that is, the World Trade Organization rules will apply. We, as the United Kingdom, are bound by them as a matter of treaty obligations and the devolved Governments are bound to follow World Trade Organization rules in relation to subsidies. Of course, it will be without any direct policing authority, but that is the course that has been decided on, so there is no urgency about this issue and I will return to that in a moment. Of course, the position could change.
I very much hope that there will be a deal with the EU, and no doubt there is a prospect that a deal may deal with the subsidy regime, but at the moment we have to proceed on the assumption that, first, the current regime will be withdrawn, and that we will move to the WTO regime. That is the background.
Secondly, I emphasise again that this is not an amendment suggesting that the UK does not needed a regime. It is perfectly obvious that any internal market has to have a state aid regime, just as world trade has to have a set of state aid rules, weak though the WTO rules are on this issue. One cannot see a stronger argument for a properly thought through regime of state aid than in the recently published paper of the Institute for Government Beyond State Aid. It explains why it is necessary, how it should be done, what should be done before it is established and that it should be widely consulted on. Of course, there has been a lot of time to do this, but nothing has been done.
I think it must be accepted that the Government desire to proceed. Why they want to do so now is unclear, but they believe that they have hit a snag, which is the fact that for the time of our membership of the European Union we lived with the devolved Governments dealing with all these issues and, as I outlined in the previous debate, this competence is not reserved. Therefore, unashamedly, the Government want to use this legislation to alter the devolution settlements. Whereas in other parts of the Bill I have been critical of the fact that the Government are trying to do something by stealth, here what they are trying to do is much clearer. What they are trying to do is, if I may say so, not open dealing or being straightforward. They are trying to make state aid a reserved matter by the device of expanding or extending the competition policy reservation. If they wanted to do this properly, one would have expected it to be dealt with in a much more straightforward manner.
The real issue is how should we now proceed, and there are three alternatives. The first, obviously, is to leave this clause in the Bill. I will come back to that in a moment. The second is to work out a policy and enact it by primary legislation. The third is to use the common frameworks. I shall deal with the second of those suggestions first.
If there is to be a state aid policy, it cannot be denied that it would need widespread consultation. If we were to go down this route, the Government would need to carefully craft legislation and bring it before Parliament. If, in such legislation, there is a need to change the devolution settlements, that can be in the Bill so that we know what is required and how it can be dealt with. That is one solution. There is absolutely no reason why we cannot do that, because we will be living under a World Trade Organization regime in the interim and the devolved Governments will be bound by that.
Secondly, to my mind a much more attractive way forward is to use a common framework. I regret that this matter came up in Committee very late on a night when, as the Minister will remember, we were all fairly exhausted at the end of the debate on Part 5. I hope he will recall that I then suggested that maybe one way forward was a common framework.
Having the privilege of being a member of the Common Frameworks Scrutiny Committee, I raised the question of a common framework with the Counsel General for Wales, Mr Jeremy Miles, and the Cabinet Secretary for the Constitution, Europe and External Affairs in the Scottish Government, Mr Michael Russell. They expressed a view that this was a way forward. Last night the Counsel General wrote in very clear terms, and I hope that the letter has safely reached the Minister and many others. He made it clear that state aid had always featured on the list of common frameworks but there had been no progression. He continued:
“The Welsh Government has been clear that it would wish there to be a single state aid subsidy control regime for the whole of the United Kingdom, or at least for Great Britain if the Northern Irish protocol makes this impossible, provided it is co-designed by all the Governments which have to implement it. I therefore wish to make a clear and unequivocal offer on behalf of the Welsh Government. If the Government will remove Clause 44 and agree without prejudice to its legal position to participate in discussions on a legislative framework on state subsidy control, we will commit in good faith to work intensively on such a framework on a tight timetable to reach agreement within three months of the Government tabling a proposal, or in any event by 31 March next year. In the meantime, we will commit to not put forward any primary or secondary legislation to the Senedd which in any way touches on the regulation of state aid subsidies until these discussions have concluded.”
So there is a plain offer of a way forward on the table. That is the second alternative.
The third alternative is to proceed with this clause. I urge noble Lords to take the view that it would be quite wrong to do so. At this stage there is no clear knowledge of what the policy will be. It is not clear what changes, if any, need making to the devolution settlements. The appropriate time to make such a change would be with the policy properly devised and the powers that are needed.
I urge noble Lords to take the view that tackling all this now, with this proposal to change the devolution settlements without a policy by this back-door device of altering the competition reservation, is wrong. It would be better by far to work out what is needed and, if possible, to proceed by a common framework, because that will produce a legal regime with no doubt proper enforcement powers across the UK. We should not put this in at the tail end of a Bill without proper thought as to the context. There is time to do this: the WTO regime will tide matters over until a common framework is agreed or until there is legislation. I therefore move the amendment and I will be prepared to test the opinion of the House on this matter.
Lord German (LD)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, for putting forward so much detail behind this amendment, which clearly lays out the course of action that could be dealt with and also talks about the way the Government propose to take these matters forward. I think that my job is to amplify some of his points and perhaps to extend them as well. I refer to the offer from the Welsh Government, which I presume has also been made by the Scottish Government at the same time: that was the indication I received last night, and perhaps the Minister could confirm that this letter from Scotland has been received as well.
This clause proposes a major recentralisation of power. It is a far cry, for those of us who live in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland, from the cry of bringing back our laws, because state aid is currently not a reserved power, despite the Government’s protestation that it is and always has been. Annexe 1 of the Explanatory Notes for the Bill clearly lays out that it is not a reserved matter, but the Bill, of course, makes it say so. I reiterate at the start that we on these Benches want to see a single state aid regime for the whole United Kingdom, but that regime has to be to a design on which all four parts of the United Kingdom have collaborated. If they are not prepared to do this, as this clause lays out, they will not get a legislative consent Motion from either of the devolved Parliaments or from the Northern Ireland Assembly. In fact, in his letter to the Secretary of State for BEIS yesterday, the Counsel General for Wales said:
“Even if we resolve all the other issues, this alone”—
that is, this clause—
“would make it impossible for me to recommend legislative consent to the Bill as it now stands.”
That is crucial, because it says something about the relationship that this clause makes between the four nations of this United Kingdom. It is not a way to respect our devolution settlement and, importantly, not a way to respect the union we have within the United Kingdom.
EU state aid policy is established through the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, and directly applicable regulations following on from that treaty. That was in place of having directives that would have required us to transpose these matters into UK law. In response to the House of Lords report on state aid, the Government said:
“We note that in practice the existing EU rules have always been sufficiently flexible to allow the UK to make innovative aid interventions when necessary.”
So the Government do not believe that there has been a problem in the way that this operated with the EU, and now they are intent on eating their own words, bringing back the rules, converting them into a straitjacket regime and not providing the flexibility that the countries in our union previously enjoyed. They also add that it would be “harmful” if this were dealt with in any other way.
A more co-operative and consensual approach is needed. The clause we are seeking to remove assumes that divergence will happen, and decrees that there shall be no divergence. Blunting and reducing the power of the devolved authorities is deemed to be a price worth paying so that the UK Government alone can determine the route they wish to follow in directing the new regime. Yet we do not know what this regime will look like. There is no sign of the detail or the choices the Government propose to take.
What this clause does, no matter what consultation the Government may eventually engage in, is drive their own agenda—an agenda that primarily has to support England. That, by the way, is no way to provide business with the certainty it is seeking. In fact, the lack of clarity at this stage prolongs the uncertainty; but it need not be like this.
We need to make progress on a UK framework for subsidy control. Again, this is another framework agreement which needs to be put in place. At the moment, without such a framework, it could easily be said that the Government are making it up as they go along. What is needed is a dialogue, not the “take it or leave it” policy that this clause entails—a policy which may well end up in the courts and will certainly amplify the feeling that the union of the United Kingdom is not respected.
Yesterday’s letter from the Welsh Government’s Counsel General, which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, referred to, provides the UK Government with a route to a sensible solution. It recognises the ability in the EU to have variance in subsidies where there is an identified need. I must point out to noble Lords that many of us will remember that this was the case before we became members of the EU. I remember the arguments and debates on UK regional aid and regional assistance, and dividing the areas of the country up where aid could be given in greater amounts. That historical message was that there would be differences and distortions; of course, subsidies provide distortions, but they were provided for very good reasons. They were proposing to make a difference where the needs were greatest—where poverty and economic need were greatest—and so it was provided it in that way.
I can say, as somebody who had to operate within that framework as an economic development Minister, having to talk about these matters with Brussels simply to identify the boundaries, the flexibility, as the UK Government themselves say, was great indeed to manage that work. I believe we are seeing this clause put the cart before the horse—devising the policy before putting the legislation in place is what we are looking for, and that is what this amendment does.
All the devolved Governments have made it clear that they are prepared to work at pace with the UK Government to design a new subsidy regime. I would be grateful if the Minister in replying could tell us how the Government will respond to the offer from the devolved Governments. I also note that there must be unease on the Government’s side about this clause, since I have noticed that no other speaker, apart from the Minister, has come forward to support it.
