House of Commons

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Commons Chamber

Tuesday 7 September 2021

The House met at half-past Eleven o’clock

Prayers

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Commons Chamber

The Chancellor of the Exchequer was asked—

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

1. What recent estimate he has made of the number of people subject to the loan charge who have been declared bankrupt.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Minister.

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Jesse Norman)]

Good morning to you, Mr Speaker. It is great to be in a Chamber that is 100% full strength after so many months. If I may make a personal note without undue deference, Mr Speaker, I will say that I thoroughly appreciated your remarks about standards within the Chamber.

To date, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs has not initiated insolvency proceedings against any taxpayer for a loan charge debt. No estimate can be provided for the number of people who have fallen into debt or who have been declared bankrupt and are subject to the loan charge because, where debts arise, HMRC is not always the only creditor. Some individuals are declared bankrupt as a result of a non-HMRC debt and some may choose to enter insolvency themselves based on their overall financial position.

[Ruth Cadbury]

We know that there are many, many thousands of nurses, social workers and other public sector workers who have been caught up in the loan charge. They took work via agencies that basically told them, “Sign here or you don’t get the work.” Checking to see whether they would be liable for the loan charge was not an option. Last week, the Yorkshire Post reported that a number of former services personnel had been affected and that one is feeling suicidal as a direct result. What does the Minister say to this veteran and the thousands of other public servants whose lives have been turned upside down by this retrospective taxation?

[Jesse Norman]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. Taxation is often a difficult matter for the relatively small number of individuals who may be affected by particular pressures. Of course the Government recognise and understand that, but it is nevertheless the case—it is indeed a foundational principle of the tax system—that people should be responsible for their own tax returns. If I may, I would like to refer the hon. Lady to the very wise words of the former shadow Chancellor, the hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), who said in 2018 that

“we would obviously welcome tightening in the area of disguised remuneration schemes…We are concerned that the measures in the Bill do not go far enough…There should be no excuse”—

these are her words—

“for people not to be aware of the situation”.––[Official Report, Finance (No. 2) Public Bill Committee, 9 January 2018; c. 30.]

I am afraid that she was right about that.

[James Murray (Ealing North) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Conservative Government’s approach to the loan charge means that ordinary people who are victims of mis-selling are suffering financial ruin and personal harm. Ministers will have heard some harrowing accounts of people pushed to the very brink and worse, some even tragically taking their own lives. This cannot be what the Government envisaged and a new approach is urgently needed. Will the Treasury now review the loan charge scheme and the approach of HMRC to prevent further devastating consequences?

[Jesse Norman]

As I have said, both the Government and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs take these cases extremely seriously, which is why HMRC has put in place extra care and support for people who may be affected by tax issues of this and other kinds. The fact remains that we have had a review. I might refer the hon. Gentleman to the words of his colleague, the hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), who said of Sir Amyas Morse who did the review that it was

“a thorough piece of work…we thank him…He has done a great service to Parliament and to the wider public debate.––[Official Report, Finance Public Bill Committee, 4 June 2020; c. 33.]

He was right about that and the Labour party has been right not to have opposed this policy at any point during its passage through Parliament.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

The problem that Members have on both sides of this House is that ordinary people were duped into something and it has effectively become a retrospective piece of legislation. I thought the way that the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Ealing North (James Murray), approached this was very reasonable. HMRC is not taking the right approach. Perhaps the Government could look at that again.

[Jesse Norman]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I have mentioned the extra care and support that HMRC has put in place. I have mentioned the extremely careful approach that it has taken with people who may be facing the loan charge. As he will be aware, it has not initiated insolvency proceedings against any taxpayer for a loan charge debt and that in itself is emblematic of the care and attention that it is taking with this subject.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

It is not enough for the Minister to say that people had to take responsibility for their own tax affairs when the information that they were given by HMRC was that there was nothing wrong with these schemes initially, when HMRC passed and signed off tax years for people, and when the head of HMRC has admitted that, in recent months, he had repeatedly tried—this was the outcome of a freedom of information request—to obtain legal analysis to understand the strength of a claim with “very little success”. There is not even a legal standing for this. How then can the Minister say that it is right to pursue people for things that they were led into, and, indeed, for payments that HMRC was regularising by allowing contractors to use as a means of paying their employees?

[Jesse Norman]

The right hon. Gentleman raises a whole bunch of questions. Let me address them. There were some contractors working through agencies for HMRC. Where it was discovered that they had used disguised remuneration, those relationships were ended and strong measures have been put in place to prevent recurrence. That is an unfortunate feature of the extended way in which these contract arrangements sometimes work. I do not think that there is any evidence that HMRC has signed off or positively approved the use of any disguised remuneration scheme. If the right hon. Gentleman has an example, he is welcome to send it to me. The right hon. Gentleman will be aware that the chief executive of HMRC has specifically written to the loan charge and taxpayer fairness all-party parliamentary group to make it perfectly clear that it has taken those remarks out of context and that what he was doing—as every chief executive of a public agency should do—was putting his own officials under some pressure to provide the justification needed, and rightly so.

[Owen Thompson (Midlothian) (SNP)]

2. What recent assessment he has made of the effect of his policies on living standards.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

5. What recent assessment he has made of the effect of his policies on living standards.

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

10. What recent assessment he has made of the effect of his policies on living standards.

[The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Steve Barclay)]

Her Majesty’s Treasury analysis published alongside Budget ’21 has shown that policy interventions in response to covid-19 have, on average, supported the poorest working households most as a proportion of pre-pandemic income.

[Owen Thompson]

The Government’s plan to increase national insurance will clearly unfairly impact the living standards of young people and the low paid. That is in stark contrast to the Scottish Government’s free education, bus travel for under-25s and the Scottish child payment. Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm how many Ministers spoke against this move at Cabinet today and whether this included the Scottish Secretary?

[Steve Barclay]

I would have thought that, having sought additional powers, the hon. Gentleman would be more interested in reminding the House how his own Government are using the powers that they have. The key issue is that in many areas they are choosing not to use their tax powers—for example, to top up universal credit. He should focus on the alliance that his party has formed with the Greens, which is bad for business, bad for the economy, bad for the oil and gas industry, and counterproductive to growth.

[Alan Brown]

In 2016, the Tories promised that fuel bills would be lower for everyone on leaving the EU. The reality is that fuel bills are increasing while they make the heartless cut to universal credit. In order to tackle fuel poverty, will the Minister use the net zero review to cut VAT on energy efficiency products, keep new nuclear off electricity bills, provide direct funding for heat decarbonisation and sort out the unfair grid charges on Scottish renewables?

