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Oral Answers to Questions
(3 years, 9 months ago)
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Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)
The Minister for Digital and Culture (Caroline Dinenage)
The UK has one of the world’s leading art markets and the free trade agreement we negotiated with the EU will allow it to flourish. We have taken steps to facilitate the export of cultural goods to EU countries. We have developed a new inland pre-clearance process for export licences for works of art, and we are digitising the export licensing system for cultural goods. Those steps will reduce border friction and avoid delays and security risks.
Anthony Mangnall
Notwithstanding the Minister’s incredibly helpful response, there are small businesses in the art and antiques market that are suffering from these teething problems, such as Dart Gallery in Dartmouth in my constituency. So what further steps are the Government going to take to ensure that there is a streamlined approach to exporting art and antiques in future years?
Caroline Dinenage
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to champion the businesses in his constituency. We care deeply about supporting them. That is why the Secretary of State met representatives of the art market only earlier this month to discuss issues. We will continue to work closely with the sector to ensure that it can keep trading smoothly with the EU. We recognise that this means a period of change for business at a time when everyone has been responding to the unprecedented pressures of the pandemic, but this is an unparalleled opportunity for the UK to do business differently and prosper. We will continue to support businesses to allow them to take all the opportunities.
Karl MᶜCartney (Lincoln) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Matt Warman)
Since 2019, gigabit-capable broadband coverage has risen from 10% to now well over 30%, but with the publication this morning of Ofcom’s market review, the way is paved for the Government to lay out their thinking in much greater detail. We will be publishing Project Gigabit very soon to explain where we will be taking the best broadband connections first and how we will tackle the hardest-to-reach premises as well.
Karl MᶜCartney [V]
I thank the Minister—my county colleague, as the Member for Boston and Skegness—for that response and look forward to a Government announcement in the near future. We have all become more reliant on our broadband connectivity in recent months, and I look forward to the full—and it needs to be full—roll-out of gigabit broadband. I represent two district areas. City of Lincoln Council has 99.4% superfast connectivity, but North Kesteven District Council, where I represent Skellingthorpe, Bracebridge Heath and Waddington East, has only 95.3% superfast broadband, with 2.74% of households receiving less than 10 megabits per second. How will my hon. Friend ensure that the roll-out of gigabit broadband benefits all those in rural areas, including across Lincolnshire, where BT took vast amounts of easy taxpayer money but has not delivered fibre connections or access for all by a long way?
Matt Warman
I know just how keen my hon. Friend is to tackle broadband roll-out in the rural parts of his constituency as well as in the urban. As I mentioned, Project Gigabit will lay out a nationwide plan and it will do so in a way that promotes competition so that we get the best that the whole of the market can offer, including Openreach, but also other providers.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab) [V]
Our Parliament, our businesses, our students, our economy and our social lives all depend on broadband. In 2019, the Prime Minister promised full fibre for all by 2025, and the 2020 Budget set aside £5 billion for that. Can the Minister confirm that only £1.2 billion of that £5 billion is planned to be spent by 2025, and that today’s decision by Ofcom to remove pricing controls will deliver greater profits for BT while allowing Openreach to charge more in rural areas that are already broadband-poorer? When will the country as a whole get the broadband infrastructure we so desperately need?
Matt Warman
The hon. Lady knows that the Government will spend the £5 billion that has been committed as soon as possible and as quickly as the industry can get the cable into the ground. She also knows that the important balance to strike is between a competitive market that makes sure that we get everyone, from Openreach to Gigaclear to CityFibre, involved, and ensuring that those businesses can make a fair return. That is the balance that Ofcom has sought to strike today.
Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con) [V]
With the publication of Ofcom’s broadband review, does the Minister agree that the time has come to respond more fully to the key recommendations of the DCMS Select Committee report in relation to broadband roll-out, as it seems clear that the Government are set to miss their revised targets? Will he commit to give the Committee its full answers by 1 April? In addition, is the £5 billion sum for Project Gigabit reported in today’s Daily Telegraph just a repackaged announcement, or is the £5 billion now guaranteed from the Treasury?
Matt Warman
The Ofcom report, as I say, strikes a balance between trying to get competition and trying to get a fair return. I think that is a reasonable approach. It is of course important that we lay out the plans in response to the Select Committee’s questions. Project Gigabit will, in due course, do an awful lot of that work. I look forward to responding in full to the Committee’s questions, perhaps even appearing in front of it once again.
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
The Minister for Media and Data (Mr John Whittingdale)
Under UK law, personal data can currently flow freely from the UK to the EU. The trade agreement also ensures the continued temporary free flow of personal data from the EU to the UK until adequacy decisions are adopted. The European Commission published positive draft adequacy decisions on 19 February and we expect the EU to complete the technical approval process soon.
Daniel Zeichner [V]
We all know how important the flow of data is for UK business, but frankly the Government have handed the powers to the EU to turn our data on and off. They have turned us into supplicants, effectively. What are the contingency plans, given that relationships are frosty, should the EU use those powers?
Mr Whittingdale
As I say, the EU Commission has already provided an assessment of the UK’s data protection laws, which found us to be adequate, and there is absolutely no reason why that should not be confirmed once the processes are under way. However, we have said that it is sensible for businesses to make contingency plans by putting alternative transfer mechanisms in place, just in case there comes a point at some future date, but we expect adequacy to be granted within the timescale permitted.
David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Oliver Dowden)
Over £1 billion from the culture recovery fund has been allocated, including £800 million supporting almost 4,000 organisations and sites across the whole of England. More than 80% of grants and 85% of loans awarded in the first round of the fund have now been paid. As Members will have seen, an additional £390 million for the fund was announced in the Budget, taking dedicated support for culture and heritage during the pandemic to almost £2 billion—an unprecedented sum.
David Johnston [V]
The culture recovery fund has provided a vital lifeline to many organisations in my constituency, from the Cholsey and Wallingford railway to the Oxford Philharmonic to the Didcot Railway Centre, which is a popular family attraction. Does my right hon. Friend agree that just as people have been very good at supporting their local shops during the pandemic, it would be great if, when restrictions lift, they can go and visit their local culture and heritage sites, even if they have been many times before, to help them get back on their feet?
Oliver Dowden
I completely agree. The Government have been here for culture throughout the pandemic, and as we emerge from it, I know that the public will want to be there, too. As our cultural institutions reopen, we will encourage people to get out there and support them. That includes attractions in my hon. Friend’s constituency, as he referenced, such as the Didcot Railway Centre and the Cholsey and Wallingford railway, both of which have been supported through our culture recovery fund.
Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)
Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)
The Minister for Digital and Culture (Caroline Dinenage)
The Government are aware of the concerns that have been raised about the challenge of securing indemnity cover for live events, and my officials and the rest of the team at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport continue to work closely with the affected sectors to understand all the barriers to reopening, including financial support, certainty around the public health situation and the potential challenges of insurance.
Martyn Day
Insurance providers, live music venues, promoters and artists have jointly called on the UK Government to support an insurance fund to get live cultural events back up and running, with assurance that covid flare-ups will not ruin their chance at a recovery. Will the Minister meet with representatives from the live music industry to discuss those proposals?
Caroline Dinenage
Yes, I meet representatives from the live music industry all the time, and the Government road map sets out a clear plan that will allow events to return quickly and safely. That is being backed up by the events research scheme, which will give the evidence to provide the how and the when. We really understand how vital it is to get people back to doing the things they love as quickly as is safely possible, and we understand the huge benefits to our economy in allowing that to happen.
Sarah Olney [V]
I was pleased to hear the Minister’s report of meetings with industry stakeholders and insurance bodies. Will she release all documents relating to those discussions, to allow proper scrutiny of the decision making around insurance for live events this summer?
Caroline Dinenage
Where appropriate, of course we can publish documents, but sometimes we have to have conversations behind closed doors, so that people can get off their chest how they are feeling and we can do our best to tackle it. We understand that there are a number of obstacles for our sectors at the moment, and the culture recovery fund has been fantastic at supporting them to keep going through this really difficult time. The hon. Lady will be delighted to know that her Richmond Park constituency has benefited to the tune of over £1 million from the culture recovery fund, which has supported so many incredible organisations, such as the Orange Tree theatre.
John Nicolson (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP) [V]
As if the Government’s refusal to underwrite live music insurance was not bad enough for the industry, the UK Government rejected a deal with the EU that would have allowed artists and their crews to tour without visas, as they did pre Brexit. At her recent Select Committee appearance, the Minister said that as far as she knew, no negotiations with individual states were taking place to resolve these arrangements, but she promised to strain “every sinew” to resolve this Brexit disaster. That was over a month ago. Have the Government finally engaged in bilateral talks over visa agreements for artists? If so, with which countries? What progress has been made? Artists are waiting to hear.
Caroline Dinenage
The hon. Gentleman knows that not all of what he said is 100% true. The Treasury has always said that it would look at indemnity if it was the only obstacle to events being able to take place, and in the current public health situation there is huge uncertainty, which is clearly another major obstacle. He also knows that we did not turn down an excellent visa option from the EU. He knows that the visa option that was on the table would not have permitted touring; it was just for ad hoc events and would not have supported all the support crews that necessarily go with a tour. With regard to international discussions, I met my colleagues in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office only yesterday.
Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)
The Minister for Media and Data (Mr John Whittingdale)
The national lottery is a national treasure that enhances the cultural and sporting lives of millions of people across the UK, and it has funded over £1 billion in projects supporting the response to covid-19. The Gambling Commission is running the competition for the next licence and is following best practice from across the public sector for competitions of this nature.
Mr Holden
I thank the Minister for his answer. It is vital that the national lottery competition is not just open and transparent but seen to be open and transparent by everyone involved. One of the biggest funds that the national lottery supports is grassroots sport. This week, Consett AFC heard that its FA Vase final will have to be played without any supporters at it, despite the FA cup final just a couple of weeks later being played with supporters. May I urge the Minister to speak to colleagues and the FA to see whether there is any possibility that this vital final—the first time Consett has been to Wembley in over 120 years—might be played with fans?
Mr Whittingdale
I am aware that my hon. Friend is a huge fan of Consett AFC, and of course he and his fellow fans are very excited about this historic match, which is due to take place in Wembley. We are working to try to get spectators back into stadiums as soon as possible. I fully understand his disappointment that it does not look as if it will be possible in time for the match, but I have no doubt that he and thousands of others will be cheering on his team from their sofas.
Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op) [V]
I will ask a question more directly to do with the national lottery. The national lottery helps to fund many charities, cultural organisations and heritage sites, and whoever is awarded the new licence must be beyond reproach. Conservative party donor Richard Desmond—who persuaded the Prime Minister to raise the jackpot limit to benefit his own lottery and then successfully lobbied the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government over the controversial Westferry development, saving himself £40 million, resulting in an unlawful planning decision that was followed soon after by another donation to the Conservative party—wants to run our national lottery. Does the Minister believe that Mr Desmond is a fit and proper person to do this?
Mr Whittingdale
The hon. Gentleman is right about the importance of the national lottery. Indeed, I point out that his constituency has received over £6 million in funding over the last five years. Which applicant should take on the franchise is determined by the Gambling Commission, and of course it will want to be satisfied that the successful applicant meets the highest standards of probity and integrity, but it is a matter for the Gambling Commission.
Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Nigel Huddleston)
The continuation of elite sport was an early priority for the Government during the pandemic. Behind-closed-doors matches have enabled vital broadcast revenue to continue to flow into elite sport, as well as to bring joy to millions of fans at a time when it is sorely needed. Travel exemptions have allowed international elite sports competitions to continue safely during the pandemic. We also provided a £300 million winter sport survival package, giving lifelines to sports organisations impacted by restrictions on spectators. Of course, a further £300 million was announced recently by the Chancellor to continue this support to elite sports while restrictions remain in place.
Antony Higginbotham
I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. He will be aware that in Burnley our local economies rely on the football club that fills hotels, restaurants and bars. While we know that getting all that back will need to be done cautiously and in line with the Prime Minister’s road map, may I urge him to look at whether Burnley football club can be included in the trials taking place to get more fans back using things like testing, so that more and more fans from Burnley can get back to the turf?
Nigel Huddleston
My hon. Friend is a worthy champion of football, and in particular of Burnley FC. In fact, I do not think I have ever had a conversation with him without the words “Burnley FC” featuring very strongly, so I am sure his constituents are very grateful for that. I know he shares my view that sport is not the same without fans in stadiums. Officials from the Department will have heard his offer. He will understand I cannot give him a guarantee today, but I do appreciate his lobbying today.
It is of course vital that we again get fans back in stadiums as soon as it is safe to do so. The events research programme will be used to provide key scientific data as to how small and large events could be permitted to reopen safely in line with the Prime Minister’s road map out of lockdown. Government Departments are working very closely together on a range of options to support commercially viable ways to reopen businesses and leisure venues, and further details will be released in due course.
Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con)
Mrs Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Oliver Dowden)
The Government’s road map provides a step-by-step plan to safely reopen culture, entertainment and sport. This includes an events research programme, which will consider how restrictions can be lifted at step 4 through piloting major events such as the FA cup final and the world snooker championships. Funding announced at the Budget, including a further £390 million for culture and £300 million for sport, will support these industries as they reopen.
Sir David Amess [V]
Southend is home to a number of brilliant local festivals, such as Leigh Folk festival, Village Green and the Leigh regatta. Sadly, it has been announced that Southend carnival has been cancelled for a second year in a row due to uncertainty surrounding any ongoing restrictions in the summer. Will my right hon. Friend reassure me that events planned for later in the year will be given plenty of notice of whether they will be allowed to go ahead?
Oliver Dowden
I share my hon. Friend’s regret that Southend carnival is not going ahead. The Government will of course give as much notice as we can, and we have already set out a clear plan that will allow events such as that to return quickly and safely. We are working closely with our stakeholders to give them as much notice as we can and to guide them through each step. I can assure my hon. Friend that I am committed to getting people back to doing the things that they love as soon as we possibly can.
Mrs Latham [V]
The past year has had a huge impact on our young people, and I know we all share the ambition to do as much as possible to support them. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, as restrictions are eased and many organisations reopen, it is vital that children’s sport is prioritised?
Oliver Dowden
Yes, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. We all of course in this House know how important sport is for young people’s physical and mental health. That is why all outdoor sports can resume from 29 March, and I would note that that is the first significant easing after schools. In addition, the Education Secretary and I are working closely with sports’ national governing bodies and Sport England on an extensive offer of activities in schools over the summer period.
Chris Loder (West Dorset) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Matt Warman)
My hon. Friend leaves no stone unturned in advocating for his constituents to get better broadband, because we all know how important it is in rural areas. Superfast broadband coverage in Dorset is now up to 96%; that is progress, but the Government have more work to do, and Project Gigabit is a crucial part of delivering that.
Chris Loder [V]
I thank the Minister for his answer. Dorset Council has worked incredibly hard to gather two thirds of the money that it needs for the Dorset fibre spine. The Chancellor gave a stonking budget of £5 billion to my hon. and right hon. Friends, and I am just asking if the Minister would make 0.05% of that £5 billion pound Budget available to West Dorset so we can sort out the fibre spine.
Matt Warman
I do not want to preannounce anything that is in Project Gigabit, but I can certainly say to my hon. Friend that the project he mentions is on the radar of DCMS officials, and I look forward to continuing those conversations so that we can deliver the improvements that I know are so valuable to his constituents.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
The Minister for Digital and Culture (Caroline Dinenage)
The Government recognise the importance of international touring for our creative and cultural sectors. The DCMS-led working group on creative and cultural touring, which involves sector representatives and other key Government Departments, is working through the issues to ensure that the sector gets both the clarity and the support that it needs.
Barbara Keeley [V]
Musicians are eager to get back to work when restrictions allow, but for those who would normally tour Europe that will require a mountain of paperwork to be negotiated both for themselves and their instruments. This is increasingly urgent as we approach the lifting of lockdown restrictions, with little time left to negotiate bilateral agreements. Can the Minister confirm that Ministers are talking to their EU counterparts about securing visa waivers to allow our musicians to tour Europe freely when restrictions are lifted?
Caroline Dinenage
The hon. Lady is right: the end of freedom of movement has inevitably had some consequences for touring artists. We want our cultural and creative professionals to be able to work easily across Europe, in the same way that EU creatives are able to work flexibly in the UK, and we are working very closely with the sector to consider all the available options. I have said right from the start that our door will always be open if the EU is willing to reconsider its position, but we are also working with colleagues across Government and members of our working group on our engagement with different member states. I met FCDO colleagues only yesterday once again to discuss this, and we want to ensure that touring can resume as easy as possible for UK artists.
Ruth Cadbury [V]
My constituent George Jackson is a conductor. He has told me that in order to be able to fill last-minute jobs in the EU he would previously have needed just to get on a plane or train and been ready to be with the orchestra the next day, but he says that now he faces expensive and time-consuming paperwork just to achieve the same as before. It seems that the Government have managed to unite artists and creatives across the country in wanting to see the Government sort this out. Even Sir Elton John was urging the Government to fix this mess, so in that spirit can the Minister commit to keeping our creative industries standing rather than letting the sun go down on them?
Caroline Dinenage
I thank the hon. Lady for her question, and we understand the strength of feeling on this. The Secretary of State met Sir Elton John recently as well to discuss the issue. We care passionately about finding a solution to this, which is why we set up the DCMS-led working group on creative and cultural touring. It involves representatives from across the creative and cultural touring sectors and all the key Government Departments that have a handle on this, and we are working through all the issues and all the options to help the sectors resume touring as easily as possible when it is safe to do so, but, as the hon. Lady said, the priority is getting touring performers the information and support they need to tour, and, crucially, working bilaterally to ensure the process is as smooth and seamless as possible when they are able to do so.
Kate Osborne (Jarrow) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Oliver Dowden)
This month’s Budget provided further support to sports, arts, tourism, heritage and creative industries, including an extra £700 million to help cultural and sports venues reopen their doors when restrictions ease, and an extension to our hugely successful film and TV production restart scheme. The Budget also included several measures to put tech and digital connectivity at the heart of our recovery, including half a billion pounds for the Help to Grow scheme, and last week I published our 10 tech priorities for the coming year.
As we move from rescue to recovery, we have announced a number of pilots to help get people back, including at the FA cup final. I met the events research programme again on Tuesday; as a first step, I look forward to the return of grassroots sports on 29 March.
Kate Osborne
As highlighted earlier by the hon. Member for North West Durham (Mr Holden), the FA vase final between Hebburn Town and Consett AFC has been rescheduled to take place behind closed doors at Wembley stadium on 3 May. This is the biggest match in Hebburn Town FC’s history, so I want to add my support on this issue. Will the Secretary of State work with the FA to make the final a pilot event for allowing the safe return of spectators to such sporting events?
Oliver Dowden
I share the hon. Lady’s desire to get sports fans back in stadiums as quickly as we can, as has been highlighted by my colleagues on the Government Benches. We have already set out a road map, and I think it is important to people that we stick to that road map, which would see fans returning socially distanced from 17 May.
We have already set out a pilot for the FA cup final. It is important to understand what these pilots are about. They are about testing fans coming into and out of stadiums; they are not windows to allow extra events to happen. We will of course keep this under review, and if there were a possibility, of course I would grab it.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con) [V]
Oliver Dowden
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend about the need for speed. As he will know, the shared rural network will see the Government and industry jointly investing over £1 billion to increase 4G coverage throughout the UK. On 5G, over 200 towns and cities already have 5G, and our ambition is for the vast majority to have it by 2027. In addition, as my hon. Friend has outlined, building on today’s welcome announcement from Ofcom, I will shortly be providing further details on our plans to make the UK giga-fit.
Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)
Over the last two weeks, we have seen an outpouring of grief over the death of Sarah Everard, and we have read and heard numerous accounts of women made to feel unsafe in their daily lives. The Secretary of State will know that words online often translate into actions offline. Last June, he said at the Dispatch Box that the online harms Bill, which was supposed to follow the White Paper published two years ago next month, would be introduced before the end of this parliamentary Session. We are still waiting. Does he accept that the continuing delay has left women and girls at risk for too long, and does he commit to measures to protect them online when he finally publishes the Bill?
Oliver Dowden
May I begin by welcoming the hon. Lady back to her rightful place in the Chamber? She is absolutely right to highlight the issue of online abuse of women. That is why our internet safety Bill will bring forward measures to help protect women online, including measures to enable them to better report abuse, and will also ensure that they should get appropriate responses from platforms. That could include, for example, the removal of harmful content, sanctions against offending users, or changes to processes and policies to support better protection. This is a real priority. We will bring forward the draft legislation at the beginning of the new parliamentary Session, and by the end of the year the full Bill will be before the House.
Jo Stevens
I thank the Secretary of State for his words. I know that he has a very well-publicised interest in the nation’s heritage, particularly in statues, telling museums and gallery experts how to do their jobs through the policy of “retain and explain”, so perhaps he can explain today what input his Department had into the Government’s legislation this week that provides for longer sentences for hitting statues than those that have been given for raping women.
Oliver Dowden
I really wish that Members in this House would take a more temperate approach towards this. The hon. Lady knows full well that the most serious violent and sexual offences, including grievous bodily harm with intent to rape, already carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. The purpose of what we are introducing in respect of statues is to help protect statues that have tremendous emotional value—for example, the Cenotaph and others—but that may have quite low financial value.
If it is now the Labour party’s position to oppose “retain and explain”—that may be the case; I have heard from the Leader of the Opposition that he thinks that some statues may need to come down—perhaps she could explain which statues she thinks should be removed from this country’s glorious heritage.
Damien Moore (Southport) (Con) [V]
Oliver Dowden
I thank my hon. Friend for his question; I know of his passionate concern about this. The Government have introduced a range of targeted measures to support hospitality and tourism through covid-19, including business rates relief and the new restart support grants, as well as the 5% VAT rate. He will know that his Southport constituency is receiving £37.5 million from the £1 billion towns fund, and that will support the development of new projects there, including a new waterfront conference centre.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD) [V]
Oliver Dowden
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The UK Government have provided over £100 million to deliver broadband in Scotland and it really is deeply disappointing to see that the Scottish Government are still failing to deliver the R100 programme effectively. The Scottish National party, I believe, promised 100% superfast coverage by 2021—yet another broken promise. We have already announced that central Scotland will be the very first part of the UK to benefit from our £5 billion investment in Project Gigabit, and I can tell the hon. Gentleman that there will be a stronger role for the UK Government in delivering this programme going forward.
Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con) [V]
Oliver Dowden
As my hon. Friend will know, we are on a national mission to transform our digital infrastructure, spanning the length and breadth of the UK, and our plans to invest £5 billion in connecting hard-to-reach communities include many rural properties in the RG17 and RG20 postcodes. We will shortly be announcing Project Gigabit, our plan to make the UK giga-fit, and I look forward to updating the House on details.
Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)
Oliver Dowden
I think that an excellent choice has been made in the choice of the new chair of the BBC. He is a person with considerable financial and commercial experience who is deeply committed to the BBC, and it would be better if the hon. Gentleman refrained from making such slurs against him.
Mr Speaker
We now come to questions to the Attorney General, and I congratulate Michael Ellis on his appointment.
Miss Sarah Dines (Derbyshire Dales) (Con)
The Attorney General (Michael Ellis)
Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. The Crown Prosecution Service complex casework units undertake some of the most complex and serious casework handled by the CPS. A recent report published by the Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate has found that CPS complex casework units are staffed by highly dedicated, skilled and professional teams who deliver high-quality casework, often in demanding circumstances and at short notice.
Miss Dines [V]
I thank the Attorney General for his answer. What is the Crown Prosecution Service doing to tackle serious crimes such as drug dealing in my Derbyshire constituency?
The Attorney General
I thank my hon. Friend for that question. The CPS East Midlands complex casework unit recently worked on an operation called Operation Trent, which concerned prosecutions against a criminal gang for drug-related activities during 2017 and 2018. A total of 26 people were convicted, and the two main defendants were sentenced in February this year. They got sentences of 20 years and 19 years, and the majority of the other defendants in that big case received custodial sentences of between 13 years and five years.
Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
I welcome the Attorney General to his place. The recent inspectorate report on complex case units highlighted that CCU heads are often also responsible for rape and serious sexual offence units, despite the report five years ago stating that the expectation was that RASSO units would be staffed with rape specialist prosecutors. Rape prosecution levels are at an all-time low and urgent action is needed, so will the Attorney General back our survivors support plan calling for rape to be a clear named permanent specialism within the CPS?
The Attorney General
I thank the hon. Lady for her question. As she knows, and as we heard from the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition yesterday, we are always willing to discuss these matters and look at these issues. I am pleased that she mentions the CPS complex case units, because the CCUs are effective and efficient, and Her Majesty’s Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate found that they were managing their casework very well. While the report that she alludes to does identify some areas for improvement, that should not detract from the fact that the inspector found that there was an overall high standard of work during his inspection, and the report read very well.
Ellie Reeves
I have heard what the Attorney General has said, but I am not sure that he grasps the scale of the issue. Last year, the police recorded over 55,000 rapes, but there were only 2,100 prosecutions and 1,400 convictions. The Government announced their end-to-end rape review over two years ago and we are still waiting for it, so I ask the Attorney General again: will he make rape a dedicated specialism within the CPS and will he back Labour’s survivors support plan for rape victims—or will he sit back and watch the effective decriminalisation of rape?
The Attorney General
I do not think the emotive language that the hon. Lady uses is appropriate at all, and I have to say that that is not the case. The reality of the matter is that we have said we will always look at any ideas and suggestions. She talks about 55,000 cases, but only about 5,000 of those were actually referred to the Crown Prosecution Service. The CPS works very hard to prosecute and charge all the cases that are referred to it, and the statistics for that have gone up. Now, 65% of all rape cases that are referred to the CPS result in a charge. I suggest that she looks carefully at the CPSI report, which indicates good work in this area, although I very much acknowledge that more needs to be done.
Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con) [V]
I, too, welcome the Attorney General to his place and the Solicitor General in returning to her role as well. I know that the Committee will look forward to constructive engagement with both of them.
The Attorney General will know that there is particular concern about the backlog that exists in complex cases because of the difficulty in finding courtrooms, in the current circumstances, that have the capacity to try multi-handed, lengthy cases, particularly where people are in custody. Most of those are complex matters, and they are likely to grow. What discussions is he having with the Lord Chancellor, and with Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service and the judiciary more broadly, to find means by which capacity can be expanded and cases of this important kind can be brought to trial more swiftly, as much as is practically possible?
The Attorney General
I thank my hon. Friend for that question and for the work he does as Chair of the Select Committee on Justice. I am pleased that the CPS is doing all it can, as it should, along with all the other parts of the criminal justice system, to clear the backlog, which has accumulated, in large part, as a consequence of this pandemic. More staff have been hired by the CPS, thanks to an £85 million cash injection in 2019 from the Government and another £23 million last year from the Government also to support the CPS. However, he is right to highlight this point. I regularly meet people from across the criminal justice system to work on this issue of clearing the backlog as effectively and efficiently as possible.
Kenny MacAskill (East Lothian) (SNP)
The Attorney General (Michael Ellis)
Any request for my advice is subject to the Law Officers’ convention, but I must make it clear that the UK prides itself on its leadership within the international system and that it discharges its international obligations in good faith. I also point out that the Solicitor General, whom I very much welcome to her place, attends the Parliamentary Business and Legislation Committee, which scrutinises all the Government’s legislation before it reaches Parliament.
Kenny MacAskill [V]
All are equal before the eyes of the law, and that includes those coming here seeking asylum. Why then are we using military camps, which are entirely unacceptable at the best of times and most certainly during a pandemic? Rather than seeking to copy Australia and transport asylum seekers abroad, is it not time that this Government accepted that refugees have rights and that the Attorney General took action to ensure that the Government adhered to their responsibilities?
The Attorney General
Frankly, as the Home Office has made quite clear, the UK is a world leader in resettlement, so I do not recognise the point that the hon. Gentleman makes. If one looks at the actual figures, one sees that we have resettled nearly 30,000 people in the past five years, which is more than any other country in Europe. As for the use of former military barracks, if Her Majesty’s armed forces personnel can be housed appropriately in those barracks, there is no reason why anyone else cannot be. We adhere to our international and national obligations. This country is extremely open and generous in these matters. As I have said, we are the most open in Europe in terms of resettlement.
Angela Crawley (Lanark and Hamilton East) (SNP) [V]
Reports in the press this morning indicate that the Home Secretary plans to send asylum seekers coming across the channel offshore, thousands of miles away, to have their claims processed. May I welcome the Attorney General to his place and ask him whether he has been consulted on the legality of these proposals yet? Can he reveal which countries his Government are doing this reprehensible deal with, given that this would be relevant to the legality of the proposals?
The Attorney General
I thank the hon. Lady for her question, but I am afraid that I cannot discuss what advice I give in other Departments and I cannot comment on legislation that the Government have not presented to Parliament. What I can say is this: the Government’s position is that refugees should claim asylum in the first safe country in which they find themselves. That is an international understanding, and European countries through which they have travelled to board boats to the UK, such as France, are of course manifestly safe.
Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)
The Attorney General (Michael Ellis)
The Crown Prosecution Service and the police are working closely throughout the country to protect against the threats of county lines drug dealing and safeguard vulnerable victims in Norfolk. CPS East of England successfully prosecuted 26 cases between November 2019 and September 2020, securing sentences of up to seven years, and specialist training is offered to CPS prosecutors who undertake county lines work and prosecutions. The Government’s serious violence strategy details the range of actions being taken to tackle the impact of county lines.
Duncan Baker [V]
I am grateful to the Attorney General for his response. My local police force in Norfolk has one of the best and most robust responses to tackling county lines drug dealing in the country and has made thousands of arrests to deal with the problem over the years. Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the message is clear: “Come to Norfolk to deal drugs and you will be targeted, arrested and jailed”?
The Attorney General
I commend my hon. Friend for making that point, and he is absolutely right. I thank him for his support for the prosecution of these odious offenders and offences. My hon. Friend clearly recognises, on behalf of his constituents, the challenges of county lines investigations, which can be complicated and onerous. The CPS intends to carry out a review of its ongoing work, including its effectiveness in prosecuting county lines offending this year. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight the work in Norfolk, as I did a moment ago, and I reiterate my thanks for his support.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
The Attorney General (Michael Ellis)
The Crown Prosecution Service continues to work with police and law enforcement agencies to prosecute modern slavery cases. Early engagement among prosecutors and investigators is central to a successful prosecution. When requested, the CPS will provide early investigative advice in such challenging cases to enable robust cases to be built. I should point out that the CPS now charges more than 75% of cases referred to it by the police.
Mr Dhesi
Shockingly, more than 19,000 human trafficking and slavery crimes have been left unsolved since the passing of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, with suspects having faced action in fewer than one in 20 cases. Even though the volume of offences has increased every single year since 2015, under this Conservative Government the prosecution levels for modern slavery charges have fallen abysmally. Will the Attorney General tell us how he intends to reverse this worrying trend, which has happened under this Government’s watch?
The Attorney General
Actually, it was this Conservative Government—under the former Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May)—who passed the Modern Slavery Act. The hon. Gentleman will know that the Government have rightly focused enormous efforts on tackling this problem. The Crown Prosecution Service, for which I have superintendence responsibilities, prosecutes all cases that meet its appropriate guidelines, once the police have referred them to the CPS. All CPS areas have an appointed a modern slavery lead, who is dedicated to this matter and attends regular meetings with their local police force lead to try to work through the issue, secure safeguarding board involvement and review performance data. In other words, there is cross-work among the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and others to secure as many prosecutions and charges for this odious offence as possible.
Bill Esterson [V]
The Government have been buying personal protective equipment from Brightway Holding, a company that is being investigated by the Malaysian Government for engaging in modern slavery. Workers are forced to live in squalid conditions and have to work 12 hours a day for up to 29 days without a rest. I heard what the Attorney General said about his commitment to enforcing the Modern Slavery Act in respect of supply chains in the private sector; will he now confirm that the Government will set an example and eradicate modern slavery, including the appalling example that I just described, from their own procurement practices?
The Attorney General
I do not recognise the point that the hon. Gentleman makes. What he ought to do, if I may respectfully suggest it, is to look at what this Government have done. It is on the record that the Government are achieving those issues that we have been discussing, namely: an increase in available criminal offences; an increase in the means by which to prosecute; and more resources to the police and the Crown Prosecution Service in order to achieve the prosecutions. The Government are highly focused on that. If he wishes to write to me about the contract, we will refer it to the appropriate place.
Saqib Bhatti (Meriden) (Con)
The Solicitor General (Lucy Frazer)
Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.
I know that the Crown Prosecution Service liaised with external stakeholders through the pandemic, because I spoke to the Director of Public Prosecutions in my role as a former Justice Minister. I am aware that the CPS continued to engage proactively with local communities throughout the pandemic. This engagement assists the CPS in improving its policies and practices. For example, feedback from the CPS’s external consultation groups has helped to develop a joined-up criminal justice system approach to domestic abuse cases.
Saqib Bhatti [V]
I welcome the Solicitor General to her new position.
Many of my constituents in Meriden are deeply concerned about recent events and violence against women and girls. Can my hon. and learned Friend please tell me how the CPS is working locally to better understand these issues and to respond to violence against women and girls?
The Solicitor General
My hon. Friend is right to raise this vital and important issue. The CPS works with victims groups through the Violence Against Women and Girls external consultation group and it also regularly engages with people at a local level. Last month, the CPS West Midlands chaired a meeting with independent sexual violence advisers and independent domestic violence advocates to discuss these issues. That forum meets four times a year to discuss casework with victims’ groups and specialist services.
Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)
Stephen Morgan (Portsmouth South) (Lab)
The Attorney General (Michael Ellis)
The need to effectively tackle violence against women and girls has been brought into sharp relief, as the hon. Lady and this House knows, in recent days. I would like to reassure her that this Government take tackling domestic abuse extremely seriously, as shown by the introduction of the landmark Domestic Abuse Bill. The CPS is working hard to deliver justice in this area, working to protect the public, and has recently published an ambitious 12-month domestic abuse programme to help narrow the disparity between reporting and criminal justice outcomes.
Gill Furniss
In 2020, domestic abuse-related crime surged by 9%, but referrals to the CPS fell by 19%. We know that the CPS is under enormous pressure to clear the backlog caused by covid-19. Will the Attorney General commit to provide the necessary resources to ensure that all victims who report domestic abuse crimes receive the justice they deserve as swiftly as possible?
The Attorney General
We will do everything we can to facilitate that. The reality, of course, is that the CPS can only deal with cases that are referred to it. That is an issue that needs to be addressed by the hon. Lady, but, as I have said, the Government have already introduced the Domestic Abuse Bill to Parliament, which is a landmark and generationally important. That is a signal, just one of many signals, of how important we consider this area to be, and the Crown Prosecution Service will continue to focus on it.
Stephen Morgan [V]
We know that domestic abuse complaints have rocketed during lockdown while prosecutions have collapsed. My constituents are concerned about that and are taking action with Charlotte Gerada and Kirsty Mellor, encouraging Portsmouth City Council to commit to the white ribbon pledge. What specific actions is the Attorney General taking to ensure that domestic abuse prosecutions do not follow the disastrous collapse of CPS rape prosecutions that we have seen in recent years?
The Attorney General
I again point out that the number of rape prosecutions by the CPS has increased to 65% of all of those rape cases referred to it. That number is an increase on just under 50% some time ago. None the less, the hon. Gentleman makes a perfectly reasonable point about domestic abuse. The Government are working on this area, as I have alluded to, with the Domestic Abuse Bill. There is also a call for evidence, which will inform our upcoming Violence Against Women and Girls strategy. That call for evidence has recently had tens of thousands of new people emailing and writing in. I encourage anyone listening to take part in that before it closes We will look at those responses very carefully and see what else we can do.
James Grundy (Leigh) (Con)
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)
The Solicitor General (Lucy Frazer)
Notwithstanding the pandemic, the courts have continued to operate and the Crown Prosecution Service has continued to play its part in our justice system. I was very pleased to read the recently published report by Her Majesty’s Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate on the CPS’s response to the court backlogs in the light of covid. The report reflects the CPS’s hard work, and finds that over the pandemic it has maintained its ability to function well, and to continue to deliver its essential public services.
James Grundy [V]
Will my hon. and learned Friend tell me what reassurance I can provide my constituents that the most serious cases are being prioritised, to ensure the protection of the public?