Removing this clause from the Bill provides the opportunity for dialogue and the drawing up of a new subsidy regime for the UK. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, said, we already have a replacement in place temporarily until that is put back and the regime determined. I do hope that the Government will accept the offer from the devolved Governments as the right way forward and, as a gesture of good will, I would be grateful if they would therefore consider withdrawing this clause, supporting this amendment and, in so doing, strengthening the relationships between the various parts of our union.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB) [V]
My Lords, I speak in support of this amendment, elegantly explained by my noble and learned friend Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd. I am pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord German, who amplified his points.
Yesterday, as already referred to, the Welsh Government’s Counsel General wrote to the Secretary of State at BEIS about Clause 44. That letter demonstrates clearly that the Welsh Government are seriously committed to trying to save the union of the United Kingdom and recognise the need to secure the internal market. Their offer to work intensively with the Government is clear and unequivocal.
The Welsh Government have consistently put forward imaginative and thoughtful proposals about how to move the constitutional debate forward. Indeed, in Brexit and Devolution in June 2017, the Welsh Government championed the idea of common frameworks, subsequently taken up by Whitehall. If I may quote, they said:
“From the outset of the debate about our collective future outside the EU, the Welsh Government has recognised a need to develop UK frameworks. It is clearly important that no new barriers to the effective free movement of goods and services within the UK are created as a result of EU withdrawal. The development of UK frameworks should be taken forward immediately on the basis of negotiation and agreement among the four UK administrations.”
This paper suggests a qualified majority voting system within a reformed intergovernmental system, where a decision endorsed by the UK Government plus one of the devolved Governments would be sufficient to break any logjam, thus addressing head on the issue of one nation wielding a veto. Last year, the Welsh Government’s comprehensive analysis in Reforming our Union championed shared governance, describing taking responsibility for codesigning legislation and policy where devolved and reserved competences intersect. It asserted that
“devolution is concerned with how the UK as a whole should be governed, with proper account taken of the interests of all of its parts. It is a joint project between England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, based on a recognition of our mutual inter-dependence, which therefore requires a degree of shared governance.”
It foregrounded common frameworks, seeking a common approach, shared delivery systems and joint governance arrangements that should be developed on a collaborative and consensual basis. So, the intervention from the Counsel General is not an opportunistic response to this Bill but the continuation of a patient, crystal clear commitment to common frameworks at the heart of intergovernmental relations.
Over these three days of debates, Members across the House have recognised the importance of these frameworks. The Welsh Government and, I believe, the Scottish Government are not arguing to be left alone to design and implement their own rulebooks for government subsidies. They would be mad to do so. In a free-for-all between Governments of these islands to attract and hold on to investment, the UK Government would be bound to win, because they have much more significant financial resources and can set their own budget. Rather than arguing to have an equal role in designing a fair system all can work within, they are committing to do this on a timetable compatible with the one the Government have set themselves and to take no legislative action in this space until at least autumn 2021.
This is surely beyond reasonable doubt. If the efforts to reach agreement fail, the Government will have to introduce primary legislation to define the new subsidy regime, subject to the same constraints there are now, in order to achieve a coherent regime. We have repeatedly been told that this Bill does not diminish the powers of the devolved institutions, yet all we see and hear defies that. This clause explicitly and openly alters the devolution settlement by adding to the list of reserved matters in the Government of Wales Act and the other devolution statutes. I therefore urge your Lordships to support its removal from the Bill.
Baroness Randerson (LD) [V]
Clause 44 says it unequivocally: the UK Government, also parading as the English Government in this Bill, are specifically removing from the devolved Administrations their power to provide state aid, by inserting it as a specific reservation or excepted matter in each of the devolution Acts. When I said in earlier debates that the Government were using the Bill to roll back devolution, the Minister insisted that devolved Administrations were being given additional powers. We have already seen in these debates that the Government are using the Bill to sideline and undermine the common frameworks, which have been well established as the basic foundation for the future internal market. At the same time, the Bill removes any incentive for devolved Administrations to develop improved standards. Removing from the devolved Administrations the powers over state aid is fully in line with the thrust of the Bill, which is a barely disguised attempt to emasculate devolution.
I want to concentrate on how this Bill affects Wales, and Clause 44 refers to the Government of Wales Act 2006. In relation to this issue, that Act says:
“The First Minister may give financial assistance (whether by way of grant, loan or guarantee) to any person engaged in any activity which the First Minister considers will secure, or help to secure, the attainment of any objective in the Minister’s functions.”
In Field 4 of Schedule 5, it lists economic development as one of those functions.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow my noble friend, with the very great experience and knowledge that she has on this issue. Given the fact that all four speakers so far in this group have been from Wales, I thought that, to avoid a degree of market distortion across the United Kingdom, there should be a little bit of northern balance. All I wish to do is to endorse the points that they have so ably made.
I put my name to this amendment, and if the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, presses it and the House agrees, the Government have an opportunity now to bring back a more considered proposal as a result of some consultation. None of the speakers in this group has indicated that it is easy. If it was easy, agreement would have been reached at the outset. It is about being aware that the frameworks update highlighted that one of the four areas of dispute around where the competences lie with this power being repatriated is state aid. It is obvious that it was not a straightforward situation of saying that this had been uniquely a United Kingdom responsibility—so by definition, it is an issue.
It is also perfectly clear from all speakers that, without there being an understanding about the tests, de minimis levels, the administration and the type of ministerial direction that has existed up to now—without clarity as to how all that will go forward—any Minister in a devolved Administration will quite rightly be concerned about what impact this will have on the economies of the powers that they do have under the devolved competences.
I just wish to reinforce the point that the letter from Jeremy Miles to Alok Sharma, which I read, made a very fair offer. We share the concern that, without there being a further set of discussions to seek a degree of common ground on a framework agreement about how this will operate in the future—which there is time to do, because the Government have indicated that they are seeking to effectively have a window under the WTO approach, and there is consensus that that will be respected—this is potentially the way forward.
I hope that, although often it may not seem so, the Minister will see defeat as a bit of a silver lining in order for him to come back with a more considered approach, to take the Welsh offer and to allow us to consider the Government’s position from a degree of consensus and agreement. I support the noble Lords who have spoken on this group so far.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab) [V]
My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, I agree with the case that has been made so well by the previous speakers. I put my name to the amendment put forward by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, and we would support him if he chooses to divide the House.
It is very simple: we agree that there has to be a UK-wide policy on state aid—or subsidy, if that is what it is to be called. The question that hangs around but never seems to get answered is: why has it not yet been articulated what this policy would be? It cannot be a question of timing. This suggests yet another shroud of mystery that surrounds this increasingly perplexing Bill.
It is certainly a novel way of developing policy for a Government to remove policy that is in force and that everybody knows and understands, increasing the uncertainty and making it more difficult for businesses. However, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, said in his opening speech, the statutory instrument removing the current rules—taking us out of the current system that has been operating for a great number of years—has already been laid and will be debated next week, and we will not be able to stop it.
We therefore seem to be heading towards WTO rules, which are not well respected and do not seem to be applied properly, and there is no policing or organisational structure in which they can be dealt with properly. If that is where we are, we would at least have a period of stability during which we can sort out how we want to set up the rules that will apply to the internal market and how, if necessary, they are to be policed. This could all be part of the yet-to-be-announced deal with the EU—and it may be that is the case, because it is clear that this is a significant area of interest within the negotiations. But without any further detail on that, it is hard for us to speculate.
However, as others have said, the Welsh Government have come forward with an extraordinarily generous offer to expedite work on a common framework that relates to state aid and make a voluntary agreement to pause any legislation that would impinge on that in the intervening period. That is almost too good an offer, and I hope that the Minister has an adequate response to it.
Lord Callanan (Con) (Con)
I thank noble Lords who have contributed to another admirably brief debate. We are making good progress this afternoon.
As I outlined in Committee, Clause 44 reserves to the UK Parliament the exclusive ability to legislate for a UK-wide subsidy control regime. I greatly enjoyed the many contributions on this matter. I particularly liked the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, that I should take defeats as a silver lining, which prompts the obvious response that the Liberal Democrats have been defeated in the last three general elections and therefore have some experience of that.
Our debate in Committee on this clause served to highlight that, while some noble Lords might disagree on the approach taken, we all recognise the importance of ensuring that the UK continues to take a clear and consistent approach to subsidy control as we move away from EU state aid rules. The Government have always been clear in their view that the regulation of state aid—the EU’s approach to subsidy control—is a reserved matter. The Government are clear that they want to maximise the economic opportunities available to us when we are no longer bound by EU state aid rules. To achieve this economic ambition, it is important that, as now, we take a coherent approach to the system that governs how public authorities subsidise businesses across the United Kingdom. Reserving subsidy control is the best way in which to guarantee that a single, unified subsidy control regime could be legislated for in future.