[Steve Barclay]

Well, I think we should look at what my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has done. I touched a moment ago on how the covid measures have protected the poorest working households the most. Alongside that, the Budget measures on tax, welfare and spending decisions made since 2019 have, on average, benefited all households this year, with the poorest gaining the most as a percentage of net income. That is the approach that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has taken and it is one that the Scottish Government should follow.

[Patricia Gibson]

According to Save the Children, more than 3 million children living in low-income households across the United Kingdom are likely to be affected by the £20 universal credit cut, with half of claimants saying that they will face significant financial impacts as a result and one in seven worrying about affording food. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation says that the cut will push 500,000 people below the poverty line. Will the Minister explain how this squares with the Government’s so-called levelling-up agenda?

[Steve Barclay]

A key way to tackle poverty is to get people into work and then skill them up in their jobs. That is what we have set out through the plan for jobs, and that plan is working. Ultimately, if that is the priority of the Scottish Government, why are they not using the powers they have to prioritise it?

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is difficult to justify raising national insurance to fund social care for the predominantly elderly, when the impact of that tax rise would fall mainly on young people and those who are earning little in the workforce? Does he also recognise that those two groups are the very groups that have been most impacted by the economic consequences of the pandemic?

[Steve Barclay]

As my right hon. Friend knows, the Prime Minister will make a statement on this matter shortly, but what he and I would agree on is that the best way is to grow the economy, drive productivity, get people into work and skill them up through work. That is what the plan for jobs is doing, alongside the £600 billion investment in infrastructure over the course of this Parliament as part of levelling up and our commitment to net zero. We need to grow the economy, skill up the workforce and get those who have been impacted by the pandemic back into work as quickly as possible.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I wonder if the Chief Secretary has had the opportunity to read a recent report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies that says:

“Material living standards held up surprisingly well through the pandemic…This is an astonishing outcome given the scale of economic disruption”.

[Steve Barclay]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The package of measures that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor took improved on the economic scoring that was forecast for the pandemic, including the figure for unemployment, which will now be 2 million lower at its peak than was estimated. That package of measures has helped to prevent many of the worst outcomes that were forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility as we went into the pandemic.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

One group whose living standards have been impacted during the pandemic has been low-income individuals who have used buy now, pay later credit products to buy online. I very much welcome the Government’s announcement in the spring of regulation of this sector. Will the Minister update me on the progress being made in regulating the sector given that it is become of increasing importance, as Citizens Advice reported just last week?

[Steve Barclay]

I understand that by the end of October there will be reassurance on that, and I am happy to take that up with my hon. Friend following this session.

[Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)]

When the Chancellor increased universal credit eighteen months ago, he said that he wanted

“to look back…and remember how we thought first of others and acted with decency.”

Does the Minister consider that taking £20 a week from millions of families across our country is really an act of decency?

[Steve Barclay]

I think that £400 billion of support in response to the covid pandemic across our public services and individual businesses shows the scale of measures that the Chancellor has put in place. On the specific issue of universal credit, we were always clear that the uplift was going to be temporary. As it was, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor extended it for a further six months. But ultimately what divides the two sides of the House is that we believe the best approach is to have a plan for jobs, to get people into work, and to upskill them in those jobs. The Opposition simply do not have a plan at all.

[Bridget Phillipson]

Let us think about what £20 a week really means. Twenty pounds a week means being able to afford to buy a coat for your children this winter. It means not having to worry about turning on the heating when the weather turns cold. Can the Minister offer any advice to families who work hard and play by the rules about how they should manage with £100 less each and every month?

[Steve Barclay]

As the hon. Lady knows, alongside the universal credit uplift other measures of support were given. Those are not only my words; I quote the Resolution Foundation, which has said:

“Since the crisis hit, the support schemes introduced by the Government have prevented an unprecedented collapse in GDP from turning into a living standards disaster.”

That is the package of measures put forward by the Government. That is how we have protected people’s living standards. The key is to have a plan and to get that plan working; it is, and that is helping people back into work.

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

Can my right hon. Friend comment on the living standards of those thousands of public sector employees to whom the Government have given exit payments in excess of £100,000 a year and continue so to do?

[Steve Barclay]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight this issue, which he and I have discussed on many occasions. In July I chaired a roundtable on it across Government, and it is prioritised across Departments. We have a manifesto commitment that the Chancellor and I are committed to delivering on. As my hon. Friend knows, we have a £200 million cost to this that we need to tackle. But at the same time we also need to be true to the manifesto, which was not about tackling those on low incomes who had high pay-offs because of the way their pension benefits were structured and those proprietary claims. We need to differentiate between that and the real ill that he is concerned about, which is those on six-figure salaries who are receiving pay-offs. That is something we are prioritising.

[Mr Speaker]

I am not quite sure if that related to the original question, so we are going to have to watch out for that in future.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

Scottish hospitality and generosity is world-renowned, but could the Minister explain to us why he thinks that Scottish taxpayers should pay for England’s social care crisis?

[Steve Barclay]

It is a slightly odd question, because through the broad shoulders of the United Kingdom, it is Scottish jobs that have been protected through the furlough, it is Scottish businesses that have been supported through the self-employment income support scheme and it is the block grant that has provided additional funding to the Scottish Government. The oddity is that they are choosing not to use those uplifts in the Scottish grant to prioritise the things that they come down to Westminster and say they care about.

[Mr Speaker]

Can I just suggest to the Minister that it might be easier if he speaks through the Chair?

[Alison Thewliss]

It would be good if the Minister answered the question, as well. The Prime Minister’s hike in national insurance has been roundly panned, not least by his own Back Benchers and the Chair of the Treasury Committee, the right hon. Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride). People in Scotland are already feeling the pain of a decade of Tory austerity cuts and the harms caused by Brexit, with the devastation of the £20 a week cut to universal credit still to come, none of which they voted for. Why should my constituents pay for the Prime Minister to break his manifesto pledge with a new poll tax on the poorest who can least afford it?

[Steve Barclay]

It may be helpful for me to remind the House of the uplift in funding that the Scottish Government have received as a result of the ability of the UK Government to act across the UK. Baseline funding of £28 billion last year with an additional £8.6 billion of funding—that is £36.6 billion in total—has increased to £40.9 billion this year, so the Scottish Government are getting additional funding. As a result of covid, they have received an additional £14.5 billion, but they are choosing not to prioritise that extra money or to use the additional powers they have on tax or welfare to target the issues they say they care about.