The Solicitor General
Ensuring that perpetrators are brought to justice, and that the public are protected, is a priority of the Attorney General’s Office, of the CPS and of this Government. To achieve that, with the CPS working with the police, we introduced an interim charging protocol last year. The protocol prioritises the most important cases, and I am really pleased that those cases include high harm cases and those with vulnerable victims, such as rape and domestic abuse.
Lee Anderson [V]
How can I reassure the people of Ashfield and Eastwood that victims of violence against women and girls will continue to receive justice in spite of delays caused by the backlog?
The Solicitor General
As I have mentioned, I share my hon. Friend’s view that it is vital that we continue to speedily prosecute those accused of violence against women and girls. I know that the Prime Minister shares that as a priority for our Government. We have put in place a number of measures to reduce the impact of delays on victims. Those include special measures allowing vulnerable victims and witnesses to pre-record their cross-examination ahead of the trial date, which were rolled out at all 82 of our Crown Courts by last November. That is just one of the measures we have taken to ensure the continued better operation of the system for our most vulnerable victims.
Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab) [V]
Court staff in London and Liverpool recently voted for strike action, and listening to evidence from the Public and Commercial Services Union to the Justice Committee this week it is easy to understand why, when PCS members are having to improvise their own perspex screens to protect themselves from covid after managers said it was unaffordable. Does the Solicitor General appreciate how this cavalier approach to health and safety by management has left court staff scared, angry and prepared to take strike action?
The Solicitor General
I appreciate the amazing work that everyone in our justice system is doing on the frontline. As a former Prisons Minister, I recognise what prison officers are doing and I know that HMCTS has done a tremendous amount of work to make our courts safe. I pay tribute to all the work of court staff who are going in and allowing our justice system to continue. HMCTS has put in a number of measures, and my understanding is that it is no less safe to be working in a court than in any other environment.
Simon Baynes (Clwyd South) (Con)
The Attorney General (Michael Ellis)
It is essential, particularly during this pandemic, to ensure that members of the public have a good understanding of the law. I am proud, therefore, that my Department supported Justice Week, which took place in the first week of March, and I am incredibly grateful to the many members of the legal sector who ran and contributed to online initiatives during that week. It makes me proud to be one of the Government’s pro bono champions.
Simon Baynes [V]
As coronavirus restrictions are relaxed, are there practical ways in which my right hon. and learned Friend can help reduce the confusion between Welsh and English covid laws for my constituents in Clwyd South, on the border with England?
The Attorney General
It is important, of course, that everyone around this United Kingdom, and especially my hon. Friend’s constituents in Clwyd South, understands and follows the law and guidance as regards the covid-19 regulations to keep the country safe. Through the information that is available on the gov.uk website, and the Government’s advertising and announcements, the law in England has been made clear to the public. It is really important that the devolved Administration in Wales make their laws and guidance clear to people in Wales. The Government continue to seek a co-ordinated approach across the UK where appropriate.
Mr Speaker
I am now suspending the House to enable the necessary arrangements for the start of the next business.
Business of the House
(3 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
Will the Leader of the House please give us the forthcoming business?
The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg)
The business for the week commencing 22 March will include:
Monday 22 March—Consideration of Lords message relating to the Trade Bill, followed by consideration of Lords message relating to the Fire Safety Bill, followed by consideration of Lords amendments to the Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill, followed by remaining stages of the Air Traffic Management and Unmanned Aircraft Bill [Lords], followed by a motion relating to the membership of the Parliamentary Works Sponsor Body, followed by a motion relating to the appointment of the chair of the Electoral Commission.
Tuesday 23 March—Second Reading of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill.
Wednesday 24 March—General debate on online anonymity and anonymous abuse, followed by general debate on support for the hospitality industry throughout the covid-19 pandemic. The subjects for these debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee.
Thursday 25 March—Motion to approve regulations relating to public health and motions under the Coronavirus Act 2020 relating to the renewal of temporary provisions, the one year status report and a motion relating to the extension of parliamentary proceedings during the pandemic.
At the conclusion of business on Thursday 25 March the House will rise for the Easter recess and return on Tuesday 13 April.
The provisional business for the week commencing 12 April will include:
Monday 12 April—The House will not be sitting.
Tuesday 13 April—Second Reading of the Finance (No. 2) Bill.
Valerie Vaz
I thank the Leader of the House for the business.
On Monday, it will be the fourth anniversary of the death of PC Keith Palmer. Mr Speaker, I know that you will arrange for the flags to fly at half-mast.
There are various dates knocking around regarding the possible date of the Queen’s Speech. I do not know why the Leader of the House does not just come out and say it. Perhaps I can suggest a date—something like 11 May.
I note that the Leader of the House has arranged for the extension of the Coronavirus Act 2020. Could he be clear about exactly how long that debate will be? The other place is debating it for five hours. There was some query, Mr Speaker, about whether we could extend the time of the debate, and you told the Health Secretary that it could be longer than 90 minutes, so I hope that the Leader of the House will confirm that.
The motion is interesting. Will the Leader of the House tell us whether it is amendable? The shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth), has suggested that there are some aspects of the Act that do not need to be renewed because they have not been used. For example, emergency powers to register nurses and social workers—not used; powers for the Home Secretary to vary the time for urgent warrants—not used; suspension of the requirement to hold inquests with a jury—not used. Can there be a chat about that after the statement later? We would be treating right hon. and hon. Members, and this House, with disrespect if we did not have a long opportunity to debate that motion.
It would be a pity to rush through it, especially because I know that the Leader of the House will join me in condemning the description of the Department of Health as a “smoking ruin” by the special special adviser who got a pay rise greater than the NHS nurses, who actually got a pay cut. That is a disgraceful thing to say about people who have worked extremely hard—flat out—during the pandemic. We know that the Government are finding it difficult to answer our questions, which is why we need an inquiry for those who have been bereaved by this terrible pandemic. The Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), have both met the bereaved. I do not know whether the Prime Minister has met the bereaved families. That is why we need an inquiry. If we are going to open up after 21 June, we need to know the lessons learned. Inquiries are very simple to set up now. I am pleased that the Council of Europe is reopening the inquiry into the Pat Finucane case; that will be important so that his family, including the hon. Member for Belfast North (John Finucane), can find the truth.
The Leader of the House will know that the Procedure Committee has been extremely assiduous and published its eighth report of this Session. I thank the Chair and all members of the Committee, some of whom do lots of different jobs at the same time. The Committee has called for all the temporary orders to be extended until 21 June. Will the Leader of the House tell us whether he agrees with that? There is a bizarre sentence at paragraph 26 that I do not understand, in which the Committee recommends that the House
“reverts to all aspects of its pre-pandemic practice and procedure.”
I am not sure when, or what exactly that means. Will the Leader of the House clarify the Government’s position on that?
The Prime Minister promised the fishermen an El Dorado. I wonder whether he knows that that is a mythical city. Perhaps he was talking about the bit where they covered themselves in gold. Either way, tell that to the Jersey fishermen who blockaded the port in protest; they are desperate. It is more desperado than El Dorado. The Office for National Statistics says that there was a drop of 83% in fish exports in January, and that UK goods exported to the EU have fallen by 40% and imports by 28%. These are not covid-related falls, because there are no similar shifts in non-EU countries. We need a statement from the Secretary of State for International Trade, and we need her to publish the impact assessment on the EU trade deal, as the shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), has called for. The Secretary of State is publishing all the minor deals, but not the main one.
We also need the Foreign Secretary to come to the Chamber to explain why his private comments are different from his public comments. It appears that the Government are allegedly pursuing an unethical foreign policy. He wants to do deals with countries that do not care about their people—for example, Myanmar. I am sure that the Leader of the House will have been shocked by the image of a nun standing in front of the army there, pleading with them not to shoot at the protesters; 90 people have died. There is no point just having sanctions against a few generals. We want them against all the generals. I do not know whether the Leader of the House has seen pictures of the Myanmar Parliament, but members sit there in a block, unaccountable—sometimes not even moving.
How we cheered when the tags came off Nazanin. But it is a farce that she had to go back to court again. And there is nothing about Anousheh and the other innocent people.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) has asked me to raise the case of Luke Symons. His parents and his granddad Bob want to know what is going on. We need to indulge in more diplomacy, and we have an ally in the President of the United States.
Finally, Sunday is international day for the elimination of racial discrimination. It is also World Poetry Day, but that is not an invitation to the Leader of the House to respond to me in verse.
Mr Rees-Mogg
Mr Speaker, my verse gets worse and worse.
I thank the right hon. Lady for reminding us that it is the fourth anniversary of the death of PC Palmer, who died in the service of the House. We keep his soul and his family in our prayers. He is a model of public service, of courage and of the type of policing of which this country is so fortunate, in the general rule of things, to be a real example—of police who are of their community and for their community, and who, unarmed, face unknown risks. We continue to mourn and commemorate him.
The right hon. Lady asks when the new Parliament will be. That will, of course, be announced in the normal course of events, as she knows perfectly well. It is one of those things that she has to ask me and I have to give the same answer every week, and we will no doubt carry on doing that for some time. [Interruption.] There is a little bit of electronic interference coming in—I do not know where that is coming from.
The debate on Thursday the 25th will be an all-day debate. Obviously, that will be subject to statements and urgent questions, but other than that we will be debating this very important issue throughout the whole day. It is obviously right, as the right hon. Lady says, that it should be properly debated. The reason why it is important to extend the Coronavirus Act 2020 is that the furlough scheme will be going on for the whole of the six months. The basis for the furlough scheme is the Coronavirus Act, which provides for only six-month extensions, but that is something that it will be doing throughout that period. As other things wax and wane, the Government have already announced that one thing will continue during that period, so the Act is needed.
May I put in a word in defence of Dominic Cummings? He is an excellent public servant who has done a great deal for this country, and he worked with a pay cut when he was first appointed. He took £40,000 less than he was entitled to, and then his pay reverted to its normal level. I am not sure that many other people working in the public sector take that level of pay cut, and I think that shows his commitment to the public service. He did a great deal for this country, not least through his energetic and effective campaigning in the Brexit referendum, but also in providing energy for Her Majesty’s Government. He is an important figure. His evidence was interesting, though it was not evidence that one agrees with in its entirety. I think my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has done an absolutely fantastic job over the past year and is an example of how politicians ought to behave and, perhaps most importantly, to lead Departments.
As for an inquiry, as has been said by Professor Van-Tam, the time for that will be when the pandemic has ended. The worst thing to do now would be to interrupt the enormous amount of work being done in dealing with the pandemic by having an inquiry, but of course it will be looked into in due course.
Her Majesty’s Government will reply to the Procedure Committee in accordance with the Osmotherly rules, which, as is well known, is how replies are made. As I have said before on the Floor of the House, when we asked people to give consensus, to accept, that we had to have these extraordinary measures, it was on the basis that they were temporary. If it were to be the will of the House to adopt some things permanently, it may wish to do so, but we must go back to normal first and then decide what we wish to implement. Otherwise, we would have got the consensus by cheat, and I am not in favour of cheating.
As regards support for fishermen, there has been a £23 million exceptional fund provided immediately and £100 million for them to improve their fleets over coming years, so there is support for fishermen. Maintaining more access to our own waters is going to be a benefit, though I do not think I ever called it an Eldorado; I am not sure that that is a phrase I have used.
The Foreign Secretary’s comments were shockingly distorted by low-quality journalism. It is a cheat that journalists sometimes use of editing text or a recording. It was done to Roger Scruton by the New Statesman, and it has now been done to the Foreign Secretary. It is a very cheap level of journalism, and it is not a proper way to behave. He was absolutely clear that there are behaviours that mean we cannot trade with people—he said that—if only people had bothered not to clip the recording unfairly, improperly and, broadly, dishonestly. We should look at that type of poor-quality online journalism. It is not the sort of thing that would happen in The Times.
I have so much sympathy with what the right hon. Lady says every week about Nazanin, Anousheh and Luke Symons. They are being worked for by the Foreign Office in ways that it can; Luke Symons’s case is particularly difficult, obviously. The Prime Minister spoke to the President of Iran recently about Nazanin. There is no excuse for the Iranian Government holding her. She ought to be released. These trumped-up charges are improper and wrong, and they reflect on a regime that does not acknowledge the rule of law. We should make it clear that the fault lies with the Iranian Government, not with Her Majesty’s Government.
Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con) [V]
I look forward to receiving my right hon. Friend’s response to my Committee’s report. Mr Speaker, I am sure that you have many constituents, as I do, who are looking forward to being able to get married. The news in the road map that they can get married from 12 April has brought joy to so many, but due to what I would describe as an anomaly in the guidelines, it appears that they could legally get married from 12 April in a gymnasium, a hairdresser or even walking down the aisle of a supermarket, but not in a dedicated wedding venue. Will my right hon. Friend find time for a debate on the important role that the wedding sector plays and how it has been devastated by covid, and will he use his good offices to encourage his ministerial colleagues to deal with this anomaly as soon as possible?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for her question, which she raised in a point of order yesterday. I have the greatest sympathy for wedding organisers, including those in my constituency. It has been an incredibly difficult time for them—more difficult than for many other forms of business. However, the Government’s road map set out that at step 2, weddings, receptions and commemorative events will be able to take place with up to 15 guests in premises that are allowed to open—that is the clear point: premises that are allowed to open. This means that at step 2, no earlier than 12 April, weddings may take place in premises that are permitted to open or where a broader exemption applies, such as places of worship or hotel function suites. Wedding receptions can take place outdoors only, and there has been no change in that plan. The Paymaster General has committed to ensure that any further clarity that Public Health England can provide on this matter is put on the parliamentary intranet covid hub for all Members to see, and it may be debated on 25 March in accordance with all the other regulations, so I hope that my right hon Friend will raise it then.
Owen Thompson (Midlothian) (SNP)
My hon. Friend the Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) again sends his apologies and hopes to be able to resume his duties in this place as soon as possible.
I welcome the Prime Minister’s comments yesterday on the urgent need to address everyday racism. I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a voluntary trustee of White Ribbon Scotland. Does the Leader of the House agree that groups such as White Ribbon, which are directly addressing men’s attitudes to women and men’s violence against women, could make a massive difference in tackling those issues? Will he arrange for Government time in which we can further consider that topic and the role that groups such as White Ribbon can play in moving us forward?
I welcomed the news last week that music streaming service Spotify now includes Scots on its list of languages. I have tabled early-day motion 1592.
[That this House welcomes Spotify’s lang-owerdue deceesion tae add Scots as yin o its kent leids (welcomes Spotify’s long-overdue decision to add Scots as one of its recognised languages); congratulates singer Iona Fyfe for leading the public campaign for that music giant to make that change; recognises that Scots is one of Scotland’s three traditional national languages alongside English and Gaelic, with more than 1.5 million speakers and official recognition under the European Charter for Minority Languages; asserts that recognising a language’s existence on large platforms such as Spotify is the first step towards acceptance and empowerment of its speakers; and thanks all those working to lift up the Scots language as well as welcoming Government efforts to promote and protect that language.]
I attempted to table it in Scots, but the rules of this place did not allow that. I thank those in the Table Office for their engagement on that matter and the way in which it was dealt with. Yesterday the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) attempted to wish everyone a very happy St Patrick’s Day in both Welsh and Irish, but understandably that is not allowed. Might the Leader of the House have some time arranged so that we could consider how the indigenous languages of these islands could perhaps be more incorporated into the business that we undertake so that we can all best reflect all the communities that we represent?
In recent weeks, I have, on a number of occasions, raised concerns around and highlighted issues of transparency and contracts. I have also highlighted my Ministerial Interests (Emergency Powers) Bill, to give that another plug. I was certainly reassured by the comments by the Leader of the House in saying that he is taking this very seriously. I have no doubt whatsoever that he is committed to cutting and tackling corruption. I was, however, slightly surprised to see that others in Government seem to have taken his comments on cutting corruption quite literally by cutting funding to tackle corruption internationally. This is going in the opposite direction that we need to be going in. Could we have a debate in Government time to consider the global impact of these actions and the damage that they could cause to our democracy as a result?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I am very grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s questions, which are particularly thoughtful. I think I can wish him a happy birthday for earlier this week. It seems that there is a flood of birthdays on the SNP Benches, with the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) being a birthday celebrant the week before.
On the corruption issue, my previous career was in emerging markets investment, and it was quite clear that the countries that do best and prosper most are those that are the least corrupt. Rooting out corruption is in the interests of all countries. It should always be at the forefront of their minds if they want to succeed and raise the standard of living of their people. This country has a proud record of avoiding corruption. It is absolutely fascinating how, in the 18th century, we were still quite a corrupt country, but by the middle of the 19th century we had set a standard for honesty that has remained ever since. We should be proud of that. I think it is very easy to defend the procurement that has gone on because it was urgent and it was fairly done. Contracts were awarded, broadly, so that we went from 1% of PPE being produced domestically to 70%, as well as the phenomenal success of the vaccine roll-out. Governments have to be fleet of foot, and bureaucracy is not always the antidote to corruption. Indeed, bureaucracy itself can sometimes be the cause of corruption.
I share the hon. Gentleman’s pleasure that Spotify is recognising the Scots language. In terms of what is orderly in this Chamber, I would be very diffident about treading on your distinguished toes, Mr Speaker, except to remind people, which I do not think is treading on your toes, that modest quotation in foreign languages is permissible. I know that some hon. and right hon. Members occasionally use Latin quips, and that is perfectly allowable, as are Welsh quips and Scots quotations, but not full speeches. I think that is reasonable, because we do not have the facilities for simultaneous translation in this House, and their cost would probably be disproportionate. It is very welcome when people give a joyful message in Scots, in Welsh or in Irish, but it would be difficult for the House to have full speeches.
I echo the hon. Gentleman’s congratulations to voluntary groups that help to change and improve attitudes, whether that is against everyday racism or against behaviour towards women that is damaging and unhelpful to society. I so agree with what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said—that we need cultural change. That is what we are doing in this place with the work of the independent complaints and grievance scheme. But ultimately it is not going to be about enforcement or rules, although they have their place, but about getting people to understand that the right form of behaviour may be different from what they have grown up to believe. It is about changing attitudes much more than punishing people.
Mr Speaker
I did feel my toes a little stood on, I must admit; I felt the trampling of the Leader of the House. A quip is one thing, but starting off in one language and switching to another language in a question, not knowing when it will end, does give the Chair a problem. If the Chair had been notified, it would not have been a difficulty; it was the fact that we had two languages before we knew how the full question was going to continue. So I think there is a difference between a quip and a question being asked.
Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con) [V]
If it is acceptable, I shall ask my question in English. May I ask the Leader of the House where he has got to on my recent request for a debate in Parliament on the disastrous Operation Midland? And I do know that he will be disappointed that I am not asking him about when the city status competition will be launched and Southend can at last become a city. Perhaps we will leave that to another occasion.
Mr Rees-Mogg
I think it should be policy in this House that every question makes a reference to Southend being made a city, so that the report that is sent daily to the Palace can include this for Her Majesty’s consideration, should our sovereign wish to issue the relevant letters patent.
As regards Operation Midland, as I said to my hon. Friend before, I think an Adjournment debate or a Backbench business debate would be a sensible thing to apply for, akthough we all recoil at the treatment of Lord Brittan and of his widow later on—of a dying man and of a grieving widow. This treatment was appalling and we do expect that people are held to account when they behave badly. This House is here to receive redress of grievance when things go wrong.
Mr Speaker
Let us go to the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee, Ian Mearns.
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab) [V]
I am very grateful, Mr Speaker, and I take it a Geordie accent is acceptable. Can I thank the Leader of the House for the business statement and for announcing the Backbench business for next Wednesday? I was wondering if he could give us an insight into the Government’s plans for the continuation of Westminster Hall-style proceedings beyond the Easter recess, as the Committee next week would like to nominate debate subject topics for immediately after the Easter recess and the sponsors of those potential debates will want to know, in a timely way, too.
Mr Speaker, you will be too young to remember this, but 48 years ago, in response to dreadful Dutch elm disease, we were all encouraged to “Plant a Tree in ’73”. Do the Government have any significant plans to commemorate that campaign 50 years on with an additional national campaign for all of us to engage in to help to tackle climate change and plant a tree or trees in 2023?
Mr Rees-Mogg
The plans for Westminster Hall will be brought forward in the motion for our general proceedings and will extend the current proceedings to 21 June. That is the current expectation. As for planting trees, Her Majesty’s Government have enormously ambitious plans for thousands and thousands of acres to be planted with trees. I think we can all involve ourselves in that by planting trees as well and encouraging others to plant trees. It can be a truly national effort.
Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con) [V]
Merci à vous, Monsieur Speaker. I am sure my right hon. Friend would agree with me that we have all spent far too much time away from the Palace this year, so will he please update us on the restoration and renewal programme to secure the future of this extraordinary building, but also on tackling the questions around fire safety of the building?
Mr Rees-Mogg
My hon. Friend raises a key question. The strategic review has taken place, but the fire safety work has been a real achievement of the existing Palace authorities. I have some fantastic figures for the House about what has been done to ensure that the risk to life is minimised and the protection of the building is maximised: 7,112 automatic fire detection devices have been put in; 5,949 emergency lights have been put in—one of them outside the Chief Whip’s office, so when he comes out and you see a halo, that is because of our fire safety lights; 3,329 voice alarm sounders; 1,869 new fire safety signs; 1,364 locations for fire-stopping compartmentation; 4,126 sprinkler heads in the basement of the Palace and, amazingly, eight miles of pipe for a new sprinkler system in the basement. I am really reassured by this that the safety of this Palace is so much greater even before R and R has started. When R and R is happening, this is crucial because the highest risk of fire is very often when builders are renovating premises.
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab) [V]
Despite the heroic efforts of schools and their staff, children and young people have had to adapt to enormous change and challenge over the last year, often chopping and changing circumstances with little notice or preparation, and I truly believe that we underestimate the impact on their short and long-term mental wellbeing at our peril. Today’s National Audit Office report on the Department for Education’s covid response reads like a litany of failure, with no plan for our children or their education in place until June. The Government now have plans for pupils to get up to speed with their studies, but can I urge the Government to show more ambition in stemming the damage this last year may have caused to our children’s wellbeing? Given that we know the effect of wellbeing on performance at school, the two must go hand in hand. Can we therefore have a debate in Government time on how we make children’s wellbeing a fundamental part of the recovery?
Mr Rees-Mogg
The Government’s record on schooling is actually extremely good. There is a £1.7 billion covid catch-up fund for enhanced support and targeted tutoring, and Sir Kevan Collins has been appointed the education recovery commissioner to oversee our long-term plans to ensure pupils can make up any lost learning over the course of this Parliament. Schools have been a priority during the whole of the pandemic to keep them open as much as possible, because the Government recognise the importance of education. Getting back to normal and helping pupils get back to normal—providing additional funding and distributing many hundreds of thousands of computers to schoolchildren, plus the 57 million lateral flow test kits that have been delivered to schools and colleges as part of ensuring schools are really safe now—has been fundamentally important.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
Workers at the LIBERTY steel company are really afraid for their jobs; 5,000 staff and others in the supply chain across the country need help. Can we please have a statement from the Business Secretary outlining what action the Government are taking to support these hard-working families and, after contact with the company and the trade unions, to stand behind the refinancing of the business? The Government accept this is a strategic industry that is crucial for our future growth. Parliament and my constituents at the LIBERTY plant in Tredegar need to hear exactly what the Government’s plans are.
Mr Rees-Mogg
The hon. Gentleman raises a very important point and I think everyone shares his concern for people working in the steel industry, but particularly in the Trinity Steel plant. The Government are following these developments extremely closely and are going to remain involved in looking at what is happening. The Secretary of State co-chaired the UK Steel Council on 5 March and met interested MPs on 15 March to have an update on developments. My noble Friend Lord Grimstone also met the sector and co-chaired the steel procurement taskforce on 12 March. I will take up the hon. Gentleman’s question with the Secretary of State so that he is informed of the concern within the House. The Government have helped the steel industry with the £500 million in relief for the steel sector since 2013 in relation to electricity costs, but this is an important issue and I understand the hon. Gentleman’s desire for further information.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con) [V]
I was first elected as a councillor to the County Borough of Southend-on-Sea, so I am glad to hear that it is moving towards becoming a city. I am also delighted—I give the Government great credit for this—that the Government are pushing ahead with the elections on 6 May, when we are going to have local elections, police and crime commissioner elections and now a parliamentary election, and are allowing campaigning to be carried out during the period up to those elections. That is the cornerstone of our democracy and the Government should be credited. However, the regulator of those elections is the Electoral Commission, which is inefficient, arrogant and politically corrupt. It is not fit for purpose, so could we have a debate in Government time about a new regulator that would be acceptable to people of all political persuasions?
Mr Rees-Mogg
Serious concerns have been raised about the Electoral Commission, not least by my hon. Friend and, as he knows, I was very concerned about some of the points he raised when this was last debated on the Floor of the House. With a modicum of ingenuity and with a benign Speaker or Deputy in the Chair, there is a debate on Monday on a motion relating to the appointment of the chairman of the Electoral Commission, which being a motion under an Act lasts for up to 90 minutes, where I think my hon. Friend may be able to say a few words of this kind. I have a feeling that I may be responding to that debate, so I may well say a few words in response.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD) [V]
Following the Home Secretary’s announcement that the elections for Mayors and police and crime commissioners will return to being first past the post, will the Government publish the assessments of which political party will benefit and any correspondence they received from Mayors and PCCs, to demonstrate to the public that this is not just about party politics, but properly leads to better democracy and more accountability?
Mr Rees-Mogg
Everyone knows that first past the post is better for democracy because the most popular candidate wins, rather than the one that nobody much likes but cannot be too bothered about. Dare I say that it is the party that is so good at losing elections that most wants to change the system.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con) [V]
This House has legislated to spend 0.7% of our GDP to support the world’s poorest. The Leader of the House is a great parliamentarian, so does he agree that any change can be made only once there has been a vote in this House? Will he indicate when such a vote might take place?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for this question. I participated in the passage of that piece of legislation, which sets out very clearly what happens in the event of the 0.7% target not being met; it requires the Secretary of State to make a statement to the House. That is the proper parliamentary procedure and it has been laid down in statute, and that is what will happen on occasions when the 0.7% target is not met. That is quite proper, but it does not require any vote beyond that. None the less, even at a slightly lower level, the UK will remain a world-leading donor, spending more than £10 billion of taxpayers’ money on overseas development aid this year.
Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab) [V]
Later this year, England will be hosting the rugby league world cup, including the first ever physical disability rugby league world cup, in Warrington. Can the Leader of the House arrange for a debate, in Government time, on the rugby league world cup, including its social, community and tourism benefits, to allow us to give this much-loved sport the support we can to ensure the success of the event after a really difficult year?
Mr Rees-Mogg
Mr Speaker, you have given me a very clear steer on how I should answer the question. Just in case our eagle-eared friends from Hansard did not pick it up, Mr Speaker said, “Nothing more important.” Having trodden on his toes earlier, I now need to untread on his toes by saying that Mr Speaker is absolutely right, as is the hon. Lady. I cannot promise a debate in Government time, but a great event is going to be taking place, she is right to highlight the disability angle as well and we should do everything we can to promote it. As I have said before, I follow cricket more closely, but she has even encouraged me to make sure that I watch some rugby when this world cup is taking place.
Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con) [V]
Many of my constituents who currently find themselves in unsaleable flats owing to fire safety concerns would like to let their properties so that they can purchase a second, larger property, suitable for a family, but they are anxious about doing so in case their fire safety issue cannot be resolved within three years and they are not able to reclaim the additional home stamp duty surcharge. Can we have a statement from the Chancellor of the Exchequer on whether Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs will consider such circumstances as exceptional and extend the three-year time frame in which additional home stamp duty surcharge can be reclaimed if the purchaser can demonstrate that they cannot sell their first property owing to issues with cladding and fire safety defects? As the Chancellor will be aware, such circumstances are outside the control of hundreds of thousands of leaseholders, not only in the Hendon constituency, but across the country, due to no fault of their own?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I can broadly answer my hon. Friend’s question. If, because of exceptional circumstances beyond the person’s control, they are unable to sell their previous home within three years of buying their new one, a refund of the higher rates on additional dwellings can also be claimed, as long as the property is sold as soon as possible after those exceptional circumstances have ended. Where a person is not permitted to sell their property and, as a result, misses the three-year period, that would be considered to be an exceptional circumstance, and this may include properties that are not allowed to be sold owing to fire safety issues. HMRC will consider each individual case on its own merits but, obviously, there will be a broad category that my hon. Friend points to and therefore I think there is some comfort for him in HMRC’s position.
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
Rape prosecutions are at their lowest ever recorded level, while only one in seven victims has any faith in the criminal justice system. I am going on Government figures, not figures from anywhere else. Given that, may we have a debate in Government time on rape and the criminal justice system?
Mr Rees-Mogg
The hon. Gentleman raises an extraordinarily difficult point that has troubled many Governments for many years. The cornerstone of our justice system is that somebody is innocent until proved guilty, and that must always remain the case, but we have to ensure that accusations of rape are investigated thoroughly and prosecutions are brought effectively and efficiently. That must be a priority for the prosecution services and, indeed, for the police.
Matt Vickers (Stockton South) (Con)
My local council is Labour-led, and it is using places in my constituency such as Yarm, Kirklevington, Eaglescliffe and Hartburn as cash cows, packing, stacking and racking hundreds of homes in our precious green spaces along already heavily congested roads, with little care for the impact on local people’s lives and while failing to develop brownfield sites. Will my right hon. Friend grant me a debate on irresponsible development on greenfield sites?
Mr Rees-Mogg
The incompetence of socialist councils knows no bounds. Their inability to run things properly or to have a concern for residents is legion, and we must try to defeat them at the ballot box so that we can have good Conservative councils that do things properly. None the less, there is a need for houses to be built, and it is an essential priority for this Government. We need to ensure that young people are able to get on the housing ladder, and we can do that only with a good supply of housing. Where it is put is primarily a matter for local councils, and local councils are subject, of course, to local electorates, so I would encourage local electorates to vote Conservative.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab) [V]
It is absolutely right that, as we emerge from this pandemic, we need to learn lessons. In particular, we need to understand the reasons for the UK’s “high and unequal” covid death toll, as described by Professor Sir Michael Marmot. I sense that, in responding to the point that my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) made on this issue, the Leader of the House was wanting to kick it into the long grass. An inquiry may not be in the interests of the Government, but it is most certainly in the interests of the country, so will he schedule, in Government time, a debate to help define the scope of an independent public inquiry into this pandemic?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I completely understand why the hon. Lady raises that point. It is an extremely fair one. It is not trying to run away from looking into what has happened, and indeed Select Committees of this House are completely entitled to be carrying out inquiries now, but it is sensible to use people’s time most effectively. The pandemic is still going on—the vaccine roll-out is still going on; Test and Trace is still a most enormous scheme being rolled out as we speak—and I think carrying out the inquiry in the midst of the pandemic would be a mistake. That is not an effort to delay; it is merely an effort to be realistic.
Scott Benton (Blackpool South) (Con)
In 2019, Stanley Park was voted the best park in the UK, being described as a
“beautiful, tranquil place away from the hustle and bustle of the Blackpool seafront”.
During the pandemic, we have learned how important open outdoor space is, not just for social distancing but for health and wellbeing. Despite this, my local authority is looking to build on Stanley Park, reducing the already limited green space in Blackpool by around 20%. Will my right hon. Friend look to hold a debate in Government time to discuss the importance of parks in towns and cities and how they can best be protected?
Mr Rees-Mogg
My hon. Friend is right to praise the value of parks and open spaces. Who was it who called the parks—our great royal parks—the “lungs of London”? Was it Pitt the Elder? It may have been; I cannot remember. It is a pity that the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) is not here, because he would be bound to know.
We have seen during the covid-19 pandemic how important access to parks and green spaces is to local communities. Green spaces help health, wellbeing, integration and social engagement. As I understand it, Stanley Park is itself listed and is one of England’s parks of special historic interest, owing to its art deco design. It is important that local authorities build new developments with the consent of local residents and that they build beautifully. That should be a real theme. It always strikes me that, under current planning rules, it is most unlikely that the Royal Crescent at Bath would be built. We have an obsession with building things that are not beautiful. We want to build things that are beautiful, and then, where they are located will become a matter of pride rather than of disappointment. However, as I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers), we cannot forget that new housing must be built.
Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP) [V]
Betting firm Football Index is now in administration, with its licence suspended by the Gambling Commission amid reports that the firm operated like a pyramid scheme and had been admonished by the Advertising Standards Authority in 2019 for creating the impression that the product was a lucrative investment opportunity. Clearly, concerns over how Football Index was raising money have been ongoing, and this has raised serious questions about how fit for purpose the Gambling Commission is, having licensed the platform. Will the Leader of the House make a statement on what can be learned from this episode and what more can be done to ensure that regulation of the betting industry is fit for purpose to protect consumers who collectively have £98 million trapped in Football Index, and will he support a public inquiry into this scandal?
Mr Rees-Mogg
The hon. Lady raises a matter of concern across the House, as is gambling more generally and the right approach to regulating gambling. I suggest that she raise this with the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, which would be able to look into it, and I, in turn, will raise it with the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and get her a fuller answer because it is a matter of concern across the House.
Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con) [V]
I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. As chairman of the all-party group on cats, may I ask my right hon. Friend whether we can have a debate in Government time to look into the encouragement of pet-friendly tenancies?
Mr Rees-Mogg
Mr Speaker, I am glad to say that those who occupy premises on the parliamentary estate are allowed to keep pets—they are allowed to keep parrots, dogs, cats and tortoises, I believe.
Mr Rees-Mogg
Indeed, allegedly, some people even keep tarantulas, though I do not believe that that particular right hon. Friend of mine is resident or has been resident in the House. Pets play a very important role in people’s lives and create great happiness. As has often been said in politics, “If you want to have a friend, buy a dog”, though I am sure that is not true for many right hon. and hon. Members. The Minister for Housing revised the national model tenancy agreement this January, making it easier for tenants with pets to find private landlords who will accept them. The key change was to remove restrictions on responsible tenants with pets, encouraging landlords to offer greater flexibility in their approach to pet ownership. A private landlord ought to accept a request from a tenant to keep pets where the landlord is satisfied that the tenant is a responsible pet owner and when the pet is suitable in relation to the nature of the premises at which it will be kept. This aims to strike the right balance between protecting private landlords from situations where their properties are damaged by badly behaved pets while ensuring that responsible pet-owning tenants are not unfairly penalised. I hope that helps my hon. Friend.
Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab) [V]
Parliament needs to really do its job and take stock of the coronavirus legislation. Many will be surprised to learn that only 17 of the 398 statutory instruments made were under the Coronavirus Act 2020. It is estimated that Parliament needs at least two full days to scrutinise the Act. Will the Leader of the House please respect parliamentary scrutiny and ensure that Parliament has at least two full days to scrutinise it?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I think that there has been a great deal of scrutiny in this House throughout the pandemic. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has made very frequent statements, and he is making another one shortly after I have finished today. We will allow a full day for the debate on Thursday, rather than the hour and a half that is the requirement for SIs under a Bill. So I think the amount of scrutiny that is being allowed is reasonable and that it will allow people to participate fully and raise all the points that they need to raise.
Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)
On 2 June 2018, a 17-year-old boy called Tavis Spencer-Aitkens was brutally murdered in my constituency. In April 2019, five people were sentenced: four for murder and one for manslaughter. Since then, every single one of them has posted on social media from behind bars, and a couple of them more than once. One of the quotes from one was:
“Five years left, light work”.
This has caused immense distress to the family and friends of Tavis. It is clear that the current in-house, slap-on-the-wrist approach is not providing a significant enough deterrent. We need to look at changing sentencing and eliminating any possibility of early release. Would my right hon Friend consider a debate in Government time on this vital issue?
Mr Rees-Mogg
What my hon. Friend reports is deeply troubling and so horribly sad for Tavis’s family. It must just so much rub salt into the wound. The Government take unauthorised communication through social media and its impact on victims and families seriously. Reducing crime in prisons remains a key priority. Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service works closely with law enforcement agencies, so that crimes committed in prison are dealt with effectively.
We continue to roll out our £100 million spending programme on prisons and security during the covid-19 pandemic. That is funding mobile phone blocking technologies and portable detection equipment. We have also spent taxpayers’ money on next-generation X-ray body scanners to find contraband internally concealed by prisoners, and enhanced routine searching capability of staff and visitors at priority sites. In 2019, Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service’s digital media investigations unit worked with social media companies to remove nearly 400 illegal posts and accounts. In 2020, the DMIU has successfully removed 220 posts and accounts as of 30 June 2020. I understand that will not be much comfort to Tavis’s family, but at least something is being done, though I accept that more needs to be done.
Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)
My constituent lost his job, and 16 weeks later he is still waiting for his first universal credit payment. Does the Leader of the House accept that is unacceptable, and will he commit to holding a debate in Government time on the delays to processing universal credit?
Mr Rees-Mogg
The universal credit roll-out has been a remarkable success during the pandemic with, I think, 91% of claims being processed extremely quickly and the majority paid within three days. That does not mean that there will not be occasional errors. While 91% is a high success rate, it means that 9% did not meet that. There was also the £20 a week uplift. The hon. Lady is right to raise individual cases of this kind in the House. That is how we seek redress of grievance and it is what we are here for. If there are individual cases that have not been answered satisfactorily by the Department for Work and Pensions, my office is more than willing to help hon. and right hon. Members to seek redress of grievance.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con) [V]
Next week is the 50th anniversary of Bangladesh attaining its independence from Pakistan at the end of a very bloody civil war. Will my right hon. Friend join me in wishing all Bangladeshis, wherever they reside now, a very happy Independence Day? Will he arrange for a debate or a statement on UK-Bangladeshi relations, so that we can all join with the Bangladeshi community in celebrating this joyous occasion?
Mr Rees-Mogg
The UK and Bangladesh share a close relationship based on strong historical and people-to-people links. We continue to work closely together on our shared interests, including security, development, climate, trade and the Rohingya crisis. We are working closely with the Government of Bangladesh to mark Bangladesh’s 50th anniversary and the 50th anniversary of Bangladesh-UK relations, including on 26 March 2021.
The UK was one of the first countries in the world to recognise an independent Bangladesh after Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was received by the former Prime Minister, Sir Edward Heath, in Downing Street on 8 January 1972. We look forward to the fourth UK-Bangladesh strategic dialogue, which is to take place in London later this year, but my hon. Friend is absolutely right: it is a good thing to celebrate, and to celebrate an independence day that is not independence from us, which is perhaps a rare treat.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab) [V]
Today the Government announced that plug-in grants for the purchase of new electric vehicles will be slashed again from £3,000 to £2,500; this is after they were cut from £3,500 to £3,000 last year. I know that the Leader of the House is very fond of his old Bentley, but the Government are meant to be committed to a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030. At the moment, new EVs are simply not affordable for many people. Can we have a statement, so that we can ask Ministers in the House why the Government’s policy on this seems to be going in completely the wrong direction?
Mr Rees-Mogg
The answer is that there is a limit to taxpayers’ money, and that as more electric vehicles are produced, so they become more efficient and so the price falls. This is the natural economic process, and it is one that will be mainly led by the private sector. This is how we have got the innovation so far, through the private sector producing these remarkable vehicles. We managed to switch from the horse and cart to the internal combustion engine without large Government subsidies. A little bit of Government help is right, but it cannot be excessive because the taxpayer cannot afford it.
Point of Order
(3 years, 9 months ago)
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Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I rise to make a point of order in relation to what the Leader of the House said earlier. He may have inadvertently misled the House when he used words like “cheat” and “editing a recording” about something that I raised in relation to the Foreign Secretary. I have had this statement from the journalist in question and from the Huffington Post:
“We did not edit any recording passed to us and quoted it in full.”
Could I have your guidance on what the Leader of the House could do? If the Leader of the House is not prepared to repeat what he said outside, he must withdraw it and apologise now; otherwise, he is casting aspersions on the integrity of a journalist. Could I have your guidance please, Mr Speaker?
Mr Speaker
Obviously, the point has been raised, but it is not for me to judge on it. However, the Leader of the House is here, and I look to see whether he wishes to respond and clear the matter up.
The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg)
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. The Foreign Office has made it clear, and has said:
“We regret that this audio has been deliberately and selectively clipped to distort the Foreign Secretary’s comments. As he made crystal clear in his full answer, the UK always stands up for and speaks out on human rights. In his full answer, in an internal meeting, he highlighted examples where the UK has applied Magnitsky sanctions and raised issues at the UN regardless of trade interests, and that this was a responsible, targeted and carefully calibrated approach to bilateral relations.”
I repeat:
“We regret that this audio has been deliberately and selectively clipped”.
If the journalist did not clip it himself, he ought to have known it was clipped. He is either a knave or a fool.
Mr Speaker
I think we will have to leave it there. I am now suspending the House for three minutes to enable the necessary arrangements to be made for the next business.
Independent Review of Administrative Law
(3 years, 9 months ago)
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The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Robert Buckland)
With permission, I would like to make a statement on the Government’s response to the independent review of administrative law.
In our democracy, judicial review plays a vital role in upholding the rule of law: it acts as one of the checks on the power of the Executive. Importantly, as the noble and learned Baroness Hale put it in her submission to the review panel,
“In the vast majority of cases, Judicial Review is the servant of Parliament”.
Through judicial review, the courts ensure that the powers that Parliament grants are not used in ways that exceed the limits imposed on those powers, and are not used in ways that are contrary to Parliament’s intentions. The purpose of judicial review is not to question the merits of any decisions made under those powers; rather, it is to ensure that the decision was made lawfully. The jurisdiction of the courts is therefore meant to be supervisory only.
Last year, I launched an independent review of administrative law to examine trends in judicial review. I am sure the House will want to join me in thanking the panel, chaired by the noble and learned Lord Faulks, for its diligence in producing such an excellent report, copies of which I have placed in the Libraries of both Houses. It was quite an undertaking, conducted in this time of covid. The panel ran a call for evidence, which elicited many valuable contributions from a diverse range of interested parties.
The report’s finding—that there is a growing willingness to accept an expansion of the remit of judicial review, whether in terms of more decisions being considered justiciable, or the way in which the courts review an exercise of power and the remedies given—is worrying. I am sure that the House will agree with me that the recommendations in the panel’s report about how we can restore a more sensible balance of responsibilities between Parliament and the courts are clear, practical and achievable.
The Government are consulting on a range of policy proposals, but there are two recommendations in particular from the report that we are keen to take forward as soon as possible. First, we will follow the review’s recommendation to legislate to remove a type of judicial review known as the Cart judicial review, after the Supreme Court case of that name.
The issue is that, even though decisions of the upper tribunal are supposed to be of the same status as those of the High Court, the Cart judicial review route allows someone to challenge certain upper tribunal decisions by applying to the High Court for permission for judicial review of the upper tribunal’s decision, and potentially onward to the Court of Appeal should the High Court refuse permission, as in fact it does in the vast majority of cases.
In such an appeal, the Court of Appeal is essentially asked whether it thinks that the proposed appeal against the High Court’s refusal to grant permission to judicially review the upper tribunal’s refusal to grant permission to appeal the first tier tribunal’s decision should be allowed. That—eloquently, perhaps—outlines the essence of the problem: we say that there are simply too many layers and too many otiose proceedings that do not serve the interests of justice.
The review analysis found that out of 5,502 Cart judicial reviews brought between 2012 and 2019, only 0.22% were successful. That is an astonishingly low rate. Given that each and every one of those cases required detailed consideration by judges, I agree with the panel that a huge amount of judicial resource is being used to rectify a vanishingly small number of errors. The proposed reform will place the decisions of the upper tribunal and the High Court on an equal footing, and we will bolster the current array of remedies available to the courts so that issues can be resolved in a collaborative way.
I agree with the panel that the courts should have the ability to suspend quashing orders and to mandate a time by which any administrative oversight should be corrected. I will accept that recommendation and would like to consider how it should be implemented and whether suspended quashing orders should be presumed to apply or mandatory.
The steps recommended by the panel are an excellent starting point for rebalancing our system, but the Government would like to go further to protect the judiciary from unwanted political entanglements and restore trust in the judicial review process. As the House will see, the report contains a detailed analysis of judicial review and how it operates in practice, and we are at the right juncture to take a closer look. Today, I want to open up a public debate on the role of judicial review within our wider constitutional arrangements by launching a consultation on further proposals to examine the use of ouster clauses, the remedies available in judicial review proceedings, and further procedural reform.
It is self-evidently open to Parliament to delineate the role of the courts in controlling any particular power because, of course, Parliament is sovereign. Parliament can do this by passing an ouster clause—a considered choice that certain subjects are not appropriate for judicial control. For example, in the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986, Parliament provided that reports of the Boundary Commission are not subject to judicial review. Unfortunately, the current practice on ouster clauses—not giving them effect—arguably goes against the intention of Parliament, so we are considering putting in place a set of rules that clearly delineate which issues are a matter for the courts to adjudicate through judicial review and which are not. For that reason, the Government want to consider the workings of ouster clauses and find a way for them to be used more effectively and in the way intended by Parliament.
The consultation proposes the introduction of prospective-only remedies, which would limit the retrospective effect of any quashed decision or action. That would complement the use of suspended quashing orders and could result in more considered resolutions. Instead of the sledgehammer of remedies that demand immediate resolution and lead to rushed policy, I want to create a system that encourages solutions to be found through political will rather than legal dispute, so that policy making as an exercise can be much more collaborative and better informed.
The consultation will therefore consider three things: first, whether to give judges discretion in providing for prospective-only remedies; secondly, whether prospective-only remedies should be presumed to apply in all challenges against statutory instruments; and finally, whether all remedies granted when challenging statutory instruments must be prospective-only unless it is a matter of exceptional public interest for them not to be.
As part of this work, to make such remedies effective I am bringing forward proposals for reforms to the doctrine on nullity. The consultation will also consider whether to recommend to the civil procedure rule committee that it considers a range of procedural reforms to improve the efficiency of the administration of judicial review claims.
As Lord Chancellor, my role is to uphold the rule of law and defend the judiciary. The Government want to seize the opportunity to do just that by restoring a proper balance between the institutions that have been so integral to our success as a nation in protecting the rights of individuals and our vital national security, and effective government itself. We are determined to ensure that judicial review—this vital check on Executive power—is maintained for future generations and that the process is finely tuned within our constitutional arrangements, to enable it to be a true conduit for fairness in our society. I commend this statement to the House.
Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)
May I begin by thanking the panel for their work? We will study the proposals carefully and note the announcement of further consultation. We would like to see all submissions to the consultations published; can the Secretary of State confirm whether he will do that? I also note that, as feared, the Government are considering making certain decisions of Parliament beyond the reach of judicial review. I note that the independent review of administrative law considered that it would be a serious disadvantage to enable Parliament to oust JR by altering the statutory code. Can he confirm whether that is in fact his intention, and if so, why he has taken the step of ignoring the concerns of his own review?
The Government should exercise extreme caution in expanding the use of ouster clauses to prevent the Executive from being challenged in the courts. That is a fundamental right, and this is particularly worrying, given the Government’s disdain for parliamentary scrutiny and No. 10’s history of hoarding powers.
In my 20 years in this House I have never encountered a Government more disdainful of our rights, freedoms and rule of law than this one. One of the Prime Minister’s first actions was to unlawfully prorogue the House; after he was re-elected, he sent his Secretary of State for Northern Ireland out to boast about how the Government would break international law in a specific and limited way; and on Tuesday we saw the Government launch an unprecedented attack on the British public’s freedom to protest. At each of these moments the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice has chosen to stay silent, ignoring his special duty to uphold the rule of law.
Judicial review is the only mechanism by which members of the public can challenge the Government and public bodies when they break the law. In recent months, we have seen how important that is. It was a judicial review that uncovered the truth about the Health Secretary’s unlawful failure to publish multimillion-pound covid contracts within the 30-day period required by the law. In a Government who have been turned rotten by cronyism—we are having the Health Secretary on WhatsApp pouring a pint to land a deal—accountability matters a lot, and it is not only crony contracts that the Government may be trying to hide.
The Government have made countless mistakes, which may or may not have been unlawful during the coronavirus pandemic. These may help explain why the UK has one of the highest death tolls in the world. Mistakes include failing to provide health and care workers with adequate personal protective equipment, as well as sending hospital patients back to care homes without testing them. Members of the public are rightly using judicial review to challenge the Government on mistakes like that. If the Government weaken judicial review, they may avoid responsibility for other potentially unlawful acts during the pandemic. Will the Lord Chancellor guarantee to me that no judicial review focused on the Government’s mistakes during the pandemic will be affected by the changes that he now proposes?
On the surface, the review has looked at technical aspects of judicial review. The formal scope focuses on potential codification of grounds, the parameters of judicial authority and the procedural changes, but its political purpose is sweeping and dangerous. The person appointed to lead it was highly vocal in his criticism of the judiciary in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s 2019 judgment on Prorogation. There has been briefing from Johnson’s Downing Street of the intention
“to get the judges sorted”,
and there can be little doubt that the review is part of an attempt to hoard more power in No. 10.
Can the Secretary of State tell the House where the idea to attack judicial review came from—was it him, the Prime Minister or Dominic Cummings? If the Lord Chancellor still refuses to publish all the submissions to the review—it is extraordinary that he will not publish those submissions—will he at least commit to publishing the submission that came from the Home Office?
A responsible Government would seek to consolidate and protect the democratic legal right of judicial review, not constrain and undermine it. Just as we condemn foreign Governments for attacking the rule of law, as in Poland and Hungary, Members must also condemn our own Government for doing the same. Members from all political traditions should be just as outraged that the Government decided in the middle of a pandemic to use their precious time to launch an attack on judicial review. Madam Deputy Speaker, be in no doubt: this cynical, misguided and politically motivated move is from the same authoritarian playbook. Judicial review is the only way the public can challenge the Government when they act unlawfully. Labour will defend it, so that we can hold this incompetent and untrustworthy Government to account.
Robert Buckland
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question. I think I can deal very shortly with the rather hyperbolic diatribe about the position of this Government and the rule of law. There is absolutely no doubt about our adherence to rule of law principles, as with all Governments who have preceded us and indeed Governments to come. I take issue with his suggestion that somehow I am staying silent on these matters. I certainly have not hesitated at important moments, for example, during the Prorogation issue, to defend the judiciary robustly in public, as is consistent with my oath.
Let me answer the right hon. Gentleman’s questions, particularly those on publication. First, those contributions to the review call for evidence that are quoted in the report have been published today. The other public responses to the consultation will be published next week. We are making sure that they are all consistent with our general data protection regulation obligations, but I give him that undertaking that they will all be published. The Government submissions to the consultation will be summarised and published within the next 10 days or so, which will give everybody a clear view of submissions to the call for evidence, but in a way that is consistent with collective Cabinet responsibility. I give him absolutely that undertaking that the next stage—the consultation process—will follow the same course as other public consultation processes. I encourage him and all interested parties to take a full role in this.
The right hon. Gentleman made a point about ouster clauses, which deserves some scrutiny. Such clauses are not completely unknown to this House. Indeed, when one looks at the Parliament Act and the particular function that the Speaker has with regard to processes between this House and the other place, one sees that it contains ouster clauses. The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 had an ouster clause. The question is about the particular purpose and the way in which such clauses are used. There have been times when broad ouster clauses have been introduced, which have naturally caused great concern. The right hon. Gentleman might well remember one such example, because the asylum Bill that he shepherded through this House back in 2003 contained an ouster clause that was described as “without precedent” in its extent. I sympathise with the position he is in, because Governments will often want to create a high degree of legal certainty, to make sure that the processes are clear and that the parties involved and everybody else knows with certainty what is to happen; I can understand why he wanted to pursue that course then. So it is wise of everybody concerned with this issue to take a long view, consider the matter carefully and come up with considered submissions and suggestions, rather than, I am afraid, descending to rhetoric that does not meet the reality of the situation we are dealing with.
These proposals are sensible, incremental reforms that are very much within the tradition of the development of our law. They are the result of much consideration, not just by Lord Faulks, but by a very diverse panel of different opinions and different perspectives, which can hardly be described as a sort of panel that was designed to reach a conclusion before the document had been written. It was genuinely independent and I value it very highly for that.
In summary, these proposals, together with what we want to consult upon, are a mature, reflective look at a process that plays an important part in our society and our constitution, but which, like all other parts of our democracy—this place, local government and all the agencies of accountability—merits careful and close scrutiny. Frankly, it is our duty, as a Government and as a Parliament, from time to time to make sure that that delicate constitutional balance is being maintained. That is what we seek to do, and I make no apology for the initiative that we have taken.
Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con) [V]
I thank both the Lord Chancellor for the tone of his statement and the members of the panel for their work. The Lord Chancellor was very clear in his commitment to the importance and the fundamental nature of judicial review in our constitutional arrangements. Does he agree therefore that, as these proposals are progressed to further consultation, it is important that the conclusions are adequately considered by Government, that there should not be any undue pressure of time to bring proposals forward, that it is better to move carefully and incrementally, and that this House will have ample time to consider any proposals once the Government have formulated them? A guiding principle that we could perhaps bear in mind are the words of the late Lord Bingham in his book “The Rule of Law” when he said that, in judicial review, the role of the judges was to be the “auditors of legality: no more, but no less.” We should not have confusion about how the audit works, but neither should we do anything that impedes the ability of the auditors to do their job.
Robert Buckland
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, the Chair of the Justice Committee. His reference to the late Lord Bingham and the description of the audit role is an invaluable intervention. That is precisely what the Government seek to do here. It is all about protecting the role of the judiciary as well. I am a fierce defender of their role and I want to make sure that they are not inadvertently drawn into matters of policy, which are matters for this place, the Government, and democratic institutions, and not drawn into merits-based assessments as opposed to assessing the legality or otherwise of Executive action or omission.
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP) [V]
I thank the Justice Secretary for his statement and the panel for its work. We will, of course, scrutinise the report carefully and constructively, but we will do so from the starting point that there is very little about this vital democratic safeguard that needs to be fixed. We absolutely do not share the Justice Secretary’s concerns about perceived expansion of judicial review. Our concern is that successive Conservative Governments have sought to constrain anything that gets in the way of their agenda: a gagging Bill on charities; restrictive trade union laws; cuts to legal aid; and, this week, the egregious attacks on the right to protest. We would be utterly failing as an Opposition if we did not approach this whole project with a healthy and significant degree of scepticism and concern. Talk of ouster clauses and restricting remedies is indeed especially alarming, and leads us to question again—is not this more about the Prime Minister’s anger at judgments such as the article 50 Miller case or the Prorogation case led by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry).
Par for the course, this announcement was trailed this week in the context of migration litigation, but, in that context, if the Government were really interested in reducing reliance on judicial review, why do they not restore the statutory appeal rights that they have slashed and burned over the past decade or invest properly in decision making, so that it is faster and more decisions are right first time? In short, it is better to fix the failing Home Office instead of meddling with one of the only systems that people have left to protect themselves from its incompetence. That is true right across Government. More reviews about asylum seekers have been talked about this week. Tomorrow, it will be people’s housing or social security cases.
Finally, the Justice Secretary has been reminded repeatedly from these Benches that the inherent supervisory jurisdiction of the Court of Session to review Acts of Government is protected by the Act of Union and the Treaty of Union. Will he confirm that anything that impinges on that jurisdiction is not for this Westminster Parliament or Government to decide?
Robert Buckland
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. May I answer his last question first? I can give him that assurance. With regard to the Cart jurisdiction, that clearly relates to a reserved matter concerning immigration issues, which does, of course, apply to the Scottish jurisdiction as well. In respecting separate jurisdictions, as I always do, these proposals relate to England and Wales matters and have been carefully delineated in that way.
With regard to the hon. Gentleman’s other assertions, I will simply say this: to conflate issues relating to public order with this Government’s approach to the rule of law and their steadfast belief in democratic institutions is, once again, to stretch reality too far. Without repeating the arguments that we had earlier this week, I cannot equate the adoption of recommendations by the independent Law Commission about the law of public nuisance with the sort of reactionary, authoritarian acts of France of the 1790s. It beggars belief that such comparisons are being made. They do not stand close scrutiny, and I am sure that in the weeks and months ahead, the intellectual poverty of these arguments will be exposed.
Miss Sarah Dines (Derbyshire Dales) (Con) [V]
I thank the Lord Chancellor for his statement. From my recent practice at the Bar, I know that the judicial review system is sometimes abused, and some unscrupulous lawyers will use it when they should not. Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that Opposition Members would be hypocritical to oppose this review, given that they—including the shadow Justice Secretary—proposed a complete abolition of judicial review in immigration and asylum matters?
Robert Buckland
My hon. Friend, who is an experienced family practitioner of many years’ standing, will know from her professional experience that, while the proper use of legal process to make legitimate claims is at the heart of our rule of law, it should sadden all of us if we see attempts being made to delay and frustrate that process by the use of procedures that, frankly, are otiose and do not add to the fairness or justice of proceedings but rather detract from the overall outcome and the fairness of it.
My hon. Friend is right to make the point that successive Governments, including the one in which the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) served, have argued, sometimes very passionately, in favour of quite wide-ranging ouster clauses in order to achieve a higher degree of legal certainty. That was what happened back in 2003, when the right hon. Gentleman was in government. What we need to do now is avoid having those arguments in future, with overly wide ouster clauses, and find a proper modus vivendi, whereby they can be used proportionately in a way that will not offend the courts.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD) [V]
I thank the panel for the work it has been doing. There is no justification for the proposals to restrict people’s access to court. The current judicial review system works well, allowing people directly to hold Governments of any colour to account and enforce their rights through the courts. Instead of this assault on the rule of law, will the Ministry of Justice instead focus on the shockingly low conviction rates for crimes committed against women and girls and publish plans for how to ensure that offenders of violence against women and girls are properly prosecuted and convicted?
Robert Buckland
The hon. Lady is, frankly, wrong to describe these proposals as a curtailment of judicial review. I will give her an example of an area where the use of a suspended quashing order could have helped campaigners. There was a case about tuition fees in which the Secretary of State was challenged for breaching the public sector equality duty. The court could only, at that stage, give a declaration of unlawfulness because a quashing of the decision would have caused administrative chaos. If a suspended quashing order had existed as an option, that would have had more teeth for those who were campaigning against tuition fees, which the hon. Lady’s party supported back in 2010.
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con) [V]
From personal experience in local government, I know that judicial reviews can bring significant uncertainty to decisions that have been made by democratically elected and publicly accountable bodies. Will my right hon. and learned Friend outline the benefits he anticipates from this review in respect of local authorities and their decisions?
Robert Buckland
My hon. Friend speaks with considerable experience as a deputy leader of a major London borough and a long-standing member of the Local Government Association. He will see that there will be many advantages as a result of the proposals. For example, as I have mentioned, the ability to suspend quashing orders is a very pragmatic and sensible step. It means that minor administrative errors will not result in the entire policy being struck down, leading to great uncertainty and often administrative headaches for local authorities and others. I am sure that my hon. Friend, with his background in local government, will look at the consultation document and come up with further sensible suggestions.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab) [V]
The amount of time and resources spent by successive Conservative Governments on restricting judicial review is extraordinary. It is one slender means that the individual has to challenge the power of Government when they act unlawfully. Rather than saying, “There’s nothing to see here,” does the Lord Chancellor want his legacy to be one of undermining judicial discretion, the common law and the rights of the citizen in order to make the Executive safe from challenge and scrutiny?
Robert Buckland
My legacy, I hope, if these proposals are, after consultation, taken forward in the form of legislation, will have been to enhance the options available to the judiciary. If we look at the remedy proposals, we will see that creating extra powers such as suspending quashing orders, and other types of discretionary remedies, will allow the courts to take a more surgeon’s scalpel-like approach to some of these issues, rather than the sometimes rather blunt sledgehammer of quashing a particular decision, making it a nullity, or, at the other end, making a declaration of unlawfulness. I hope that my legacy, whenever it comes, will have been to increase the discretion of the courts and to rebalance their position within our unwritten constitution.
Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)
It seems to me that we need to find the right balance between protecting the rights of individuals to rightfully challenge Executive power and ensuring that government can proceed effectively without vexatious legal claims. How will my right hon. and learned Friend ensure that we get the right balance?
Robert Buckland
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend’s characterisation. The use of the word “balance” is very much at the essence of what I as a Conservative and Lord Chancellor believe in. I can give an example. We can see from the Cart judicial review process, which I have mentioned, how such a process can be used to press claims that, frankly, have no merit and result in delay, which frustrates lawful action. By streamlining those procedures, by ensuring that the existing, reliable and sufficient routes of appeal are there, we can ensure that claims are dealt with quickly, fairly and in the proper place.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
I thank the Lord Chancellor for his statement, but on 13 March The Daily Telegraph reported that the Government were planning to limit how a judicial review could be used in asylum cases by stopping
“the automatic referral of judicial review cases to senior judges.”
Will the Lord Chancellor be doing that? If so, is anti-immigrant sentiment the motivation behind this Government’s attack on judicial review?
Robert Buckland
May I reassure the hon. Gentleman that there is certainly no base motive behind these proposals, and certainly no attack on people who make proper applications, whether they are seeking asylum or, indeed, clarifying their immigration status in the United Kingdom? What we seek to do is create a system that will work in their better interests. As he will know, one of the big problems is the delay and the anxiety it can cause to many applicants who have to wait for an undue period of time. I want to ensure that we maintain those appeal processes that need to exist in order to satisfy all those rule of law principles that he and I believe in, but to also strip away the unnecessary processes that just prolong the agony for everybody concerned, not least the applicants.
Robbie Moore (Keighley) (Con)
Judicial reviews are a vital part of the justice system. They are a way for people to test the lawfulness of decisions by public bodies. However, as a mechanism, they are often expensive and their costly nature prohibits poorly made decisions from being held to account. I am thinking of the Environment Agency’s recent decision to award an environmental permit for an incinerator in Keighley. Could the Lord Chancellor comment on how the judicial review process can be made more accessible and affordable so that public bodies can be properly held to account?
Robert Buckland
My hon. Friend makes a very proper point, and one of the important functions of judicial review is for the courts not just to opine on the legality or otherwise of the decision, but to help local and national Government understand better how to make those decisions in the first place. I readily take the point that there are still far too many outcomes that result from flawed decision making, which is why judicial review is such an important principle. My hon. Friend will, I am sure, be particularly interested in the proposals in the consultation about procedural reform, which are designed to try to streamline, simplify and make judicial review more accessible for organisations and individuals who seek it. But in the first instance my aim is to try to ensure that these disputes are resolved before the need for litigation.
Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP) [V]
When this review was announced I corresponded with the Lord Chancellor, reminding him that our independent system of civil justice in Scotland is protected by article 19 of the treaty of Union and devolved to the Scottish Parliament, so I welcome the assurance he has given today that his proposals going forward will apply to England and Wales only. As it is my birthday, will he indulge me by joining me in celebrating another victory for Scotland’s independent legal system, which of course in 2019 led the way in ruling that the Prime Minister’s Prorogation of Parliament was unlawful?
Robert Buckland
I am more than happy to wish the hon. and learned Lady a very happy birthday. I absolutely accept that she and I corresponded on these matters, and she pressed me when serving on the SNP Front Bench, but at no time was there any intention by the Government to trespass on to issues that are the province of the separate Scottish legal system. In this particular instance we have the Cart process, which applies to reserved matters and which of course would apply to Scottish courts, but I can assure the hon. and learned Lady that, if anything, we will be learning from the Scottish jurisdiction, because I note in particular section 108 of the Scotland Act 1998 and its provisions with regard to a certain type of remedy. So once again the great jurisdictions of England, Wales and Scotland are learning from each other as part of our even greater United Kingdom.
Tahir Ali (Birmingham, Hall Green) (Lab) [V]
The time limit to bring a judicial review claim is extremely short in comparison with other types of such claim. There is already a requirement for a claim to be brought promptly and within three months of the decision which is being challenged; any further restrictions would only make it harder for individuals to access justice. Will the Lord Chancellor guarantee that he will not make time limits for judicial review stricter than they already are?
Madam Deputy Speaker
Before I call the Lord Chancellor, I do want to remind hon. and right hon. Members of the dress code, which is the same for those contributing by video link and is that we should wear jackets.
Robert Buckland
I can absolutely reassure the hon. Gentleman that the proposals in fact are the opposite of a restriction or restraint on judicial review. The proposals include a recommendation that the rule about bringing a claim promptly be removed because it does not add anything to the overall procedural framework. Secondly, the three-month limit will remain, but there is of course within that discretion for the court to disapply or to entertain a late application. None of that is going to be interfered with. This review is not based upon some crude attempt to restrict a class of people from applying or to restrict the length of time. This is all about the scope of judicial review and the remedies that are on offer. It is a mature contribution to the debate, and I know that when Labour Members look at it carefully they will be compelled to draw the same conclusion.
John Howell (Henley) (Con) [V]
When many judges were beginning their legal career, I doubt very many of them ever came across judicial review, so much has this crept along over the last 40 to 50 years or so. Will the Lord Chancellor please accept my congratulations on his review of judicial review, and will he also accept that I would like to see it move quicker and faster in order to make sure that we do see a fundamental review? Certainly, of all the judges I have spoken to, I have not come across any who would contradict what we are trying to do?
Robert Buckland
My hon. Friend is right to urge expedition. I think I need to temper his remarks with those of the Chairman of his Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), who wants to make sure that this place and the other place have a proper opportunity to scrutinise. That of course will happen, because if there is to be primary legislation, that will need proper scrutiny.
However, I take my hon. Friend’s point. The truth is that there have not been many occasions in the last 50 years or so when we have taken a close look at these issues. Judicial review has developed quite significantly since the late 1970s, so most of our judges now will have had some experience unless, with respect, they are extremely senior. I agree with the point that he makes. We need to remember that this is very much part of the Government’s overall approach to take incremental, structured looks at aspects of our constitution to get the balance right.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op) [V]
This week of all weeks, when the Government are using the law to clamp down on justice seekers protesting on the streets, they are now using the law to clamp down on justice seekers prosecuting their cases in the courts. They are taking our rights, as they run roughshod over the human rights of others, further exposing the hostile, authoritarian environment festering at the heart of Government. Will the Secretary of State publish all the submissions, including that of the Home Office, to his further consultation and an equality impact assessment on narrowing the scope of judicial reviews?
Robert Buckland
I can forgive the hon. Lady for reading a stock question as she has not had a chance to see the document. I will repeat the answer that I gave to the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) with regard to publication. With respect, I must, however, take grave issue with her characterisation of the Government. I am sorry, but the public order reforms are in no way comparable to the extreme rhetoric she used. This is a codification of the law; an application of well-established legal practice with regard to mobile demonstrations to those that might be static. This is about balancing the right of freedom of expression with the rights of the rest of society to go about their lawful business.
Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)
Can we quash this hyperbolic nonsense spouted forth in the Chamber this morning? The incidents on Saturday were because of poor enforcement of badly drafted covid regulations, and nothing more than that. Will the Lord Chancellor take this opportunity to provide an update on the constitution, democracy and rights commission? He will recall with fondness his appearance before my Committee, I am sure, and he might have ample opportunity now to expound further.
Robert Buckland
I thank the Chair of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, and I do indeed remember my appearance before it. As I explained to the Committee then, the review was one distinct part of a process that I am already undertaking. In January, I announced the creation of an independent review to consider the operation of the Human Rights Act, chaired by Sir Peter Gross, a former Lord Justice of Appeal, with a diverse panel—in terms of geography and, indeed, opinion—across the United Kingdom and Ireland. That is part of an overall process that will result not in a commission trying to deal with all aspects but will demonstrate and reveal the Government’s approach to rebalancing our constitution in the finest traditions of what we do and what we represent in this country.
Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP) [V]
The Faculty of Advocates, in its evidence submission to the review, stated:
“There is no case for substantive statutory intervention in the judicial review process. Such an intervention risks artificially stymying the development of the law of judicial review”,
and
“judicial review does not suffer from a lack of clarity, and any attempt to codify it is likely to undermine the very flexibility that renders it effective.”
Will the Lord Chancellor advise the faculty and the House why this astute advice has been disregarded by his Department?
Robert Buckland
I can reassure the hon. Lady that in fact the advice has not been disregarded by the Department, because we are not advocating a wholesale codification of the law in this area. That was a particular issue that the review looked at very carefully. It took into account the evidence of the faculty, as it did the other evidence, and did not come to that conclusion. I will forgive her for making an incorrect assertion because she is yet to have a chance to read in depth the report, which has just been published. When we discuss these matters on another occasion, I am sure that she will accept the point that I have made and focus on the legitimate issues of debate that might still exist between us.
Sara Britcliffe (Hyndburn) (Con)
Will the Lord Chancellor set out for the benefit of the House the advantages of these measures?
Robert Buckland
For my hon. Friend and her constituents in Hyndburn, there will be many advantages. The options with regard to remedy actually enhance the rights of individuals. Where courts in the past have had to make a declaration of unlawfulness without any consequences, the option of having a suspended quashing order could allow that middle way to be achieved, where the authority concerned has an opportunity to correct its behaviour in a way that will give a higher degree of justice to the applicants. If these options are adopted, I can see a whole range of different approaches being taken that will enhance the public’s experience of judicial review applications.
Christian Wakeford (Bury South) (Con)
Will my right hon. and learned Friend confirm that the consultation process will be a truly interactive one that engages with interested parties in the public discourse about these proposals and ensures that not only all regions, but all nations, can truly take part in this process?
Robert Buckland
I am delighted to confirm to my hon. Friend that both he and his constituents in Bury South will have the opportunity to take part in further consultations. I suspect that most of the people and organisations who responded so helpfully to the review panel’s call for evidence last autumn will indeed engage again in this consultation. I look forward to a full and lively debate in the weeks ahead.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I thank the Lord Chancellor for his statement. I am suspending the House for two minutes to allow the arrangements to be made for the next business.
Health and Social Care Update
(3 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Matt Hancock)
With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to make a statement on the support that we are giving to the NHS and social care to help recover from the pandemic.
Before turning to that, I want to update the House on vaccine supply and the roll-out, and set out the facts, given some of the speculation that we have seen overnight.
Let me set out the position absolutely straightforwardly. Throughout the vaccination programme, the pace of roll-out has always been determined by the availability of supply. As I have said in the House many times, supply is the rate-limiting factor. The process of manufacturing vaccines is complicated and subject to unpredictability. Because we get supplies out into the field so fast, and run a highly lean delivery system, changes in future supply schedules impact on the weekly availability of vaccine. This has been true throughout. We make public commitments to the goals we can reach according to our best estimates of future supply. That supply goes up and down. We are currently, right now, in the middle of some bumper weeks of supply.
We have now reached the milestone of 25 million vaccinations, within the first 100 days of roll-out, and we have therefore been able to open up invitations to all people aged 50 and above. Yesterday, for example, we delivered over half a million vaccines, and we will do so again today. In April, supply is tighter than it is this month, and we have a huge number of second doses to deliver. During April, around 12 million people, including many colleagues in this House, will receive their second dose. These second doses cannot be delayed, as they have to be delivered within 12 weeks of the first dose. In the last week, we have had a batch of 1.7 million doses delayed because of the need to re-test its stability. Events like this are to be expected in a manufacturing endeavour of this complexity, and this shows the rigour of our safety checks.
We also have a delay in a scheduled arrival from the Serum Institute of India. I want to put on the record my gratitude to the Serum Institute of India for the incredible work that it is doing producing vaccine, not just for us in the UK but for the whole world. Its technology and its capability, which has been approved by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, is remarkable. The Serum Institute of India is producing a billion doses of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine this year. It truly is a partnership that we can be proud of. I also want to put on the record my thanks to both AstraZeneca and Pfizer, who have been remarkable partners in this historic endeavour.
We have committed to targets, it is vital to say, to offer the vaccine to everyone aged 50 and over by 15 April and to all adults by the end of July. I can confirm that we are on track to meet both those targets. I also want to clear up some rumours that have been circulating and give people reassurance. There will be no weeks in April with no first doses. There will be no cancelled appointments as a result of supply issues. Second doses will go ahead as planned. Most importantly, the vaccine data published yesterday show the life-saving impact of this vaccine. It is not just that the vaccines are safe; it is that they make you safe. You are much safer having had one. Shortly, the MHRA will be saying more on this matter, which of course it keeps under constant review.
I know the House will also want to hear some good news from Gibraltar. Throughout the crisis, we have provided Gibraltar with personal protective equipment, testing and a sovereign guarantee for its covid spending. We have also provided Gibraltar with vaccines, as we have all other British overseas territories. I am delighted to be able to tell the House that yesterday Gibraltar became the first nation in the world to complete its entire adult vaccination programme. I want to pay tribute to all Gibraltarians for their fortitude during this crisis, and the kind words of Chief Minister Fabian Picardo, who said yesterday:
“The United Kingdom has played a blinder on vaccinations and we have been among the beneficiaries in the British family of nations.”