In previous debates, there has sometimes been a misplaced conflation between the devolved spending powers and the systems that regulate the potentially harmful and distortive effects of this spending. To be clear, these are two distinct and separate responsibilities. Although the devolved Administrations can and should make spending decisions on subsidies, the wider rules in which they operate are, and should continue to be, consistent across the whole nation. In response to the intervention from the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, I reiterate that the reservation does not change the devolved Administrations’ position in practice. They have never previously been able to set their own subsidy control regime, as this was covered by the EU state aid framework, but they will continue to make their own spending decisions on subsidies as they do currently.
The effect of the amendment would be to create unacceptable uncertainty regarding the extent to which subsidy control is a reserved or devolved competence. That would potentially give rise to inconsistency if there were different regimes to regulate subsidies across the UK. Ultimately, it could undermine fair and open competition across our internal market and inevitably discourage investment in the United Kingdom, bringing additional costs to supply chains and consumers.
The reservation will enable the UK to design a bespoke subsidy control regime that meets the needs of the UK economy. The Government have been clear that any future domestic regime will operate in a way that works best for all UK businesses, workers and consumers. In the coming months, as I said in Committee, we intend to publish a consultation on whether we should go further than our World Trade Organization and international commitments, including whether further legislation on this subject is necessary.
The Deputy Speaker (Barness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)
My Lords, I have received one request to ask the Minister a short question for elucidation, from the noble Lord, Lord Liddle.
Lord Liddle (Lab)
Can the Minister reflect a bit more on what he has just said about treating this issue as a matter for common frameworks? It sounded as though he wanted a co-operative solution to this problem, one that would bring all the devolved Administrations into a common framework. However, at the end, he said that it is not appropriate—but why not? He has not given a satisfactory answer to that question. I remember challenging the noble Lord, Lord True, in an earlier debate at Report, on whether the Government had changed their policy on common frameworks and were no longer taking them seriously. I got a very vigorous shaking of the head from the noble Lord, Lord True. Would this not be a perfect example of how common frameworks were still being taken seriously by the Government, and would it not resolve a real problem that the Government have had?
The Minister talked about unacceptable uncertainty, but frankly, the unacceptable uncertainty about state aid has come from this Government. Mr Dominic Cummings had one view of state aid, as against the traditional Conservative view. That is where the uncertainty came from. Now that he has gone and now that he is out, thank goodness, we have an opportunity to create a sensible common policy. There is a need for balance, and it must be sensible. The best way is through a common framework in co-operation with the devolved Administrations.
Lord Callanan (Con)
I am not sure whether that was a question or a speech in the wrong place—but I take the noble Lord’s point. I think he is getting issues conflated. The common frameworks programme of course is a programme of work with diffuse levels of power and ultimately it is not clear where regulation lies. To resolve those matters on a cross-UK basis, there is no doubt in our mind where the proper operation of these powers is—state aid, or rather subsidy control, is a reserved matter for the UK Government. However, we have said that we want to work collaboratively. We want to work with the devolved Administrations and of course, as we have said, we will consult closely with them on any new policy that we develop and indeed on whether legislation is necessary. But, given my general support for the framework and the Government’s support for the framework programme, I do not believe that it is appropriate for this matter to be included in the framework programme.
Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB) [V]
I will be brief, as obviously it would be very unfair if the Welsh were totally to outnumber everyone else in the number of speeches delivered this evening. I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to an interesting, though short, debate.
First, it is very encouraging that there is complete consensus on the need for a single subsidy regime for the internal market. There is no doubt about that. Secondly, there must be a consensus that at the moment this is not something that the UK Government have power over—otherwise this clause would be unnecessary. It is not a reserved matter and therefore under the devolution schemes it is a matter for all the devolved Governments. Thirdly, it is clear that there is no uncertainty. The Government are taking us out of the EU regime, assuming the instrument is passed, and we will go into the WTO regime—so that is the regime for the foreseeable future.
The real question is: are we going to go forward by diktat from Whitehall and Westminster or are we going to go forward by consensus? An obvious way of going forward is a common framework. I regret to say that I cannot agree with the Minister that a common framework is inappropriate. It is absolutely appropriate, because it will cater for the kind of divergence that will be allowed in the subsidy regimes. This is a matter of acute importance to people such as fishermen and those involved in agriculture. We need to know what level of divergence is permissible and negotiate that.
Finally, a decision has to be made on the role of the CMA. I moved amendments earlier this week in relation to the CMA simply because I imagine it will have to be the policeman of this regime. But what is it to be? Is it to be an adviser? Is it to have a central role? Or are things to be laid out in a common framework?
I therefore say that this clause ought to be removed. Get the policy right first. Try it by common framework and let us go forward on that basis. Therefore, I want to take the opinion of the House on the appropriate means of going forward—and the appropriate means is taking this clause out of this Bill.
Lord Judge
“(1) Section 11 ceases to have effect when Articles 5 to 10 of the Northern Ireland Protocol cease to apply.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the removal of Part 5 (Northern Ireland Protocol) at Committee Stage.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the removal of Part 5 (Northern Ireland Protocol) at Committee Stage.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the removal of Part 5 (Northern Ireland Protocol) at Committee Stage.
The Deputy Speaker (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)
My Lords, we now come to the group beginning with Amendment 73. I remind noble Lords that Members other than the mover and the Minister may speak only once and that short questions of elucidation are discouraged. Anyone wishing to press this or any other amendment in this group to a Division should make that clear in the debate.
Amendment 73
Lord Mackay of Clashfern
“Joint Ministerial Committee on European Negotiations: agreement of regulations
(1) Regulations to be made under any provision of this Act must be brought before the Joint Ministerial Committee on European Negotiations for discussion and agreement before they may be laid before Parliament.(2) If the Joint Ministerial Committee on European Negotiations do not agree to the regulations, the Secretary of State must lay before Parliament the reasons for the disagreement, and table a motion in both Houses of Parliament to debate the regulations and disagreement before they are approved.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause seeks to ensure the Joint Ministerial Committee on European Negotiations, representing all four nations, have sight of the regulations made under this Bill.
Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con) [V]
My Lords, I am happy to move Amendment 73. It is the same sort of amendment that I moved in Committee, when my noble friend Lord True was kind enough to say that it was a unionist type of amendment and, therefore, could be considered. Since then, the Government have accepted a number of situations covered by my amendment. It has therefore probably served its purpose and I do not propose to put it to a Division.
However, it illustrates what I am anxious to achieve: a degree of co-operation between the devolved Administrations and the Government of the United Kingdom, which will put the Bill in a much happier situation than it appeared to be in at first sight. A good deal has happened already. I just hope that they will go a little further.
I am under a certain restraint, because my computer has decided to restart without giving me any notice. I may not be able to speak at all when my turn comes at the end of this group but, if not, I end in that spirit.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
It is a pleasure to follow the noble and learned Lord and we are grateful that he is more reliable that his technology. In Committee and with this amendment, he has suggested to—and sought to persuade—the Government that there is merit in them thinking again about further consultations on developing the frameworks to the extent that, where they can reach their limit, there would then be the legislative requirement within this Bill.
I will speak to Amendment 75, in my noble friend Lord Fox’s name, which tries to put forward a structure for these discussions and, in effect, to codify it within this legislation—providing that framework, as it were, for the talks that should happen. In so doing, I will display what some colleagues in the House consider my usual characteristic of being rather pernickety—to which I say mea culpa. In our amendment, we reference the “Joint Ministerial Council”; it should refer to the Joint Ministerial Committee, so I admit that that was an error in the drafting.
When we started Committee, we had heard reflections at Second Reading and the concerns of the devolved Administrations about this Bill. At this stage, there is no need to rehearse the concerns; we have done so in Committee and on Report. Ministers—the noble Lords, Lord True and Lord Callanan, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, in particular—have been very willing to meet with us and discuss this. We have not always been in agreement; nevertheless, personally speaking, I am grateful for the opportunities to discuss some of these issues with the Ministers.
Ultimately, the House has made the decision that we have not been persuaded by many of the Government’s arguments. Even today, key elements of the legislation have been excised, such as those on spending and subsidy powers. From the government Benches, the noble Baronesses, Lady Noakes and Lady Neville-Rolfe, indicated that it was not appropriate for the OIM to be in the CMA. In a whole series of areas, this House has taken a view that we are concerned about how the Bill had been drafted.
Fundamentally, one of the themes has been a genuine ongoing concern, not fully addressed by government amendments on consultation, that the powers which the Government are taking under this legislation will damage, rather than strengthen, devolution. In particular, they will put at risk one of the areas where we have seen consensus not only within the parties in this House but within the nations and the UK Government: namely, that the frameworks process has been positive, notwithstanding a pause and a disagreement. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord True, which this House passed with a large majority, the reference that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, indicated with his amendments and our amendment show that we also wish for that process to see its natural conclusion.
At this stage, we believe there is merit in seeking support for a further set of discussions at a plenary session of the Joint Ministerial Committee, which can agree the principles of the market access and an intergovernmental relationship that will put this on a sound footing for many years to come. That is why we are asking the House to consider a proposal that we believe will allow there to be agreement and consensus, but not a veto.