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

At the beginning of this pandemic, like most people I was really worried that unemployment would rise by millions, and I am delighted that it has peaked 2 million below what most people forecast. Unemployment, at 4.7%, is now at historic lows. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the best way to raise living standards is to get those without jobs into jobs and, for those who already have jobs, to give them the training and skills they need so that they can get higher-paid jobs? That is exactly what the Government are doing.

[Steve Barclay]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend. It is as a result of those measures that unemployment has now fallen for six months in a row and that the OBR is forecasting a peak of 5% to 6%, compared with the previous forecast of 12%. As he rightly says, the peak will be 2 million fewer. It is not just about those who are being helped back into work, however; it is also about the programme of apprenticeships, traineeships, jobs support and the doubling of work coaches that will then help people in work to get into the better jobs that they deserve.

[Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)]

3. What fiscal steps he is taking to help achieve the Government’s net zero emissions target.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

6. What fiscal steps he is taking to help achieve the Government’s net zero emissions target.

[Virginia Crosbie (Ynys Môn) (Con)]

8. What fiscal steps his Department is taking to encourage investment in green (a) industries, (b) growth and (c) jobs.

[Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)]

9. What fiscal steps he is taking to help achieve the Government’s net zero emissions target.

[Julie Marson (Hertford and Stortford) (Con)]

13. What fiscal steps his Department is taking to encourage investment in green (a) industries, (b) growth and (c) jobs.

[The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Kemi Badenoch)]

The Prime Minister’s 10-point plan demonstrates our commitment to net zero. It sets out £12 billion of new Government investment in green industries. This will create and support up to 250,000 highly skilled green jobs in the UK. In addition to this £12 billion, our plan will attract up to three times as much private investment by providing regulatory certainty and robust green finance frameworks.

[Bambos Charalambous]

The recent Climate Change Committee progress report showed that the Treasury had not fully met a single one of its recommendations in the past year. Does the Minister think this is good enough, and what steps should be taken to rectify that?

[Kemi Badenoch]

I am afraid I do not think that is what the report has said. What I will say is that we will be releasing many publications this autumn around net zero, not least the net zero review. This final report will be published in advance of COP26. The report will inform sectoral decarbonisation strategies and the net zero strategy, and work on those will continue to develop at pace across Whitehall.

[Catherine West]

The recent cuts to the international aid budget have undermined the UK’s leadership in advance of COP26, so what urgent steps will the Treasury take to develop a carbon neutral programme of international aid going forward?

[Kemi Badenoch]

I will ask my counterparts in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to answer the hon. Lady’s question directly—they are responsible for aid. What I will tell her is that there is a lot of stuff we are doing within our remit on international climate finance action, not least on the taskforce on nature-related financial disclosures.

[Virginia Crosbie]

Time and again, I speak with companies that want a freeport on Anglesey. I want a freeport on Anglesey, and local people want the jobs and local investment that will come with a freeport, but the Welsh Government say and do nothing. Will the Minister please urge the Welsh Government to work with me to deliver this game changer in my constituency of Ynys Môn?

[Kemi Badenoch]

I thank my hon. Friend for her letters and her continued campaigning for her constituency. We are working closely with the Welsh Government and remain committed to establishing at least one freeport in Wales as soon as possible. I encourage them to work closely with constituency MPs on that. As in England, specific locations will be chosen in a fair, open and transparent allocation process.

[Jeff Smith]

The Minister must recognise that climate inaction is not just a disaster for the planet but has a huge financial cost and economic consequences. We cannot dodge the critical decisions that we need to decarbonise the economy any more. How exactly will the Government hardwire our net zero targets into every decision in the upcoming spending review?

[Kemi Badenoch]

The Government have used the Green Book to mandate that policies must be developed and assessed against how well they deliver on our long-term policy aims, including net zero. We did that at spending review 2020, where guidance required Departments to include the greenhouse emissions of bids and their impact on meeting carbon budgets and net zero, and allocations to Departments were informed by that information. That is how we will continue to carry out consideration of climate impacts in fiscal policy.

[Julie Marson]

I thank the Minister for her response. With more than £10 trillion of assets under management in the UK, there is scope for more green innovation investment via the venture capital sector. I therefore welcome the measures she explained and the regulatory changes being driven by the Treasury, but will she meet me to discuss a potential office for venture, similar to the new Office for Investment, which could provide a centre for expertise and growth in this area?

[Kemi Badenoch]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. The Government recognise the important role of financial markets in supporting the UK’s transition to a net zero economy. The British Business Bank is a Government-owned economic development bank that makes finance markets for smaller businesses work more effectively, and its remit includes venture capital. I note her point about a meeting and believe that my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary is happy to meet her on this issue.

[Abena Oppong-Asare (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)]

It is only 55 days until COP26 in Glasgow and households, consumers and businesses urgently need clarity and certainty about how the costs and benefits of our transition to net zero will be shared. Labour’s approach to tackling the climate crisis would have fairness at its heart, because we know that while some are planning to build personal heated swimming pools in their homes, millions of others are struggling with energy bills. The net zero review is supposed to consider fairness. At the last Treasury questions, the Chancellor told my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) that the final report would

“of course be published imminently”—[Official Report, 22 June 2021; Vol. 697, c. 750.]

That was 11 weeks ago. Where is it?

[Kemi Badenoch]

As I said, the report will be published in advance of COP26, but we have published other things that the hon. Member does not seem to have heard of or read. We have set out ambitious plans about the net zero target and published the energy White Paper, the industrial decarbonisation strategy, the transport decarbonisation plan, which has not happened anywhere else in the world—we are the first country to do a transport decarbonisation plan—and a hydrogen strategy. We will publish the heat and building strategy in due course. The Government have been busy setting out plans on net zero, and we would appreciate it if Opposition parties took some time to read them.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

The Government’s measures will have important consequences for taxpayers and energy bills. Will my hon. Friend therefore set out in detail the cost of net zero and the calculations behind that cost?

[Kemi Badenoch]

We will put affordability and fairness at the heart of our reforms to reach net zero. Our latest estimates put the costs of net zero at under 2% of GDP—broadly similar to when we legislated for it two years ago—with scope for costs of low-carbon technologies to fall faster than expected. Most of those represent increased investment in growth markets of the future. However, I take my hon. Friend’s point. All I would say is that he should wait until the net zero review is published.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) and I may not have the same views on net zero, but we share a concern about how the Government will fund it. We will see, for example, a reduction in petrol vehicles, so what will happen to the tax on them? We have also seen yet another failure recently with the green homes grant. What is the fiscal plan for making sure that net zero achieves its targets while we maintain the Exchequer balances?