I agree.
The vaccination programme has been a success thanks to a team spirit across the British family of nations. It has not always been easy; of course there are challenges thrown at us in what is the biggest civilian undertaking in history, which affects every single one of us. The whole House pays tribute to those who have helped make it happen, including Emily Lawson, Kate Bingham, Maddy McTernan, Ruth Todd, Nikki Kanani, Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, Professor Chris Whitty, Sir Patrick Vallance, Wei Shen Lim, Sarah Gilbert, Andy Pollard, Pascal Soriot, my officials in the Department, colleagues across the House, and so many others who have made this a success.
With 25 million people vaccinated and a clear road map out of lockdown, we are taking careful steps out of this pandemic. Now, there are 7,218 people in hospital with covid across the UK, down from a peak of almost 40,000 just seven weeks ago, the rate of hospitalisations has halved in just the past 16 days, and thankfully, the rate at which people are dying has fallen by a third in the last week.
As a result, I can tell the House that we are, from today, writing to all clinically extremely vulnerable people to let them know that shielding will come to an end on 31 March. I thank all those who have shown such fortitude, and all those who have done so much to look after the most vulnerable. The shielding programme truly has been Britain at its best—pulling together to help those most in need.
I know that colleagues in the NHS and social care are beginning, cautiously, to look to the recovery ahead. I know that everyone in this House is proud of the life-saving work we have seen in hospitals across the country. Yet we also know that our battles against covid-19 have meant that there are things that we have not been able to do, such as routine treatments and operations. The challenges of covid are still with us. We must continue to treat patients with the disease and bolster our vital mission of infection control, while also laying the groundwork for a recovery that gets us back to where we need to be.
We have backed the NHS at every point in this pandemic so that it can treat patients, stay safe and save lives, and I am delighted to inform the House that we are backing it again today with a further £6.6 billion of funding for the first half of this coming financial year. This money is in addition to the £3 billion committed at the spending review last November to help the NHS meet the additional costs of covid while, critically, starting the work on the elective recovery ahead.
Due to the pandemic, the waiting list for elective treatment in January was almost 4.6 million, and 304,000 people are waiting more than a year for an operation or diagnostic. Before the pandemic, we had reduced the number of 52-week waits—people waiting more than a year—from 20,000 in 2010 to 1,600. We were in fact on track to get that number to zero before the pandemic hit. This backlog of elective work is an inevitable consequence of the pandemic, and I know that NHS colleagues are as determined as I am to put it right.
We are also putting £594 million towards safe hospital discharge. Over the last year, the NHS’s existing discharge programme freed up over 6,000 beds and, with them, the valuable time of 11,000 NHS staff. We can be grateful that we are seeing so many people leave hospital and that our discharge programme has shown the way forward, ensuring that people can get the very best of care outside of our hospitals, helping them off the wards and into the right settings, with the right support at the right time.
Our £500 million mental health recovery package will help tackle the challenges that the pandemic has wrought in access to mental health services. I can also confirm that we will be extending enhanced discharge arrangements for mental health patients, getting patients safely from hospital into healthy community settings, providing better care and freeing up thousands of beds.
The challenge of mental ill health is so important. We all need to keep looking out for each other and doing all we can to strengthen our mental health. Tackling mental ill health is a core objective of our NHS long-term plan, and this Government are committed to seeing mental health treated on a par with physical health and to delivering on the long-needed reforms that we have set out.
I am equally committed to supporting the vital work of our colleagues in adult social care. Last Monday, we reopened care homes to visitors, with a careful policy of a single regular visitor, who will be tested and wear PPE. I know how important this is, and I know that colleagues will be cheered by the stories we hear each day of more and more residents safely reunited with people they love. It means everything to them.
I can today announce a further £341 million to support adult social care with the costs of infection prevention, control and testing that will make sure that visits are safe for everyone. That takes the total infection control fund and testing support to more than £1.6 billion, alongside the free PPE that care homes receive.
The pandemic has tested our NHS and our social care system like never before. That they have risen to meet the challenges of the past year is down to the incredible dedication and hard work of colleagues—they have our thanks. We will deliver on our commitments. We will build 40 new hospitals. We will hire 50,000 more nurses. We will vaccinate this country ahead of almost all others. We will back our NHS and social care as we build back better for everyone. I commend this statement to the House.
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)
As always, I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement.
Our constituents will be worried, anxious and disappointed at the news on vaccination last night. It has been an unspeakably horrific year. We have one of the worst death rates in the world and our economy has taken a massive hit. Many key workers under the age of 50, such as teachers and police officers, who through the nature of their work are not at home, are going out and are more exposed to risk, had been hoping that vaccination for them was not far away. Of course, we understand why there will be delays in supply, but this is not fantastic news and nor, frankly, is it expected news.
On Saturday, the Government, or Government sources at least, were briefing The Daily Telegraph about a “bumper boost” and that everyone over 40 would be offered their first vaccine by Easter. Last week, the Business Secretary was hinting that all adults could be vaccinated by June, saying:
“There is no reason why we can’t be optimistic.”
On Monday, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire clinical commissioning group began inviting those in their 40s for vaccination, and a similar invitation went out from Bury CCG. We are grateful for the Secretary of State’s update today, but it will be a surprise to many.
The Secretary of State did not mention Moderna supplies today. I understand that supplies from Moderna will start in April. Is there any prospect that, if Moderna supplies come on stream, new appointments can be offered in the light of that?
About 11 million people received their first dose between January and February. I listened carefully to what the Secretary of State said. Can he clarify for the House and our constituents: is he offering them an absolute guarantee that all those will get their second dose within the 12 weeks throughout April? Our constituents will be keen to get that absolutely clarified.
The vaccination programme will need to ramp up to about 3.5 million doses a week from May to ensure that everyone under 50 is vaccinated by mid-July. Is the Secretary of State confident that these supply issues will be fixed by May? Is there any prospect of doing more than 3.5 million jabs a week from May? We heard today from Adam Finn of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation that infection rates may rise as a result of the delays. Does the Secretary of State anticipate that any of the stages, any of the dates, in the road map for easing out of lockdown will be pushed back, given that we are rightly judging the road map by data, not dates?
On behalf of the official Opposition, I take this opportunity to support the AstraZeneca vaccine. Of course, where people are worried and have concerns, those worries and concerns must be addressed, not dismissed. But this is a concern at the moment. Yesterday, for example, I was told that hundreds of people failed to show for appointments at the ExCeL centre and we think that is because of concerns and misinformation circulating online.
There are parts of the country where infection rates remain relatively high and vaccination rates are relatively low. I see that in my Leicester South constituency. Will the Secretary of State pull together a cross-party taskforce of community and local leaders to look at tackling these vaccine hesitancy issues? I again offer to work with him on that on a cross-party basis.
Children make up about 21% of the population. That is a large segment of the population that will be lacking immunity. Obviously, research and trials are ongoing, but does the Secretary of State have a timeline for when he hopes to vaccinate children? Does he anticipate, for example, being able to vaccinate children this autumn, as Anthony Fauci in the US has suggested could well happen over there? Even as vaccination rolls out, the virus continues to circulate, and new vaccine-evading variants could emerge. We may need booster jabs in the autumn, and the winter will be challenging, which is why driving up vaccinations across the whole of the population is so important.
On the Budget allocations that the Secretary of State has announced for the next six months, I welcome the extra funding, of course, but can he guarantee that the NHS will continue to get additional funding after the six months if it is needed for covid care? As he has said, people are waiting longer for treatment, with more than 300,000 people waiting over a year, risking permanent disability or loss of livelihood, and with thousands waiting too long for cancer treatment, risking loss of life. We should not have to choose between cancer care and covid care. We are also facing a mental health epidemic as a consequence of this crisis. Crucially, because of years of underfunding, bed cuts and understaffing, when we entered the pandemic we already had growing waiting lists, our A&Es were in crisis and we were missing cancer targets. Can he tell us when he expects to bring down those waiting lists and meet the various cancer targets again?
Finally, the Secretary of State did not mention NHS pay today. He claps NHS workers and nurses, but he is introducing a real-terms pay cut for our NHS staff. Can he tell us whether he will implement any recommendations of the independent pay review body? If it recommends an increase above 1%, can he assure us that the funding will be additional to what he has announced today? In truth, if he really wants to value NHS staff, he should withdraw that pay cut now.
Matt Hancock
I welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s support for the vaccines, the vaccine roll-out and the clinically-led approach that we have taken in this country, and I mean that as more than simply a polite gesture. It is vital in this country that we have such a strong cross-party consensus, which includes all parties represented in this House, behind the vaccine programme and behind the science. The science means, of course, that we should and we do publish any side-effects, and we are open and transparent about that, but also that we make an assessment as to the benefits and how those benefits weigh against any side-effects. It is absolutely clear from the data we have seen so far that the vaccines are safe and that they make us safer than not getting vaccinated. That is an absolutely critical fact, and the MHRA will shortly set out more details; it is properly for the independent regulator to set out those details.
The right hon. Gentleman asked about supplies from Moderna. We expect supplies from Moderna in the coming weeks, and I am grateful to Moderna for the work that it has done. Of course, we have always been cautious about setting out future supply details, and the experience of the last 24 hours makes me even clearer that it is far better for us to set out clear commitments to the public in terms of when people can be vaccinated. This means that all over-50s now can come forward and that we are committed to and on target to offer to all over-50s and groups 1 to 9 by 15 April.
However, we know that supply figures move up and down. We have seen that throughout the roll-out, and it is part of the normal management of this roll-out. The commitment I can give the right hon. Gentleman is that, for those who are coming forward for second doses, those appointments will not be delayed because of these supply issues. Also, appointments that are already made will not be cancelled because of supply issues. I therefore say clearly to any member of the public who is watching: the vaccination programme is on track to meet the targets we have set out, and if you get the call from the NHS—whether you get it through a letter, a text, a telephone call or even, these days, an email—take up the offer and get the jab.
The right hon. Gentleman rightly asked about the road map. We are on track for the dates in the road map, and there is no impact on the road map from the changes to vaccine supply that we have been detailing in the last 24 hours.
The right hon. Gentleman asks about the vaccination of children and the autumn vaccination programme. Neither of these is certain. The vaccination of children is currently being assessed in a number of different clinical trials and it is very important that we consider the results of those before making any decision. It is likely that we will need a vaccination booster programme in the autumn, not least to deal with new variants, but that is again not yet certain.
Finally, I am very glad that the right hon. Gentleman welcomed the extra funding that we are putting into the NHS. He asks whether, after six months, there will be more funding if needed for covid purposes. The Chancellor has been absolutely clear from the start of this crisis that the NHS will get what it needs to deal with covid. That is very important, as is the work to restart the NHS in areas where it has had to be paused and, critically, the work that colleagues across the NHS will be doing to recover the backlog of elective work and make sure that everybody can get their appointments and operations in a timely way on the NHS once more. That is the work of the months ahead and I look forward to supporting NHS colleagues in delivering on it.
Jeremy Hunt (South West Surrey) (Con) [V]
Was the Health Secretary as concerned as I was by the comments by former Finnish Prime Minister, Alexander Stubb, on the “Today” programme this morning about the threat by the EU Commission President to block exports to countries that were ahead in their vaccination programme? He said that that was a “political reality”, irrespective of any breach of legal contracts that it might involve. Does my right hon. Friend not agree that it is incredibly dangerous to make threats to the supplies of vaccines and components, alongside casting aspersions on their safety at the very moment when vaccines are the only way the world is going to get out of our covid straitjacket?
Matt Hancock
I agree with every word that my right hon. Friend said. It is vital that we all work together. The supply chains for the manufacture of these vaccines cross borders. They are often global supply chains and it is vital that we work together to deliver them. There is a need for that co-operation and there is, of course, a need for all countries to respect contract law. That is the basis of international trade, and I am sure that the European Union will live up to the commitments and statements that it has made, including President von der Leyen herself, who has said that there should not be restrictions on companies when they are fulfilling contractual responsibilities. Of course there should not, and we fully expect those contracts to be delivered on, because there are very significant consequences to breaking contract law.
One further point is that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was developed because of UK taxpayers putting the funding into the science, development and clinical trials and because of AstraZeneca, with an incredibly bold and generous decision, which we fully support—but it was their decision—to offer this vaccine around the world at cost. Working with institutes such as the Serum Institute of India, Oxford and AstraZeneca are providing a vaccine for the whole world. They are not taking a profit from it. We are very proud of that fact, and that makes this materially different from other vaccines that have been developed for commercial advantage. I am not against that at all, but let us celebrate what AstraZeneca has done, and it only underlines how important it is for everybody to work together to keep their populations safe.
Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP) [V]
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement, and, of course, any additional funding for health is always welcome, especially during the pandemic. However, we must ensure that it delivers results. A Public Accounts Committee report has found that the £22 billion UK Government test and trace system has had “no clear impact” on coronavirus infection rates in England. Does the Secretary of State accept that the NHS-led track and trace was the correct option, not privatising public health? And will he tell us whether he believes that Serco track and trace did not have a clear impact on coronavirus infection rates because of the failings of the system, or was it because the UK’s pitiful statutory sick pay is not sufficient to support people in self-isolation to stay safe and save lives?
Matt Hancock
People across Scotland who were listening to that will recognise that political point scoring is the opposite of what is needed right now and that instead the UK Government are delivering for people across Scotland the benefits of this United Kingdom working together. Instead of making arguments for constitutional meddling and separation, we are delivering for people. We are delivering vaccines into arms. We are delivering a testing system that works for people across the whole of the UK. Crucially, we are also delivering that enormous economic support package to businesses and individuals alike. All of this is possible only because of our great United Kingdom, and I am glad that the people of Scotland increasingly recognise that.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con) [V]
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement and pay tribute to him for the vaccine programme, along with everyone else in the NHS. Given the £200 million already spent on the move of Public Health England to Harlow, first announced by the Government in 2015, and the additional £120 million given this year to facilitate the move, will he set out the progress on and timings of the move of Public Health England or its successor body to Harlow and the next steps on the completion of the Harlow campus, as part of our country’s programme to modernise our public health science?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Before I call the Secretary of State, I wish to reiterate that there is a dress code for people participating by video link. We expect them to be dressed in the same way as they would be if they were in the Chamber—with a jacket.
Matt Hancock
If I may say so, Madam Deputy Speaker, I think my right hon. Friend would wear that tie if he were in the Chamber as well. He makes an important point about the future of investment of public health. He is a great champion for Harlow, and he and I have spoken about the Harlow project many times. As he knows, we are reforming the way we deliver public health, to make sure that the delivery of health security, especially against contagious diseases, gets its own special focus, and the vital work of health improvement, to improve public health in non-contagious diseases, such as by tackling obesity. The Harlow project has been worked on for some time and I look forward to working with him on the next steps in that programme.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD) [V]
The Secretary of State rightly paid tribute to the service and sacrifice of NHS staff over the past year. Several Conservative Members joined me in speaking to nurses and Royal College of Nursing representatives from across south-west London last week. The message to us was clear: they are traumatised and exhausted after treating thousands of severely ill covid patients, and they are insulted by the proposed 1% pay rise. Will he therefore follow the example of the Welsh Government and offer NHS workers a £500 tax-free bonus as well as a real-terms pay increase?
Matt Hancock
As the hon. Lady knows, we are in a difficult economic situation due to the pandemic, and about 700,000 people have lost their jobs. As a result, we have implemented a pay freeze across the public sector, for all but the lowest-paid workers and NHS staff. As she knows, the independent pay review body is looking at this point, but, like her, I bow to no one in my admiration for the work of staff across the NHS. They have worked incredibly hard and have done a huge amount to help people through this pandemic. She is absolutely right to say that we must support them, especially in getting rest and recuperation after this latest peak, because we also have work ahead of us to make sure we can deal with the consequences of covid, including the backlogs for which I announced the financial support to crack through today.
Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con) [V]
I thank my right hon. Friend for his statement. The roll-out of the vaccine has been truly impressive and undoubtedly led to some heightened expectations. From experience, I recognise that the supply letter from NHS England to the system was not actually unusual. Does my right hon. Friend agree that there is a possibility that an equally appropriate phrase for the current supply fluctuation might be “expected level” rather than “constrained”? May I ask him to allay the fears of the people of Wimbledon and the UK and confirm that he expects supply levels to be in line with expectations over the next few months and that no target dates for vaccinations will be missed?
Matt Hancock
I can absolutely give that assurance. My hon. Friend is quite right, and he brings his experience as an incredibly impressive Health Minister to bear. It is absolutely standard to tell the system what our future expectations are, but they are expectations, and we are always clear that supply is lumpy. We have set out clear commitments to the public, and those commitments that come either from me or the Prime Minister are the ones that we will meet, and we manage this enormous programme in order to deliver them as best we can.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I, too, thank the Secretary of State for his continued updates on these issues in the Chamber. As a type 2 diabetic who lost four stone when I was diagnosed with diabetes some 13 years ago, I have come to understand the importance of a healthy weight. My specific concern on reported vaccine supply is that the overweight, who are ostensibly more vulnerable to coronavirus, must have access to the vaccine. Can the Minister confirm that shipments to Northern Ireland will continue as scheduled and, further, that clinical priority will continue to be given to those with a high body mass index, despite the alleged shortage?
Matt Hancock
Yes. People listening to the news over the past 24 hours might be surprised to hear this, but there are no changes to the prioritisation and no changes to planned appointments. People will be called forward as previously proposed and in the order previously proposed, including with the addition of opening up invitations to those who are 50 and above. The vaccines will be delivered by the NHS across the whole of the United Kingdom, including in Northern Ireland, where I work extremely closely with my counterpart.
Jacob Young (Redcar) (Con)
The vaccine roll-out has been a tremendous success. Just 100 days after the first jab, we have vaccinated 25 million people. In front of the Science and Technology Committee yesterday, Dominic Cummings made reference to the vaccine roll-out and criticised civil servants in the Department of Health and Social Care. Will the Secretary of State outline the decision-making process that led to the vaccine taskforce and the most successful vaccine roll-out in the world?
Matt Hancock
Absolutely. The thing about the vaccine roll-out, the vaccine delivery, the purchase of vaccines and the scientific research into vaccines is that the whole thing has been a massive team effort, and I thanked some people in my opening statement who have been involved. They have worked incredibly hard together as one big team. That is the attitude that we take, and that is one of the reasons why this programme has been successful. In particular, I emphasise my gratitude to officials in the Department of Health and Social Care, who have worked incredibly hard and very, very effectively at making this happen.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Before I call Mick Whitley, I just say that we have 22 Members to get through and something like 26 minutes to do that, so we need to be brisk.
Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab) [V]
Care home workers have made enormous sacrifices over the past year to keep their residents safe, and they continue to work on the frontlines of the pandemic. Will the Secretary of State inform the House of what he is doing to increase uptake of the covid vaccine among care home staff and whether high-risk care home staff who have come forward for vaccination in April will be able to get their first dose?
Matt Hancock
Yes, absolutely. The hon. Gentleman is quite right and I totally agree with him. Anybody who works in an elderly care home should come forward now for a vaccine if they have not had it. We are working incredibly hard to try to make those vaccines as accessible as possible.
Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con) [V]
Thanks to the work of the Secretary of State and his team, I represent a constituency where most over-50s have had their first jab, where there are now very few covid patients in local hospitals, and where the rate of infections is very low and still falling. But I also represent a constituency where hospitality businesses are going bust right now, because they cannot hang on any longer. Given that the Secretary of State says that outdoor settings are very low risk, why do covid-secure hospitality businesses with table service in outdoor settings still have to wait another month to reopen, when the data shows pretty clearly that it would be pretty fine for them to reopen now?
Matt Hancock
We have set out the road map based on clinical advice. I am delighted to say that, because of the success of the vaccination programme so far, we are able to proceed down that road map.
Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab) [V]
I start by giving my unreserved support to the NHS for the massively successful roll-out of the vaccine programme, but can the Secretary of State assure the House today that, given the unpredictability of supply, all of those due their second dose will receive it within the specified 12-week time period?
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con) [V]
Many congratulations to the Secretary of State and his team on the vaccine roll-out. It shows the success of collaboration between Government, business and universities, and the beneficial side effect of more high-quality jobs and more self-reliant and productive capacity in the UK, which I hope we will follow in other areas. Can he give us a brief update on progress with finding new treatments for covid-19 and applying existing drugs?
Matt Hancock
I highly, 100%, wholeheartedly agree with my right hon. Friend. The model that we established in the vaccines taskforce—of the holy trinity of business, academia and civil service colleagues working together as one team—was learned from reforms from his time in government. It has worked incredibly well, and I think will do as well in the future.
We also apply that approach to therapeutics, and one of the reasons, alongside the NHS, why we are the only country in the world that has participated in the discovery of all the current therapeutics is our use of that approach. Obviously we are driving it further, and I would be very happy to discuss it with my right hon. Friend.
Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab) [V]
One of the gravest threats posed by covid is its potential to create a cancer epidemic. I recently co-ordinated a cross-party letter to the Secretary of State in support of an urgently needed £50 million refurbishment plan for Sheffield’s Weston Park cancer centre. I urge the Secretary of State to give serious consideration to the proposal, which would ensure that patients across South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw received the best possible treatment.
Matt Hancock
I have seen the letter and I am looking into what we can do. Because of the crisis the need to tackle cancer is more urgent but there is also more hope, and the hope is that the underlying technology behind some of the vaccine—the so-called mRNA technology—also has the potential to improve cancer-fighting technology radically. So we propose and plan to support very significantly work on that, in order to find further breakthroughs in cancer treatment. I would be very happy to talk to the hon. Gentleman—and indeed you, Madam Deputy Speaker—about the proposal for South Yorkshire.
Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con) [V]
Given the sterling success of the vaccination roll-out in North Norfolk, where on recent numbers we had vaccinated the second-highest number of people by constituency population in the whole country, can my right hon. Friend assure my constituents that despite the recent supply news, the vast majority of them will see no interruption to their being given their first and second doses in the roll-out programme?
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op) [V]
The Secretary of State knows that I sometimes criticise him but I sometimes pat him on the back. I want to pat him on the back for much of what he has done. Yesterday’s evidence from a Select Committee just shows that he did not always get the support that he needed from No. 10, and from Dominic Cummings in particular.
I want to see a level playing field—whether it is in Harlow, Richmond or Huddersfield. There is some resistance to getting the vaccine in some of our urban centres. I can assure him that I will work with him, and we all will work across the House, to make sure that people know it is so vital to get the vaccine, wherever they live. I hope we can have a good PR effort, working together to do that.
Matt Hancock
I am a pretty collegiate kind of guy and I generally see the best in people, and I see the best in the hon. Gentleman. One thing that I have really enjoyed about the vaccine roll-out is that it has been a totally cross-party effort and people have really leaned into getting the message out. I look forward to working with the hon. Gentleman—my hon. Friend, certainly today—on his suggestion.
Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con) [V]
The Secretary of State will know from his appearances before the Health and Social Care Committee that we are concerned about how the backlog is dealt with, so it is great that he is taking such a proactive stance to deal with it. He set out in his statement just how big the backlog for elective surgeries is going to be. The question from Bosworth is: how long does he estimate it will take to clear the elective-surgeries backlog that has built up?
Matt Hancock
I am currently working with the NHS to answer that question, which is a characteristically acute one from my hon. Friend. We are not yet able to answer it simply because the pace at which we can return activity to full, normal levels is not yet clear because the main barrier to that recovery is a combination of infection, prevention and control and the need for staff to get some R and R. We will know more in the coming weeks and months.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD) [V]
There was no mention of cancer in the Secretary of State’s statement, nor a single penny in the Budget to boost cancer services, despite the fact that Macmillan Cancer Support’s figures show the need to increase all cancer services by 10% for a solid 15 months, starting now, to clear the cancer backlog.
Macmillan also says that there are 37,000 people with cancer who are not even in the system yet. Given the scale of this crisis, will the Secretary of State agree to set out an urgent, ambitious and funded plan to catch up with cancer, so that tens of thousands of people do not unnecessarily lose their lives?
Matt Hancock
The need to catch up on the backlog is there across all elective operations and of course that includes those for cancer. The good news is that the NHS has worked incredibly hard, especially in this second peak, to make sure that cancer services have remained working and effective as much as possible. Some cancer services have in fact delivered more than their normal pre-pandemic levels of care. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that we have to make sure that any backlog is reduced—that is a critical part of what I have been talking about today.
Mrs Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con) [V]
The vaccine roll-out has been incredibly successful, but we have now come up against a bit of a hiccup with the AstraZeneca vaccine. Europe does not seem to be too keen on using that vaccine; could we not use its vaccines? Will my right hon. Friend assure me that the Pfizer vaccine will be available for not just second jabs but first jabs in April?
Matt Hancock
My hon. Friend has put her finger on a certain irony in two different positions that our European friends are taking at the same time. The best thing to say is that I hope that, following the MHRA’s statement later today and consideration by the European Medicines Agency, we can get the vaccine going everywhere, because the data are really very clear that it saves lives, as the European Medicines Agency itself has said throughout past couple of weeks. It is important to follow the science on this one.
Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab) [V]
I thank all those in Warrington involved in the vaccine roll-out, including our NHS and community vaccine centres, GPs and primary care networks, pharmacists and volunteers. While I patiently await my jab as a 29-year-old, I have been heartened by the progress made so far in getting our community vaccinated.
Can the Secretary of State reassure the House that if high-risk people in the top categories come forward for their first dose of the vaccine, they will not be prevented from receiving it as a result of anticipated delays to delivery?
Matt Hancock
That is absolutely our goal. The hon. Member is 29; I am 42. The fact is that we have to vaccinate an awful lot of people of our age to save the same amount of lives as vaccinating just one octogenarian. We will take this time to loop back and find as many people in the most vulnerable cohorts as possible. That is the way to save as many lives as possible and reduce pressure on hospitals as much as possible. I hope that she will bear with, in the same way that I am having to bear with, until we are able then to open up vaccinations—first for those in their 40s, then those in their 30s, and finally the youngsters.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
Kettering-born Professor Sarah Gilbert of Oxford University, who has led the team that developed the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, attended Kettering High School for Girls, which is now Southfield School, in the 1970s. It was at that school that she first decided she wanted to work in medical research.
As Sarah is a heroine of the town, her name is today being added in a mayoral ceremony to Kettering’s historic timeline in the marketplace, which commemorates key milestones, achievements and famous local people. Will the Secretary of State join me in congratulating Sarah on that thoroughly well-deserved accolade from her home town, praising her outstanding work and recognising her as a role model for young people everywhere who want to enter a worthwhile career in science?
Matt Hancock
I am sure the whole House will agree with every single word that my hon. Friend said. They say that success has many fathers, and Kettering has discovered another extraordinary daughter in the vaccine roll-out. Sarah Gilbert worked on the Ebola vaccine before this one and has played a role in saving many, many thousands of lives over her career in medical research. I have no doubt that she will save many, many more in the future. We all salute her work, and we salute her attitude and her team work too, because that is one of the characteristics that has made it possible to deliver these vaccines so fast.
Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP) [V]
As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on disability, I have been hearing heartbreaking accounts of the disproportionate effect that the pandemic has had on disabled people across the United Kingdom. According to a survey conducted by the Family Fund, 93% of families said that coronavirus had negatively affected disabled or seriously ill children’s mental health. What crucial steps are the Government taking to support the mental health and wellbeing of children and adults with disabilities?
Matt Hancock
The hon. Member is quite right to raise that; it is an incredibly important subject. Of course, those with disabilities have been recognised where they have clinical priority for a vaccine, as have their carers, according to clinical advice. Part of the £500 million of mental health funding that I mentioned in my statement will go towards further strengthening children’s mental health services, with the goal that mental and physical health are treated with parity, as of course they should be.
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
The United Kingdom’s vaccination programme has been among the most successful in the world right from the point at which the Government took the decision to fund the scientists who made it all possible. With these constraints on supply, is the Secretary of State still confident that we can follow our road map to release, which is so important to so many families and businesses across the country?
Matt Hancock
Yes. We did fund the science from the start, and we worked collegiately to make that happen. I can confirm that there is no impact on the road map timetable from the news on supply, because we remain on track in terms of the targets that we have set out.
Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab) [V]
If there are indeed issues with vaccine supply, it does not make sense that countless manufacturers across the world are unable to produce covid-19 vaccines, treatments, diagnostics and other health technologies because of intellectual property restrictions and pharmaceutical monopolies that prevent open technology sharing. Will the Government now commit to supporting a waiver of covid-19-related patents at the World Trade Organisation, or is artificially limiting vaccine supply official Government policy?
Matt Hancock
I am very happy to provide the hon. Lady with a briefing, because she should be very proud of her country. AstraZeneca is providing the Oxford vaccine free of charge—it is not charging for any intellectual property rights—right around the world. That is not true, as she implies, for all the vaccine companies, but she should be really, really proud of ours.
Simon Fell (Barrow and Furness) (Con) [V]
I was listening to the excellent “Covid Confidential” podcast on the BBC and was surprised and delighted to find out that when the various vaccines were nearing production they were named after submarines built in my constituency, so may I first thank my right hon. Friend for his choice of names? Secondly, not to labour this analogy, a good defence rests on having a good range of options, and Kate Bingham recently said that not having monoclonal antibodies as part of our defence is the gap in our armour, so can my right hon. Friend give an update on where his Department is on this?
Matt Hancock
Yes, this is an incredibly important subject and we are working very hard on it with clinical leads and external experts. I said earlier that success has many fathers, and I am sure that the people of Barrow are very proud of their role in making sure that we could keep what needed to be kept confidential confidential. We have now had to change all those names, because everybody knows about it.
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab) [V]
GP surgeries have been crucial to the roll-out of the vaccine, and I pay tribute to all those involved. However, many of my constituents are concerned that the Centene Corporation, a massive American health insurance firm, has just taken over dozens of GP surgeries in London, including Brondesbury and Swiss Cottage GP hubs in Hampstead and Kilburn and others in Camden. Does the Secretary of State share their concern that this appears to have taken place with no meaningful public scrutiny, and their concerns about the increasing involvement of US healthcare corporations in our health system?
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con) [V]
Given the link between covid deaths and obesity, does the Secretary of State share my concern that children from the poorest constituencies are being the most heavily targeted by social media junk food adverts, and that over half of the top UK child influencers on Instagram have promoted junk food in the last year? Will he meet some of the young people from Bite Back 2030, who are concerned about this?
Matt Hancock
I would be very happy to ensure that the children of Bite Back 2030 meet the Minister for public health, my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill), who leads on these matters, and my hon. Friend is right to raise that incredibly important point.
Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)
Almost as soon as the Secretary of State sat down yesterday after his statement, I was contacted by a constituent who is shielding and is very concerned that shielding will now end on 31 March, but he has not had his second jab. Will the Secretary of State be issuing guidelines on what those people should do, as my constituent is asking?
Matt Hancock
Yes, absolutely, and we will be writing to all those who are shielding to set out the details so that they get a personal copy of those guidelines. What I would say is that the rates of covid now are much lower than when we paused shielding in the past, so this is not just because of the vaccination programme—which of course has benefited many people who are shielding, and we know that the first dose brings huge safety and benefit already—but is also because the rates of covid are so much lower.
Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con) [V]
On behalf of their citizens, who need to be vaccinated and who need to see their economies reopened, I have to say I am personally in despair at the short-sighted decisions taken by many European countries and what seems to be their absurd misapplication of the precautionary principle. I am sure my right hon. Friend would wish to be diplomatic, so will he join me in praising what we are doing, and the MHRA and the JCVI for their sensible and proportionate decision making, which has always prioritised public health here in the UK both in respect of the approvals given for vaccines and the dosing regimens they subsequently recommended?
Matt Hancock
Yes, my hon. Friend puts it characteristically well. It is very important to take all considerations into account when making decisions like these. Of course, the precautionary principle is important, but when there are such huge benefits to vaccination, over-precaution is a mistake. We have to take overall public health into account.
Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab) [V]
The Salford system has delivered the covid vaccine in an unprecedented way. Everyone from cohorts 1 to 9 has been invited at least once—some three or four times—and I understand that, even with the vaccine shortage and guaranteed second doses factored in, we will run out of people in cohorts 1 to 9 to give our current vaccine supply to. Will the Secretary of State authorise Salford to proceed to cohorts 10, 11 and 12 and begin to prioritise the vulnerable members in those age groups, so that we can maximise the doses we have?
Matt Hancock
No. What everybody in Salford and around the country needs to do is make sure that every last effort is made to reach every last person in groups 1 to 9, because they are the most vulnerable. Only in exceptional circumstances should people under the age of 50 who are not in groups 1 to 9 be invited for vaccination. The message is incredibly clear and I speak very directly to the whole team, including in Salford: please put all your efforts in the forthcoming weeks into delivering vaccines for groups 1 to 9.
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con) [V]
As I am over 50, I will get my Oxford-AstraZeneca jab later today at my local Honley village vaccination centre, which has now delivered over 10,000 vaccinations. Will the Health and Social Care Secretary join me in thanking our wonderful local NHS, the pharmacy involved and all the volunteers there, and confirm once again that we are still on track to vaccinate all over-50s and deliver the second doses as planned?
Matt Hancock
Yes, absolutely. It is wonderful to see the joy on my hon. Friend’s face in anticipation of his jab. I hope that he gets the opportunity to change into a short-sleeved shirt, because some colleagues have inadvertently had to undo an awful lot of buttons in order to be vaccinated. Although I imagine that some of their more enthusiastic constituents may have enjoyed the sight, I think it is best if we gents wear a short-sleeved shirt so that we do not have to bear our hairy chests.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. I will suspend the House for approximately three minutes to make the necessary arrangements for the next business.
Data Transparency and Accountability: Covid-19
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
We now come to the Select Committee statement. William Wragg will speak for up to 10 minutes during which no interventions may be made or taken. At the conclusion of his statement, I will call Members to put questions on the subject of the statement and call William Wragg to respond to them in turn. I should say that the questions should be brief so that the Chair can answer them succinctly. I am sure that all right hon. and hon. Members are aware that there are two very well-subscribed debates to follow. I call the Chair of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, William Wragg.
Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)
It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to present to the House the latest report of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for accommodating us in today’s proceedings. May I also place on record my thanks to fellow members of the Committee for their work during this inquiry on Government transparency and accountability during covid-19: the data underpinning decisions? We are also indebted to the Committee staff for their hard work, particularly Claire Hardy, who has been with us this past year on secondment from the National Audit Office
To be clear, this report does not critique the Government’s decisions, but asks important questions about how transparent those decisions were and whether the data are available for parliamentarians and, indeed, the public, to hold them to account. The report also examines whether data were shared with local leaders for the purpose of informing the response to the pandemic. As we say in the report, data transparency is not just a moral issue, but integral to the success of the response to the pandemic. Transparency builds trust and trust aids compliance with the rules.
It is important to acknowledge properly the progress to date. The Government have amassed enormous amounts of data from a standing start, making much of it available to the public, including on the covid-19 dashboard and through surveys by the Office for National Statistics, including the infection survey. The report pays tribute to the hard work of public servants involved at all levels in this huge endeavour.
However, although the report welcomes the publication of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies minutes, which we called for in a letter to the Prime Minister last May, it also states that publication needs to be more consistent and timelier. It is worth noting that SAGE minutes have been published, on average, 49 days after the meeting, with some significantly longer gaps. For example, a SAGE meeting that took place on 30 July 2020 did not see its minutes published until 134 days later, on 11 December.
The report considers public communications and, while recognising that the Downing Street press briefings have been an important exercise in gaining some democratic consent, it is not without criticism for both the use of reasonable worst-case scenarios and sometimes poorly presented data. The report notes that some data presentation appears to be have been impacted by political considerations.
The Committee is very clear in its view that statistics should be used for the purpose of genuinely informing the public and that open and honest communication builds trust, even when, on occasion, the Government have, for whatever reason, fallen short of their promises. If I were minded to deploy Disraeli’s quote about statistics, this would be the point at which to do so.
The first principle of the UK Statistics Authority code of practice is trustworthiness.
It states that data should be presented “impartially and objectively”. It is, I am afraid, evident that Ministers have not always lived up to the expectations of the UK Statistics Authority code of practice.
The report finds that creating a sense of anxiety—for example, through quoting large numbers—could be counterproductive in the effort to encourage behaviour change, because, to quote from one of our expert witnesses,
“inducing fear leads people to turn away and to turn off.”
On the other hand, being open and honest, and communicating uncertainties in data, builds trust, and trust is central to the social contract between Government and the people.