This is the final thing that I will say. We accept that the operation of the UK market is a shared UK aspect, but it will be a complex set of discussions and potentially contentious. That is why in this amendment we have sought a mechanism to prevent a veto but to allow consensus to be brought about. I know that my noble friends Lord Bruce of Bennachie and Lord Fox will cover the details. Personally, having gone through all the stages of the Bill, I will say that while we recognise Ministers’ willingness to be open, as I have indicated, there is still a case to be made for one further opportunity to seek consensus.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, I put my name to my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern’s amendment out of admiration for him and for the way in which he has sought positively to contribute to our debates on the Bill, both in Committee and on Report. All his contributions have been informed by his passionate unionism. He is a truly remarkable man. He was a most revered Lord Chancellor and, of course, had he lived in Edinburgh in the Age of Enlightenment he would have been one of the adornments of that age. We are extremely fortunate to have him as a Member of your Lordships’ House.
I say to my noble friend Lord True that my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay has indicated that he does not wish to push his amendment to a Division because he is appreciative of the recognition of the importance of the union displayed by my noble friends Lord True and Lord Callanan, and indeed all those who have spoken from the Front Bench. However, and I say this on my own account, while I completely understand why my noble and learned friend does not want to divide on this amendment, and I admire him greatly for all that he has done, I still believe that the union is in peril, and it is terribly important that my noble friends on the Front Bench take most carefully into account all that has been said today on the subject of the union. All the amendments have been informed by a great love for the union, a recognition that it is at risk and a passionate, consuming desire to ensure that the most successful union in European history does not come to grief.
If, when he comes to wind up, my noble friend Lord True could emphasise his own devotion to the union, that would be a reward to my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay for his persistence, and a recognition from your Lordships’ House of the esteem in which we hold him.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]
It is a pleasure to follow Lord Cormack, who has neatly demonstrated in this last group on Report how much this has been a cross-party, cross-House effort. There may be many things that we disagree on, but what has been broadly agreed is that the Bill is not currently fit for purpose. We have seen that again and again, with very strong votes for the amendments put forward by your Lordships’ House from a wide range of directions. It is fitting that, in opening this group, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, demonstrated the House’s persistence in the face of technological challenges, which has been a great credit to the House right through this debate and, indeed, through the entire Covid-19 pandemic.
I will speak briefly to Amendment 75, introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, to which I have attached my name, as have the noble Lords, Lord Fox and Lord Wigley. I shall not go through it in detail; it is a very detailed amendment, but that reflects of the nature of this debate and the issue of trust. Your Lordships’ House has heard again and again, including in reports from its respected committees, of great concern about details, plans and policies not being put in the Bill. This is one more amendment that seeks to tackle that. Looking at the overview of this, your Lordships’ House has, perhaps slightly ironically, been standing very firm as a defender of devolution and democracy. We will almost certainly return to this again and I urge all Members of this House to stand up for these issues, which are crucial for the future of the United Kingdom, whatever shape that might take.
Lord Wigley (PC) [V]
My Lords, I am glad to have the opportunity to speak in this group of amendments and to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, who has made a massive contribution to our work on the Bill. As I have stated in previous debates, the House would be well advised to listen to the words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern. Time after time, he has alerted the House to the need to find an acceptable compromise on these matters. In particular, Amendment 75, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Fox, to which I have added my name, serves that purpose. The amendment addresses the need to have a coherent framework for the work of the Joint Ministerial Committee and to provide a mechanism for when there may be disagreements. The noble Lord, Lord Purvis, stated that this amendment provides for any opportunity to achieve a consensus where that is possible—an excellent aspiration.
Likewise, the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, stressed tonight, as he has before, the need to find ways of co-operating. As I am sure he would be glad to hear, I add that my main objective in seeking greater powers for Wales is not primarily to demolish the union, but to change it into something that better serves the interests of our respective countries. That means giving greater power and being prepared to be flexible, something that has not been entirely apparent in the Government’s attitude to the Bill.
There clearly has to be some mechanism for dealing with situations where there is a disagreement among our four nations. It should have been the duty of the Government to find an acceptable solution, but they have failed to do so. I therefore believe that we should give MPs in the other place an opportunity to address this matter again by writing an amendment along these lines into the Bill.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Wigley. I endorse everything that my noble friend Lord Cormack said about our noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern.
I have not spoken in general terms about the union. Suffice it to say that, as a Scot by birth with a Scottish father, who made her maiden speech next door on the Scotland Bill, I care passionately about this area. I lend my support to the terms of the amendment as set out by my noble and learned friend. I urge my noble friend Lord True to show the same spirit as our noble friend Lord Callanan when he accepted many of the areas, identified by the Law Society of Scotland in earlier parts of the Bill, on which we felt that the Government should consult. I am just disappointed that those fell to the terms of consent being sought. I am not sure that is appropriate in all those circumstances.
We must not lose sight of the fact that the Scottish Parliament withheld its consent to this legislation. It behoves the Government to move as far as possible and to consult. I am mindful of the old BT advert: it is good to talk. By talking and consulting, many misunderstandings are removed. It also behoves the Government to ensure that the common frameworks are allowed to reach their natural conclusion in the areas that are already well advanced. I wish my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay and his amendment the best, and hope that our noble friend Lord True might be magnanimous and come forward with something similar at the next stage.
Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD) [V]
My Lords, I am speaking in support of Amendment 75, and I recognise the constructive intentions behind Amendments 73 and 76. I want to be clear that I have not been persuaded in any way of the case for this Bill. It is wrong in almost every respect, and that is why it has been substantially amended: I think the House takes a similar view. Of course, I have supported amendments that mitigate its worst effects, but I view with growing despair the failure of the Government to grasp just how negative and dangerous is the thrust of this Bill.
The Bill is clearly driven by an ideological and deluded belief that the UK Government can negotiate trade deals more far-reaching and radical than have been achieved within the EU and that, in doing so, they do not wish to allow the existing devolution arrangements to account for any friction in the process. Of course, however, Part 5 of the Bill destroys the negotiating capacity of the Government, who have had no experience of negotiating trade deals in more than 40 years, by advertising in advance their preparedness to set aside unilaterally any agreements that they might sign. The trouble is that the Government seem completely oblivious to the friction that will result from unilaterally overriding decision-making under the devolution settlements.
It has been argued repeatedly that decisions involving the devolved Administrations should be based on seeking agreement. The principles behind the common frameworks have been met with wide support and approval, and I welcome their inclusion in Amendment 76 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara. However, there is still a serious lacuna in the process for reaching agreements across the four nations, and Amendment 75 addresses this. The amendment also seeks to utilise the joint ministerial committee, which, in practice, has not been used enough, but which could be an effective means of producing a dispute-resolution process.
The problem at the moment is that the default position leaves it to UK Ministers—who, of course, are also English Ministers—to have the final say. It is not desirable for any one of the four nations to have a veto on achieving agreement. We are quite clear about that. That is why a premium should be placed on seeking agreement wherever possible. Where it is not possible, however, there needs to be a mechanism that is seen to be fair and collaborative and not one-sided. That might involve qualified majority voting, which I have advocated on a number of occasions. However, this amendment proposes not a solution but a mechanism for finding one. My noble friend Lord Purvis, in previous contributions, alluded to the Australian example where the mechanism was unanimously agreed by all the state premiers, but decisions relied on qualified majority voting.
This Bill will do immense damage to the union and to what is left of Britain’s good standing in the world, which this Government seem determined to destroy. Amending it is only damage limitation, but Amendment 75 would go a long way to help. I support it: it is a mechanism by which we can find solutions to disagreements among our four nations that do not allow for veto but do seek consent and will have the support of all the component parts of the union, apart from those who have no desire to maintain it. Many of us want this union to survive and to be effective: this kind of amendment is a way to try to ensure that.
Viscount Trenchard (Con)
My Lords, my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern made some powerful arguments on this subject in Committee. As he said, the UK internal market is not a fixed law, like the law of the Medes and Persians. He made a great contribution, together with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, in bringing the common frameworks programme into being in 2017.
I believe that the nationalist-led Administrations in Scotland and Wales, by arguing that powers that have been held by the European Commission in maintaining common frameworks at a European level should not return to Westminster but should be returned to the devolved authorities, are acting against the economic interests of their stakeholders. They might want to increase the powers of the institutions of which they are members, but they do not give enough consideration to the damage to the UK internal market that their power grab threatens to cause.
The Duke of Montrose (Con) [V]
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Trenchard, who has contributed so much to the different stages of this Bill. Once again, it has also been a great pleasure to support my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern as he tries to prompt the Government to outline a process of devolved consultation on any major disputes in the creation of regulations or statutory instruments that future Administrations will consider adequate to the task under this Bill.