[Kemi Badenoch]

I thank the hon. Lady for that question. We recognise that this is an issue under intense speculation. We will publish a strategy that will set out many of the answers to the questions she is posing. What we have said is that we will put affordability and fairness at the heart of our reforms to reach net zero. The fact is that everyone in this House agreed with us when we set that target. For example, we have put in place plans to bring in electric vehicles by 2030. These will require changes not just in how we spend, but in our tax and regulatory system. The answers will come in due course.

[Jacob Young (Redcar) (Con)]

As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on hydrogen, may I take this opportunity to welcome the Government’s world-leading comprehensive hydrogen strategy, backed up by £105 million of public funding to unlock £4 billion of private investment by 2030? Does the Minister agree with me that this is how we will build back better and create more jobs in places such as Teesside?

[Kemi Badenoch]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. I do agree with him: building back better and building back greener are at the heart of this Government’s strategy. I thank him for raising those points, which will benefit Teesside and the north-east in general.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

At the weekend, a young activist called Fatima challenged the Chancellor, asking why the Treasury is blocking action on the climate crisis. He replied that the Treasury has committed £12 billion of new money to the 10-point plan, but even that is not true, as he knows, and the President of COP26 has said that actually only a paltry £4 billion is new money. When will the Treasury start committing serious money to the green transition, in the region of the £85 billion that the TUC has said is necessary to put into green investment so that we go into COP26 as climate leaders, not climate laggards?

[Kemi Badenoch]

I will tell the hon. Lady what the Treasury is doing. We are issuing £15 billion of green bonds over the next year, and launching a world-first green savings bond ahead of COP26 to help finance the Government’s green projects. We set up the UK Infrastructure Bank to invest in net zero, backed by £12 billion of capital, which will also help to unlock more than £40 billion of overall investment in infrastructure. We are committing £11.6 billion in international climate finance over the next five years to help developing countries tackle climate change. The Budget also announced three UK-wide competitions that are part of the £1 billion net zero innovation portfolio. We have the towns deal, which is helping people create new green spaces, build back greener, create sustainable transport routes and repurpose empty shops. The fact is that the Treasury is doing everything it can to support the transition to net zero.

[James Daly (Bury North) (Con)]

4. What fiscal steps he is taking to help young people into work as part of the economic recovery from the covid-19 outbreak.

[Karl MᶜCartney (Lincoln) (Con)]

19. What fiscal steps he is taking to help young people into work as part of the economic recovery from the covid-19 outbreak.

[The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Rishi Sunak)]

It is absolutely right that we remain relentlessly focused on helping young people into work, and our plan for jobs does exactly that with a range of initiatives. I would just draw colleagues’ attention to the fantastic youth offer that our jobcentres are rolling out, providing 13 weeks of intensive tailored support for those young people who enter universal credit and creating 140 dedicated youth hubs across the country.

[James Daly]

In Bury, Ramsbottom and Tottington, the Government’s plan for jobs is working, saving jobs and getting people back into employment. As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on youth employment, may I ask my right hon. Friend to update the House specifically on how schemes such as kickstart are helping young people with employment and training opportunities throughout the country?

[Rishi Sunak]

I thank my hon. Friend for all the work he does as chair of the APPG on youth employment, and I thank him and his colleagues for their advice as we have developed these initiatives. He is right to highlight kickstart. This is a signature initiative of this Government, providing Government-funded, high-quality jobs for young people at risk of long-term unemployment. It has got off to a fantastic start, with 50,000 kickstarters already having started and thousands more to come.

[Karl MᶜCartney]

That initial response is helpful, and of course I commend the Chancellor and his Treasury colleagues for their financial support to some businesses over the last 18 months, and I realise important announcements from the Treasury and the Prime Minister are imminent. However, in a city such as Lincoln with such a vibrant hospitality sector, the cumulative impact of successive lockdowns has hit my constituents hard, especially young people, and my right hon. Friend knows that they are disproportionately employed in those businesses that are forced to close. Does the Chancellor agree that we must do everything possible to keep the economy open so that instead of paying young people not to work, we focus on creating well-paid jobs for them?

[Rishi Sunak]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight the importance of hospitality in employing young people, which is why, together with our VAT cut for that sector and indeed £16 billion of business rates reductions, we have helped support all those jobs. He should also know that employers do not pay employers national insurance on those young people under the age of 21, nor on most apprentices up to the age of 25, demonstrating our support to those employers to keep young people in work.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

When I was a very young MP, a Conservative Prime Minister introduced a windfall profit tax on the banks. When will this Administration and this Chancellor of the Exchequer have the imagination and leadership to introduce a windfall profit tax on those who have done very well over the last few years, and put it into green apprenticeships, green training and green skills, and do it now?

[Rishi Sunak]

Talking about young people and financial services, I was recently in Glasgow talking about young people starting exactly what the hon. Gentleman described: new apprenticeships in the financial services industry, growing in Glasgow, supported by this Government who have put more money behind apprenticeships than any previous Government.

[Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

I am hearing from colleges that fewer level 1 and level 2 students are going to college as they are going straight into work and that is to be commended, but we know that having a level 3 increases people’s earnings potential in the long term and therefore opportunities to obtain that level 3 must be available to those young people as they get older. How can they achieve that, however, when the Chancellor has cut the adult skills budget by half since 2010?

[Rishi Sunak]

I point the hon. Lady to the Prime Minister’s speech on skills last year when he unveiled this Government’s lifetime skills guarantee, which delivers exactly what she is asking for. Those 10 million adults without a level 3 qualification, who she is absolutely right to highlight, will, for the first time, be able to get one, fully funded by this Government. That is a Conservative Government delivering for people, giving them the skills and opportunities they need.

[Matt Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)]

The combination of the furlough scheme, the kickstart scheme and the youth offer the Chancellor has just discussed shows that his efforts are leading to the UK having one of the fastest economic recoveries in the world. Will he commit to working globally to ensure that the confidence and opportunities this brings are available globally as they increasingly are in the UK?

[Rishi Sunak]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I want to thank him for two things. First, when he was a Minister he created traineeships, and he will be pleased to know that this Government are tripling the number of them to give young people the best possible start in life, finding new skills and opportunities. Most importantly, this year, because of his success in making sure this country had the fastest roll-out of a vaccine anywhere in the world, we are enjoying the fastest opening up and the fastest economic recovery, and I pay tribute to him for that.