While SAGE has certainly become prominent in the past year, the report notes that it might not be well understood by the public, and it is questionable how helpful some public statements by individual members have been. The 2012 SAGE guidance from the Cabinet Office states that SAGE members should be provided with “clear guidance on confidentiality”, but it is unclear if this had happened. The Committee recommends that the ministerial code should be strengthened to require Ministers to abide by the UK Statistics Authority code of practice. When Ministers or senior officials quote statistics, underlying data must be published. Some expectations should be laid out about the appropriate way for SAGE advisers to communicate publicly.
Perhaps the most concerning aspect of our inquiry is that the Committee struggled to establish who the Government see as accountable for ensuring that decisions are underpinned by data. For example, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster passed questions and letters from me to the Department of Health and Social Care on issues that must have included wider considerations beyond health. It is not acceptable to pass apparent responsibility for decisions between the Cabinet Office and the Department of Health and Social Care when so much is at stake. Lines of accountability must be clear and decision making must be transparent. Of course, while only the Prime Minister can be accountable for key decisions such as the lockdown, it is the Committee’s view that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster should be accountable for ensuring that these decisions are informed by data through Covid O and as part of the co-ordinated response.
We were disappointed that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster declined to appear before the Committee on this specific inquiry and sent junior Ministers in his place to answer questions on these specific matters. Unfortunately, the Ministers sent before us were not able to answer many of our questions. Both Ministers who appeared stated that they were not involved in the decision-making process, and our report questions why they were sent to the Committee, given that both the Cabinet Office and the Department of Health and Social Care were alerted to the themes of the questions prior to the session. The ability of Select Committees to hold Ministers to account for decisions is a vital part of our democratic process. This is particularly true at a time when the country is facing the toughest possible restrictions on our freedoms and when detailed scrutiny of the Government’s decisions has not always been possible in the timeframes required.
In May 2020, the Committee heard from the national statistician that responding to the next stage of the pandemic would require more localised data. The report criticises a national “by default” approach to data that included local leaders not receiving data in sufficient detail early enough. There was a reluctance from Whitehall to share granular data despite requests by directors of public health. New systems were set up outside existing systems, so data could not flow easily. Indeed, initially, test and trace data was being collected in spreadsheets. The consequences of this approach were manifold and included interoperability issues, problems with data sharing and extraction of data, and concerns or, indeed, mistrust about data quality. To quote the president of the Association of Directors of Public Health,
“if we had had all the data we have now in July or earlier, we would have had a stronger response to the epidemic.”
We also heard that existing health data systems were fragmented. Data that is key to decision making on the road map should be shared immediately, ahead of the potential renewal of the Coronavirus Act 2020 next week. The Government should publish a comprehensive list of what data is actually available. The Department of Health and Social Care, with support from the UK Statistics Authority, should undertake an urgent review of health data systems in England. Ministers who appeared before our Committee were unable to provide answers to the most basic of these questions as it was evident that neither of them had been involved in the decision making. My right hon. Friend the Paymaster General directed the question of the first lockdown to the Health Minister when clearly the Department of Health could not have made decisions that involved much wider considerations such as the economy.
There was not a consistent framework in place for tiering decisions. There were five tests in June 2020, five indicators in November 2020, and now there is a road map with four tests. Indicators have not had data thresholds, which has created confusion. It was hard to find data under the indicators, and “pressure on the NHS” was not well defined. On 19 December, 26 local authorities were put into tier 4, in spite of having infection rates at the same range as areas in tier 2. In October, local leaders told us that they were not informed about decisions prior to them being announced, and could not prepare communications and reassurance for local communities. In the midst of opaque decision making, there developed a sense of confusion and mistrust, and it quickly became apparent that some areas had been placed in higher tiers than neighbouring areas with worse infection rates.
The February road map contains dates, but not much in the way of data. Wording such as
“vaccine deployment programme continues successfully”
is not sufficient, as success is not defined. Although evidence on the safety of hospitality venues was far from conclusive, the report states that the Government were “not clear” on the evidence underpinning the decision to close hospitality in higher tiers. Fundamentally, if the Government are asking businesses to close—risking jobs, livelihoods and the very survival of those businesses—it must be clear why this should happen, and the evidence outlined demonstrates that the lack of clear communication of any evidence that does exist to underpin the decisions has created frustration and mistrust.
The Cabinet Office must outline the range of data and information it will use to lift the current lockdown. The priority must be a clear and consistent framework. The Government should provide links from road map indicators to local authority level data. They must publish thresholds aligned to the road map, and they should publish the data justifying restrictions that will remain in place on businesses at each step of that road map. I commend the report to the House.
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab) [V]
The Chair of the Committee referred to our evidence about data sharing locally and the Government’s decision to set up new organisations. The British Medical Association said:
“Our devastating mortality figures could in part be a result of the failure of the Government to…share data”.
With rates still variable across the country, how does the hon. Member think we can ensure that the Government learn those lessons—to include and trust local experts—as we come out of lockdown?
Mr Wragg
I thank the hon. Lady for her assiduous work as a member of the Committee and her significant input to this particular inquiry.
In answer to her question, I suspect that the overriding concern for some in Whitehall and NHS England was that the ideas were not necessarily invented by them, and they were therefore mistrustful of them. It is vital that existing local expertise and infrastructure should be called on to the fullest amount—more than it has been in recent times.
Nicola Richards (West Bromwich East) (Con) [V]
I congratulate my hon. Friend on his Committee’s report, which has an emphasis on the availability of data to the public, and highlights the confusion caused when the specific data underpinning decisions is not easily available online. The Government have done very well on this in the last few months, but does he agree that, further to making this data readily available, honesty about the uncertainty contained in the data is key to maintaining public trust?
Mr Wragg
My hon. Friend highlights an important point of our report, which is the need to be clear, open and honest about uncertainties. We can all be guilty of wishing to have answers to every single question—perhaps like me at the moment—but in being able to express uncertainty and show that candour, public trust is enhanced.
Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab) [V]
I have met hospitality and creative arts businesses in Luton South to discuss how the pandemic has impacted their operations. Many were frustrated that the Government were not publishing the information being used, by whom it was being used and how it was being used to inform decisions that placed restrictions on their operations. This damaged their trust in Government decision making. Does the Chair of the Committee agree that the timely publication of all the data used to make decisions on the road map and restrictions, along with clear reasons why, will help to rebuild trust with businesses and enable them to better plan their transition out of restrictions?
Mr Wragg
I thank the hon. Lady for her hard work on the Committee and particularly on this report. She will be aware of a case that is possibly going before the courts on that matter, which is to do with the opening on 12 April of non-essential retail, but not of hospitality. I agree with the thrust of her question, and I suggest that the Government publish the evidence that hospitality venues are not covid-secure, given that many have spent many thousands of pounds in making themselves so.
Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con) [V]
I welcome this report and the excellent work done by my hon. Friend. As someone who studied mathematics at university, I know that evidence-based decision making is always the right thing. Will my hon. Friend confirm that he agrees that businesses such as pubs up and down my constituency of South West Herts, including the Penn, the Akeman in Tring and the Greyhound in Aldbury, deserve the evidence and rationale for why they are not able to reopen yet, despite the significant costly measures they have put in place?
Mr Wragg
I certainly thank my hon. Friend, and I take his question as an early invitation to visit those excellent establishments with him when restrictions and time allow. From the answer that I gave to the hon. Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins), he will know that I have expressed the view that that data and the justification should be published if those excellent hostelries cannot reopen on 12 April.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP) [V]
I am not a member of the Committee, but I commend the Chair and all the members and staff of the Committee for this very thorough report.
The Chair of the Committee has called for a strengthening of the ministerial code. In paragraph 98 of the report, there is a very serious charge that a senior member of the Cabinet has been contemptuous of Parliament through their unwillingness to co-operate with this inquiry. Has the Committee considered whether the arrangements for enforcing the ministerial code are fit for purpose? For example, has the hon. Gentleman considered the practice in the Scottish Parliament by which the Parliament can consider a motion of no confidence in individual Ministers as well as in the Government as a whole? Does he believe that it would be beneficial to introduce that in the United Kingdom Parliament?
Tom Randall (Gedling) (Con) [V]
I thank my hon. Friend for his statement, and I add my thanks to the staff who helped to prepare this report. The report acknowledges that the presentation of data has improved, but does my hon. Friend agree that there is much more work for the Government to do in this area, and that that improvement will not only improve confidence in the data itself but is critical to improving confidence in future Government decisions that are data-based?
Mr Wragg
I thank my hon. Friend for his question and, indeed, for his work on the Committee; I have had the pleasure to serve alongside him. He is entirely right. I think the purpose of his question was to suggest the strengthening of the ministerial code, with the UK Statistics Authority code of practice being integrated with it, so that Ministers who are accountable to this House and, through us, the wider public are always mindful of their duty and obligation to be accurate when they bring data to bear in support of their arguments.
Jeff Smith (Mawnchester, Withington) (Lab) [V]
I, too, thank the Chair and the Committee for their report, and welcome the acknowledgement of the difficulties for the hospitality sector as a result of the failure to provide data in support of measures such as the 10 pm curfew and the substantial meal requirement. I agree with his earlier answer that hospitality needs the data informing the ruling to stay closed. Does he agree that, when the Government carry out their events research programme this summer to decide how nightclubs and festivals can reopen, they must publish the data and the evidence, so that the industry and the public can have confidence in those decisions?
Mr Wragg
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. He and I in some respects have always been engaged in the joint endeavour of ensuring that Greater Manchester, throughout the tiering decisions, was dealt with slightly more favourably than it was. But I agree with him on the study to which he refers: all of that evidence and data should be published.
Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his statement and for the Committee’s work in producing this very alarming report. Does he know why the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster did not appear before the Committee during its inquiry, despite the Committee’s expectation that he would do so? What measures will be taken to get commitments from the Government that Ministers will be more open and attend in future?
Does the hon. Gentleman know the reasons behind the Government’s unwillingness to share data with local authorities and local contacts that is reported in his report? Does he agree with my Opposition colleagues that that seriously hindered the ability of local government and local authorities to control the virus? Finally, does he agree that the continued lack of transparency reported here, and of clarity on how the Cabinet Office is making decisions on covid and who is making these decisions, is hindering, not helping, our response to the virus?
Mr Wragg
I thank the hon. Lady for her questions. I hope that the publication of this report can serve as a reminder to all Ministers that, when they are invited to attend a Select Committee for a particular inquiry purpose, rather than for a general session, their first response should be to accept that invitation. If there are any problems, they should, of course, use the usual channels to communicate those concerns. But I would hope that some of the stern words in this report will serve as a useful reminder to all Ministers that they have the obligation and are accountable to this House. While we do not have government by Parliament, we have parliamentary government and that should be sufficiently understood by them. In answer to her other questions, particularly on the hesitancy, if I may put it that way, to share all available data at local levels, I am reassured that much of that has been put right, although there may be some more to do. On the latter point, it is a hypothetical question, if I may daringly accuse her of that, but I think that that will undoubtedly have had a negative effect, certainly on the early actions to respond to the pandemic.
Christian Wakeford (Bury South) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend the Chairman of the Select Committee for his statement and welcome his Committee’s report. On the tiering decisions, many times in this Chamber we were pledged a consultation process, but it seems that the word “consultation” was a very loose one. In fact, we were essentially told, without any prior information, without prior engagement and without any of the data. Could he advise us as to the Committee’s view on this process and whether it had any recommendations on how it could be improved, if the need arose?
Mr Wragg
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I have always been dubious of the word “consultation” when expressed by anybody as a means of kicking things into the long grass. What is, and what was required was the publication of data thresholds so that areas could judge for themselves objectively why those tiering decisions were necessary. As we go forward with the road map, the publication of the data thresholds that mean that decisions are taken is vital.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I thank the Chairman of the Select Committee for answering the questions of hon. and right hon. Members. We are now going to suspend for three minutes.
Point of Order
Owen Thompson (Midlothian) (SNP)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. My point of order relates to the debate held by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) on Tuesday evening on the Scottish civil service. In that debate, he used parliamentary privilege to make a number of points. Privilege obviously allows Members to say a number of things, but it remains important that, when these things are said, what Members say is accurate and correct.
The right hon. Member made three specific points that I would contest. First, he made reference to messages between specific members of SNP staff where Mr Salmond has claimed there was a conspiracy. It is my clear understanding that the Scottish Parliament Committee has received all the communications between the named members of staff because it has used the powers it has to get them, and the Committee has been widely reported as dismissing them as irrelevant and not showing any form of conspiracy.
Secondly, the right hon. Member made reference to a message from an individual in HR claiming interference by the First Minister’s chief of staff, and suggested that this showed the First Minister’s chief of staff had knowledge of complaints against Mr Salmond earlier than she had said. However, Rape Crisis Scotland yesterday issued a statement from the civil servant involved stating that this was
“fundamentally untrue and are being deliberately misrepresented”,
that they had not shared the details of the complaint, the complainer, or who was being complained about, and the chief of staff’s actions were in line with their wishes.
Finally, the right hon. Member claimed that civil servants had deliberately removed a document from the court. This is untrue. Let me quote the Scottish Government statement that was issued last night:
“The assertions made by David Davis are wrong—this document was not withheld, it was provided to the Court on 21 November 2018.”
All that was accidentally redacted was one email address, not a document, and this is clear in the published documents. The right hon. Member is right that the Scottish Parliament Committee needs to get to the truth of this matter in order that mistakes are not repeated and that women are not let down in the future, but clearly this will not happen if serious allegations are made without checking the veracity of them first.
In response to the Scottish Government’s comments last night, the right hon. Member appears to have taken to social media this morning to try to move the goalposts, but he has notably not sought to defend his earlier accusations. He claimed in a newspaper interview yesterday that he was very careful with what he said in the Chamber on Tuesday evening. However, it would appear that he was not quite careful enough. Mr Deputy Speaker, I seek your advice on what options are available to me and to the right hon. Member to ensure that the parliamentary record can be corrected.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I thank the hon. Member for his point of order and for giving the Chair advance notice of it. I know that he also gave the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) notice that he was going to make this point of order. I have listened carefully to what he has had to say, and I am sure that, in saying that, he believes some of the comments made by the right hon. Gentleman were untrue, but he is not saying that anybody has deliberately misled the House and I am grateful for an acknowledgement of that. It is not for me to comment on the accuracy of comments made by the right hon. Gentleman in that Adjournment debate or by the hon. Member in this point of order, but the Speaker has made it absolutely clear that if any Member needs to correct the record, they should do so at the earliest opportunity. The hon. Gentleman has put his points on record, and I think we should leave it there.
Backbench Business
Sri Lanka
(3 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
It may be helpful to inform the House that this debate is likely to run until about 3.45 pm.
Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House notes with concern the reports of a systematic attack in Sri Lanka on democratic governance, the rule of law and human rights including renewed discrimination against the Tamil and Muslim communities; is profoundly concerned that the Sri Lankan Government has refused to investigate accusations of war crimes including by key members of the current government and has withdrawn from the UN Human Rights Council Resolution 30/1; welcomes the significant leadership role played by successive UK Governments at the Human Rights Council and urges the Government to provide clear policy direction and leadership to ensure a new substantive resolution is passed at the upcoming Council session in March 2021 that will enable continued monitoring by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and mandate a mechanism to gather, preserve and analyse evidence of violations for future investigations and prosecutions; and calls upon the Government to develop a consistent and coherent policy to assist the Sri Lankan people through its trade, investment and aid programmes, and in its diplomatic and military relations.
I begin by thanking the Backbench Business Committee for approving this debate and the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey) and the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) for co-sponsoring it. I proudly declare my interest as the vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for Tamils. For 12 long years since the end of the Sri Lankan civil war, I have stood alongside my Tamil constituents on the road to truth, justice and accountability. Those 12 years have presented them with so many challenges, so little progress and so much pain. The images of the final days of the civil war are scarred on my memory. No one who saw them could possibly forget them, and the mass violation of human rights left a stain of injustice on Sri Lanka. The world looked away, but today we will not.
I shall introduce today’s debate by running through a decade-long quest for justice. I will continue with the last UN Human Rights Council resolution on Sri Lanka—a resolution that the country itself disappointingly withdrew from—and I will finish by highlighting the urgent need to strengthen the new resolution on the table in Geneva, because the measure of success for global Britain comes not just in rhetoric but in the actions that we take on the international stage, particularly in the face of international justice.
But first, the history. In 2009, in the final few months of Sri Lanka’s civil war, tens of thousands of civilians lost their lives. We all remember the horror of the Mullivaikkal massacre, the most recent peak of genocidal killings against the Tamil people committed by the Sri Lankan state. The current Prime Minister, Mahinda Rajapaksa, was President and his brother Gotabaya, the current President, was Defence Secretary. They are the present-day link to the atrocities of the past. The bombing of the Government-designated no-fire zone, where Tamil civilians took refuge, is as utterly horrifying today as it was 12 years ago, as are the findings of experts that Government forces even systematically shelled hospitals.
Amnesty International estimates that, since the 1980s, there have been at least 60,000 and as many as 100,000 cases of enforced disappearance in Sri Lanka, the vast majority from the Tamil community. These figures illustrate the scale of the suffering, the uncertainty surrounding the facts and the urgent need for resolution. Members will have heard of the horror of rape, torture and murder used during the civil war, the stories of the mass violation of women’s rights—stories that brought the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women to urge investigations into sexual violence. They are stories we could never forget, but, to this day, no one has been held accountable for international crimes that have led many to accuse the Sri Lankan Government of genocide against the Tamil community.
The pursuit of justice must now move decisively forward with more sincerity from the international community. The Human Rights Council meeting happening now provides the perfect opportunity. Before turning to today’s resolution, it is important to consider the resolution that came before. Passed in 2015, with the consensus of Sri Lanka, it promised the establishment of a process of justice, accountability, reform and reconciliation, but six years on, Sri Lanka has made it clear that it has absolutely no intention of pursuing prosecutions or legal redress for war crimes. Its withdrawal from the process altogether could not have spelled this out more clearly. The little progress made has been rolled right back. The ongoing Human Rights Council meeting is our chance to finally secure progress, making it clear that a country cannot fail to fulfil international commitments. To do so risks undermining the credibility of the council as a mechanism of accountability.
I turn to the current resolution, to which the UK is a penholder. Disappointingly, it falls short. First, there is no recommendation to pursue criminal accountability by referral to the International Criminal Court. I could barely believe my eyes reading the Government’s reasoning, citing “insufficient…Security Council support”. Who are we to cast the veto for China or Russia before they have done so themselves? Our role on the international stage must be to send the loudest message that impunity will not be tolerated, not to pre-empt the inaction of other nations.
Secondly, there is a clear need for an international, impartial and independent mechanism to investigate the most serious international crimes. The Minister may point to resolution operative paragraph 6, but can he confirm whether preparation of files to facilitate criminal proceedings will be carried out in accordance with international criminal law standards? The resolution must be absolutely clear about the requirement to establish a IIIM to investigate allegations of war crimes, secure evidence, identify perpetrators and prosecute those responsible. The High Commissioner for Human Rights should continue to monitor and report on human rights in Sri Lanka, providing recommendations to ensure justice for victims and accountability for perpetrators. To rely, as the Foreign Office argues, on the Sri Lankan Government to investigate and prosecute all allegations of gross human rights violations is simply unrealistic, falling far short of our moral responsibility.
Thirdly, why have we not applied sanctions against those credibly accused of gross human rights violations? The US has designated General Silva and his immediate family over his role in extrajudicial killing of Tamils. It is an immediate step that we could take and the Minister cannot point to a veto as an excuse for our inaction. We must ensure a coherent approach to aid, trade and diplomatic and military engagement with Sri Lanka, consistent with the international obligations to human rights. That is long overdue.
Let me turn to the present day. Human rights are under attack in Sri Lanka again, with President Rajapaksa waging a campaign of war. Many of those who face serious wartime abuse allegations have been appointed to senior Government positions. Members of the Rajapaksa family hold nine ministerial roles, including seven Cabinet posts, and manage almost a quarter of the budget. It is total control. President Rajapaksa even pardoned one of the few members of the security forces to be convicted of human rights violations, Sergeant Sunil Ratnayake. That was unsurprising, given his stated determination to protect so-called war heroes during the presidential campaign.
The intimidation is perhaps best demonstrated by the demolition of the Mullivaikkal memorial at Jaffna University in January. That same month, the damning report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights warned that Sri Lanka was on an
“alarming path towards recurrence of grave human rights violations”,
and called on the UN Human Rights Council to take strong action to promote accountability and reconciliation.
This is not just about the human rights of Tamils: the Rajapaksa Government even insisted on the forced cremation of those who died from coronavirus, thereby disregarding the religious beliefs of the Christian and Muslim communities in the country. The ongoing attack on human rights is undeniable. As we are a penholder to the UN resolution, the world will watch closely the strength of our response.
I look around the Chamber and, unless I am mistaken, I cannot see the Foreign Secretary. Perhaps I should not be surprised; he repeatedly declined to meet the APPG for Tamils in the build-up to the UN Human Rights Council meeting. I ask the Minister, with all due respect: where is the Foreign Secretary? The Foreign Secretary under the Labour Government personally flew to Sri Lanka at the end of the civil war to press for a ceasefire. The Foreign Secretary’s absence not only today but in the months leading up to the Human Rights Council meeting will be felt strongly by the Tamil community.
Before I conclude, let me turn to the Tamil community. There are half a million Tamils throughout the UK. They are a hard-working, respectful and dedicated community who have my utmost respect. We owe a debt of thanks to the huge number of Tamils who are working tirelessly on the frontline of our NHS. I sincerely thank them and say loud and clear that however long the road to reconciliation may still be, we will keep fighting for justice and human rights until they are achieved.
Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con) [V]
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for scheduling this debate and my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh), for opening it so well.
As chair of the APPG for Tamils, who are the largest ethnic minority group in Carshalton and Wallington, I am especially pleased to speak in this debate to urge the Government to do all they can to secure peace and accountability in Sri Lanka. I thank colleagues from all parties who have worked with me on the APPG this past year, and the Tamils from Carshalton and Wallington, the United Kingdom and around the world who have been in touch with us and shared their stories.
In the short time I have, which is not nearly enough to cover everything, I will try to get straight to the point. Six years ago, the UK Government paved the way in addressing human rights abuses in Sri Lanka and successfully pushed for UN resolutions to pursue accountability and reconciliation on the island. The Sri Lankan Government at the time signed up to those UN resolutions, but since then Sri Lanka has sadly withdrawn its support for them, and the evidence collected by the APPG in its many evidence sessions this past year have painted a very worrying picture of the situation on the ground.
As the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden outlined, recent infringements on human rights have been on the rise. Those have included the forced cremations of covid-19 victims, regardless of their religious beliefs, causing grief and anguish to Sri Lankan Christians, Muslims and others. The police criminal investigation department has been repeatedly visiting members of advocacy groups on the island who are campaigning for justice following the disappearance of their family members during the war.
The terrorism investigation department has been increasing state surveillance culture, especially in the north, Tamil-populated part of the island. The state-supported demolition of a Tamil memorial monument at Jaffna University and attempts to prevent Tamil memorial events from taking place at all have been causing anguish among the community, occupying private land in the name of security and so much more.
It is clear that there is no scope at the present time for a domestic accountability mechanism in Sri Lanka, so the UK must once again demonstrate its global leadership on this issue and support an international accountability mechanism. The initial zero draft resolution published by the UK in February and presented to the UN Human Rights Council fell well short of providing the action that was needed.
After efforts from Tamils in the UK and abroad, campaign groups and the APPG, subsequent drafts of the resolution have included a requirement to collect evidence on human rights abuses, rather than just looking at what is already there, and acknowledged for the first time that Tamils have been particularly victim to worsening human rights abuses on the island. I welcome those changes, but I urge the FCDO to listen to the calls we are making today.
So much more needs to be done, so we must act now, before the conclusion of the UNHRC session at the end of the month, to ensure that there is a true international accountability mechanism in place. Only then can we hope to bring about truth, justice, reconciliation and accountability for all in Sri Lanka, as well as for the Tamil diaspora—not just in Carshalton and Wallington, but across the world.
Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con) [V]
I start by highlighting my chairmanship of the all-party parliamentary group on Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka’s relationship with the rest of the world has been strongly shaped since the end of the conflict by allegations that the army committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during the final phase of the civil war.
A UN panel of experts reported in April 2011 that there were credible allegations of those crimes by both Government and Tamil Tiger forces. It remains my opinion that both sides were at fault. However, I regret the Government of Sri Lanka’s decision to withdraw support for UNHRC resolution 30/1 and note that previous domestic initiatives have failed to deliver meaningful accountability. I therefore urge the Sri Lankan Government to engage in a process that has the confidence of all on the island.
But it would be remiss to state that the current Sri Lankan Government have failed to act. The Office on Missing Persons and the Office for Reparations are to be retained and strengthened, so that communities may build trust. It will be good to see reform of the Prevention of Terrorism Act and progress on the release of political prisoners. We must act as a critical friend to the country. We need to help strengthen democratic institutions, and we must trust Sri Lanka to develop its own judicial and non-judicial mechanisms.
Since the end of the conflict, reconciliation has occurred between Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim communities. People are able to live wherever they wish. They benefit from state resources, such as free education and health services. Private land that was occupied by the military has been returned, former conflict areas have been de-mined with assistance from the United Kingdom, and more than 12,000 ex-LTTE— Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam—cadres have been rehabilitated. There is a greater connectivity throughout the island and globally, and all of this has transformed the business sector and the lives of everyone in the country.
But we should remember that resolution and accountability are not a panacea for addressing underlying tensions. Questions about how to address the legacy of the Sri Lankan conflict must be answered: what kind of justice is attainable? How should the victims of violations be treated in the process? What might punishment look like, and how can justice play a constructive role in forging a lasting peace?
Draft legislation for a truth and reconciliation commission had been prepared under the previous Sri Lankan Government, and that could be revisited. If it gains universal support in Sri Lanka, truth seeking among all stakeholders, including the diaspora in many of our communities and constituencies, could make a lasting difference. When these issues have been resolved, a sustainable and acceptable peace will endure. Given the good will between our two countries, I ask the Minister: how can the UK help to facilitate a TRC mechanism that is unique to the needs of Sri Lanka?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
It may help those who are participating, both remotely and physically, to know that the wind-ups will begin no later than 3.21 pm. Anne McLaughlin will have six minutes, both Stephen Kinnock and Nigel Adams will have eight minutes, and then we will go back over to Siobhain McDonagh for two minutes at the very end. I hope that is useful.
Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab) [V]
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) for her warm and powerful opening of the debate, and for securing it along with the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) and the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey).
Ambihai Selvakumar, also known lovingly as Ambi, is a director of the International Centre for the Prevention of Genocide. Ambi was on hunger strike recently in Kenton in Brent, in order to highlight the current injustices in Sri Lanka. In her own words, Ambi’s campaign is a demand for
“justice for the genocide of Tamils carried out by the Sri Lankan state.”
Ambi’s protest sparked a number of solidarity hunger strikes across the north-east.
When he gets to his feet, I hope the Minister will address Ambi’s four demands. The first is to recommend to the United Nations Security Council and the UN General Assembly that Sri Lanka be referred to the International Criminal Court and to take steps to effectively investigate charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. The second is to establish an international independent investigative mechanism akin to those established for Syria and Myanmar, which mandate that the evidence of international crimes and human rights violations be collected and prepared for criminal prosecutions. She also states that a meaningful independent investigation must also have a strict timeframe.
The third recommendation is to mandate the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to appoint a special rapporteur to continue to monitor Sri Lanka for ongoing violations and to have an on-field presence in Sri Lanka. The last recommendation is for a UN-monitored referendum to determine the aspirations of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka, on the basis that the north-east of Sri Lanka is the traditional Tamil homeland, and the Tamils have a right to self-determination. I hope that the Minister will address Ambi’s demands when he gets to his feet.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con) [V]
I declare an interest: in October 2020, the British Tamil Conservatives made a donation to the Harlow Constituency Conservative Association.
It is estimated that between 40,000 and 70,000 civilians were killed in the final five months of the Sri Lankan conflict. At the end of the war, in 2009, some 280,000 Tamils remained incarcerated for years in camps surrounded by barbed wire, with thousands of enforced or involuntarily disappearances. Their relatives continue to search for their whereabouts and for justice. Twelve years on from the end of the armed conflict in Sri Lanka, little progress has been made to secure justice and autonomy for the Tamil community. Still there is no real accountability.
The Sri Lankan state continues to target the Tamil people in all aspects of their lives through surveillance, denying them their livelihoods, physical security, education, economic security, culture, healthcare, freedom of expression and freedom of worship. In February, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, issued a report expressing deep concern at the situation in Sri Lanka. She said that there are
“clear early warning signs of a deteriorating human rights situation and a significantly heightened risk of future violations”.
What action are the Government taking to prevent future cycles of violence and to promote autonomy for the Tamil community in Sri Lanka, as forecast in the latest UN report? In 2014, the UK led the international efforts that successfully passed a key resolution in the UN Human Rights Council to promote accountability, justice and reconciliation. In 2015, Sri Lanka agreed to co-sponsor a resolution to promote accountability, justice and reconciliation, but despite that pledge and repeated extensions to their deadlines by the UN Human Rights Council members, successive Sri Lankan Governments have delayed and obfuscated at every turn. In 2019 Sri Lanka unilaterally withdrew from the resolution, walking away from its international obligations. The Sri Lankan Government have repeatedly reneged on their pledges to investigate and prosecute wartime atrocity crimes.
Now is the time for strong international action, led by the UK once again, to secure justice for the Tamil community, recognition of the genocide and a proper accountability mechanism. In February, tens of thousands of people joined one of the largest rallies in the Tamil homeland since the end of armed conflict in 2009. They marched for five days, from the east to the north of the island, calling for justice. That same month, 500 British Tamil organisations wrote to our Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, seeking an independent mechanism for evidence collection and the referral of Sri Lanka to the International Criminal Court.
Twelve long years have passed. I urge the Minister to listen to the Tamil community here in the UK and in Sri Lanka, to recognise the genocide, secure justice for the Tamil community by taking on board the recommendation of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and refer Sri Lanka to the International Criminal Court.
Ed Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)
I thank the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) for leading this debate. I am proud to have worked with her for many years on the APPG, standing up for justice and human rights for Tamil people. Over those years, we witnessed time and again Tamil people being harmed by the Sri Lankan Government and let down by the international community.
Human rights are again under attack in Sri Lanka. Recent reports from numerous human rights organisations, as well as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, paint a disturbing picture. From the appalling treatment of Sri Lanka’s Muslim and Christian communities during covid, when the Sri Lankan Government for months prevented burials of their dead in the traditional manner, to the continuing human rights abuses against the Tamil population across the island, things are getting worse, as the international community wrings its hands.
It is clear that domestic mechanisms for accountability in Sri Lanka have failed again in recent years; they cannot be relied on. An international mechanism has always been needed to enable allegations of genocide, war crimes and human rights abuses to be properly examined and investigated. Many of us had campaigned for such a mechanism for nearly 12 years since the end of the civil war. Eventually, at the United Nations Human Rights Council, the Sri Lankan Government signed up to a mechanism, albeit one involving significant compromise by those of us who felt it did not go far enough, and who did not trust the Sri Lankan Government to deliver.
Sadly, time has proven us right. The Sri Lankans did not deliver on any of the promises made to the international community and then, last March, walked away totally. It is clear that the Sri Lankan Government will continue to deny, to delay and to evade. That is why we urgently need a new international solution.
The 46th session of the UN Human Rights Council is currently under way, giving the UK the opportunity to demand accountability in Sri Lanka, but regrettably the draft resolution on Sri Lanka totally fails to rise to the challenge, even though the UK is a leader of the core group. As it stands, the draft resolution is too vague and lacks a robust commitment to international accountability mechanisms. Section 6 is simply far too weak. That is why Liberal Democrats continue to call on the UK Government to work with international partners to ensure a proper international, independent investigative mechanism to establish what is happening in Sri Lanka. There must be a robust international mechanism that ensures that evidence can be collected and files can be prepared for prosecution.
The British Tamil community is growing frustrated at the lack of meaningful progress in finding justice, and I share that frustration. It is time for the UK to undertake bilateral actions to push for accountability. I have long called for an end to arms exports to Sri Lanka. For Sri Lanka to be listed as a human rights priority country in the Foreign Office’s own recent annual human rights report is preposterous, and arms exports are still not banned. The Government should look at Magnitsky-style sanctions against individuals involved in perpetrating human rights abuses.
The truth is that Sri Lanka is part of the global struggle between the US and China. It is part of the geopolitics of our world, and it is time that democratic countries worked together to support the democratic and human rights of the Tamil people and stopped allowing the Sri Lankan Government to become increasingly under the influence of Beijing. It is time we stood up for the human rights of the Tamil people.
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests regarding a visit I made almost exactly a year ago to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva to make the case for justice for the Tamil people.
Terrible crimes were committed during the conflict in Sri Lanka. Over a decade later, as we have heard today, human rights abuses against Tamils persist. In a deeply worrying report in January, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, highlights
“the accelerating militarisation of civilian governmental functions, reversal of important constitutional safeguards, political obstruction of accountability, exclusionary rhetoric, intimidation of civil society”.
Domestic initiatives to secure accountability for war crimes have failed to produce results, and Ms Bachelet fears that this entrenched impunity could contribute to past crimes being repeated. Not one of the individual cases identified by the UN as emblematic has led to a successful prosecution. In one of the few cases where a member of the military was convicted for murdering a Tamil, President Rajapaksa chose to issue a pardon. Some of those implicated in war crimes have even been appointed to senior positions. More than 40 civil society institutions have reported harassment and surveillance. Reporters Without Borders points to “an alarming resurgence” in attacks on Tamil journalists. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights continues to receive credible allegations of abductions, torture and gender-based violence by security forces. The Prevention of Terrorism Act is still used to detain people, years after the Sri Lankan state promised to repeal it.
Driven forward by David Cameron’s Government after his historic visit to Jaffna—the first by a major world leader—much hope centred on UNHRC resolutions 30/1 and 40/1. That Conservative-led Government played a crucial role in securing those very significant resolutions. Ministers and officials under this present Conservative Government continue to lead efforts to secure a tough new resolution at the UNHRC session under way as we speak in Geneva. Welcome progress has been made on that resolution, but the international community needs to match words with deeds. If it does not, this new resolution could run into the sand, like the previous ones.
I call on the Minister today; it is time for the UK Government to use their Magnitsky sanctions regime to target the men the UN believes are culpable for the atrocities that took place during the Sri Lankan civil war. That is one of the key asks of my British Tamil constituents. I believe that could finally help break the deadlock and open the way for justice for Tamils and a better future for Sri Lanka.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
I express my gratitude to the Backbench Business Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) and all hon. Members involved for ensuring that time is given to this very important debate.
Many people in my Slough constituency have a direct interest in reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka because of their own links to the nation, because they have friends and family there or because they are concerned about human rights. I had the pleasure of visiting this beautiful country and therefore appreciate fully the huge potential it has to succeed and prosper on the global stage. However, since the end of the tragic civil war in 2009, there has, sadly, not been the construction of robust human rights institutions and legal frameworks needed. Attempts at truth and reconciliation have been unsatisfactory, especially the withdrawal by the Sri Lankan Government from UNHRC resolution 30/1. There must be commitment on all sides to transparency, honesty and a willingness to show contrition.
The Tamil community, victims of violence and their families must feel that their voices are being heard. This has not, sadly, been the case thus far in Sri Lanka. In the limited time available and without repeating what other hon. Members have mentioned, I want to address one very specific abuse of human rights. It is an issue of huge concern to Sri Lankan Muslims, Christians and other faith communities, and one which I raised earlier this month with the Minister for Asia—the forced cremation of those who have died from coronavirus.
As the House will know, cremation of a human body is forbidden in some religions, including Islam. The Holy Koran sanctifies the human body as made by God and forbids cremation because it contends that human remains must return to the earth. However, widespread reports indicate that the Sri Lankan authorities have been cremating all covid-19 victims, regardless of religion. The Sri Lankan Government’s chief epidemiologist claimed that burials would “contaminate ground drinking water”. There is absolutely no medical or scientific basis for this. The World Health Organisation has made it clear that human remains can be safely buried without risk of spreading covid-19 and across the world, including right here in the UK, countries have safely buried the bodies of those who, tragically, have died from this virus.