Almost all the issues discussed today fall very much into the area that recalls the off-the-cuff remark that slipped from the lips of my right honourable friend the Prime Minister, which he has since spent some time trying to explain in any way that fits with government policies going forward. Speaking as a Scotsman, however, I believe that the First Minister of Scotland should take some comfort from what the Prime Minister said and the fact that as devolution has progressed she has been able to move many Scots institutions and practices—never as far as she might like, but always in the direction that she would like, towards an independent nation. The situation in Wales has not been the same; it has been much healthier. Naturally, this is the approach that we can expect the First Minister to use with any future changes, and it presumably explains the lack of consent from that area.
Like my noble friend Lord Cormack, today I wish to support a Government who aim to maintain a United Kingdom. The Government are looking for support and settlements in structures and frameworks that can support devolution within, and as part of, the United Kingdom. In supporting my noble and learned friend, we are all seeking a truly robust mechanism that has the possibility of overcoming disagreements at the highest level. The debates in your Lordships House today are more and more an illustration of the levels of disagreement that will have to be solved.
In Committee, my noble friend the Minister in his reply gave some idea and suggestions of the criteria that the Government have in mind for resolving disputes at a more mundane level. Some of it sounded quite good, as far as it went. Disputes such as those he outlined are frequently liable to comprise very technical elements, and the Government would like to resolve these at a departmental level, or, as they say, at as low a level as possible—whatever that is.
In Committee, my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay insisted that his suggestion for working these things out through the Joint Ministerial Committee on EU Negotiations was exactly what is needed. However, he is hoping that the amendments the Government have now introduced will move it some way in that direction.
In his response in Committee, my noble friend the Minister enticed us—and it was repeated at a briefing I received today—with the thought that there is in train a revision of the workings of the Joint Ministerial Committee, where already
“The proposal for reforming the formal process for avoiding and resolving intergovernmental disputes was jointly drafted”.—[Official Report, 2/11/20; cols. 529-30]
Having said that, the Minister was then asked by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed—who has also prompted us today—whether we would be given some indication of what this reform contained, as it is of consequence to our consideration of disputes under this Bill. But the Minister would not be drawn, and we are being asked to consider this Bill without this knowledge and without the proper mechanism. It sounds as if the Government are going to rely on some political bargaining somewhere along the line.
I have another question of clarification for my noble friend the Minister. Will the Competition and Markets Authority—which is above political interference —and its office of the internal market task force be given the support they need to face disputes in a court of law? That appears to be where this is all heading.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, this has again been a high-quality debate. It is an honour to follow the noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, who spoke with great wisdom. In offering Her Majesty’s Government support, that support was heavily nuanced with some important questions, which I look forward to hearing the Minister answer.
In the previous debate, on Amendment 69, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, set the question of whether it was diktat versus consensus. It is the same with group. I am pleased to speak in a group which has heard the contribution of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, and I share in the admiration of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, for his contribution. He painted a rather half-full picture of where we have got to in the Bill, and the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, was a little more half-empty. I am afraid that I side with the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. Those concerns were further illustrated by my noble friend Lord Bruce, who set out the flaws and problems that remain with the Bill.
I am speaking to Amendment 75, in my name, and I am grateful for the support of my noble friend Lord Purvis of Tweed, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and the noble Lord, Lord Wigley. Overall, my noble friends have been very clear and helpful in setting out the purpose of this amendment. It is essentially to help drive a process whereby the consensus that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, talked about in the last group can be delivered—an explicit process.
Why do we need an explicit process? One thing that has come through the Bill, and through amendments brought by both Ministers, is an acknowledgement of the need for consultation. However, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Empey, who was here just a few minutes ago and I am afraid is not here now, one Minister’s consultation is not necessarily one recipient’s feeling consulted. There is a process that is called consultation, whereby people are informed marginally before the general public, and then there is genuine consultation. All Governments practice both these forms of consultation.
Amendment 75 sets out a process whereby consensus is driven, rather than relying on the Minister or the Government of the day, whether this one or future ones, to deliver that consensus around the Joint Ministerial Committee. That process has been set out, as I said, by my colleagues. The purpose is, in a sense, to bookend the amendment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope. After Part 5 discussions, we started these discussions with the amendment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, which pushed the common frameworks to the forefront of how the future internal market should be organised. Amendment 75 seeks to put in place a process by which this can happen and, as my noble friend set out, avoids the pitfall of a veto.
The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said that he had concerns about the union. I have concerns about the union. It is only by delivering a truly consensual process that is seen to be transparent and set out, rather than optional, for people, that that danger can start to be averted. That is why I will be pressing Amendment 75 to a vote—unless, of course, there is a damascene conversion on the Benches opposite.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab) [V]
My Lords, like others, I congratulate the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, on his campaign. The Government have listened to it and that has resulted in a number of good and important changes to the Bill. He exerts great influence on our work, and long may it continue.
I admire the thinking that has gone into Amendment 75, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Fox, and his supporters. It proposes a response to another of the gaps that we keep encountering in the Bill—the need to reform the JMC system and the need for a mechanism for getting agreement, with particular reference, in this case, to the market access principles, about which we have different views. This may not be the time to bring this particular proposal in, but it shows us the way forward and I hope that that will influence the Government’s thinking in other ways and in other parts of our political consciousness.
Amendment 76, in my name, was intended as a fallback, in case our plans for ensuring that the common frameworks programme was made the centrepiece of the process for agreeing the rules required to underpin the UK internal market fell by the wayside. However, this House has strongly supported the amendments of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, on the common frameworks, and we hope that, in time, we can persuade the Government that they can and should do likewise.
I am less sure that we have persuaded the Government about the damage they will do to the devolution settlement if they do not change tack on how state aid is to be organised and their current top-down plans for the shared prosperity fund. I urge them to reflect on the opportunity they have been given by the votes today, but I do not think Amendment 76 will actually take the trick that it was intended to in this case, so I shall not be pressing it to a vote.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord True) (Con)
My Lords, I must say that any computer that tries to silence my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern should be carried to the top of the Old Man of Hoy and dropped from a very great height, hopefully with destructive power—unless any environmentalist thinks that that is a serious suggestion; it is a figure of speech. Those who are not familiar with the Old Man of Hoy should understand that it is an extremely high stack in a very beautiful part of the country. It is very hard to climb, too; I have never attempted it—you only have to look at me to see that.
These amendments have difficulties because they would all introduce, in our judgment, a serious risk of the internal market system not being in place at the end of the transition period. That is a serious consideration in our contention. I agree with my noble friend Lord Trenchard, with his great experience of business—indeed, of business with Japan—that a secure, stable and functioning market is part of the bedrock of our union. It is a unionist principle that we should have a common functioning market; I think that that is assented to by almost all of those who have spoken in our debates. Of course, I repeat my personal commitment and this Government’s commitment to the union. My party has always been a unionist party, and we remain as such.
Coming back to the amendments, in our judgment, a considerable delay would undermine business certainty and consumer confidence at a time when it is vital that the economy is able to bounce back in the Covid recovery phrase, about which my right honourable friend the Chancellor spoke so eloquently earlier today.
Amendment 73, as others have said, absolutely underscores the honourable intent of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern. We have had a meeting of minds on that. I am grateful for his kind words; I can certainly assure him that he has been a great influence in securing constructive change, as have other noble Lords in the course of these debates. I can affirm that the union will remain at the heart of the Government’s objectives. I am grateful for his withdrawing the amendment with the comments and, indeed, warnings that he set around that withdrawal because of the clear limitations—I will come on to these—of linking any proposal to the Joint Ministerial Committee.
For that reason, I will move on to Amendment 75, which specifies a process of debate and consent that must be achieved with the devolved Administrations through the joint ministerial council before the market access principles can take effect. This process would add an unacceptable delay to the implementation of the market access principles when the very reason for the Bill that we are here to discuss is to provide certainty to businesses from 1 January 2021, when the European structure falls away. The objective to provide certainty as powers flow back from the European Union is not new or rushed; indeed, efforts have been made to discuss this over a lengthy period. I must remind your Lordships that, sadly, the Scottish Government walked away from the internal market project in spring 2019. However, there has been continuing, positive and helpful engagement at official, and indeed ministerial, level since then. I do not share the pessimism, suspicion or doubt of a number of your Lordships that our union cannot prosper with this internal market after January 2021.
There is a valid question on how governance and disputes relating to the internal market should be dealt with through intergovernmental machinery; my noble friend the Duke of Montrose alluded to our earlier discussions on this. As I updated your Lordships earlier in these discussions, the Government are looking with the devolved Administrations at reforms to the Joint Ministerial Committee structure. The intent is to move on through the joint intergovernmental relations review.
This review will deliver the overarching architecture to support the delivery of improved and effective engagement with the devolved Administrations at all levels of government—as my noble friend the Duke of Montrose alluded to—from officials upwards and, if necessary, the consideration of cross-cutting issues above departmental level. I repeat what I said earlier: this is not complete, but work is progressing positively in this respect. I think that all the various Administrations would accept that. We welcome further discussions with the DAs on finalising the format of these engagement structures, including to complement those relating to the internal market, and I look forward to reporting back to this House on our finalised governance structures when we have concluded the review, which, as I have said, we aim to do by the end of the year.