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

The Government announced the kickstart scheme to much fanfare. However, at the moment they publish the kickstarter statistics breakdown by gender and perhaps by race, but why do they not do so by disability? Will the Chancellor rectify that?

[Rishi Sunak]

I am always happy to look at what more we can do to improve the transparency of our statistics. However, with regard to kickstart in aggregate, I would just say that there have been 50,000 starts and, when compared with previous versions of similar schemes such as the future jobs fund under the last Labour Government, kickstart is delivering more young people into more jobs at a much faster pace and, importantly, many more of those jobs are in the private sector, not just the public sector.

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

7. What fiscal steps he is taking to invest in new infrastructure.

[Gareth Davies (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)]

11. What fiscal steps he is taking to incentivise businesses to invest in new infrastructure and equipment.

[The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Rishi Sunak)]

The Prime Minister is rightly ushering in an infrastructure revolution because infrastructure drives growth and productivity and creates jobs. We are doing that with over £100 billion of investment this year and, thanks to the efforts of the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, a world-leading UK Infrastructure Bank created and set up in Leeds.

[Rob Butler]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that all parts of the country can benefit from investment in infrastructure, and that an excellent way of achieving that in my constituency, in support of the substantial housing development there, would be to approve funding for the Aylesbury link of East West Rail, which would also help to achieve our target of net zero?

[Rishi Sunak]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to focus on making sure that our investment reaches every part of the country, including his constituency. I am pleased to tell him that £760 million has been allocated by the Chief Secretary and the Transport Secretary to deliver East West Rail, and I understand that the Department for Transport is currently working with the East West Rail Company to figure out the best possible way to serve Aylesbury. I hope that my hon. Friend will engage with that process.

[Gareth Davies]

The Infrastructure Forum recently published a report that showed clearly that the super deduction is already having an impact, accelerating investment by businesses. Will my right hon. Friend join me in encouraging businesses across Grantham and Stamford to take up the relief, and does he agree that this is exactly the kind of investment that will boost jobs and level up our country?

[Rishi Sunak]

From the Office for Budget Responsibility to the Bank of England, many people have described the super deduction as doing exactly what my hon. Friend has said, and that is why we know it is working. I recently visited BT, for example, which, because of the super deduction, is now increasing the speed of its roll-out to millions more houses and creating thousands of new jobs in the process. My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I encourage his businesses to take up the super deduction, and, indeed, we see that; a Deloitte survey recently showed that business intentions to invest in this country are the highest they have been in years.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

I am afraid that I must tell the Chancellor that his infrastructure revolution is not very noticeable in cities in the north of England, which grind to a halt at rush hour. They desperately need infrastructure investment, particularly in public transport. Can he tell the House when he last met our city region Mayors in the north of England, and what his plans are for fiscal reform that will help them invest in public transport infrastructure?

[Rishi Sunak]

My entire team meet the regional Mayors all the time, and of course we will do so in the run-up to the spending review and the Budget. I agree with the hon. Lady that intra-city transportation is important. Unlocking the economic potential of our cities is important to driving our economic recovery. That is why last year, in my first Budget, we announced £4.2 billion for intra-city transport settlements for our largest several cities outside London so that they enjoy the same long-term funding as London and can invest in exactly the types of schemes that she describes.

[Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)]

That investment in infrastructure does not get to the south Wales railway service. DFT Ministers keep announcing increased services along the main line in south Wales, which includes Pencoed in my Ogmore constituency, but no increased investment in stations, level crossings or, indeed, the track. When will the Chancellor get a grip and start investing in much-needed railway infrastructure in south Wales?

[Rishi Sunak]

I am not sure that I entirely recognise the aggregate picture that the hon. Gentleman presents. Rail investment over the course of this Parliament is at record levels, under CP5—control period 5—and then CP6, to give the technical terms. I am very happy to take away the specific schemes. He will understand that those are a matter for the Welsh Government, but I am happy to facilitate with the Department for Transport as required.

[Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)]

I commend my right hon. Friend for his commitment to infrastructure, and I particularly welcome the UK Infrastructure Bank. Will he consider introducing an infrastructure bond so that long-term pension funds can invest in the future of this country too?

[Rishi Sunak]

My hon. Friend is right. He has previously highlighted the importance of unlocking pension fund capital to invest in long-term assets such as infrastructure in the UK. He will know that the Prime Minister and I wrote to pension funds just recently discussing that, and my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary is actively working on creating a long-term asset fund, a new vehicle to unlock exactly the investment that my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond) wants in exactly the type of infrastructure that this country needs.

[Ben Lake (Ceredigion) (PC)]

12. What recent discussions his Department has had with the (a) Department for Work and Pensions and (b) Welsh Government on the impact of the end of the £20 uplift to universal credit on recipients of that benefit.

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

16. What recent discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on the impact on the Exchequer of ending the £20 uplift to universal credit.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

18. What discussions he plans to have with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on the impact on the Exchequer of ending the £20 uplift to universal credit.

[Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

21. What recent discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on the impact on the Exchequer of ending the £20 uplift to universal credit.

[The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Rishi Sunak)]

The Government have always been clear that the £20 increase to universal credit was a temporary measure, much like furlough and our other interventions to support this country through the acute phases of this crisis, but we are not done supporting those who need our help. This Government will always be on their side, and that is why we have created our plan for jobs. On the Government side of the House, we know that the best way to help people is to give them the skills and the opportunities they need to find high-quality work, and that is what the plan for jobs is delivering.

[Ben Lake]

Ending the uplift will mean £286 million less for families in Wales, and risks plunging 275,000 families into poverty. Figures from the Bevan Foundation suggest that families in Ceredigion stand to lose £5.7 million in support. What assessment has the Chancellor made of the economic impact of ending the £20 a week uplift for communities in Wales?

[Rishi Sunak]

The hon. Gentleman talks about those in poverty. The statistics most recently published show that 200,000 fewer people are living in absolute poverty in the United Kingdom than when this Government came into office. With regard to the economic impacts, I think all colleagues in the House can see the strength in our labour market: the need for businesses to find people and the fact that this Government are giving them the skills they need to get those jobs. That is the right strategy to help people and that is the economic strategy this Government are pursuing.

[Ian Byrne]

While the Chancellor was pondering the colour of the tiles for his new swimming pool and the site of his new tennis court for his country mansion this summer, back in the real world 20% of my constituency of Liverpool West Derby are facing a £20 a week cut to universal credit and sleepless nights about how they will survive. Can the Chancellor tell me what assessment the Government have made of the impact of the cut, and how many of the 12,530 people in Liverpool West Derby they estimate will be forced into poverty?