While reports indicate that these measures are being reversed, albeit not to full satisfaction yet, this has been seen by many in the broader context of the oppression of minorities in Sri Lanka, including Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Tamils and others. From listening to constituents, especially those worshipping at the Masjid al-Jannah, Slough, and the Council of Sri Lankan Muslim Organisations UK, as a vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for Sri Lankan Muslims, I appreciate their deep pain and legitimate concerns.
When the war ended after 25 years of death and destruction, we had hope for a lasting peace for every citizen of Sri Lanka. We had hope for the rule of law and universal human rights. Recent events show that we still have a long way to go, and our UK Government must step up to the plate on the international stage and impress upon the Sri Lankan Government the need to respect universal human rights and the critical need to follow the path of accountability, justice and reconciliation.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con) [V]
I congratulate the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) on leading the debate, and it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi), with whose remarks I agree wholeheartedly. I declare my interest as an officer of both the all-party parliamentary groups on Tamils and on Sri Lanka, and as chair of the all-party parliamentary group for the Council of Sri Lankan Muslim Organisations UK.
The reality is that Sri Lanka was blighted and torn apart by a terrible, bloody civil war. Twelve years on from it ending, there are still many people who are unaccounted for. We do not know what happened to them: whether they were killed, they are in graves somewhere or they dispersed around the world. Nine years ago, I joined others in visiting Sri Lanka, ahead of the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, and I saw at first hand the work that was being done in Jaffna. That heralded the visit by former Prime Minister David Cameron, which was a deeply historic visit. I saw at first hand the mine clearances going on and also the clearance of areas for fishing, so that the Tamil people could return to being able to farm and to fish for their own population and for exports.
My constituent, Ambihai Selvakumar, who has been referred to earlier, lives in Kenton in Harrow and has been on hunger strike in her bid to seek justice for the Tamil people. I hope that her campaign will be successful, but I caution her that her life is more important at the moment than ensuring that we get the British Government and others around the world to shift their views.
I commend the Amnesty International report, which highlights the abuses that minority religions experience in Sri Lanka. I commend as well the report by Real Other, which put together the position in Sri Lanka. It took 32 days writing the report and it draws attention not just to the forced cremation issues, but to the other suffering that the Muslim minority are experiencing in Sri Lanka right now. We should remember that all sorts of atrocities are being inflicted on the minority Muslims across Sri Lanka.
The reality is that deeply religious persecution is going on in Sri Lanka, where there is a big majority of Buddhists against all the minority religions. Recently, I led a virtual delegation to the UNHRC on behalf of COSMOS and drew to the council’s attention the atrocities being visited on the Muslim minority in Sri Lanka. It is key that the resolutions of the Human Rights Council are strengthened. When my hon. Friend the Minister rises, I urge him to give a deep commitment to ensuring that we act as a country to strengthen the resolutions and to make people, particularly the leadership in Sri Lanka, face up to their responsibilities and ensure that religious persecution ends and that minority rights are protected. After all, that is one of our fundamental areas of international concern and I hope that we will be leading the way rather than following.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
First, let me congratulate the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) on setting the scene so well and with such passion. I applaud her commitment to the cause.
I register my interest as chair of the all-party group for international freedom of religion or belief. I am sure that I speak for all members of that group when I stress the concern that we feel about the Sri Lankan Government’s withdrawal from their commitment to reconciliation, accountability and human rights.
I am also very concerned about the treatment of religious or belief communities in Sri Lanka. The UN special rapporteur for freedom of religion or belief, Dr Ahmed Shaheed, visited Sri Lanka and noted the frequent reports of acts of intolerance and the failure of the state to protect individuals and communities targeted by such hostility. Dr Shaheed also said that the Muslim communities and new Christian churches faced harassment and assaults that include interruption and damage to places of worship, physical assault on clergy, intimidation, mob violence, restricting the use of places of worship, the obstruction of religious rights, incitement to violence and many, many other acts of intolerance. Indeed, since the beginning of 2015 to the end of June 2019, the National Christian Evangelical Alliance of Sri Lanka has documented an estimated 387 attacks or violations targeting Christians specifically.
When it comes to Muslims in Sri Lanka, according to CSW, religious intolerance towards that community predates the 2019 Easter bombings. Many propagators of hate speech towards Muslims play on the economic factors. Anti-Muslim rumours are also a regular feature of life on Sri Lankan social media.
Since the bombings, Sri Lankan Muslims have faced an upsurge in violations of their basic rights, as well as assaults and, indeed, other abuse. This lack of accountability that abusers and perpetrators of violence face in Sri Lanka has been raised by many different communities to the special rapporteur. The authorities have shown an unwillingness to protect communities against threats and acts of violence. We must also look at the legal basis of all this, as the Sri Lankan Government constitution declares:
“Buddhism shall be given the foremost place by the State.”
In 2003, a Supreme Court ruling determined that the state was constitutionally required to protect only Buddhism. This gross violation of human rights puts into law the Government’s refusal to treat all religious or belief communities fairly. They should all be treated the same.
Sri Lanka is also not responsive to violence and abuse against women. Women who experience religious hostility, including violence, displacement and stereotyping, do not receive attention or redress. Women also experience gender-specific hate speech and human rights violations. Moreover, women’s human rights activists appear to be at risk from fundamentalist members of their own religious communities.
Like others, I am concerned about the Government forcing cremation on Muslims, Christians and those of other ethnic groups. I believe that is against the human rights of every member of those religions. It is based on absolutely no scientific and medical evidence, and it is a cause of great concern.
I want those in a position of power to be made accountable for their war crimes by being brought to court and having their assets taken away, and through travel bans. The influence of hate speech, legal discrimination and impunity for violent actors will serve only to cause more conflict and violence in Sri Lanka in the long run.
I always like to quote a Scripture text. I do that in all these debates because it is important to do so. Galatians chapter 6, verse 2 urges this of every one of us:
“Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.”
I believe that the people of Sri Lanka are crying out for that very help. I urge the Minister, for the sake of every community in Sri Lanka, to use all channels available to him to encourage his Sri Lankan counterparts to commit to UN Human Rights Council resolution 30/1 and to the protection of freedom of religion or belief for all. We are here to speak up for those who have no voice.
Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con) [V]
I congratulate not just the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) but a collection of near neighbours of mine to the north on securing this debate.
I have a vivid memory of being in Sri Lanka a few years ago as war planes passed overhead, heading in the direction of the Tamil areas of the country. That was a very stark reminder of the turmoil that that country has experienced. Although I am in no doubt that there were sometimes dreadful deeds on both sides of the civil war, it is the plight of the Tamil community in particular that rightly attracts international concern. I remember that concern taking David Cameron to Jaffna when he was Prime Minister, and it is rightly shared by politicians across the House today.
There can be no winners from the racial strife that continues to dog Sri Lanka; nor is it easy to see how that strife can end without accountability for what happened and genuine efforts for reconciliation between the two communities. I know from my constituency and the Tamil community that lives and worships here how strong the sense of resentment and anger still is among that community, and how real and strong the concerns are for surviving relatives still in Sri Lanka. Many of my constituents lost relatives during the civil war, and many still fear for relatives in today’s Sri Lanka, where it is clear that pressures on the Tamil community have not gone away. It is a tragedy.
I also represent members of the Sinhalese community, who live and work in my constituency and play an important part, for example, in our NHS. Those communities should be able, back in Sri Lanka, to find a way of living alongside each other in peace and friendship. Unless that can eventually happen, there will be no long-term stability for the country. I welcome the UK’s move to lead the UNHRC resolution on Sri Lanka, which would provide a framework for continued international engagement on human rights and post-conflict accountability. It calls on the Government of Sri Lanka to investigate and prosecute all allegations of gross human rights violations and serious violations of international law. It highlights concerns about the human rights situation, including the protection of Tamils. Those things are the minimum necessary to start Sri Lanka back on the road to justice and stability.
We have heard quite a bit this afternoon about the hunger strike by Ms Selvakumar here in the UK to highlight the need for action in Sri Lanka. Whether or not we support the approach that she took—I happen to agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) about the importance of her life—the fact that she chose to do that serves to underline the frustration of the Tamil community about how much still has to be done.
It is my hope that the Sri Lankan Government are listening to this debate and the cross-party contributions, because this is an issue that unites Members on both sides of the House. I hope they will be provoked to think about their future and what is in the interest of their country. In the end, no Government succeed by failing to respect the rights of all their citizens. In the end, the damage to their international reputation bleeds through to their economy and all other aspects of their interaction with the world.
It really is time now for the Government in Colombo to act in their national interest, to recognise the deep international concern about what has happened and what is still happening, and to put things right once and for all. Unless there is justice in Sri Lanka for everyone, and justice for all members of the Tamil community, that potentially great country will never in reality be able to fulfil its potential; and without justice, its reputation in the world will remain seriously tarnished.
Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) for securing this debate, which is so important to so many people in Ilford—both north and south.
It is now 12 years since the end of the armed conflict in Sri Lanka, and the latest UN report on the country’s human rights situation paints an extremely worrying picture. Since 2019, the situation in Sri Lanka has rapidly deteriorated to widespread reports of torture and oppression, the reintroduction of the death penalty for certain drug offences, antagonistic behaviour such as the demolition of the Mullivaikkal memorial at the University of Jaffna, and the appointment of military officials such as General Silva to positions of authority. This is all deeply troubling to people across Ilford.
In 2015, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights completed a thorough investigation into the abuses by all parties in the Sri Lankan armed conflict, mandated by UN Human Rights Council resolution. It found strong and corroborated evidence that the 58th Division, led by Shavendra Silva, had extrajudicially executed surrendering soldiers and shelled marked civilian hospitals. The Sri Lankan Government recently passed the 20th amendment to the constitution, which is seen by many as a significant challenge to democratic governance. The amendment, which has been opposed by civil society and religious leaders, removes all checks on the power of the executive President. Campaign groups say that this also further undermines the judiciary’s independence by allowing the President complete control of senior judicial appointments. In the UN Human Rights Commissioner’s latest report, she said that she is
“deeply concerned about the increased use of ethno-nationalistic and majoritarian rhetoric and symbols by the President and other senior Government figures”,
and warned of a return to violence. She also called for a referral to the International Criminal Court and targeted sanctions against Sri Lankan officials found in contravention of human rights.
Despite these troubling reports, the UK Government have recently provided several million pounds in security assistance to Sri Lanka, to aid training and capacity building of the Sri Lankan police and security forces. In 2019, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office announced another three-year programme under its conflict, stability and security fund, totalling £3 million; this would include supporting police development and strengthening the defence relationship. I urge the Government, as I previously have in this House, to publish the overseas security and justice assistance assessment of the financial support for activities under this programme, because I and the people of Ilford South want to be confident that we are not supporting human rights violations.
Let us be clear: the Labour party is committed to defending the rule of law and human rights across the world. It is troubling that the Foreign Secretary was recently recorded saying that the UK could pursue trade deals with Governments who commit human rights abuses. Does that include the Sri Lankan Government? It is deeply concerning that the Government are yet to implement Magnitsky sanctions against members of the Sri Lankan Government who are found to be complicit in serious human rights abuses, and makes the UK an outlier among its allies.
In February 2020, the US State Department designated General Silva under the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2020, banning him and his immediate family from entry into the United States. Various civil rights groups and NGOs have expressed their concerns that £6.3 million of UK taxpayers’ money has recently been spent on supporting security reform in Sri Lanka. This has only enabled Sri Lankan security forces to advance antagonistic activities, including accelerated destruction of places of worship and cultural heritage, and, as I have already mentioned, the terrible events at the memorial at the University of Jaffna. Indeed, there are further reports, widely, of torture and oppression by state actors.
Thousands of members of the Sri Lankan Tamil community in my constituency are deeply concerned about this. They want to see this Government put human rights at the centre of our foreign policy and any future dealings with the Sri Lankan Government, working towards a political solution that includes the self-determination of the Tamil people on the island of Sri Lanka.
Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) on securing this debate and on her work in raising this matter both in this Chamber and in Westminster Hall debates. It is a pleasure to be able to take part. I also associate myself with the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) in relation to the Magnitsky Act and making sure that we use its full potential to ensure that we can bring to justice people who are committing human rights violations. As ever, it is a pleasure to be in the same debate as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), and I appreciate what he said.
As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the preventing sexual violence in conflict initiative, I would like to address how we could use the PSVI to tackle some of the human rights violations and abuses that have been identified by so many Members. As many have said, the progress that has been made since 2009 has been incredibly limited. In fact, the Sri Lankan Government’s decision to reverse their position is of grave concern.
In recent weeks and months, we have heard the Foreign Secretary talk about the need for the UNHCR to restore its reputation to make sure that it acts on human rights violations. I would say that we, too, can do well to listen to that advice. The international community, at a point at which it is fractured and divided, could again become united and stand together in addressing the violations of human rights of countries around the world, and Sri Lanka would be a good place to start.
A recent report from the UN states that there continue to be
“credible allegations, through well-known human rights organizations, of abductions, torture and sexual violence by Sri Lankan security forces since the adoption of Human Rights Council resolution 30/1, including during the past year”.
The preventing sexual violence in conflict initiative was set up on the basis of helping those who, as its name says, have endured sexual violence in conflict and crisis zones. The UK, when it set it up in 2012 and 2014, was able to engage international co-operation to be able to ensure not only that resolutions in the UN could pass, but that documentation could be provided of crimes that are going on across the globe, that survivors could be supported, and that potential prosecutions in future years could be delivered. If the organisations that are currently set up are failing to deliver that, I suggest that we push forward to create on our own new international body that can help to document these crimes, support survivors, and lead international prosecutions. Out of every great conflict and crisis that has happened throughout mankind, great new reforming bodies have come, and this should be no exception.
I want to make two final points. First, this year there is the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Rwanda, and, as has always been the case, we should be able to speak truth to our friends. It would be a missed opportunity for us to not speak clearly at the CHOGM about what has happened in Rwanda to ensure that there can be co-operation in order to address the human rights violations that have happened. Secondly, we must make sure that we raise these issues at the G7 in order to provide support for those who have endured human rights violations, and to ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice and the culture of impunity is shattered. We have an opportunity—I do not believe this to be bravado—to lead the international community to take action to help safeguard human rights and to lead by example, and I hope that we can do so.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind) [V]
The seriousness and urgency of this debate cannot be overstated. The current presidential Administration of Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his brother Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa stand accused of multiple historical and ongoing human rights violations. Their Administration continue to prevent any accountability for the Sri Lankan military, many of whose leaders stand credibly accused of innumerable war crimes in the Sri Lankan civil war. These leaders include army commander Shavendra Silva and Secretary of Defence Kamal Gunaratne, who are accused of deliberately shelling hospitals and civilians, involvement in sexual violence, extra-judicial executions and enforced disappearances.
During the civil war, an estimated 100,000 people were forcibly disappeared. These disappearances have affected all communities, but the bulk of the victims were Tamils. Forced disappearances also occurred in Sri Lanka before the war, when hundreds of students in the south of the country were disappeared, as well as in its aftermath. The vast majority of these cases remain unresolved, and attempts by relatives of the victims to attain justice have provoked visceral resistance from the Sri Lankan state.
In February 2017, the relatives of the disappeared in the north and east, mainly Tamil women, began a continuous protest seeking the truth about what happened to their loved ones. At least 78 of the protesters have sadly passed away since the beginning of the protest, without ever learning the truth about what happened to their families. There is, at present, no prospect that these families will ever know real accountability from officials responsible via the domestic justice system in Sri Lanka, the independence of which has been severely compromised by the Rajapaksa Administration.
However, that does not mean we are without options to defend the human rights of Sri Lankan citizens. The US applied sanctions on army commander Silva for his complicity in human rights abuses in February last year. The UK should immediately follow suit, in designating both General Silva and Secretary of Defence Gunaratne on the UK sanctions list.
Furthermore, given the Sri Lankan military’s continued complicity in preventing any real accountability for historical and ongoing crimes against humanity, we should immediately halt UK defence engagement with the Sri Lankan armed forces and withdraw our resident defence adviser in Colombo. That post was established in January 2019,
“to hasten the development of a modern, accountable and human rights compliant military,”
but all the post has created is a legitimisation mechanism for the Sri Lankan military and state.
The UK has a long record of training Sri Lankan military and security forces on human rights issues, but there is no evidence of significant changes in the approach of the military to human rights, nor of effective vetting or accountability in the army for those accused of serious human rights violations. The UK must not remain complicit in these grievous crimes. If our engagement is truly aimed at preventing further human rights violations, we must take real steps to remind the Sri Lankan Government that they cannot expect military engagement and support unless those human rights violations are addressed.
In conclusion, I hope that the UK Government take these considerations on board and act accordingly, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) on securing this debate.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
I, too, draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Like the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers), this time last year, just as the seriousness of the pandemic had become clear in our country and days before formal lockdown was introduced, I was in Geneva, lobbying delegations and missions to the UN Human Rights Council about the need for firm action at UN level as a result of both the failure of the Government of Sri Lanka to honour the existing commitments that had been made and, as we have heard about during the debate, the ongoing human rights abuses in that country.
My hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) set out perfectly well both the historical context and the ongoing challenges in the country. I am afraid that it is with a sense of déjà vu that I participate in this afternoon’s debate, because we have been here so many times before, discussing exactly the same issues—the appalling atrocities committed during the civil war; both the literal scars and the emotional scars that survivors of that conflict continue to feel to this very day; the disappearance of families, still unresolved; and the responsibility that rests on the Government of Sri Lanka to promote truth, justice and reconciliation for all the peoples of Sri Lanka.
It had felt that we had begun to make progress. We had seen, through successive UN Human Rights Council resolutions, not just focus from the international community but the Government of Sri Lanka signing up to commitments before the international community. Those included a commitment for international involvement in the investigation and prosecution of allegations of historical war crimes, and a commitment—made before the eyes of the entire international community—to put a stop to ongoing human rights violations.
But what do we see from the report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, as well as from a wide a range of independent international NGOs? We see a picture, described by the UN, of the last 12 months fundamentally changing the environment for advancing reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka: the erosion of democratic checks and balances in the civic space; threats to reverse the limited—I emphasise that word as I thought the hon. Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) was far too generous in his assessment—gains in recent years; and the risk of the return to policies and practice that gave rise to the grave violations of the past. Indeed, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden, not only do we have a Government who have withdrawn from the commitments that Sri Lanka made to the international community, but we have back in power the same cast of characters who were responsible for perpetrating human rights abuses during the civil war, and resistance to any sense that they should be accountable for their historical actions and for ongoing human rights violations.
I ask the Minister: what is going to change, beyond the resolution, the lived experience of people in Sri Lanka, and the Tamil community in Sri Lanka and around the world, who are seeking accountability and justice for historical crimes? As we have heard, it is not just the international community—I agree with the arguments made about the importance of CHOGM and the G7—that can take action; we can take bilateral action to apply Magnitsky sanctions against the rogues and criminals who perpetrated human rights abuses. At this point, after many years of campaigning for justice, my Tamil constituents are looking not just for warm words but for action and leadership, which has been missing from the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab) [V]
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting): how many more times do we have to be here before we get firm action?
I thank the hon. Members who secured this important debate, and I pay tribute to all my constituents and the community groups who have contacted me to express their views about the deteriorating situation in Sri Lanka. All of them, especially from the Tamil community, have impressed upon me the need for decisive international action merely to secure a peaceful and just future for the country.
These next few days in the run-up to the UN Human Rights Council meeting on Monday are critical to securing a meaningful international intervention that could lead to that better future. That is why I support the call in this debate for urgent action from the highest levels of our Government, in particular the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary, to ensure that the resolution is strengthened for Monday and also that the vote is overwhelmingly carried. I urge the Government to draw upon the full range of our diplomatic relationships, especially with our friends in the Commonwealth countries in Africa and Asia.
Many of us have been shocked but not surprised at the latest report in January on the situation in Sri Lanka from the UN Commissioner for Human Rights. It sets out straightforwardly the litany of concerns that our own constituents have drawn to our attention: the failure of the Sri Lankan Government to address past human rights violations; the closing down of the space for independent voices; the intimidation of civil society alongside a deepening attitude of acting with impunity within the Government; a visible and increased militarisation of the civil Administration; and, yes, the rise of ethno-nationalism and hate speech—there clearly has been a concerted and targeted attack on the rights of Tamil and Muslim communities.
I repeat what others have said: the seriousness of these issues means that the UK Government must throw their full diplomatic weight behind the strengthening of the United Nations Council resolution and make sure that we follow it through to implementation. As my hon. Friend for Ilford North said, we should also recognise that the adoption of the resolution does not preclude individual countries like ours from taking additional unilateral action. I believe that this country has a special responsibility for action as a former colonial power. We united the three kingdoms, one of which was a Tamil kingdom, into one country and then left in 1948.
To prove that we are serious about holding the Sri Lankan Government regime to account, the only way is for the UK Government to undertake unilaterally three distinct actions. First, we must ensure that all trade and aid agreements with Sri Lanka are only granted following the full ratification and enactment by the Sri Lankan Government of the UN human rights conventions and the fulfilment of their pledge to scrap the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Secondly, I support all Members who have said that we should use the Magnitsky provisions that we have recently put into legislation to ensure that we take action against those individuals who are accused of gross human rights violations. Finally, we must ensure that we fully fund and support bodies investigating human rights abuses and war crimes and bring on to the agenda the claims of genocide during the war in Sri Lanka.
Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab) [V]
It is an honour to speak in this debate about a situation that should concern all of us, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) on leading it.
I have been contacted by a number of my constituents for whom the pain and suffering caused by the civil war in Sri Lanka and the persecution of the Tamil community is still very real. Many of us have been contacted about the hunger strike currently being undertaken by Mrs Selvakumar. The fact that Mrs Selvakumar feels that this is the only way to get her voice heard is deeply saddening.
The move away from the UN Human Rights Council resolution in the past year by the Government of Sri Lanka is very troubling, and the ongoing human rights issues in that country must be a priority for our Government as they focus foreign policy on the Indo-Pacific region. The 30-year civil war between the Sri Lankan Government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam saw continuous and terrible human rights abuses by both parties. When the war ended in 2009, it was hoped that finally Sri Lanka might find peace and the chance to reconcile and heal the divisions that had beset the country since independence. But progress has been slow and halting at best, and since the Sri Lankan Government removed themselves as a co-sponsor from the UNHRC resolution, there have been increasing concerns about their commitment to peace and justice.
Trends emerging in the past year have represented a clear early warning sign of a deteriorating human rights situation in Sri Lanka. We have seen an acceleration of the militarisation of civilian Government functions, the erosion of the independence of the judiciary and key institutions, increasing marginalisation of the Tamil and Muslim communities and even the destruction of a memorial to the victims of the war. There is ongoing impunity and obstruction of accountability for the crimes and human rights violations that have occurred.
Victims and their families are calling out for international accountability, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has requested that members of the UNHRC co-operate with victims and their representatives to investigate and, indeed, prosecute international crimes committed by all parties in Sri Lanka. Our Government must commit to doing all they can to have these crimes investigated and the perpetrators prosecuted.
The British Government created the Global Human Rights Sanctions Regulations 2020 in order to prevent the immunity enjoyed by perpetrators of serious human rights abuses. Will the Government commit to using those sanctions to prevent further abuses in Sri Lanka? They have already announced a shift in foreign policy in the Indo-Pacific region, but our foreign policy and trade agreements must not come at the cost of people and their lives. It is imperative that the Government commit to prioritising human rights as a cornerstone of our foreign and trade policy in the region, and I hope they will not put trade and profits before the interests of human lives.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab) [V]
I warmly welcome this debate. The resolution to be voted on next week comes at a crucial time. It should make a reference to the International Criminal Court, as my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) argued so powerfully in opening the debate. The evidence-gathering element is crucial to maintain material for the international accountability which Sri Lanka has resisted for so long but which must come in due course. I welcome the proposed commitment to regular report-backs on the conditions in Sri Lanka.
As others have reminded the House, we now have a UK mechanism for sanctions against those guilty of human rights atrocities; will we sanction those who are guilty in Sri Lanka? The US has rightly designated army commander Shavendra Silva, who has been mentioned already and led the ground assault on the beaches of Mullivaikkal at the end of the civil war, attacking civilians, hospitals, medical staff and no-fire zones; will we now do so too? Kamal Gunaratne, who is now Defence Secretary, led a February 2009 assault, attacking civilian hospitals and food distribution points. He commanded the Joseph army camp, which was notorious for torture after the war. The UN has named him; will we sanction him? Why on earth do we have a resident defence adviser in Colombo, providing training and legitimacy? He has met at least five people who have been credibly accused of mass atrocities. Surely that adviser must now be withdrawn.
Before the 2019 Sri Lanka election, the Government there paid lip service to the Human Rights Council resolution that they co-sponsored with the UK after David Cameron visited as Prime Minister. The calculation seemed to be that if they paid lip service to engaging, the international community would leave them alone. They were right: there was no serious effort to hold Sri Lanka to account. The new Sri Lankan Government, elected in 2019, includes guilty men, as we have heard. They are no longer pretending; they have simply withdrawn.
Last month, the Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice, which has Tamil, Muslim and Sinhalese support, said that
“respect for the rule of law and human rights has demonstrably diminished”
and that the current Government have
“significantly reversed progress on 15 out of the 25 commitments”
under resolution 30/1
“and halted progress on 7 others.”
The president now controls all senior judicial appointments. In a climate of fear, human rights defenders and victim/survivors are watched and harassed, and human rights lawyers are held without charge. We have been reminded of the presidential pardon for one of the only soldiers ever convicted of a wartime atrocity. Other key cases have collapsed; witnesses and victims are intimidated; senior police officers are taken off investigations; and the former head of the Criminal Investigation Department has been arrested. The president has promoted war criminals; all Government Departments are led by former military commanders; military intelligence officers run covid contact tracing, threatening activists and victims; and, as we have been reminded, Muslims are targeted. The Human Rights Council must pass an ambitious resolution next week.
Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op) [V]
As others have alluded to, Sri Lanka is a stunningly beautiful island, but for its Tamil citizens or, increasingly, its Muslim citizens, and certainly for its citizens who are Sinhalese and interested in human rights or are opponents of the Rajapaksa family, it is a very dangerous country.
Many of those who are Tamil who live in my constituency believe that nothing short of a genocide continues to take place against Tamil citizens in Sri Lanka. They believe that Tamil citizens are increasingly viewed by the Sri Lankan Government in apparently the same way as the Chinese Government view the Uyghurs. There is deep frustration with the apparent impunity of the Rajapaksa family and their supporters in respect of either domestic or international accountability. There is anger with the UK Government for their tolerance of that impunity and their complicity, at international level, in thus far failing to get the international community to take action against the Sri Lankan Government. There is also disbelief that Tamil refugees might be returned to a country so obviously ravaged by human rights abuses.
There is among the Tamil community in my constituency a demand, similar to those expressed by others, for Britain to use the powers that it already has at its disposal to hold to account those who are clearly implicated in serious human rights abuses—as alluded to by many Members, not least my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms)—and to take action, as recommended by the UN Commissioner for Human Rights. The Tamil community want Ministers to back a call for Sri Lanka to be referred to the International Criminal Court. A number of Members have referred to the courage of Mrs Ambihai Selvakumar in her recent hunger strike, which, I am pleased to say, for her sake, has ended, but which served to draw international attention to the issues that we are debating today.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) said in her excellent speech, the frustration of the international community and the Tamil community in many of our constituencies dates back to the end of the conflict in 2009, when terrible war crimes were committed against the Tamil community, including civilians and those surrendering at the end of the conflict. No one has ever been held accountable for those crimes. I strongly support the call by Michelle Bachelet, echoed by my hon. Friends today, for Britain to use the Magnitsky sanctions that it does have available to it against Shavendra Silva and Kamal Gunaratne.
In the short time that I have left, I also want to praise the recent Amnesty International report and note the important contribution from Freedom from Torture urging the Home Office to take another look, with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, at the country note that it uses to judge whether or not refugees should be returned to Sri Lanka. Clearly, given the scale of torture and other human rights abuses, it would be totally wrong to return people with credible concerns about the situation in Sri Lanka. I look forward to the Minister finally taking some serious action against Sri Lanka.
Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP) [V]
I congratulate the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) on a speech that I know will have moved many of my friends here and in Sri Lanka, as it did me. She and others in this debate have been good and consistent friends to those campaigning for truth, justice and accountability in Sri Lanka.
I will not repeat all that we have heard about what happened during the 30 year-long war. Instead, I will focus on what has or has not happened since. It is a crime against humanity that nobody has been found accountable since the war ended 12 years ago. There has been a sleight of hand performance between then and now, with successive Governments promising the international community and their own people that they will do X, Y and Z, then drawing back, then promising again, but at the end of the day progress is never made, accountability never happens, reconciliation is never credibly attempted, and peace never really comes to this beautiful island.
I know exactly how beautiful Sri Lanka and its people are because I lived and worked in Galle on the south coast for a short time during the civil war. I cannot claim to have suffered because of it, but I certainly met many people who were suffering and heard stories and rumours of what was going on at the time. It was in the years afterwards, however, when I returned just after the war and was finally able to travel to the north and on two further visits, that I heard at first hand what had happened. People were still frightened. In fact, one man gave me a copy of the book that he had written about his account of abuses against the Tamil community. He was so afraid of what might happen to me, should I be caught reading it, that he removed the cover and replaced it with another.
It was on those visits that I made in the years after the war that I got a clearer picture of what had happened, and it was from my constituents as a Member of the Scottish Parliament from 2009 to 2011, from friends who stayed on to help rebuild Sri Lanka and from the people in Sri Lanka I have kept in touch with for the last 13 years that I got to understand more about what happened—about the internally displaced people camps, the missing people, the torture, the sexual violence and the shelling of so-called no-fire zones.
The reason for today’s debate is to urge the UK Government to do more. The Sirisena Government of 2015, about whom I was somewhat cynical, did co-sponsor the UN Human Rights Council resolution, and it was hoped that this would encourage further investigations into civil war crimes. To an extent it did, in that it established institutions with the functions of addressing the impact of the war, but not much more happened and the operation of these institutions has been hampered by successive Governments.
I will also acknowledge that the UK Government have played a vital role as leaders of the core group on Sri Lanka within the Human Rights Council, but it is clear now in which direction the Sri Lankan Government are heading, and the UK Government must step up their commitment to reconciliation, accountability and human rights. Separation of powers and the independence of the judiciary have been grossly undermined by amendments to the constitution. I believe the 20th amendment, which removes almost every check on the executive powers of the President, to be the most significant signal that there is no respect for the rule of law. Donald Trump is an amateur compared with this guy.
The new Government are led by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was the Defence Secretary in the final throes of the war. The President’s brother, Mahinda Rajapaksa, the President at the time of the civil war, has been appointed Prime Minister, and we have heard about the nine other family members holding senior positions in that Government. The Rajapaksa brothers are credibly accused of a host of crimes during the war, and of violating international humanitarian and human rights law, yet there they are, President and Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, with all the checks and balances removed. They have consistently blocked, undermined and obstructed investigations and court cases. The missing are still missing. As we have heard, the President recently pardoned a soldier—one of the few ever to be tried, let alone found guilty. The soldier was guilty of the killing of eight Tamil civilians, including a five-year-old child and two teenagers. I can only assume that was all part of his promise to end what he calls the
“era of betraying war heroes”.
As an MSP, I met two teenage girls living in Glasgow. They were Tamils who had sought asylum because, as children, they had watched their father shot to death in front of them by a Sri Lankan army soldier. He made them watch as he put a bullet through their dad’s brain. Should that soldier be tried, or should he be hailed as a war hero, while the world looks on, simply shrugging its shoulders?
I back the calls on the UK Government from previous speakers and the Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice, and I will reiterate just a few of those. In terms of trade, Sri Lanka should be removed from enhanced framework level until it meets the conditions set and agreed to repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act—an Act that allows arbitrary detention and strips the rights to due process for those detained. Their armed forces need to stop training their army until they satisfy the conditions, set and agreed to, on human rights. The Minister needs to establish a screening policy for diplomatic meetings, so that the UK is no longer giving legitimacy to individuals critically accused of war crimes.
Finally, I would suggest that we engage the Global Human Rights Sanctions Regulations 2020 to apply sanctions against individuals credibly accused of involvement in mass atrocities. Shavendra Silva would be a start. It is the very least the victims of this war, both living and dead, both here and there, can expect from us.
Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) on securing this vital debate. I pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Brent Central (Dawn Butler), for Slough (Mr Dhesi), for Ilford South (Sam Tarry) and for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi), who made truly powerful, moving contributions to the debate. The really strong showing from the Labour Benches shows the central importance of this issue to our party.
The Labour party puts the rule of law, democracy and universal human rights at the very heart of our foreign policy. We expect those principles to be upheld consistently in every country throughout the world, including Sri Lanka. We will always stand up for the universal rights and freedoms of all citizens when national Governments refuse to live up to their international obligations.
In 2009, in the final few months of Sri Lanka’s long, brutal civil war, tens of thousands of civilians, mostly from the Tamil community, lost their lives. It is a scar on the conscience of the world that no one has been held accountable for those crimes, which include the deliberate shelling of civilian targets, sexual violence, and extrajudicial executions. The shocking lack of accountability for past atrocities is compounded by the fact that the human rights violations in Sri Lanka continue to this day. Respected non-governmental organisation Freedom from Torture has forensically documented more than 300 cases of torture by the Sri Lankan state since the war ended, and it continues to receive referrals for Sri Lankan individuals today.
The people of Sri Lanka, regardless of their ethnicity or religion, deserve justice. Those responsible must be held accountable, and peace and freedom must be secured for future generations. The Labour party is therefore deeply troubled by what has been taking place in Sri Lanka since the election of Gotabaya Rajapaksa in December 2019.
First, he has militarised his Government by appointing former soldiers such as Shavendra Silva and Kamal Gunaratne, who both stand accused of crimes against humanity, to key positions in his Cabinet. Secondly, he has done huge damage to his Government’s credibility in the eyes of the international community by withdrawing from UN Human Rights Council resolution 30/1, which sets out a process for delivering accountability for war crimes. Thirdly, we are profoundly concerned by reports of the forced cremation of victims of covid-19, including those of Muslim and Christian faith, for whom burial rituals and traditions are sacred. The World Health Organisation has issued guidance stating that the burial of covid-19 dead poses no danger to public health.
On the UNHRC resolution, in recent weeks and months I have written to the Minister twice about these issues and made it clear that, as the penholder on Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Council, the UK has a crucial and unique responsibility to show moral and political leadership in its approach to co-ordinating the international response. The final version of the draft resolution, which is set to replace 30/1, is certainly an improvement on the zero draft. However, we continue to have real concerns about key aspects of it. Therefore, I have the following questions for the Minister.
First, the draft resolution fails to incorporate the recommendations made by the high commissioner in her report of 27 January regarding universal or extraterritorial jurisdiction. We should be supporting the high commissioner’s view that the principles of universal or extraterritorial jurisdiction should apply, and that states should pursue investigations and prosecutions in their national courts. Why have the Government failed to include an explicit commitment to that in the resolution?
Secondly, the suggested evidence-gathering mechanism is clearly a step in the right direction, but it stops short of recommending the establishment of a fully fledged international, independent investigative mechanism. Why have the Government failed to include in their final draft a commitment to IIIM?
Thirdly, it is clear that there is a strong basis for referring a number of senior members of the Sri Lankan military and Government to the International Criminal Court. Why have the Government failed to include such a recommendation in the resolution? We know that two of the permanent members of the UN will likely block such action, but should the position of the Government really be shaped by the veto-wielding intentions of China and Russia?
Fourthly, there is nothing in the resolution about prevention. Why does not the resolution include explicit reference to protecting human rights defenders? Are British diplomats travelling regularly to the north and east of Sri Lanka to assess the situation on the ground?
Fifthly, the draft resolution requests a report on accountability options in 18 months. This is an unacceptably long timeline, given the evidence already available, and it will give the Sri Lankan Government yet more time to obstruct and obfuscate. Why have the Government failed to ensure that the resolution is based on a far shorter report-back timeline of six months, as I recommended in my recent letter to the Minister?
Moving beyond the UN resolution, there are a number of bilateral steps that the Government should be taking. In my 11 December letter to the Minister, I suggested that a number of Sri Lankan officials should be sanctioned under the Government’s global human rights sanctions regime, yet not a single Sri Lankan Government Minister, official or military officer has been designated. Could the Minister please explain why it is taking so long when the evidence is already widely available?