In addition, as set out in my letter to colleagues prior to Report, the Government propose that a meeting be held in the new year with devolved counterparts once the Bill becomes law to agree a programme of official and ministerial-level engagement on the—my brief says “operationalisation”; can you imagine such a thing?—implementation and operation of the Bill. This includes determining the practical arrangements to deliver our commitment to meet Ministers in the devolved Administrations annually, as undertaken on this Bill, to review the operation of the UK internal market as supported by Parts 1 to 4 of the Bill, including new developments that might require the use of such delegated powers. This annual meeting will be just one of the regular intergovernmental meetings between BEIS Ministers and officials on other portfolio matters, such as the Covid-19 response.
On Amendment 76, I do not mean to disparage the noble Lords, Lord Fox and Lord Purvis of Tweed; indeed, I thank them for their openness and engagement in the process so far. I was going on to thank the Labour Party for its engagement, and I never want to give unintended offence to anyone in your Lordships’ House.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, for what he said; I am grateful for the engagement and discussions that we have had on this and the common frameworks programme. His amendment seeks to create a link between the common frameworks programme and the market access principles. While it is true that the internal market provisions and common frameworks programme are complementary, as we have tried to persuade your Lordships—that is how the Government see it—it is not appropriate to create a link with the common frameworks programme in that specific way in this amendment. I will not go on at length because the noble Lord has said that he does not intend to press it, but I underline that I appreciate the strength of feeling in the House on common frameworks, which I and other Ministers continue to reflect on. In saying that, I will not undertake to come back to this House on Third Reading, so if any noble Lords wish to test the opinion of the House on this issue, it would have to be at this point.
I assure noble Lords that the Government remain committed to the common frameworks programme. The processes established in it will work with future intergovernmental relations machinery. As the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, pointed out, with the inclusion of the amendment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope—although the Government did not and do not accept it—your Lordships have ensured that common frameworks will be discussed in another place; no doubt we will have opportunities to consider it further. I think that was the spirit in which the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, was withdrawing his amendment. I appreciate that and offer him those words of assurance.
The process proposed in his amendment and Amendment 75 undermines the purpose of the market access principles, which are designed to provide underpinning certainty that the UK internal market will continue to function in all circumstances. These amendments would create uncertainty about whether and when the market access principles would apply. Leaving businesses to manage this uncertainty and friction is not acceptable. Indeed, it undermines the core purpose of the Bill of providing businesses with certainty that they can continue to trade across the UK at the end of the transition period. For these reasons, the Government cannot support these amendments and I hope the noble and learned Lord will withdraw his amendment.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride) (Lab)
I have received no requests to speak after the Minister. I now call the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern.
Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con) [V]
My Lords, I am glad to be able to speak to noble Lords, although I cannot now see them. I appreciate what has been said. I do not think it necessarily involves uncertainty about the principles, as my noble friend Lord True suggested. I think it could be quite clear that the principles apply, except so far as they are modified by the common frameworks agreements. That does not in any way make them uncertain. If it were needed, some kind of notice that a common frameworks decision was to become part of the internal market rule would possibly deal with that if it had to be dealt with, but it is perfectly reasonable to think that the common frameworks could work as part of the arrangements in such a way that the results of agreements in the common frameworks are put into effect in the UK internal market rule.
I agree that the internal market is fundamental to the union of the United Kingdom. As has been said, it was the rule right from the first day of the union. I entreat the Government to think carefully about how to engage the common frameworks policy in the rule of the common market in a way that is acceptable and does no harm. I cannot see that it does any harm. It makes it all the more constructive. The internal market rule is a living instrument, which should accommodate degrees of innovation that might well bring forward the whole market in due course. I shall not press my amendment, as I indicated, because I think the Government have already done what I wanted in most of the situations where it would be suitable. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
(3A) A statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (3) may not appoint a day for the commencement of Part 1, 2, 3 or 4 until the following requirements are met—(a) the requirement in subsection (3B), and(b) the requirement in subsection (3C) or the requirement in subsection (3D).(3B) The requirement in this subsection is that the Prime Minister must convene a plenary session of the Joint Ministerial Council in order to seek agreement of the market access principles set out in section 1(2).(3C) If an agreement on the market access principles is reached at the conclusion of the Joint Ministerial Council session, the requirement in this subsection is that the Secretary of State must lay before Parliament a memorandum of understanding which sets out—(a) details of the agreed principles; and(b) proposals for the establishment of an agreed dispute resolution mechanism relating to the internal market in the United Kingdom for any disputes among the Secretary of State, the Welsh Ministers, the Scottish Ministers, and a Northern Ireland department.(3D) If unanimous agreement is not reached at the conclusion of the Joint Ministerial Council session, the requirement in this subsection is that the Secretary of State must lay before Parliament a report outlining—(a) why unanimous agreement could not be reached; and(b) proposals for the operation of the internal market in the United Kingdom in light of the fact that an agreement under subsection (3B) was not reached unanimously.”
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, it has been very helpful to hear the Minister. His description of the intergovernmental discussions is very important and we wish the Government good speed on that. If the Minister or his colleagues can keep us updated on the progress of those very important discussions, we would be grateful.
On Amendment 75, the Minister made great play about the timetable, but it should be noted that the Bill does not affect any existing legislation on day one. Furthermore, the devolved authorities have agreed to a standstill arrangement. The Minister is creating a false timetable pressure on your Lordships. I do not believe that your Lordships need to be constrained on time for this.
In conclusion, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, spoke about the internal market as a living, breathing, changing process. To run that, there needs to be a structure with the JMC and the devolved authorities. Amendment 75 would set in place one way of doing that and I am sure we would be very happy to discuss other ways of doing that with the Government if they have ideas. To put that pressure on, I would like to test the will of the House.
Lord Judge
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the removal of Part 5 (Northern Ireland Protocol) at Committee Stage.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride) (Lab)
That concludes the Bill. We will now go straight on to the next session, so I ask the Ministers to swap.
Sport Sector: Financial Support
(4 years ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for repeating last week’s Statement. Normally, it is undesirable to have such a gap between the debates in both Houses, but, in this case, it allows us to consider recent developments.
Labour welcomes the additional financial support for the sport sector, and I repeat the thanks expressed by my colleague, Alison McGovern, for the hard-working Treasury and DCMS, who have had to deal with complex financial returns at speed. It is regrettable, and I do not like to sound curmudgeonly here, but Ministers chose that process at such a late stage. However, these funds will nevertheless provide a lifeline for the range of sports that receive them, and for that reason they are very welcome.
Last week, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State reiterated his desire for this money to be going out in weeks and certainly for some of it to be disbursed before Christmas. Is the noble Baroness able to provide any updates on the planned timescales, particularly in the light of today’s wider economic announcements? Can she express in percentage terms what amount she expects to arrive at with organisations before year end? I very much hope that the department has learned lessons from its experience with the Culture Recovery Fund, which, as we all know, took some time to start distributing moneys.
In response to a question on equal access for funding by women’s sports, Mr Huddleston said that there would be an appropriate proportion for women’s sport. What, in the Minister’s view, is an appropriate amount? Again, I would appreciate a percentage. I know, from previous comments, that the Minister shares my view that we must not allow the pandemic to reverse the excellent progress and good work in women’s sports over recent years, but that will be possible only with appropriate financial help and support.
The noble Baroness will not be surprised if I ask for an update on the Government’s planned fan-led review of football governance. We have been told that preparations are in progress without any dates being named. Ministers continue to point out that it was a manifesto commitment of theirs. Given this, we would expect there to be some more urgency.
I wish to probe a little on Monday’s announcement that a limited number of fans will be allowed to return to sports stadia once the national lockdown is lifted and the tier system resumes. Allowing up to 4,000 fans to attend outdoor sporting events and up to 1,000 spectators at indoor events is a welcome step forward after an unprecedented period of professional sport being played behind closed doors. Noble Lords will know that these numbers are the absolute cap, with a percentage system in place for clubs with lower-capacity stadia. Can the Minister provide the evidence base behind the 4,000-person attendance limit?
Manchester United’s Old Trafford can ordinarily host well over 70,000 fans. Even the old wooden stands at Goodison Park will fail to emit their customary creak with just 4,000 fans present. Twickenham Stadium has a capacity of 80,000. While it is not desirable to have these grounds full at this time, on what basis was it determined that they were unable to safely host a higher number? Premier League clubs have spent large sums preparing their grounds to accommodate socially distanced fans. Similar steps have been taken by rugby clubs and others in anticipation of reopening their doors. While they will be excited to welcome even a small number of fans back home, doing so is likely to result in financial losses, which will become unsustainable if the cap is not revisited.
Therefore, when are we likely to see a detailed road map for increasing sporting capacities? Will DCMS commission new test events to inform such a road map? Has any consideration been given to previous test events and the data they have provided? I draw attention to the case of Brighton & Hove Albion. There was approval in principle for crowds of around 8,000; that would move individual fixtures from loss to profit. Even for lower league clubs, which desperately need that additional income, the current offer is unlikely to satisfy demand from season-ticket holders who have paid up front. I am told that AFC Wimbledon, which has just completed its historic return to a new stadium at Plough Lane, had over 3,000 season-ticket holders last year and are expecting that number to climb. If the area remains in tier 2, it means that the club will admit only those who have already paid, rather than making new money.