[Rishi Sunak]

I do not accept that people will be forced into poverty, because we know, and all the evidence and history tells us, that the best way to take people out of poverty is to find them high quality work. We are creating jobs at a rapid rate, with eight months of continuous growth in employment supported by this Government: traineeships, sector-based work academies, apprenticeships, kickstart. You name it, we are delivering it to help those people in Liverpool to get the skills and the jobs they need to help support their families.

[Stephen Timms]

Forty per cent. of the people who claim universal credit are already in work. Does the Chancellor understand that they will be very hard hit by this cut, which is the biggest overnight benefit cut in our history?

[Rishi Sunak]

Of course there are people already in work who are on universal credit, but our plan for jobs helps them too. We increased the national living wage this year by an inflation-busting amount—£350 a year to help those families. We talked earlier about the lifetime skills guarantee, about apprenticeships, about skills boot camps. Those are all ways the Government are supporting people; each one of those initiatives, by the way, is worth thousands of pounds of support. Those people will benefit from those increased skills and benefit from guaranteed new job interviews or higher wages at the end of it. That is the right strategy to help those people in work.

[Alex Davies-Jones]

This week, the charity Action for Children highlighted that a street cleaner with two children in private rented accommodation is already on average £729 worse off as a result of Conservative cuts since 2010, but that will soar to over £1,700 as a result of the Chancellor’s planned cut to universal credit. So I ask the Chancellor: how exactly are families meant to manage?

[Rishi Sunak]

Again, what we know is that children growing up in workless households are five times more likely to be in poverty than those whose parents work. That is why we are supporting their parents to get into work and why almost 800,000 fewer children are living in workless households than when this Government first came into office. That is the right way to support those families. Of course, there are other bits of our welfare system that we have maintained the generosity of, but when it comes to universal credit or employment, we on this side of the House we will support their parents into work and, crucially, with their childcare costs. Mr Speaker, we forget that 85% of childcare costs for people on universal credit are covered to support parents into work, which we know will make a difference to those children.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Rishi Sunak)]

Over a year ago, the Government launched their plan for jobs, a comprehensive and ambitious plan to help people back into work to earn more and to gain the skills they need to succeed in the jobs of tomorrow. The latest data shows that our GDP and our economy is recovering quickly, unemployment is falling, jobs are being created, and, indeed, household incomes have been protected. All of that tells me that this Government’s plan for jobs is working.

[Stephen Timms]

Cutting universal credit by £20 a week will hit working families very hard. It will leave support for unemployed families at the lowest real terms level for over 30 years. It will undermine the recovery and scupper the prospects for levelling up. Does the Chancellor of the Exchequer understand why every single former Work and Pensions Secretary since 2010 has opposed his cut?

[Rishi Sunak]

The right hon. Gentleman talks about economic recovery. We are forecast to grow faster this year than any other country in the G7. The recovery is under way. Jobs are being created, people are getting into work, wages are rising. That is the right strategy for us to pursue. Our plan is working and we will stick to it.

[Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)]

T3. Will the Chancellor provide an update on the follow-up to the discussions we have had on maintained nursery schools, and will he urgently bring forward a long-term funding settlement for these brilliant schools?

[Rishi Sunak]

My right hon. Friend is right to highlight this issue, which I know is of particular importance to her and her constituency. I assure her that I have spoken to my team about it and, as part of the spending review, we will further those discussions with the Department for Education. I look forward to the Chief Secretary and she and I talking about this issue again.

[Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister’s and the Chancellor’s plans to increase national insurance will hit workers and businesses hard at the worst possible time. The British Chambers of Commerce described it as a “drag anchor” on jobs growth. The Federation of Small Businesses stated:

“If this hike happens, fewer jobs will be created”.

The TUC said that it is wrong to hit young and low-paid workers while “leaving the wealthy untouched”. We agree. Will the Chancellor of the Exchequer therefore explain why he is choosing a tax on jobs rather than on other forms of income?

[Rishi Sunak]

I am very pleased to see the Labour party finally focus on the importance of jobs in this House. We also agree that it is important to support companies to hire people, which is why there is no national insurance payable on those employing people under the age of 21, on most apprentices up to the age of 25 or on people who are going to be employed in new freeports. And, because of the steps that Conservative Governments have made to the employment allowance, 40% of all small businesses pay no employer’s national insurance at all.

[Rachel Reeves]

You cannot have it both ways. Cutting national insurance either benefits jobs or it does not. The Chancellor told voters at the election:

“Our plans are to cut taxes for the lowest paid through cutting national insurance”.

That promise is now in flames. The Chancellor is not cutting national insurance; he is putting it up. It cannot be right that nurses and builders are set to pay hundreds of pounds more each year in national insurance, yet those getting their incomes from a large portfolio of shares, stocks and property will pay not a penny more. Labour cannot and will not support this Tory Government’s manifesto-breaking, economically damaging and unfair tax on jobs. So let me ask the Chancellor again: why will this Government not fund health and social care in a way that is fair for families and for businesses?

[Rishi Sunak]

I will be brief, Mr Speaker. When the hon. Lady was appointed shadow Chancellor, she went out of her way to say that any policies that the Labour party put forward on her watch would be “fully costed and we will explain how they are paid for”. We have heard about uplifts to welfare. We have heard about more money for public sector pay. We have heard about opposing every difficult and responsible decision that this Government have made. We have not heard once how the Labour party will pay for anything and we know what happened last time around when it did that.

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)]

T5. The levelling-up fund is about improving a region. In Bosworth, we are putting forward the Twycross zoo for its national centre of conservation and education. It will be a world-leading scientific, education and conservation centre, driving tourism and the local economy. It is backed by the borough council, the county council, the local enterprise partnership and the midlands engine. Would the Chancellor like to come and visit it and, failing that, would he like to meet me to discuss how we can make this a symbol of the levelling up of the nation?

[The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Steve Barclay)]

I do not know about the Chancellor, but I am sure my children would love to come and visit the zoo. I thank my hon. Friend for putting forward a bid for the levelling-up fund. As he will know, bids are currently subject to competitive assessment against objective criteria, but more generally, I think the whole House will welcome the fact that zoos are once again fully open to the public this summer. They provide a wide range of valuable benefits.

[Kenny MacAskill (East Lothian) (Alba)]

T2. Scottish communities, other than those in Shetland, failed to benefit from the North sea oil and gas bounty landing on their shores. Now that the North sea’s offshore wind is casting ashore on East Lothian, will the Treasury ensure that East Lothian will actually benefit, as opposed to it all simply being transmission-stationed down south? Or will it go the same way as Scotland’s oil and gas: down to the Treasury?