In my letter, I also raised the issue of the UK defence adviser’s engagement with the Sri Lankan military. Since arriving in Colombo in January 2020, he has met at least four senior commanders of the Sri Lankan military who stand accused of gross human rights violations. Could the Minister please explain how the activities of the defence adviser will lead to greater accountability for the Sri Lankan military? Are the UK Government vetting who the adviser meets? Is the adviser’s defence engagement delivering tangible results, or is it simply lending a veneer of legitimacy to a military that is committing human rights abuses?
Thanks to the recent leaking of comments made by the Foreign Secretary, we know that he is perfectly happy to pursue trade deals with Governments who are committing human rights abuses. Are the UK Government pursuing a trade deal with Sri Lanka? Will human rights conditions be applied? As an EU member state, the UK was party to trading arrangements that offered a preferential tariff to Sri Lanka under the general scheme of preferences enhanced framework known as GSP+ because the Sri Lankan Government were supposedly living up to their human rights obligations. Now that the UK has left the EU, will the Government be reassessing their trading relationship with Sri Lanka?
Here’s one for the SNP spokesperson—to be answered at another time, I guess—if she is still tuned in. Police Scotland has made 90 deployments of officers to Sri Lanka over the past 15 years. Have these deployments achieved tangible results, or are they just lending a veneer of credibility? Finally, what assessment has the Minister made of Sri Lankan soldiers continuing to be deployed in UN peacekeeping missions despite the human rights record of the Sri Lankan military?
The integrated review is full of snappy slogans and rhetoric, but all it really achieved was to expose the chasm between the stated ambitions and the actual, tangible actions of this Government. If global Britain is to mean anything, it must surely mean consistently standing up for democracy, for the rule of law and for universal rights and values—not just with words, but with deeds. That must start today, and it must start with Sri Lanka.
The Minister for Asia (Nigel Adams)
I am particularly grateful to the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) for securing this debate. I pay tribute to her for her work with the APPG. I also pay tribute to the many other Members across the House for their work on this important issue and for the many informed and passionate contributions that we have heard this afternoon. I will try to respond to as many of them as possible in the time I have, but I am conscious that I have to give the hon. Lady a couple of minutes at the end of the debate. The Minister for South Asia—the Minister that the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) wrote to—would have been delighted to take part in this debate, but obviously he sits in the other place so it is my pleasure to respond on his behalf and on behalf of the Government.
Human rights in Sri Lanka are an important issue and a long-standing priority both for the UK Government and for many fellow Members. This debate is timely, coming during the 46th session of the UN Human Rights Council, which began on 22 February. The human rights situation in Sri Lanka and the limited progress on reconciliation and accountability raised by many right hon. and hon. Members are deeply concerning. As the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Aberavon, pointed out, in February last year the Government of Sri Lanka withdrew their support for the UK-led UN Human Rights Council resolution 30/1 and its successor resolutions 34/1 and 40/1. Those resolutions concerned reconciliation, transitional justice and accountability.
The Sri Lankan Government then announced a domestic mechanism on accountability. As with previous domestic initiatives, however, meaningful progress has yet to be delivered. There have also been a number of setbacks on accountability, including the appointment into Government positions of military figures accused of war crimes, as referenced by hon. Members this afternoon. As the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) pointed out, they also include the presidential pardon of former army sergeant, Sunil Ratnayake, one of the few perpetrators of war crime atrocities to have been convicted in Sri Lanka.
Other worrying human rights developments include the continued harassment and surveillance of minorities and civil society groups, as was pointed out by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), the increasing role of the military in civilian governance, and a constitutional amendment that has extended Executive control over the judiciary and the independent institutions. As the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) pointed out, the Government’s policy of forcibly cremating those deceased due to covid, which has only recently been reversed, has particularly affected the Muslim and Christian communities. Even now, our understanding is that families face significant restrictions on where and how burials can take place.
The UK Government are deeply concerned by these developments. We have long stood by all the victims of the conflict in Sri Lanka. I was particularly taken by the comments made by the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin), who had very personal recollections of that time. We have condemned LTTE terrorism and worked over many years to achieve post-conflict truth, accountability and transitional justice. Together with our international partners in the Core Group on Sri Lanka, the UK has led successive UN Human Rights Council resolutions on Sri Lanka in 2014, 2015, 2017 and 2019. In February, June and September of last year, we set out our continued support for the UN Human Rights Council framework and our growing concerns about the human rights situation in Core Group statements to the HRC.
Sri Lanka is a human rights priority country for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. In our annual reports, and in Lord Ahmad’s autumn ministerial statement, the Government have highlighted a number of important concerns, which have been highlighted here this afternoon. Accountability and human rights have also been integral to any bilateral discussions we have had with the Government of Sri Lanka. The Foreign Secretary underlined the importance of accountability when he spoke to the Sri Lankan Foreign Minister in May. Lord Ahmad, the Minister for South Asia and the Commonwealth, has also had numerous discussions with the Foreign Minister, most recently in January, and with the Sri Lankan high commissioner here in London.
We welcome the recent reports on Sri Lanka by the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. We agree with the high commissioner that the Human Rights Council must continue to monitor the situation in Sri Lanka very closely and we must continue to press for accountability and reconciliation. Along with our Core Group partners, the UK, as penholder, has presented a new draft resolution on Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Council. The resolution aims to provide a continued framework for international engagement on human rights in Sri Lanka. The draft calls on the Government of Sri Lanka to make progress on accountability and human rights, and stresses the importance of a comprehensive accountability process for all violations and abuses committed in Sri Lanka. It aims to keep Sri Lanka firmly on the HRC agenda and requests OHCHR reporting on the human rights situation and, importantly, on accountability.
A number of right hon. and hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden and the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey), have called for an international accountability mechanism —a mechanism to collect and preserve evidence of human rights violations—as part of the resolution. I can confirm that our resolution strengthens the capacity of the OHCHR to collect, consolidate, preserve and analyse evidence. The resolution supports future accountability processes and builds on the investigations conducted under previous HRC resolutions. We are now working hard to build support for our draft, which we hope will be adopted next week.
Regrettably, the Sri Lankan Government have made clear their opposition to further substantive action by the HRC. None the less, we will continue to seek to work constructively with them on these issues. We will underline the importance of accountability and human rights in our dialogue with the Government of Sri Lanka. My right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) and the hon. Members for Brent Central (Dawn Butler) and for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi) raised the issue of the hunger strike carried out by Ambihai Selvakumar. We understand that, as has been pointed out, she was able to conclude her hunger strike two days ago. We absolutely recognise the concerns she has raised about the issues faced by the Tamil community in Sri Lanka. We have highlighted these concerns about the lack of progress towards post-conflict accountability and the wider human rights situation.
A number of hon. and right hon. Members raised the question of sanctions. We established the global human rights sanctions regime in July 2020, and in a statement to Parliament, the Foreign Secretary set out the full scope of the new regime without speculating, importantly, on future designations. We continue to consider further designations under this global human rights sanctions regime, and we keep all evidence and potential listings under close review.
I acknowledge and welcome the strength of feeling in the House. We are right to be concerned. We will continue to prioritise international efforts to support accountability and reconsideration at this current session of the Human Rights Council, and we are pushing very hard for our resolution to be adopted next week. I must reiterate that we cannot speculate on future designations under the global human rights sanctions regime.
Finally, I make it clear that we want a positive relationship with Sri Lanka. We share deep historical ties. We work well together on a number of common interests, such as climate change and covid recovery, and we value that partnership, but accountability and human rights must remain high on the agenda—accountability and human rights to provide justice for all the victims of the conflict and the lasting reconciliation and stability that will allow the people of Sri Lanka to prosper.
Siobhain McDonagh
I thank all the hon. and right hon. Members from across the House who have taken part in this debate. Their commitment to the minority community of a small island is very much appreciated, but their interest is because of the hard work of the members of the Tamil community. They simply cannot forget the relatives they no longer have, the relatives who they have no idea where they are, the relatives who were bombed in hospitals and the relatives who were left on beaches having lost their limbs by a Government now led by the same men who did that to members of their family.
This debate is about the credibility of the British Government in taking seriously the loss and distress of a community in this country—half a million who work hard, do their best and contribute greatly to our nation. Are we serious about representing them, or do we believe that Governments who have powerful friends should be allowed to behave as they like?
I suggest that the Government of Sri Lanka only understand very firm action. To rely on that Government to seek out those who committed the atrocities or to take action is simply a fool’s errand, and it has to stop. We have to seriously mean that we will help the Tamils in this country to find their relatives, to know what happened, and to allow their relatives to live in a community where they are able to vote, to take part and to believe that their views are taken seriously.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House notes with concern the reports of a systematic attack in Sri Lanka on democratic governance, the rule of law and human rights including renewed discrimination against the Tamil and Muslim communities; is profoundly concerned that the Sri Lankan Government has refused to investigate accusations of war crimes including by key members of the current government and has withdrawn from the UN Human Rights Council Resolution 30/1; welcomes the significant leadership role played by successive UK Governments at the Human Rights Council and urges the Government to provide clear policy direction and leadership to ensure a new substantive resolution is passed at the upcoming Council session in March 2021 that will enable continued monitoring by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and mandate a mechanism to gather, preserve and analyse evidence of violations for future investigations and prosecutions; and calls upon the Government to develop a consistent and coherent policy to assist the Sri Lankan people through its trade, investment and aid programmes, and in its diplomatic and military relations.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
We will suspend very briefly for the cleaning of the Dispatch Boxes.
World Water Day
(3 years, 9 months ago)
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Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered World Water Day 2021.
I thank the co-sponsors of this debate, ahead of World Water Day on 22 March—the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg), my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) and the hon. Member for Dundee West (Chris Law). It also has the support of the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham) and my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson). I also thank the many organisations that have campaigned on this important issue over the years—to name just a few, WaterAid, UNICEF, Oxfam and Global Justice Now. UN Water has done important work, as has, more widely, the United Nations. I also pay tribute to We Own It, whose tireless work on water access in this country has drawn attention to the spiralling cost of water to consumers since it was first privatised in England and Wales under Margaret Thatcher’s Government in 1989.
The need for clean, accessible water is universal. It should not be a privilege for countries with the highest GDP or those that benefit from a geographical location that means they are safe from the ravages of climate change. It is a disgrace that almost half the world’s population is without access to clean water. It is even more shocking, given that we are in the midst of a global pandemic and a key factor in halting the spread of covid is people’s ability to wash their hands regularly. Despite that, figures by WaterAid reveal that more than 3 billion people are unable to wash their hands with soap and water at home, half of healthcare facilities in low-income countries lack basic water services, and 60% have no sanitation services at all.
That is set to worsen with the climate emergency, with warmer temperatures, rising sea levels, increased floods, droughts and melting ice affecting the quality and availability of water and sanitation systems. Forecasts show that, by 2040, a quarter of all children worldwide will live in areas with extremely limited water access. Data from Oxfam, which has done so much to help communities gain access to clean water, reveals that 2.4 billion people do not have access to a toilet, while a staggering 4.5 billion people lack safely managed sanitation services.
The lack of access to water is a killer. Figures from the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development show that unsafe water accounts for more than 1.2 million deaths each year. Every minute, a newborn child dies from infection caused by a lack of safe water and an unclean environment. That is backed up by WaterAid’s research, which adds that unclean births caused by limited water supply account for 11% of global maternal mortality, while approximately 20% of all global deaths are due to sepsis, which often arises from contaminated water.
This crisis is being exacerbated by the ongoing pandemic. More than half of all healthcare facilities in low-income countries are operating without access to hand-washing facilities. At present, according to WaterAid, just 5% of climate finance is spent helping countries adapt to climate change. Even less is given to the most vulnerable countries. Less than 1% of total global climate investment goes on basic water infrastructure and services. The climate emergency is the greatest challenge facing our planet, and that approach falls well short of what is urgently required.
Just a week after International Women’s Day, it is worth noting that 80% of people displaced by climate change are women. That means that, in the aftermath of disasters, women are more likely than men to be displaced and become victims of violence. Women are also more affected by droughts and water shortages, and often have to walk even longer distances to collect water. This also has enormous implications for global food production.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend is listing some really important interlinkages of how water is vital to achieve all these other important goals. Of course, many of them are the sustainable development goals. Is he worried, as I am, that covid has put back much of our progress on the SDGs—particularly the water and sanitation goal—and that 2030 is looking further off than it did a year and a half ago?
Navendu Mishra
I fully share my hon. Friend’s concerns about the sustainable development goals.
The cost associated with tackling this issue is not prohibitive; far from it. The World Health Organisation and UNICEF estimate that providing water, sanitation and hygiene in 80% of healthcare facilities in low-income countries by 2025 would cost approximately $3.6 billion, of which $1.2 is capital costs. To put that in context, funding the initial infrastructure costs would account for just 6% of the US Government’s $20 billion budget they set aside for global health, and it represents a tiny fraction of the $732 billion the US spends on its military budget each year. And that is just one country.
In the UK, sadly, our funding has often worsened, not improved, access to water when it is linked to projects that privatise services. For example, research by Global Justice Now revealed that, over the past decade, UK aid accelerated the privatisation of public services in the global south. Overseas development aid was invested in for-profit schools, unaffordable private hospitals, water and sanitation privatisation and private sector energy projects.
That approach does long-lasting damage. For example, in the 1980s and 1990s, a wave of privatisation swept across much of the global south, with Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa particularly impacted. Many indebted Governments who turned to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to restructure their debts were subsequently forced to reduce public spending and privatise public services as a condition of future loans. Under dictator Pinochet, Chile enshrined water privatisation in its constitution, and 40 years later it continues to pay the highest rates for water in Latin America.
Despite reassurances from the Prime Minister when it was announced last year that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development would merge, the Government have since shelved their ring-fenced commitment to spend 0.7% of national income on overseas aid, cutting spending to 0.5% despite the Conservative manifesto commitment to maintain the higher target. At the start of the pandemic, DFID announced a £100 million campaign to support better hygiene practices, including access to water. At the time, the Government stated that the programme would work in 37 countries and help implement country-specific activities on safe water and sanitation. Separate funding of £20 million was also made available in a humanitarian support package. All this is now under threat.
In the UK, we are incredibly fortunate to have access to clean, safe water that has been treated and tested to the highest standards. However, in the past three decades, we have also seen the privatised model lead to spiralling costs that are not matched by investment in infrastructure and quality of service. Research by We Own It revealed that between 1989, when the UK water companies were first privatised, and 2016, water bills increased by 40%. According to the Commons Library, there were price hikes of up to 50% in the decade after water and other utility companies were denationalised—this despite UK companies paying billions to shareholders. Indeed, between 2013 and 2017 alone, UK water companies handed out more than £6.5 billion to shareholders, clearly prioritising profit over people.
While the water industry is always quick to argue that the increase in bills since privatisation has been accompanied by investment in infrastructure by companies and improvements in service quality, the reality is that the infrastructure is poorly maintained. That has resulted in the network haemorrhaging water, with more than 3 billion litres lost each day, equal to 53 litres per person, which is 21% of the water taken from the environment each day by water companies. The reality is that it is far more commercially appealing for private companies and their shareholders to buy new and often protected tracts of land to build new reservoirs, rather than fix the existing leaking infrastructure. That has led to parts of London and the south-east facing severe shortages, and responsibility for that must, at least partly, be laid at the door of water companies.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
My hon. Friend is right to point out that Britain is the only country in the world to have dabbled in complete privatisation of water. In places where Labour has maintained power, we have mutualised it and renationalised it. Many customers in Britain will be seeing rising water bills because they have been at home during covid. Does he agree that something the Government could do to help the pound in the pocket of ordinary citizens is bring water back into a mutual, non-profit structure and make sure that the money goes to where it is deserved?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I remind the hon. Member that we are under massive pressure for time, so he should be looking to wind up very soon.
Navendu Mishra
I will, Mr Deputy Speaker. I fully share my hon. Friend’s concerns; his point about water companies going back into public hands is very valid, and I support that.
I will conclude in a moment, but first I would like to talk about the Flint water scandal. Time and again, we have seen that private water companies do not have the consumer’s best interests at heart, and the drive for increasing profit comes at the expense of health and safety. Perhaps the most notable example of that was the Flint water scandal in Michigan, which is one of the worst human-made environmental disasters in US history and a case that has been held up as a symbol of environmental injustice and racism.
In an effort to cut costs with the private water contractor, Veolia, former Governor Rick Snyder took the decision to use Flint river to supply water to the city’s predominantly African-American and economically poor population. The corrosive water, however, was not treated properly—a misstep that freed lead from old plumbing into homes. Despite desperate pleas from residents holding jugs of discoloured water, the Snyder administration and the drinking water regulator took no significant action until a doctor publicly reported elevated lead levels in children 18 months later. In the months and years that followed, 12,000 children were exposed to dangerous levels of lead, while residents experienced rashes and hair loss, and 12 people died from an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease. It is time for private water companies to be prevented from treating our environment like a sewer and finally bring water back into public ownership.
In conclusion, I call on the UK Government to continue to play their part and help alleviate the suffering and harm caused by limited access to clean water. This means ensuring that water, sanitation and hygiene are fully integrated into all health programmes supported by UK aid, as well as using our role as chair of the G7 to bring donors together to make progress towards funding the $1.2 billion that is needed to build the basic infrastructure for water, sanitation and hygiene and health facilities in low-income countries.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
To assist those taking part in the debate, the wind-ups will begin at no later than 4.36 pm with Patricia Gibson for six minutes, then Anna McMorrin at 4.42 pm for eight minutes, then Wendy Morton at 4.50 pm for eight minutes, and then Navendu Mishra will have the last two minutes.
Tahir Ali (Birmingham, Hall Green) (Lab) [V]
World Water Day is an important time to reflect upon the universal value of water and the many obstacles freshwater communities face across the world. Climate change is driving water scarcity across the global south, affecting South and central America, Africa and east Asia, with projections of water shortages reaching extremely dangerous levels over the next 10 years. That is why today’s debate is so important and why it is deeply concerning that the UK Government have substantially cut overseas aid that would help millions of people facing some of the worst droughts, famines and humanitarian crises in recent history.
It must also be noted that water scarcity is intensifying regional conflicts, one example of which is in Jammu and Kashmir, where climate change means natural glaciers are melting, leading to a significant reduction in fresh water supplies. In addition, several rivers that run through the region provide water to two major regional powers, Pakistan and India. India’s recent military occupation of Kashmir was in part driven by concerns over water shortages, and it is clear that the situation in Jammu and Kashmir is part of a water conflict between Pakistan and India with the people of Kashmir caught in the middle, suffering increasing water scarcity as a result. Therefore, it is essential that international organisations work together to solve water scarcity and prevent conflicts from arising. This is why the situation in Jammu and Kashmir is of international significance and why the conflict in the region must be brought to a peaceful and just resolution so that the people of Kashmir, Pakistan and India do not face an escalating humanitarian crisis due to scarcity of water.
Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con) [V]
Water is everywhere; after all, our planet is a watery one, with water covering 71% of Earth’s surface. One might wonder why we need to worry about it, but despite our abundance of it our activities to plunder the world’s most precious natural resources give us cause for concern.
World Water Day is all about valuing water, and I rather worry that we take it for granted. All too often we risk denigrating our water supply, harming its sustainability and creating vast amounts of pollution, and the growing threats from climate change will have a significant impact on the availability, quality and quantity of water for our basic human needs.
Water may be all around us, but it is also in us. As you sit there, Madam Deputy Speaker, your body is made up of 60% water; it is rather important in regulating your temperature, transporting nutrients around and helping digestion, not to mention many other bodily functions. Put simply, water is essential to life, because all lifeforms are dependent on it. And as such, Earth is dependent on a stable hydrological cycle that if we do not use it properly threatens our water security.
I have dealt with many water security issues in my constituency. Many of my constituents are farmers—the very people who, arguably, do more than most to manage our precious planet by using it to grow food. Some of my farmers are threatened with their livelihoods for abstracting too much water, despite any convincing or compelling evidence base to support this claim. When these are the very people who create the jobs, the employment and the food that we eat on many of the food shelves around the country, such threats are a worry. Our focus must be on those who truly are harming our planet, not those doing the lion’s share to protect it. I would say to the Environment Agency that revoking water licences on which many businesses depend will have an adverse and permanent effect on the livelihoods and employment of those involved. All decisions must be backed by unequivocal scientific facts. Need I point out that growing the crops that we all eat needs more than anything—yes, that is right—water.
The Government’s 25-year plan, which commits to achieving plentiful clean water, is commended, as is the landmark Environment Bill, but there is much to do. A recent Environmental Audit Committee inquiry learned that only 14% of our rivers are currently achieving good ecological status. Freshwater species are going extinct more rapidly than terrestrial or marine species globally. Almost one third of freshwater biodiversity faces extinction worldwide due to habitat loss, invasive species, pollution and over-harvesting.
This debate nobly aims to raise awareness of water, but, perhaps, when we reach for the taps to make ourselves a cup of tea later today, let us not take it quite for granted. We should think a bit harder about the one in 10 who do not have access to clean water. It is not our gold, diamonds and pearls that are our precious resources, but our life-giver, water.
Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab) [V]
First, let me thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra) for securing this debate.
Access to clean water for drinking and for sanitation is an inalienable human right. Importantly, though, access to water and sanitation is recognised by the United Nations as a human right, reflecting the fundamental nature of these basics in every person’s life. Lack of access to safe drinking water, water for sanitation and water that is truly affordable has a particularly devastating effect on billions of people on their health, dignity and prosperity, especially in the global south. The markets and the money men think differently, with water joining gold, oil and other commodities being traded on Wall Street, as worries about the uncertainty of its availability in the future rises and therefore its attractiveness to big investors.
Water traded as a commodity is morally reprehensible. While the privateers make a tidy sum, half a million die globally each year because of diarrhoea-related illnesses on the back of drinking contaminated water, and that is just scratching the surface. The water shortage issue is slowly appearing on our media’s agenda, albeit on the back of rich Californians being told that they are not permitted to fill their swimming pools, or, of course, of the hosepipe bans that we have seen issued in recent years across the south of England on the back of protracted droughts. Growing water shortages are every bit linked to the deepening climate emergency as global temperatures continue to rise. By 2040, one in four children worldwide will lack access to clean drinking water. That means that, if they do not perish from diseases first, school days are lost and all human development indices will be down.
I know that we are looking at the global picture today, but nations—be they rich like ours—need to lay down a marker, driving the privateers out of the water markets, and that starts by nationalising our own water supply. Our international development strategy should be focused on helping developing nations to take control or maintain control of their own water supplies that are run in the interests of their own people, not private profit.
In many ways, water is the perfect commodity. It is a fixed, finite resource with a global market that covers every human being on the planet who needs access to it for survival. Most alarming is the emerging view that the resource wars of the future will be fought not on scarce resources like oil, but on water. We only need to look at the recent past for evidence of what could await poorer countries, particularly if right-wing autocrats force their people to abide by World Bank privatisation diktats in exchange for loans. We saw this in Bolivia barely two decades ago, where it even went as far as criminalising the collection of rainwater and violent scenes broke out across the country.
Members of this place should be absolutely committed to this agenda—one that guarantees universal access to clean and safe water for every human being, and a just settlement based on developing countries having the tools at their disposal to oversee their own destiny.
Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con) [V]
World Water Day is about what water means to people, its true value and how we can better protect this vital resource. The issue of water means different things to different people. I acknowledge that, for many in the world, this means access to a safe drinking supply, but today I want to focus on another area. As a former lifeguard and chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on water safety and drowning prevention, the issue that I want to discuss is that of access to water in order to swim.
Our connection to water is as old as humankind. It has even led some, such as Elaine Morgan, to propose in her book “The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis” that humans evolved from creatures in the water. I would claim that we have never left it. Nowadays, it seems that everyone is engaged in wild swimming, but this has not always been the case. In the 19th century, swimming was an exclusive activity restricted to men and access to swimming pools was a luxury limited by class. If women chose to swim in the sea, they had to ensure that no men were around. Even in the 20th century, they could be arrested and convicted if they sought to take a dip in a lake. Amazingly, it was not until the 1930s that women were finally allowed to publicly bathe, so I am sure that we are all very pleased to see that the advancement of women’s rights has progressed, even if it has only been in outdoor swimming.
Outdoor swimming has gained huge popularity in recent years. The debate continues as to whether it is better to swim with or without a wetsuit, but the health benefits and potential for wellness and mindfulness have shown us that this activity improves not only physical health but mental health. But we have a problem here in England. In Scotland, swimmers have a clear right to swim, which goes alongside their right to roam. Scotland allows swimming in any outdoor water. In England and Wales, the law is not so clear. It is legal to swim in any navigable waters, but this means water that is also being used by boats and other watercraft, posing a hazard to those swimming. Access to water becomes fraught with problems around civil trespass, and actually getting in and out of the water. Indeed, the private owners of reservoirs ignore the desire for people to swim, even though they allow activities on their water source.
Today I am calling on the Government to support the Outdoor Swimming Society’s campaign for clearer legal access to water bodies in England and Wales. We did it for access to the countryside; now let us do it for access to waterways.
Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab) [V]
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra) on securing this important debate. I agree with every point he made. With climate breakdown threatening to plunge vast swathes of the world into drought and water conflict, it is simply shameful that the Government are cutting overseas aid spending. It signals a worrying retreat from the UK’s long-standing humanitarian commitments, and I urge the Minister responsible to change course. My hon. Friend is quite right to demand action for the 2.2 billion people globally who still lack access to clean drinking water.
World Water Day marks a day dedicated to the sustainable management of water resources, so I also want to discuss the immense challenges facing us at home. It seems inconceivable that Britain, with its rolling green fields and regular rainfall, could ever want for water, but the climate crisis and water wastage could plunge us into a life-threatening water shortage in less than 25 years. Sir James Bevan, head of the Environment Agency, has warned that we are staring into “the jaws of death”—the point at which we will not even have enough water to supply our needs. Urgent action is needed to improve infrastructure and reduce wastage, and that means acknowledging that water is a public good, not a private commodity.
Since the privatisation of water in 1989, the average bill has risen by 40% in real terms, and £57 billion that could have been invested in making much needed internal improvements has been paid out in dividends to private shareholders. We have been left with a system in which almost 3 billion litres of water—approximately the amount consumed by 22 million people—is lost in leaks every day. If Members will forgive my phrasing, privatisation has been a busted flush.
I say to the Government, who have already borrowed so much from my party’s 2019 manifesto, that there is one more Labour policy ripe for the taking: a publicly owned, democratically controlled water system. By at last bringing water back into public ownership, we could slash the average water bill by at least £100 a year and plough profits back into securing water mains and reducing leakage. As part of a wider green industrial revolution, we could create thousands of new, highly skilled jobs in the construction and maintenance of new and improved waterworks.
Public ownership would not just bring benefits to people living in Britain; the conversation about water is a global issue, and the UK must play its part. By developing much needed infrastructure, skills and expertise at home, the UK can play a leading role in assisting those nations most afflicted by water scarcity and those people across the globe deprived of this live-giving resource.
Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)
Congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra) on securing this important debate, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing it.
This debate marks international World Water Day, which is on 22 March and is an opportunity to talk about access for all to this necessary resource with a live-giving property—water. As co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on water, sanitation and hygiene, I am delighted to be able to speak in today’s debate. As hon. Members may be aware, I am unapologetically evangelical about the importance of water, sanitation and hygiene—WASH.
This debate will be warmly welcomed by constituents across the UK who support water projects so generously through organisations such as WaterAid and CAFOD. They get it. They get that we cannot eradicate poverty, we cannot have gender equality and education for all, we cannot tackle climate change, and we cannot achieve peace and security around the world if we do not fund water, sanitation and hygiene. Investment in national public services and water systems is both a high value for money investment and highly valued by the British public.
In my work for WaterAid, Christian Aid and CAFOD, I have seen the transformative impact that having water and sanitation can bring to people’s lives—to whole communities transformed by having water. I have seen women who can now get jobs because they do not have to be off fetching water. I have seen nurses and doctors saying that they are able to do their job—that they are able to save lives now—because they have water facilities in their clinics. But I have also seen the impact of not having water. I have spoken to a mother whose baby died of sepsis, an entirely preventable disease—clean water is necessary for preventing it—that is responsible for an extraordinary one in five global deaths.
Our aid budget simply does not fund WASH projects enough. Just 2% of the UK aid budget is spent on WASH, and even that is under threat, with the aid budget being cut by devastating amounts, from £15 billion to £9 billion this year. I urge the Minister to think WASH in all her planning, budgeting and delivery. I am very disappointed that the integrated review published this week contains almost no mention of water and sanitation, and no recognition of how fundamentally strategic this issue is. Its scale is enormous, and it must be met by equal ambition. We could be showing leadership on this across the world.
Some 2 billion people lack access to safe water for drinking, cooking or personal use, and 55% of the global population still lacks access to safely managed sanitation. One in two healthcare facilities in the least developed countries lacks basic water services. If my local hospital said it had no water, we would close it down. If my son’s school said it had no water, we would not send children to it. We would not say that those were adequate education or healthcare facilities, yet we fund the building of healthcare clinics and schools around the world that do not have water. It has got to stop. A shortage of clean water for hand washing, sanitation and hygiene is also fundamental in stopping the covid spread
I urge the Government to commit, as a minimum, to returning to the 0.7% aid target as soon as possible. I would like to hear more than warm words from the Minister today. Those words must be backed up by a step change in our funding for water and sanitation, using the role as the chair of the G7 to bring together global donors to fund this and using our role as host of COP26 to bring WASH funding to the fore. It is time for the UK to return to being a world leader in delivering water and sanitation programmes, and the UK public will cheer us on.
Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab) [V]
It is a pleasure to follow my good friend my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) on an issue that is extremely close to both our hearts. Members are making some fantastic points about global water poverty, but I am sure it will come as no surprise that I will be keeping my contributions focused on the situation a little closer to home. Colleagues may not be aware of this, but in my former life I worked at the not-for-profit water company Dŵr Cymru—Welsh Water. I am also the proud co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on water.
I have raised the issue of flooding time and again in my contributions, and I am afraid that today, in a debate commemorating World Water Day, it would be remiss of me to open with any other topic. As colleagues will be aware, my community in Pontypridd was hit by devastating flooding in February last year. More than 1,800 homes were affected and, sadly, water entered more than 320 homes across my constituency. Time and again in this House, I and my Rhondda Cynon Taf colleagues —my hon. Friends the Members for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter) and for Ogmore (Chris Elmore)—have called on this Government to step up and take the issue of flooding in Wales seriously. After much persistence from my Labour colleagues and me, I was pleased to see that the Chancellor finally accepted some responsibility to the communities in Wales, and pledged £31 million for flooding repairs and to help secure the coal tips.
Sadly, however, I have real concerns about this Government’s commitment to working with the Welsh Government to secure long-term, sustainable solutions to this problem. One of the major problems facing people in my community who have experienced flooding is accessing home insurance. Although the Flood Re scheme has helped some individuals, there are still major problems of affordability, especially for the poorest households. One of the major concerns that brings real anxiety to people who have experienced flooding is the possibility that this could happen again.
Ultimately, if nothing is done to address the climate crisis in this country, sadly, many more people will find themselves with the same anxiety and fears as those of my constituents. Indeed, the Met Office’s own report on the issue, “State of the UK Climate”, published in 2019, shows that the UK’s climate is becoming wetter. The findings highlighted that the highest rainfall totals over a five-day period were 4% higher between 2008 and 2017 compared with the averages between 1961 and 1990.
We are lucky in Wales to have our fantastic Welsh Labour Government, who not only have a fantastic record on tackling climate change, but are at the forefront of supporting sustainable planning and home building across the country. Colleagues may roll their eyes, but one of the policy areas I feel most passionate about is sustainable drainage systems. In 2019, the Welsh Labour Government introduced mandatory regulations on new housing developments to help reduce flood risk and improve water quality. These SUDS not only help address the issue of flooding in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way, but can help improve local wildlife and biodiversity. Despite the fantastic benefits of SUDS, the UK Government still trail behind and have failed to introduce mandatory regulations for developments here in England.
To conclude, while I am aware that my contribution today is at risk of turning into an ode to my former employer, I would also like to place on record my support for any initiatives that improve accessibility to clean water. The last 12 months have been extraordinarily difficult for my community both because of the devastation of last year’s flooding and because the coronavirus has left many people concerned about their jobs and livelihoods. Welsh Water, being a not-for-profit company, truly is leading the way with some fantastic work to support those who need extra help. Its HelpU scheme helps the lowest-income households eligible to have their bills capped so that they know they will not be paying over a certain amount of money.
I am sure we can all agree that such schemes are vital to helping people across Wales, regardless of income, have access to clean, sanitised water. This is particularly important in a world where, according to research by the World Health Organisation and the UN, a whopping 785 million people do not have clean water close to home. With the Queen’s Speech just round the corner, I sincerely hope that the Minister will carefully consider the points raised here today. The Government have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to lead from the front on climate change and to make a real and meaningful difference to everyone who lives under the threat of flooding.
Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab) [V]
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra) on securing this vitally important debate for World Water Day.
Clean water, decent toilets and good hygiene are key foundations to supporting communities to break free from extreme poverty and inequality. Water Aid’s mission statement says:
“Some people dream of finding water on Mars. Others dream of finding it here on Earth.”
While developed countries continue to rightly seek progress, we have to recognise that the basic life-sustaining rights we are afforded need to be replicated in deprived areas across the world. I recognise that progress has been made, as 1.7 billion people have gained access to safely managed sanitation since 2000, but there is still a long way to go. Some 55% of the global population still do not have access to safe sanitation, and 2 billion people lack access to safe water for drinking, cooking or personal use.
We have seen over the past year how a shortage of clean water for handwashing, sanitation and general hygiene in healthcare facilities worldwide has undermined countries’ covid response. The lack of access to water in hospitals and clinics has risked the lives of health workers and patients as well as potentially perpetuating the pandemic.
Without concerted international action, the situation in the global south is going to quickly deteriorate because of the climate emergency. It is the world’s most vulnerable who bear the brunt of climate breakdown despite having contributed to it the least. Extreme weather such as prolonged droughts is drying up water sources, while rising sea levels and flooding are contaminating ill-protected water supplies. The Environmental Justice Foundation has estimated that one in every seven people in Bangladesh will be displaced by climate change by 2050. Former Governor of the Bank of England and UN special envoy Mark Carney has said:
“When you look at climate change from a human mortality perspective, it will be the equivalent of a coronavirus crisis every year from the middle of this century, and every year, not just a one-off event.”
It is shameful that when faced with such a huge injustice, the Conservative Government decide to step back from their international commitments by slashing the overseas aid budget from 0.7% of GNI to 0.5%. The Government must not renege on our internationally binding obligation to work collaboratively to guarantee access to water and sanitation for all by 2030 under the 2015 UN sustainable development goals.
As well as addressing water scarcity in developing countries, the UK also has an obligation to ensure that it is not wasted domestically. The Tories’ privatisation of water has been a disaster. People have been left without water for days and trillions of litres of water have been lost through leakages, all while billions of pounds of bill payers’ money is siphoned off in dividend payments to wealthy shareholders. The only way to end the dismal mistreatment of our utilities in the UK that is impacting the public’s pocket and our planet is by bringing water back into democratic public ownership.
I echo the comments by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport about the Flint, Michigan water scandal. In Flint, privatised water has had dire consequences for the local community. Private water company Veolia and former governor Rick Snyder prioritised profit over people and the environment, subsequently poisoning a predominantly African-American and economically poor community. If the terrible situation in Flint is to teach us anything, it is that access to water is a right and not a commodity to be profited from.
Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab) [V]
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra) on securing this really important debate for World Water Day.
I pay tribute to the incredible Right2Water campaign that the Irish people began in 2014 against the corporate theft of their water in order to maintain their water and sanitation in public ownership, paid for by progressive taxation. This was the biggest single-issue mobilisation of citizens in the state’s history, bringing 600,000 people on to the streets over seven days of peaceful demonstrations and collecting over 2 million signatures for their petition. They demand that water and sanitation are enshrined as a fundamental human right, that water supply and management of water resources are not subject to internal market rules, and that efforts are made to achieve universal access to water and sanitation.
Today, on World Water Day, I take up those demands and call for them to be implemented here in the UK. We need a water and sanitation infrastructure that is driven by universal access, health and safety, protecting the environment, and minimising waste. We know what happens when this fundamental right is corrupted by the profit motive. Throughout the world, private water companies have ravaged our environment and put profits before people.