I stress that we do not want to rush this. We need to be confident that stadia of all ages and sizes can cope with the return of fans and that there are appropriate protocols in place, not only around grounds but on transport networks as well. However, sports clubs at all levels need to see progress, not just one-off announcements. This is true in relation to support from government and clubs’ ability to raise their own funds. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Botham, for example, will be hoping that Lord’s is able to welcome a higher number of spectators when cricket returns next summer—otherwise he, like the rest of us, will be obliged to watch remotely and that cannot be right.
I want to close with one final question regarding the Prime Minister’s recent announcement. We know from the Independent SAGE group that the ability for families to mix at Christmas may require new restrictions in January and beyond. If that comes to fruition, is it the Government’s intention that attendance at sporting events would become an exception to restrictions or do we face the prospect of clubs opening their doors in December, only to see them being slammed shut in the new year?
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, it a good thing that we have this debate, even if it is nearly a week late. The old adage that a week is a long time in politics must be ringing very loudly in the Minister’s ears at the moment, because we have had many announcements that add to this Statement. The biggest, shall we say, elephant in the room— or dog that is not barking—is what is happening with arrangements for the upper tiers of professional football. If the Minister knows anything, now would be a good time to tell us. I would understand if no arrangement has been reached, but if anything can be told about that it would help us.
To return to what is said in the Statement, we need a little more flesh on the bone. For instance, I live in the village of Lambourn in the “Valley of the Racehorse”. There, the National Trainers Federation has been asking how the money going to the racing establishment is going to trickle down to its members. Without people who look after the horses, you do not have any event. It is not that straightforward and there are details to go through.
The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, has already had a good go on the fact that getting some fans into the grounds will help a few clubs. But one of my noble friends has pointed out to me that certain lower league clubs are getting gates of 18,000—I think Portsmouth does, if my noble friend the Chief Whip has told me right. He is nodding at me, so I am fairly safe there. If that is the case, how will this potential lifeline and way out compensate them? The reform of football has been made more pressing by Covid. We should be looking at the fact that the current model is virtually unsustainable. I do not think that we should forget that at any time.
On rugby union, I heard a question today that I want to ask the Minister. What do you do about the money for the Olympic sport of sevens, which was cut due to this? I have heard that an arrangement is coming to help with that, which is good news, but rugby union may well be the last sport to play again. Let us face it, old prop forwards like me know that we form our own special non-socially distanced, germ-spreading little units around the place when we play the game. When do the Government expect there to be sufficient immunisation to allow us to come back? Intelligent things have been done about trying to get a different version of the game played. Rugby union may be the best example, but all sports have these questions. Will the Government have some form of timescale to allow the fans in and the playing of the game in all circumstances, especially at community level?
We may have gone a little wider than the Statement in this debate but a lot has happened. It would help if we could find out now exactly what the Government are thinking.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Barran) (Con)
I thank both noble Lords for their questions and their welcome to this funding. I echo the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, in thanking the civil servants in both DCMS and the Treasury for their incredible work on this package.
The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, started by asking about timings for the disbursement of these funds. This package is aimed at those clubs really facing an existential threat, particularly as a result of the recent lockdown and the inability to allow fans back and the income that comes with that. We are keen on and committed to getting the first tranche of funding out by year end. More detail will be published about that shortly. There will also be an independent board overseeing the disbursement of the funds.
The noble Lord also asked about funding for the women’s game. I must confess that I heard my honourable friend the Minister for Sport be slightly more vehement about the importance of those clubs receiving funding from the Government treating women and women’s sport exactly the same as men’s. The criteria for this fund are identical for women’s sport and men’s sport.
I fear that I will disappoint the noble Lord regarding a further update on the fan-led review. As he noted, it is a manifesto commitment and we are committed to doing it. Progress is being made but no firm date has yet been settled on.
Both noble Lords talked about the importance of returning fans to stadia. We are all enormously keen to get fans back and delighted by the recent decision that in tiers 1 and 2, in particular, there will be capacity for up to—in tier 1—4,000 fans in the open air. As the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, noted himself in a later comment, the decisions about the number of fans in a stadium are based not purely on the capacity of the stadium but also on the design, entrances, exits and travelling arrangements. We have done a number of pilots which have helped inform our thinking. We will watch and learn from the opening-up that is shortly to be with us, and then we will build on that. But we really do feel optimistic about the prospects for this as we go into the new year, and particularly beyond Easter.
The noble Lord, Lord Addington, asked specifically about rugby union and rightly pointed out the risks in the scrum—to the long list of which a new risk has now been added for those brave enough to go into the scrum. We are obviously aware that this is a close-contact sport and will have particular challenges. We aim to give more detail on how we hope to address the points that the noble Lord rightly raised around vaccination in particular. We are working and hope to be able to publish a not-later-than date. As I mentioned, the Health Secretary has been very optimistic about seeing a significant change in conditions around Easter. We all look forward to that.
The noble Lord, Lord Addington, also asked about trainers. Obviously, with the £40 million going to racecourses and the ability for racing to take place, there will be a trickle-down benefit to trainers from the prize money from those events.
I felt that the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, was not at his most generous when he talked about the progress and implied that there would be a stop-start pattern. I think that we have come a really long way. There is light at the end of the tunnel for both grass-roots and professional sport. We have a lot of hope, based on the vaccine results announced recently and on the level of testing that we are now achieving. We are very grateful to the Sports Technology and Innovation Group for its advice on how we can bring fans back as quickly as possible.
The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)
My Lords, we now come to the 30 minutes allocated for Back-Bench questions. I ask that questions and answers be brief so that I can call the maximum number of speakers.
Lord Moynihan (Con) [V]
My Lords, I very much welcome this Statement as an important rescue package, for that is exactly what it is. I note that £250 million of the £300 million is in the form of loans. When can we expect the terms of the loans and details of the repayment holidays to be finalised, rather than the final deals themselves? I hope that the Minister will commit to a comprehensive review of all Covid-related support for sport by the end of March, when this package ends, because long into 2021 the impact of Covid-19 will still be delivering a hammer-blow to the decimated income statements of both winter and summer sports across the United Kingdom.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I thank my noble friend for his question. We will publish the application process and wider conditions for loans in the winter survival package in the next few weeks, but the principle behind the loans is that they should be affordable in terms of both the interest rate and the repayment period. In relation to a review of sport, I am not aware of a formal review of the sort that my noble friend suggests, but I stress that the team in DCMS is working extremely closely with all sports to get as thorough and comprehensive as possible an understanding of the situation and how we can relaunch stronger in the new year.
Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB) [V]
My Lords, I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the register of interests. What work have Her Majesty’s Government undertaken to explore an equivalent of the hospitality sector’s Eat Out to Help Out scheme for the sport and fitness sector and connecting it to a scheme to drive activity levels that could support the Prime Minister’s obesity strategy?
Baroness Barran (Con)
The noble Baroness raises the interesting idea of “Work Out to Help Out”, or whatever it would be called. Obviously there are different ways of helping different sectors. We have tried to focus on a number of direct funding packages. Obviously there is the £300 million winter survival package; £200 million was announced earlier in the year for grass-roots sport; and there is £100 million for gyms and leisure centres, which I am sure the noble Baroness welcomes.
Lord Razzall (LD)
My Lords, I hope that noble Lords will forgive me for the metaphor that I am opening the bowling on behalf of cricket. I particularly want to say that as I see that the noble Lord, Lord Botham, is bowling at the other end—hopefully with me rather than at me.
The Statement indicates that cricket has the opportunity to make an application. Can the Minister confirm that there will be sufficient availability within the £300 million for county cricket, which is in need of money, if it gets its application together? I would welcome some elucidation from her as to why county cricket has not so far been included. I understand why the ECB is not because it is rather analogous to the football situation, where you have the Premier League and the lower clubs, and the ECB has had a huge amount of television money from Sky.
Is county cricket not included because it has not actually made an application yet, or is it to pressurise the ECB to give more of the TV money to the counties rather than them getting it out of the £300 million? If neither of those is true, can the Minister please explain what the counties need to do to receive the necessary payments from the fund?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I was wondering which bowler I would rather face if I were batting at this hypothetical wicket—but, with the greatest respect to the noble Lord, we probably know which one it is. In answer to his question, the reason that funding has not been made available to country cricket is that we were reassured by the ECB that it had the means to support all the counties over the winter. If the restrictions continue beyond 1 April, we will consider whether some form of additional support is needed.
Lord Caine (Con)
My Lords, I draw attention to my interests as set out in the register. On behalf of the entire rugby league family, I thank my noble friend and the Government for the additional funding in the package of £12 million for rugby league, coming on top of the £16 million announced in May, all of which is vital support for clubs that are at the very heart of their communities. May I also underline the absolute necessity of ensuring a return to paying spectators for the start of the 2021 rugby league season—a season which, as my noble friend will know, concludes with the rugby league World Cup? It promises to be the biggest and most ambitious ever, and I am pleased to say that there is already an unprecedented demand for tickets.