[The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Kemi Badenoch)]

We support the UK oil and gas sector, especially as gas is a transition fuel to net zero. The sector supports 147,000 jobs directly in its supply chains. I take the point that the hon. Gentleman raises; if he would like to write to me with more detail, I think I will be able to give him more comprehensive answers.

[Sir David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)]

I commend my right hon. Friend the Chancellor for all his determination to create new jobs and new investment and to upskill the workforce; I believe it is paying dividends, as we are seeing in the economy. Does he agree that further education colleges have a vital role in upskilling our workforce, both young and not so young, to get the best jobs for the future?

[Rishi Sunak]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right about the important role of FE colleges, which is why I was pleased in the last Budget to invest billions over this Parliament to improve the infrastructure and the quality of our FE estate. With the Prime Minister’s lifetime skills guarantee, FE colleges will be instrumental in delivering to all adults the extra qualification that they need to get better-paid jobs. My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to focus on that.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

T4. The Government should lead by example with their spending power and with the design of public contracts to buy more from Great Britain, as Labour would, but the UK strategic steel sector has been neglected by this Conservative Government. Highly skilled jobs have been lost because a huge proportion of our steel, including for HS2, is purchased from other nations. Will the Chancellor explain why his Government do not even have a non-binding target for the use of our own steel in our national public infrastructure projects?

[Steve Barclay]

The hon. Gentleman raises a very valid point. It is right that we maximise the opportunities from domestic suppliers; my right hon. Friend the Business Secretary is focusing on that through the industrial strategy. It is also linked to targeting the seven innovation sectors funded through the significant uplift in our research and development budget.

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

We are working hard in Shropshire on a £500 million investment in modernising A&E services in our local hospital. There is a funding shortage; I have written to the Chancellor on the issue and would be very grateful for a response. There is nothing more important than modernising A&E services for the safety of our patients and constituents.

[Steve Barclay]

I know that that is a very important constituency issue, and my hon. Friend has championed it frequently. He will know that, through the long-term plan, there is a £33.9 billion uplift in core funding, in addition to the other funding through covid and other measures announced by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor. I am very happy to discuss the matter with my hon. Friend; I know that it is a key constituency issue, and he is right to focus on it.

[Kate Osborne (Jarrow) (Lab)]

T6. Research by the Disabled Children’s Partnership has revealed that nearly three quarters of disabled children have regressed in managing their conditions during the pandemic as vital services have been delayed. Ahead of the forthcoming spending review, will the Chancellor consider offering a lifeline to families and funding dedicated recovery to help disabled children and their families to catch up on missed services?

[Rishi Sunak]

I thank the hon. Lady for raising that important point. I would be very happy to make sure that it is considered as part of the spending review.

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

The Chancellor referred earlier to the record amounts being invested in the rail network. May I urge him to ensure that one of the projects that he supports is an east-west freight corridor linking the Humber ports to the west coast? That would greatly maximise the benefits of freeport status; it would also aid the levelling-up agenda.

[Steve Barclay]

I am in no doubt about the importance and the merits of my hon. Friend’s approach to freeports, not least after an early morning meeting that he and I had—last week, I think—on that very topic. As part of the integrated rail plan, we are looking at how we link that to levelling up across the UK. He is quite right to highlight the growth and productivity opportunity that freeports offer.

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

T7. At the last Budget, the Chancellor gave a £25 billion tax break to the top 1% of businesses in the form of the super deduction, but when the school catch-up tsar came to him asking for £15 billion over a three-year period, he said that he could not fund“everybody who comes knocking on my door.”Why is it that when an Amazon-style business comes knocking, the door is wide open, but when students come knocking, asking for money to get over the challenges of the past few years, the door is slammed in their face?

[Rishi Sunak]

That is absolutely not right. When it comes to the super deduction, what the Labour party will never understand is that we want to support businesses to create jobs. That is what the super deduction does. I just gave the hon. Gentleman the example of BT creating thousands of new jobs because of the super deduction. When it comes to education, this Govt have invested £3 billion—£800 per pupil—in helping children to catch up with lost education, on top of a record increase in schools funding, which means that per-pupil funding in real terms at the end of this Parliament will be the highest it has been in over a decade.

[Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)]

Jobs are the most important way of helping communities to move forward. Those who have been out of work for 12 months or more can access the restart scheme, worth nearly £3 billion. Will my right hon. Friend ensure that part of his plan is helping everyone to have proper, decent work and decent training to enable them to get the right job?

[Steve Barclay]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight not only the importance of restart to the long-term unemployed, but how it sits alongside the kickstart scheme, the tripling of traineeships and the boot camps for skills. That is part of a plan for jobs that is working.

[Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

T9. Will the Chancellor clarify which Department is paying the £200 million for the Prime Minister’s vanity yacht? What does it say about this Conservative Government’s warped priorities when the Chancellor approves that while planning to cut universal credit for those who need it the most?

[Rishi Sunak]

This Government are proud of the record investment that we have made in our armed forces—a record settlement for the next few years to support our forces and the work that they do around the world to ensure that we can play our responsible role.

We will end on this note, I think. We have had a good debate today, but one thing is clear: the difference between us and the Labour party. We believe in supporting people into work, we believe in supporting their skills, and, crucially, we believe in our plan for jobs, because it is working.

[Jeremy Hunt (South West Surrey) (Con)]

I thank the Chancellor for his willingness to make extremely difficult decisions to fix the crisis in waiting lists in the NHS and the problems in the social care system. The Health and Social Care Committee heard this morning that we need 4,000 more doctors to tackle the backlog. Does he agree that this is about reform as well as money, particularly in respect of the way we plan our workforce?

[Rishi Sunak]

My right hon. Friend speaks on these matters with extreme authority and experience, and I thank him for all his engagement on them with me and others. He is right to want to make sure that we have a long-term plan for people in the NHS. He will know that we are committed to delivering 50,000 more nurses and 50 million more primary care appointments, but as part of that plan we must ensure that we get the number of GPs right as well, and I look forward to working with my right hon. Friend on that.

[Dame Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Given that the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have already decided to break their manifesto commitment on overseas aid and are now gearing up to break their solemn manifesto promises on the tax lock and the pensions triple lock, why should any voter believe ever again that a Tory manifesto promise is worth the paper it is written on?