The Flint water scandal was one of the worst man-made environmental disasters in American history. To cut costs, the private water contractor was allowed to use the Flint water supply to serve the city’s predominantly working-class African American population, with 45% of residents living below the poverty line. A wave of complaints about the foul-smelling, discoloured and off-tasting water were chronically ignored, overlooked and discounted by local government officials for more than 18 months, despite the water causing itchy skin, rashes and hair loss among residents. To date, 12,000 children have been exposed to the dangerous levels of lead that had seeped out of aged and corroded pipelines and into people’s homes. Twelve people died from a related outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease. Faecal coliform bacteria was found in the water and dealt with by the adding of more chlorine without addressing the underlying issues, resulting in increased levels of cancer-causing chemicals in the water. It was a devastating example of environmental injustice and racism, driven by profit and greed.
From fracking in Lancashire to the Dakota access pipeline in the United States, private companies are ravaging our environment and putting profit before the needs and wellbeing of our communities. The climate change emergency brings further risks in respect of access to clean water around the world. The question of water justice is an urgent one and the challenges are growing fast. Some 2 billion people lack access to safe water for drinking, cooking and personal use. Just as the challenges are global, so must be our movement. In the year that the UK plays host to both the G7 and COP26, we need to lead the way by increasing the share of climate finance dedicated to helping the poorest countries to adapt to climate change. With no clean water to drink, cook and wash with, communities falter and people get sick, putting their lives, livelihoods and futures at risk. By 2040, the situation is predicted to be even worse, with climate change making water perilously scarce for 600 million children.
I call on the Government to bring our water back into public ownership and to do everything necessary to ensure that third-world countries have access to clean water to drink, cook and wash.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I have to reduce the time limit to three minutes.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is always a pleasure to speak in this House for three or four minutes.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra) on bringing this matter to the House. We are so blasé about water: we turn on the tap, the water comes out and we do not think about it. But there are parts of the world where that does not happen—although not, of course, around Newcastle in South Down, where people can look at the mountains of Mourne and see whether it is raining or about to rain, and that is perhaps where it is in that country.
A few years ago, I hosted a dinner in a local church and the profits from the meals were going to a project called H2O—water. I heard the story of entire communities taking their water from the river in which animals bathed and did their business and that carried all human waste away. Finance was raised to bore a water well that provided those communities with fresh water, and health has improved in that village as a consequence.
I congratulate the church group Challenge Ministries Swaziland UK for its great work in Swaziland, but it is not alone in the work it carries out. I note that the group is hosting a virtual concert called “Surviving Our Storm” on Friday 26 March at 6.30 pm, with choirs from the Eden church in Newtownards, other churches in Northern Ireland and churches in Swaziland. I will post a link on my Facebook page next week, should anyone wish to watch. It is hard to raise funds these days, but such projects, which think outside the box, ensure that we do not abandon those who rely on us.
There are many missionaries, churches and charities that work so hard to raise awareness and bring about change, and I thank them for all that they do. I understand that the FCDO works with Unilever to bring together groups of people; how can churches, missionary organisations and charity groups feed into that process? They are committed to Africa and further afield and can make things happen.
We all know the horrendous stats: 2 billion people lack access to safe water for drinking, cooking or personal use; 1.7 billion people have gained access to safely managed sanitation since 2000, but 55% per cent of the global population still lacks access; 3 billion people are unable to wash their hands with soap and water; and one in two healthcare facilities in the least developed countries lack basic water services, and three in five have no sanitation services. These things are critical, so I urge the Government to respond in a way that means we can all help.
It is my firm belief that the UK should use its role as chair of the G7 to bring global donors together to fund the $1.2 billion needed to build the basic infrastructure for water, sanitation, hygiene and healthcare facilities in the least developed countries. We can help and make a difference and I believe sincerely that it is right and proper to do so.
I look to the Minister and to my Government to ensure, with the NGOs, that every person has access to that which we take for granted: the basic necessity of water.
Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP) [V]
I thank the hon. Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra) for securing this debate on World Water Day. Such a debate is a reminder of how lucky we are in the UK and how fortunate I am. In Scotland, we enjoy world-class, high-quality water, drinkable straight from the tap, and, unlike in England, it is publicly owned and will remain so unless the Tories use the pernicious United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 to privatise it. It is worth noting that water bills in Scotland are 12% lower than in England.
The theme of World Water Day 2021 is “Valuing Water” and, indeed, water—safe water—is beyond price. As highlighted by the International Rescue Committee, practising simple hygiene, especially hand washing, plays a critical role in reducing the transmission of covid-19 and other communicable diseases, yet according to the latest UNICEF estimates, only three out of five people worldwide have basic hand-washing facilities. Some 40% of the world’s population, or 3 billion people, do not have a hand-washing facility with water and soap at home.
It is a terrible fact that billions of people worldwide still live without safely managed drinking water and sanitation. The world is not on track, sadly, to achieve the sustainable development goal of sanitation for all by 2030, as the current rate of progress needs to quadruple to reach the global target of universal access by 2030. It is shameful that while every other G7 country has responded to the covid-19 pandemic by increasing aid, the UK Government are alone in choosing to cut it by approximately £4 billion this year, after a cut of £2.9 billion last year, and, in doing so, reneging on a legally binding aid spending commitment and breaking yet another manifesto promise. The Government must urgently rethink this move and U-turn on the plan to abandon their 0.7% commitment to aid spending, if tragic consequences for the world’s most vulnerable are to be avoided.
For example, the UK Government announced earlier this month that they would cut aid to Yemen by nearly 60% in 2022, directly risking cutting food and water support to a quarter of a million vulnerable people. Some 92% of the UK aid budget in Yemen goes to disaster relief, health, education and water, with 7.8 million people in Yemen lacking clean water and sanitation, including an estimated 9.2 million children who have no access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene. In sub-Saharan Africa, 63% of people in urban areas, or 258 million people, currently lack access to hand-washing facilities, while it has been reported that the UK Government are set to cut aid to the most water-scarce region of sub-Saharan Africa by a staggering 93%.
The UK Government’s decision to refocus UK aid spending towards supporting trading interests in favoured countries, as opposed to poverty alleviation, will cost the lives of the poorest people on earth, who do not even have suitable drinking water. There are deep concerns about the UK Government’s £120 million funding cut as well for international research on water security. With almost no notice, this cut has taken place and has been condemned by the UN.
For the poorest people in the world, the situation is already much worse than any of us in the UK could imagine. Extreme weather, such as prolonged droughts, dry up water resources like springs and wells, while rising sea levels and flooding contaminates ill-protected water supplies, with dire consequences. With no clean water to drink, cook or wash, communities falter, putting their lives, livelihoods and futures at risk. By 2040, the situation is predicted to be even worse, with climate change making water perilously scarce for 600 million children—that is one in four.
Safer water has huge implications also for maternal and newborn health and, tragically, infections associated with unclean births account for 26% of newborn deaths and 11% of maternal mortality, together accounting for more than 1 million deaths each year. Approximately 20% of all global deaths are due to sepsis, amounting to approximately 11 million potentially avoidable deaths each year. More than half of all healthcare-associated deaths could be prevented through the provision of safe water and sanitation, as part of infection prevention and control.
A lack of access to water for hygiene and personal use and sanitation can affect women and girls in multiple intersecting ways. Girls and women in sub-Saharan Africa spend 40 billion working hours a year collecting water—time that therefore cannot be spent participating in education, employment, social and political activities. With studies linking child survival most closely to their mother’s education level and poverty level, factors that reduce educational opportunities for girls have significant implications, not only for their economic and social opportunities, but for the health and wellbeing of their families and communities.
Water security is quite literally the difference between life and death, and the poorest people on earth are suffering and dying without vital access to this natural and essential resource. For the UK Government to slash their aid budget when the poorest people on Earth need it most is truly shameful. Let’s change that.
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra) on securing this important debate. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson), who has done so much work in this area, and who continues to fight for proper funding for WASH, and to my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), who speaks eloquently about the need for access to clean water close to home and about flooding issues.
It is a pleasure to follow such powerful contributions from across the House. I also want to put on record my thanks to WaterAid and the many other organisations across the world fighting to put water accessibility at the top of the agenda and continuing their fight for a global solution to a global challenge.
Water, and access to water, is at the very core of who we are. It fuels humanity and is the driving force of advancement and progress. Water is the thread that binds us, weaving together people and places across the globe; it is the universal language, but today we have heard Members across the House raise alarming issues, emphasising that in our rapidly changing world, when it comes to water we are no longer equal. Whether because of dwindling resources or access, water is at the centre of the rising crises around us, from climate to conflict to covid. We have a water emergency.
A large portion of the world is on a collision course. Whether through drought, or scarcity, or water weaponisation by rogue actors, 3 billion people across the world are affected by water shortages—half of those as a consequence of climate breakdown. When the wells run dry we learn the true value of water. But it is no longer just the wells; the once great lakes, and the roving rivers that bring fresh water to communities, to fields for crops, and that support jobs and livelihoods, are also drying up.
How lucky are we, then, to have such easy access to water when so many have none—to live in a society where we celebrate the discovery of water on distant planets, yet access for so many is becoming ever more distant. And it is the world’s most vulnerable who bear the brunt, whether that is in conflict zones, in fragile states, or because of climate breakdown.
Last week, I was fortunate to speak to some incredible women—Rose, Rosemary and Comfort, from communities in Kenya and Uganda, three extraordinary women leading grassroots responses to climate breakdown in their own communities. Rosemary, who educates women and girls in rural Kenya to build sustainable water infrastructure, shared her experiences with me. She spoke of the women in her communities who walk for miles to find water, meaning that there is less time to think about how to intervene in, adapt to and mitigate these crises. This means that their daughters must spend more time looking after the household and their siblings, so they are unable to go to school. “It is always the women,” she said, “They are the ones disproportionately affected by the climate crisis and water emergency. They are the ones who have to pick up the pieces. They are the ones who have to find the dwindling supply and lean on daughters for support. Where is the international community for help?”
Rosemary is talking about the importance of aid and development money, making sure that money reaches the people who need it, that girls have access to education and are not forced to stay at home, that the necessary equipment is built for new wells closer to home, and that there is money in place for preventive measures. We know, however, that this Government have announced severe and damaging cuts, which will have a direct impact on Rosemary.
As well as scarcity, there is the increasing weaponisation of water. Naza, a young Syrian woman, told me, “It is always the innocent that suffer.” After 10 years of war in Syria, nowhere is that more true than in Hasakah in north-east Syria, where Turkish authorities break international law by restricting water for half a million people. Worse still, they have had their aid access cut at the border crossing. This must urgently be reauthorised by the Security Council this year.
The Prime Minister chaired the most recent UN Security Council meeting, which looked at water access, and just this week said that tackling climate breakdown is his top priority. Yet his actions do not match his words. Let us look at what this Government are actually doing. Where water scarcity is most acute, the Government have spent upwards of £4 billion on funding fossil fuel projects in developing nations since the Paris climate agreement. Despite promises of a phase-out and a consultation, which by all accounts the Government seem to have already prejudged, we are still waiting for action to be taken. Meanwhile, they continue to green-light projects polluting water sources, fields and food chains. This is unacceptable.
Although distribution of an equitable vaccine through COVAX is essential for fighting covid, it is unlikely that that vaccine will be available in those low income, water-stressed nations until 2023. Water and sanitation are vital for maintaining good hygiene and preventing the spread of the virus. How do we beat a mutating virus when one in three people does not have access to safe drinking water, and two in five people do not have basic hand-washing facilities?
Aid and development spend is our first responder and last line of defence to keep our world safe and secure. It really sticks in the throat that the Minister will no doubt rise to tell this House about problems across the world when it is this Government’s politically motivated cuts to aid that will undo the resilience necessary to tackle them. When the Government are slashing aid by one third, how do they hope to lead at the G7 summit? How will they address the £1 billion shortfall in the funding needed to build the basic infrastructure for water sanitation and hygiene?
The Foreign Secretary has set out seven core priorities for the aid budget for the year ahead, but they do not exist in a silo. When the Government are cutting £5 billion from the aid budget, where do they draw the line? All the issues overlap, driving inequality, scarcity and poverty collectively. Which projects are the Government going to cut? Which person’s lifeline are they choosing to withdraw—Naza or Rosemary? What message does this send as we host COP26 this year? Will the Government give those from climate-vulnerable, low-income nations a voice, as Labour has called for, and a long overdue seat at the table, so that the voices of those I have raised today are given equal weight?
Ambition without action is fantasy. Now it is time for the Government to start leading through the power of their example. They should not turn their back on the most vulnerable when they need us most.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Wendy Morton)
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra) for securing this important debate just four days before World Water Day on 22 March. I am grateful to Members across the House who have raised a number of specific points, which I will address, and who have shared many experiences and examples of the importance of water both domestically and globally.
The theme of this year’s World Water Day is “valuing water”. What does that mean? The value of water is far more than its price. Access to safe water, sanitation and good hygiene is critical for people’s health. In much of the world, diarrhoea is a killer, responsible for the deaths of 1,200 young children a day. Almost 60% of those deaths are caused by inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene.
We have committed to help end preventable deaths, and improving water supply, sanitation and hygiene is one of the most effective ways we can do that. However, as Members have rightly reminded us, nearly 800 million people still lack access to basic water supplies, 2 million live without basic sanitation services, and 3 billion do not have any hand-washing facilities at home. That last statistic should ring loud. We are dealing with the worst pandemic in a century, and 40% of the global population are unable to wash their hands at home—something that we take for granted.
Beyond the household, one in four healthcare facilities has no water supply, rising to 50% in the world’s least developed countries. Health facilities should be a source of care, not of infection. We want universal access to water, sanitation and hygiene by 2030, but at the current rate of progress we are not going to achieve that before the end of the century.
The value of water extends well beyond its direct connection with health. Water allows children—especially girls—to attend school and learn there. According to UNICEF, one in three girls lacks basic water supplies. Even more lack facilities for menstrual hygiene, which is a massive barrier for adolescent girls. Access to water for household use and public services is fundamental for human health and development, but it only accounts for 11% of all the fresh water we use. Agriculture and industry use the rest, and demand is fast outpacing supply. Climate change is making the situation worse, as we have heard this afternoon. In many parts of the world, prolonged drought and severe flooding are becoming more common, which have particularly high human impacts in developing countries. Poor people are experiencing climate change through water.
The UK Government take the issue of water and sanitation very seriously, as a development concern and as part of our approach to dealing with covid-19. Members have raised the importance of hand washing. Recognising that hand hygiene is a critical element to tackle the virus, in March last year we forged a unique partnership with Unilever: the Hygiene and Behaviour Change Coalition. It is a brilliant example of what we can achieve through partnership, with the private sector, the public sector, civil society and research institutions all working together. We provided £50 million of funding, which Unilever matched in hygiene products and expertise in promoting behaviour change.[Official Report, 23 March 2021, Vol. 691, c. 4MC.]
The programme has been active in 37 low and middle-income countries, from Brazil to Kiribati and Syria to South Africa. Action on the ground is by an amazing team of 18 NGOs, UNICEF, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Unilever has donated tens of millions of bars of soap and other hygiene products, alongside its valuable advice and campaign materials. This ambitious programme has an equally ambitious target, which is to reach 1 billion people with essential advice on hand hygiene, and we are almost there.
More broadly, I am pleased to report that we have exceeded our target of 60 million more people with safe water or sanitation over the last five years. Those receiving our support are among the world’s poorest and in fragile or conflict-affected areas.
Reliability and sustainability are important concerns, too. We are assessing the sustainability of our earlier work and that review will inform a shift in our emphasis. We will move from supporting household or community systems to supporting Governments to establish or strengthen services. British innovation will drive services from e-payment and smart maintenance systems to safe reuse and recycling. That will maximise the impact of UK aid and, at the same time, demonstrate what the UK has to offer in this area. It will also help to attract domestic and private resources, which are vital to meet our ambition of universal access to water, sanitation and hygiene by 2030.
That shift will be reinforced by national leadership on water, sanitation and hygiene, with sound policies and plans that are backed up by good evidence. We will do that through several channels: the Sanitation and Water for All partnership, which includes more than 70 national Governments, our support to the World Health Organisation for evidence-based guidance, and our support to the UNICEF-WHO joint monitoring programme, which is tracking progress against the sanitation and water global goal. That work reinforces our wider objectives of safeguarding water resources.
With UK support, water insecurity is an increasingly hot topic for Governments in the run-up to COP26 later this year in Glasgow. The new Adaptation Action Coalition has identified water as one of the three priority themes to address with UK support. We know that the challenges are enormous, but I am confident that we can and will use our insight, experience and resources to good effect. We will work with like-minded partners and deliver the impact that is urgently needed.
Navendu Mishra
I thank all those who have taken part in this debate ahead of World Water Day on Monday. I thank the shadow Minister and the Minister for their contributions. In particular, I thank the Backbench Business Committee and my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) for supporting me with this debate.
There is overwhelming support in this country for bringing water companies back into public hands—63% are in favour, and Scotland’s publicly owned Scottish Water is the most trusted utility company in Britain. From listening to the many contributions to the debate, it is clear that there is widespread consensus that the Government must honour the UK’s international aid commitment, restore the ring-fenced aid funding and reverse the cuts that have led to a number of programmes relating to the provision of clean water, hygiene and sanitation being underfunded.
What was also communicated today is that the privatised water system in our country is not fit for purpose and that it must be brought back into public hands to ensure the highest standards and value to the consumer. It must finally be restored after decades of failure.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered World Water Day 2021.
Public Landmarks Review
(3 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)
Britain is under attack—not in a physical sense, but in a philosophical, ideological and historical sense. Our heritage is under direct assault. There are those who seek to call the very sense of what it is to be British today into question. Attempts are being made to rewrite our history, indoctrinate our children with anti-British propaganda and impose an alternative worldview.
Our institutions have been undermined. Attempts have been made to sully the reputations of towering figures from British history because the views of their time may not conform to today’s values. The rise of the power, reach and influence of social media in recent years has been highly influential, increasing the pace and spread of what is a broadly left-wing, anti-British, anti-western and anti-capitalist rhetoric. A domino phenomenon is being witnessed as a succession of national institutions and organisations accept, seemingly without question or critical analysis, the new orthodoxy.
The new orthodoxy has become colloquially known as the woke perspective. In modern day Britain, the woke viewpoint includes attacking the historical concept of Britain by reinterpreting British history in a slanted and decontextualised manner, using modern viewpoints and value judgments. In woke eyes, the British empire is no longer seen as a modernising, civilising force that spread trade, wealth and the rule of law around the globe. Instead, it is viewed as a racist, colonialist, oppressive force than invaded sovereign foreign countries, plundered them and enslaved people en masse.
Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 9(3)).
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Tom Pursglove.)
Gareth Bacon
Great British heroes such as Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson and Sir Winston Churchill, who were until comparatively recently almost universally regarded in a highly favourable light, now have their reputations besmirched.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing this matter to the House. When we record greatness, we celebrate men and women who are inherently imperfect. When I look at Churchill’s statue in Parliament Square, I honour what Churchill represented: duty, fortitude and an unwavering belief that when we British stood together, we could not be defeated. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that these are worthy of celebration and honour today, and that by tearing them down we make no statement other than that we will not acknowledge our past, which makes me fear for our future?
Gareth Bacon
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. I agree with him unreservedly. I would also like to acknowledge the honour of being intervened on by him. I gather this is a rite of passage for any Member of Parliament: you are not really a Member of Parliament until you have been intervened upon by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), so I am very grateful to him.
Britain, a small country on the north-western edge of the European continent that led the world in the fields of science, industry, democracy, trade, law, the arts and much more besides, and that stood and fought, often for long periods alone, for freedom against European tyranny in the shape of Napoleon and Nazism and successfully opposed Soviet Communism, is reinterpreted in the woke perspective solely as a slave-owning force of oppression and evil. The slanted views of the woke perspective focus firmly on the past. Its preoccupation is with rewriting that past in order to alter the present. By rewriting Britain’s long and varied history to focus solely on slavery, without any acknowledgement of Britain’s huge role in stamping it out, the woke perspective seeks historical justification for its ideological belief that modern Britain is inherently racist, with an entirely shameful past.
Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that woke activists are of course entitled to their views, and to express them, but that they are not entitled to impose those views as though they were in any way authoritative or unchallengeable? Does he agree that that is an arrogant and divisive standpoint to take?
Gareth Bacon
I agree with my hon. Friend. In any mature democracy, the right to hold alternative views and to express them is unchallengeable. However, what I do not think is unchallengeable is an attempt to stamp out contrary views, to cancel people, to bully and intimidate them and to make them fear for their safety simply because they have an alternative view.
This woke view of our nation’s history fails to recognise the open, tolerant and global Britain that is a force for good in the world—a champion of democracy, equality, peace and prosperity that was forged in the empire. Its mission is to destroy the accepted sense of Britain in order to impose a countervailing ideological perspective, because if it delegitimises the one, it is possible to legitimise the other. Of course, there is no better way to achieve this than to topple the towering heroes on which British history balances. For example, left-wing efforts to paint Churchill as a racist are an attempt to warp our country’s memory of the second world war.
It is against this backdrop that we see a sudden push from some quarters to question the legitimacy of the statues, monuments and even the road names of certain parts of our country. Chief among them, of course, is London. Our capital city has always been the political, governmental, financial and cultural centre of our country. It therefore has many historic monuments. Unfortunately for London, it also has a Mayor who has never wasted a moment in ingratiating himself with woke activists.
Within days of the protests in central London last summer, Sadiq Khan announced that he would create a commission for diversity in the public realm. Staggeringly, for a man who constantly pleads poverty when it comes to carrying out his core functions of building houses, running the transport system or keeping people safe on the streets, Sadiq Khan has set aside £1.1 million of taxpayers’ money for this exercise. He claims that the commission is about putting up more monuments of historically significant black and ethnic minority figures and to aid public understanding. This indeed is a worthy aim, but he rather let the cat out of the bag when asked last June whether he thought the commission would lead to statues being removed, and he said, “I hope so.”
The Mayor’s desire to rewrite history is underlined in the application pack for people aspiring to be on the commission. In it, the Mayor states:
“Our statues, street names, memorials and buildings have left a distorted view of the past.”
He goes on to call for the commission to:
“Further the discussion into what legacies should be celebrated.”
The terms of reference for the commission stated that there would be:
“A fair and transparent recruitment process resulting in a group of 15 Commission Members in addition to the two Co-Chairs with broad-ranging knowledge, expertise and lived experience relevant to the work of the Commission.”
Anyone who takes that at face value is either spectacularly naive or they have not been following the development of Sadiq Khan’s mayoralty.
In February, the membership of the commission was announced, and it is fair to say that it removed any pretence that it would produce an impartial and objective historical world view. One of the commissioners has already been forced to resign for antisemitic comments he made in the past. Of the remaining commissioners, one has said:
“The UK is evil. It is the common denominator in atrocities across the world and is responsible for white supremacy everywhere.”
Another said:
“Boris Johnson is an out and out complete”—
he then uses an obscene four-letter word beginning with c —“who is overtly racist.” He goes on to express support for defunding the police. A third claimed last year that:
“The concept of race was created by white people in order to give them power over non-white people.”
When setting this commission up, the Mayor claimed:
“The membership will be representative of London’s diversity.”
Diversity of what? Certainly not diversity of thought or of political opinion. These people are hand-picked, hard-left political activists. Sadiq Khan is playing an irresponsible and dangerous game by establishing a new commission to tear down London’s landmarks. The Mayor expects this to be an easy, virtue-signalling public relations win, but his decision has created division and inflamed tensions in the capital. A recent poll conducted by YouGov found that 42% of Londoners oppose the plans, compared with 38% who are in favour of them.
An e-petition calling for the protection of all historical statues and monuments has attracted more than 35,000 signatures of support. Shaun Bailey, Mr Khan’s Conservative opponent in the forthcoming London mayoral election, commented:
“The Mayor has driven wedges between communities…With his diversity commission, he’s trying to re-write British history, but he does not have the expertise or the authority to do this.”
He is completely correct.
One of my constituents wrote to me, and I will quote what he said at length. He said:
“I originated from Pakistan and my late Father was born in India. I am very concerned about how the identity politics and cancel culture is being promoted. I fully support those who have raised their concerns about Mr Khan’s initiative about changing the names of London roads and dismantling historic statues and monuments.
There are no other nations or countries which will wipe out or bring disrepute to their empires or Kingdoms and will actively degrade their heroes. History is history and let it not punish our present!”
He continues:
“If we study the…British Empire, the British left a huge legacy throughout its vast empire. The British made a chain of Universities and medical colleges, the world’s best irrigation system, it introduced a new structure of administration and introduced democracy in the Subcontinent. It built modern infrastructure including railway tracks, bridges and railway stations. Moreover Britain has welcomed people from North, South, East and West and we must teach patriotism in our schools.”
Whether we like it or not, there are many very good, some bad and a few ugly elements in Britain’s past, and it is a complicated picture, filled with imperfect heroes. The notion that historical figures should be judged by today’s standards will eliminate every British hero this country holds dear. Will Sadiq Khan topple Churchill for his support for the British empire? Will Admiral Nelson fall for living in a time when slavery existed? Will Sir Francis Drake, Oliver Cromwell, King James II, Lord Kitchener and William Gladstone be erased, and their contributions to British history forgotten, because they were flawed characters? Where do we draw the line? Should Gandhi’s statue be removed because he believed Indians were racially superior to Africans? Will Karl Marx’s tomb be destroyed because of his deeply held antisemitism? Should Egypt’s pyramids and Rome’s colosseum fall because they were built by slaves and those civilisations profited from that abhorrent trade?
This is why Sadiq Khan was wrong to jump on this latest virtue-signalling bandwagon. His decision to tear down statues in London risks encouraging left-wing mobs to topple statues themselves and far-right mobs to take to the streets to protect them. The events of last summer are proof of that. Instead of posturing in this way, the Mayor should take a long, hard look at his record of failure, which has left communities behind in London. After five years at the helm of City Hall, it is time he took his fair share of responsibility for the challenges and inequities that exist in London today. On his watch: violent crime soared to record levels and murder reached an 11-year high; only 17,000 affordable homes have been completed in five years; 22 major transport upgrades that could regenerate communities have either been delayed or cancelled; and Crossrail is three years late and £4 billion over budget, and Transport for London has lost £2 billion in fares income it would otherwise have accumulated.
The sad truth is that London is saddled with a Mayor who is not especially interested in the core functions of his role. There is no virtue he will not signal, no passing bandwagon he will not jump on and no gallery he will not play to in his never-ending attempt to ingratiate himself with the latest trend on Twitter. Pandering to woke activists in this way is deeply disturbing. These moves are illegitimate and dangerous. They will do nothing for inclusiveness. Instead, they will foster bitterness and resentment on all sides. We must not go down this route. If the Mayor of London insists on pushing ahead with this deeply divisive, virtue-signalling exercise, the Government should step up to protect our national heritage and explicitly strip him of the power to dismantle it.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
Politics is about values. Gone are the days when half-hearted political careerists could retreat to the safe ground of mechanistic economic minutiae, for the new battle of Britain has begun. Islamic extremists, Black Lives Matter radicals and Extinction Rebellion rioters despise our way of life, and British patriots expect resistance, not retreat, and from resistance we will advance. In years gone by, as my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon) said, children were taught about the exploits of our nation’s heroes. Now, left-wing zealots and their ill-educated acolytes are determined, by cancelling the past, to dictate the future. For them, heroes must be cancelled too. Yet in the struggle to counter the brave new world of moral relativism and meaningless mundanity heroes remain vital, as he said, for our shared sense of identity. By embodying the spirit of their times, they bring historical truth to life, so building our collective understanding of how our nation was forged.
In essence, heroes bring us together, just as the identity politics of the left seeks to tear us apart. By dividing us into exclusionary social tribes, the socioeconomic elite distract to disarm us, so perpetuating their heartless rule over working-class patriots. Make no mistake, this political struggle of our time is for all time.
In Marxist cultural dogma, identity must always be defined by a sense of grievance. Rather than fostering harmonious patriotic pride, they deride our colonial history, ignorantly dismissing our time-honoured worldwide contribution to civilisation. Nowhere is heroism more potent than when soldiers, sailors and airmen leave their homes, families and friends to protect British interests in storms of all kinds across vast oceans and distant landscapes.
Mindful of exceptional service, it is our patriotic duty to commemorate those who have been awarded our nation’s highest honours. A total of 1,300 individuals have been awarded the Victoria Cross for valour in the presence of the enemy; 408 men and women have received the George Cross after displaying conspicuous courage in circumstances of extreme danger. Too many who have given so much have been all but forgotten. In some places, locals may be unaware that they tread in the footsteps of local heroes, who made a difference to their whole nation.
The Members of Parliament associated with the Common Sense Group seek to commemorate VC and GC recipients by naming roads, parks and public buildings in their honour, reigniting their memory and refreshing their legacy. Let us have more plaques, more memorials, more statues, not merely retaining and explaining, but retaining, explaining and acclaiming the heroism of those who helped to build Britain.
In the same spirit, as our eyes are lifted to public buildings, all should fly the Union flag—the flag of our United Kingdom. I hope the Minister will confirm that, immediately following this Adjournment debate, he will take measures to put such an instruction in place.
The story of our heroes teaches us that, through service and sacrifice, men and women reach the apex of human endeavour. For our generation and those born later, let us glory in this, our land of hope.
Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)
I will be very, very brief, Madam Deputy Speaker. Churchill is the great thing that the left aim for, and there is a reason for that. Churchill is at the core of why many people feel proud to be British—the Churchillian spirit. If they can take him down, if they can redefine him, what is to stop them? We must not allow it to happen, and those at Churchill College should hang their heads in shame for the way that they allowed his legacy to be questioned in the way that they did.
My hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon) made a wonderful speech. This matter is not just for London MPs. This is our nation’s capital, and the heritage of London is our nation’s heritage, so despite being criticised by some Labour councillors from my patch for getting involved in a debate about memorials and statues in London, I will continue to do so, and I make no apology for that.
We saw the reality this week in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. I am glad that we have increased the punishment for those who desecrate and damage our war memorials and statues, but we saw how the Labour party sought to ridicule that. It has ceased to be a patriotic party. Quite frankly, we are more likely to see its leader on his knees apologising for our country’s past and heritage than proudly standing up for it as the greatest country in the world, as my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington has wonderfully done. I will keep my comments at that: short, punchy and, hopefully, patriotic.
The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)
May I begin by congratulating both my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon) on securing this debate and the other Members who have spoken on their excellent, sincere and considered contributions? I always listen with great care and attention to my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) and, as far as I am able, I always do what I can to achieve his objects. No one, either, would ever question my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) for being anything other than punchy and patriotic in the pursuit of his constituents’ interests.
The starting point, and the end point, for this Government is that it is our duty to protect our nation’s history, traditions and heritage. We believe that our history shapes us, that we are poorer if we seek to deny that history, and that the right approach to statues and other public landmarks, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) attested, however contentious they may be to some, is to retain and, if it is appropriate, to explain them to enable better public understanding and respect.
Many Members, today and in previous debates in the House, have spoken proudly of the tradition that we have in this country of commemorating individuals with statues to acknowledge their contributions to society, whether at local or national level. Those erected by local communities can be a lasting and shared source of local pride. Frank Whittle, the inventor of the jet engine, is commemorated in Coventry, where he is from, and in Lutterworth, Rugby and a number of other places around our country. Edith Cavell’s memorial near Trafalgar Square was erected by public subscription, as was the statue in my own town, Tamworth, to Sir Robert Peel, a man who repealed the corn laws, emancipated the Catholics, founded the police—a force for liberal good in our country, even though last year there was a flurry on social media to pull him down.
My hon. Friend the Member for Orpington spoke about his concerns at the action of the Mayor of London in setting up his commission for diversity in the public realm, with the purported intention of increasing the representation of London’s great and diverse communities in its built environment, but the real aim of which seems to be to airbrush the past and demolish public monuments to our history. Certainly, its composition is concerning—as my hon. Friend suggested, one member has already been forced to resign—and although I have written to the Mayor about its true cost and its true intentions, he has yet to reply to me, so I share my hon. Friend’s concerns.
Marco Longhi
Does the Minister therefore agree that the £1.1 million that the Mayor purportedly intends to spend on his commission for statues should be spent on better supporting Londoners at this very difficult time, and that the Leader of the Opposition should direct the Mayor to do exactly that?
Christopher Pincher
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, who of course has a statue to the Earl of Dudley looking over his town in the west midlands. The Leader of the Opposition should take his Mayor in hand, but I am afraid that I must borrow from Euripides, who famously said that those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad. If Euripides were with us today, he would probably say that those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make members and leaders of the Labour party, because the leader of the Labour party has gone mad. He has been captured. He is a POW—a prisoner of woke. I trust that he will be released so that he can direct his friend the Mayor of London to pay greater attention to Londoners, because it will be for them, ultimately, to judge whether that £1.1 million of public expenditure is spent on statue destruction, or whether the Mayor might better spend his time and the public’s money trying to put up more homes for Londoners rather than pull down their statues in public parks.
I suspect that the Mayor’s real interest is to distract us and draw our attention away from his lamentable failure to build a better future for Londoners. To borrow from Churchill—by the way, his statues are going nowhere—Sadiq Khan is a very modest Mayor with much to be modest about. Let me be quite clear: his lopsided commission has no mandate to advocate for the removal of existing statues. The Government’s policy is that historic statues should be retained and explained rather than removed, and any such proposed removal of an historic statue should rightly be, and will be, subject to planning permission or listed building consent.
Sir John Hayes
And, I hope, to acclaim. In congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon) on securing the debate, may I ask my right hon. Friend the Minister to support the idea that I advanced of more plaques and statues, particularly for winners of the VC and GC, who, by the way, are drawn from all ethnicities?
Christopher Pincher
I am always prepared to recognise the honour done for us by those great men who won the Victoria Cross, from wherever they hailed, and I certainly hope that more plaques to their memory are forthcoming.
By doing the things that we are proposing to do, we will give the whole community—not simply the self-loathing, Britain-hating perpetual revolutionaries who seem to have captured the commanding heights of the Labour party, but the whole community—the opportunity to engage and to give their views. Additionally, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has the power to call in planning applications, and he has set out his intention to exercise that power if appropriate.
It is clear from the contributions in this debate and in the wider public discourse that, with the passing of time and changing values in society, there will be examples of those who have had statues erected to them whose own story—and perhaps their family’s—is complex. Many statues and other historical objects were created by generations with different perspectives on right and wrong from our own. Some of what they believed to be virtues, we now believe to be vices. But it is better—far better—to remember that history, reflect that not everyone in the past was perfect, and retain that history and its monuments, so that we can all better understand it, not destroy it as the Marxist, wokeist ideologues would insist on.
We have a proud and rich history. Britain led the way in the abolition of slavery; we were foremost in abolishing it. The Royal Navy was one of the seminal forces sweeping it from the seas. So when we hear of those who argue that some public memorials are an abomination and that statues of people who profited from the transatlantic slave trade should be taken down, this Government’s clear view is that doing so is quite misguided. As my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington asked, where does that misguided logic end? Are we to take down the statue of Julius Caesar from Tower Hill, for we can be pretty sure that he brought slaves with him in 54 BC and doubtless carried away a few enslaved ancient Britons when he left? Do we want the Elgin marbles taken down and hidden away because they appear to deny the existence of slavery in ancient Greece? That is where that logic leads, but where does it end?
Our view of retaining and, where right, explaining is shared by Historic England, the Government’s advisory body on the historic environment. If we remove difficult and contentious parts of our heritage, we risk harming our own understanding of our collective past; yet that is where some of these book burners of the internet age are set on going. Ours is a great country with a proud and illustrious heritage of democracy, freedom and rule of law, and that is why we do not gloss over any failures in our past, nor seek to destroy the historic heritage that can help us understand those failures.
I am pleased to update the House on the changes that the Government are bringing forward to ensure the protection of our heritage. The planning system plays a crucial part in conserving and enhancing our heritage. I am pleased to tell the House that under the changes coming into effect in the spring, any proposals to remove an unlisted public landmark will require an application for planning permission, giving communities the right to be consulted. We are also introducing notification requirements to ensure that the Secretary of State is made aware of any contentious applications and has the opportunity to exercise his call-in powers if he considers that appropriate
History, by its nature, can be contentious. But rest assured: the Government will act to ensure that our national heritage is protected from those who would seek to remove or deface it. The Spanish philosopher, Jorge Santayana, wrote in his “The Life of Reason”—and Churchill often quoted him—
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.
For the sake of our remembered history, so that we do not repeat it—and, please, for the sanity of the Labour party—let us agree to remember and explain our past, not seek to destroy it.
Question put and agreed to.