Baroness Barran (Con)
Well, I am delighted to hear from my noble friend about the demand for tickets for the rugby World Cup. I stress that we appreciate and understand the importance of rugby league to communities around the country and the very positive benefit it brings to so many people’s lives. One of my most memorable visits, in the days when we were allowed such visits, was to watch the Castleford Tigers women’s team training. It was very cold but it was very inspiring. To address my noble friend’s question more directly, obviously we are working very hard to ensure that spectators can return to stadia as safely as possible, and we are working closely in consultation with the sporting bodies, health and safety experts and officials to do this. We are making real progress. To have a truly successful World Cup event, we need a good, sustainable and solid domestic game, and we are working hard towards that.
Lord Botham (CB) [V]
My Lords, we all welcome the injection of £300 million into rugby union and horseracing, and the safe return of much-needed supporters to stadiums, which will be a lifeline to so many clubs. Do the Government have any plans to financially support cricket, which has faced massive financial difficulties as a result of Covid? Is the Minister willing to favourably consider direct representations from all the cricket clubs affected by Covid?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I thank the noble Lord for his question. As I mentioned to the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, we have had confirmation that so far the ECB has the means to support all the counties over the winter. We are in conversations with the ECB and it would be eligible to apply to the contingency fund—but obviously the best thing for all sports will be to open up and get spectators back as quickly as possible. But I would be more than happy to follow up with the noble Lord directly on his suggestion in relation to individual clubs.
Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton (Con)
I draw noble Lords’ attention to my interests in the register and I join at the crease the noble Lords, Lord Botham and Lord Razzall. My appeal is not for money but for common sense. In that spirit, will my noble friend ensure that the Government are not overly prescriptive in the measures required to allow a few hundred spectators to attend a game of county cricket? My genuine fear is that the cost of doing so may outweigh both the mental well-being benefit and the financial benefit to the clubs.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My noble friend is absolutely right about the value of sport in terms of both physical and mental health. Obviously, with cricket being a summer sport, things may look very different next summer, but the current limits of 4,000 outdoor spectators in tier 1 and 2,000 in tier 2 should make a number of these games viable. Obviously, cricket as a sport lends itself to spacing for spectators, and we are truly optimistic that, by the time county cricket restarts, the prospects for normal crowds will be very good.
Lord Campbell of Pittenweem (LD)
My Lords, what discussions have the Government had with the officers of the British Olympic Association and UK Sport about the financial implications for both of these bodies if the cancelled Tokyo Olympic Games of 2020 go ahead in 2021?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I apologise to the noble Lord, but I will have to write to him in response to his question.
Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con) [V]
My Lords, I draw attention to my entry in the register as a trustee of the Saracens Foundation. I welcome this much-needed support for sport. I know that my noble friend, as we have heard, and our honourable friend Nigel Huddleston in the other place share my strong support for girls’ and women’s sport. Until we can get back into stadia and watch from the sidelines, is there anything that my noble friend can do to encourage broadcasters to showcase more women’s sport?
Baroness Barran (Con)
The noble Lord is absolutely right about the role that broadcasters can play, and my colleagues within the department are liaising closely with them on this point.
Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I welcome very much the financial support for this level of sport, but does the Minister share my concerns about the really grass-roots sports clubs—the little clubs, the Saturday morning football clubs that are losing their match fees, and clubs with huge numbers of volunteers whom they are losing at the moment? I join the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, who asked earlier whether the Government might consider, once the Covid situation has been sorted, that we may need a really root-and-branch review of everything that is happening in grass-roots sport and how it has been affected?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I am happy to reassure the noble Baroness and my noble friend Lord Moynihan that I will take the suggestion of a thorough review back to the department, but I reiterate what I said earlier about our constant communication. In terms of the real grass roots, I absolutely echo the noble Baroness’s recognition of the value of those organisations to their communities, particularly during this Covid period, in which they have been setting up food banks and providing all sorts of extraordinary help in their communities. That is also why we committed £220 million earlier this year to make sure that exactly those organisations survive.
Lord Hayward (Con) [V]
My Lords, I declare my interest, as recorded in the register. May I ask the Minister for clarification in relation to this very welcome news about spectators being allowed back into grounds? Will loans or grants that are given to clubs or organisations be affected by the number of spectators who are allowed into the grounds? Will the decision on numbers allowed in be taken by the Government or in association with the HSE, the Sports Grounds Safety Authority, local police and the like?
Baroness Barran (Con)
In response to the first part of my noble friend’s question I can say that, as we work through the individual awards with the different sporting bodies, we will take into account their projected revenues. So this is about financial need; it will have some bearing on that. With regard to the planning work we are doing around letting fans back into stadia, we have been working closely with the Sports Grounds Safety Authority and, as I mentioned earlier, the Sports Technology and Innovation Group.
Lord Mann (Non-Afl)
On what date will the number of spectators be reviewed, so that we can answer the question of why Germany can get far more people into its stadiums every week than we will allow? Will the Minister ensure that professional and grass-roots sport are a crucial part of the Government’s levelling-up agenda? In many towns in the north of England, people do not have much money in their pockets. They will not have much money to spend going to rugby league, which will need continued support if its clubs are to survive. It is not just the money to keep going now, which is very welcome, but what will be needed in the next couple of years as well. Will levelling up include sport?
Baroness Barran (Con)
On the first part of the noble Lord’s question about review dates for increasing the number of spectators, those decisions are clearly not taken in isolation and will be part of wider decision-making on what is allowed within different tiers as we move forward. I fear I cannot add more on that point at the moment.
The Government well understand the importance of levelling up and of sport within it. There was obviously a very important infrastructure announcement in the Chancellor’s speech today of £4 billion directed to levelling up, but more specifically, on sport, there have been two important contributions to rugby league so far. We continue to value its contribution and see it as a critical part of rebuilding a sense of pride in local communities.
Lord McNally (LD) [V]
As the Minister will have gathered, there is very widespread support for this announcement. But will she make sure that the Government follow where the money is going and ensure that all the recipients pay a proper contribution to diversity and community activity where they are located, because that is why they have such widespread support?
The other thing is the dog that is not yet barking in the night: whether the Premiership will cough up enough money for first and second division football, which have many clubs in communities in real danger. I again put the idea of the Government threatening a windfall tax on transfer fees and television money if the Premiership does not get more realistic about the kind of help it will give.
Baroness Barran (Con)
The noble Lord makes an important point about following where the money is going. Part of the role of the independent board is to do just that. On the Premiership, as I and my honourable friend the Minister for Sport have said several times from our respective Dispatch Boxes, we believe that the Premier League has the financial capacity to support the wider football family. We hope that it has the good sense to act on that quickly.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]
My Lords, I return to two questions asked by the noble Lord, Lord Bassam of Brighton, about the percentage of funding going to women’s sport and what the Minister considers to be the appropriate percentage. I understand that she might not be able to answer now, but perhaps she could write to us later. In responding to the question, she said that the criteria are identical for men’s and women’s sports. Would she agree that equality does not equal equity, particularly when we consider the starting position of women’s sport, with grass-roots participation four percentage points lower than for men? Considering its long history—whether the Football Association actively oppressing women’s football, the Olympic movement refusing to allow women to participate in marathons and longer races for many years, or the attitudes of broadcasters, as the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge, just referred to—does she really not think that there should be a bias towards women’s sport to deal with historical disadvantage?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I think the noble Baroness may be conflating two things. This package is very specifically for those sports clubs in real financial difficulty. It is the same whether it is a woman’s sport or a man’s. This is not about trying to level the playing field between men’s and women’s sports. The noble Baroness made entirely valid points about the wider context for women’s sport and I hope she will acknowledge that progress has been made. We are determined to make further progress, but this specific package is about ensuring the survival of clubs. In that regard, women’s sport is on an equal footing to men’s.
Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl) [V]
My Lords, I begin by extending my condolences to the worldwide fans of Diego Maradona, who died earlier today.
Youth provision by skilled staff has been a vital source of safe space and plays a critical role for young people who may be vulnerable, empowering them through recreation and sports activities, including, in my area, women’s bicycling clubs. Many youth organisations have had their services shut down, which may leave current generations excluded. I know that the Minister will understand all too well the significance of their inclusion at this time. Will she nudge her department towards grass-roots, community sport, from where the next generation of Beckhams and cricket’s Moeen Alis may come?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I reassure the noble Baroness that my department does not need any nudging in relation to the importance of sport for young people. As I mentioned, we committed £220 million to grass-roots sport, much of which will benefit young people. Crucially, we have also worked closely with the youth sector throughout the pandemic, so that youth workers are able to carry on providing the critical support for just the vulnerable young people to whom the noble Baroness rightly alludes.
The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)
My Lords, all supplementary questions have been asked and answered.