[Rishi Sunak]

What people know they get from this Conservative Government is a Government who are on their side, a Government who are delivering their priorities, whether their priority is 50,000 more nurses, 20,000 more police officers, record investment in every part of our country, or having a Government who are creating jobs and prosperity wherever people live. It says in that document that this is a people’s Government, and that is what we are delivering.

[David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)]

I know that this Government are listening to the levelling-up agenda, especially in the north of England, and on that note I should like to suggest that the best way of getting people back into work is putting forward new initiatives. Will the Chancellor meet me shortly to talk about Eden Project North?

[Rishi Sunak]

I should be very happy to.

Health and Social Care

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Commons Chamber

12:34

[The Prime Minister (Boris Johnson)]

Mr Speaker, with permission I will make a statement on the Government’s plans for health and social care. Our national health service is the pride of our whole United Kingdom, and all the more so after it has been there for us during the worst pandemic in a century, treating almost half a million patients, administering more than 88 million vaccines and saving countless lives. The inevitable consequence of this necessary and extraordinary action is that covid has placed massive pressures on our NHS. As we stayed at home to protect the NHS, thousands of people did not come forward for the treatment they needed. Like those who suffered from covid, these are all people we know: your aunt who needs a new hip, your neighbour who has problems with their heart and needs a pacemaker, or your friend at work who thinks that they should get that lump or cough checked out. So we must now help the NHS to recover, to be able to provide this much needed care to our constituents and the people we love, and we must provide the funding to do so now.

We not only have to pay for the operations and treatments that people decided not to have during the pandemic; we need to pay good wages for the 50,000 nurses who will enable that treatment and who can help us to tackle waiting lists that could otherwise expand to 13 million over the next few years. We now need to go beyond the record funding we have already provided, and we need to go further than the 48 hospitals and 50 million more GP appointments that are already in our plan. So today we are beginning the biggest catch-up programme in NHS history, tackling the covid backlogs by increasing hospital capacity to 110% and enabling 9 million more appointments, scans and operations. As a result, while waiting lists will get worse before they get better, the NHS will aim to be treating around 30% more elective patients by 2024-25 than it was before covid.

We will also fix the long-term problems of health and social care that have been so cruelly exposed by covid. [Interruption.] The Labour party certainly failed to tackle them. But having spent £407 billion or more to support lives and livelihoods throughout the pandemic—from furlough to vaccines—it would be wrong for me to say that we can pay for this recovery without taking the difficult but responsible decisions about how we finance it. It would be irresponsible to meet the costs of this permanent additional investment in health and social care from higher borrowing and higher debt.

So from next April we will create a new UK-wide 1.25% health and social care levy on earned income, hypothecated in law to health and social care, with dividends rates increasing by the same amount. This will raise almost £36 billion over the next three years, with money from the levy going directly to health and social care across the whole of our United Kingdom. This will not pay for pay awards for middle management; it will go straight to the frontline at a time when we need to get more out of our health and social care system than ever before. It will enable radical innovation to improve the speed and quality of care, including better screening equipment to diagnose serious diseases such as cancer more quickly; designated surgical facilities so that non-urgent patients are no longer competing with A&E; faster GP access to specialists, so people do not have to wait months to see someone in hospital to find out whether something is wrong; and new digital technology so that doctors can monitor patients remotely in their homes.

We will do all this in a way that is right, reasonable and fair. Some will ask why we do not increase income tax or capital gains tax instead, but income tax is not paid by businesses, so the whole burden would fall on individuals, roughly doubling the amount that a basic rate taxpayer could expect to pay, and the total revenue from capital gains tax amounts to less than £9 billion this year. Instead, our new levy will share the cost between individuals and businesses, and everyone will contribute according to their means, including those above state pension age. So those who earn more will pay more, and because we are also increasing dividends tax rates, we will be asking better-off business owners and investors to make a fair contribution too. In fact, the highest-earning 14% will pay around half the revenues. No one earning less than £9,568 will pay a penny, and the majority of small businesses will be protected, with 40% of all businesses paying nothing at all.

Although Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own systems, we will direct money raised through the levy to their health and social care services. In total, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will benefit from an extra £2.2 billion a year and, as this is about 15% more than they will contribute through the levy, it will create a Union dividend worth £300 million.

However, we cannot just put more money in; we need reform and change. We need to build back better from covid. When the covid storm broke last year, 30,000 hospital beds in England were occupied by people who could have been better cared for elsewhere and who wanted to be better cared for elsewhere. That is 30,000 out of 100,000 hospital beds in our NHS, costing billions. Those beds cannot be used by people needing cancer care or hip operations, making it harder than ever to deal with the growing backlog in our NHS.

Too often, people were in hospital beds because they or their relatives were worried about the cost of care in a residential home, and that same fear kept many others at home without any care at all. This anxiety affects millions of people up and down the country: the fear that a condition such as dementia, one of nature’s bolts from the blue, could lead to the total liquidation of their assets, their lifetime savings and their home—the loss of everything, however great or small, they might otherwise pass on to their children—while sufferers from other diseases, who have to be in hospital for the majority of their treatment, have their care paid for in full by the NHS.

Governments have ducked this problem for decades. Parliament even voted to fix it, yet that 30,000 figure is an indictment of the failure to do so. There can be no more dither and delay. We know we cannot rely solely on private insurance because demand would be too low for insurers to offer an affordable price, and a universal system of free care for all would be needlessly expensive when those who can afford to contribute to their care should do so.

Instead, the state should target its help at protecting people against the catastrophic fear of losing everything to pay for the cost of their care, and that is what this Government will do. We are setting a limit on what people can be asked to pay, and we will be working with the financial services industry to innovate and to help people insure themselves against expenditure up to that limit.

Wherever you live, whatever your age, your income or your condition, from October 2023 no one starting care will pay more than £86,000 over their lifetime, and no one with assets of less than £20,000 will have to make any contribution from their savings or housing wealth—up from £14,000 today. Meanwhile, anyone with assets between £20,000 and £100,000 will be eligible for some means-tested support. This new upper capital limit of £100,000 is more than four times the current limit, helping many more people with modest assets.

As we fix this long-term, long-standing problem in social care, we will also address the fears that many have about how their loved ones will be looked after by investing in the quality of care, in carers themselves, and by integrating health and care in England so that older people and disabled people are cared for better, with dignity and in the right setting. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care will be bringing forward a White Paper on integration later this year.

You can’t fix the covid backlogs without giving the NHS the money it needs; you can’t fix the NHS without fixing social care; you can’t fix social care without removing the fear of losing everything to pay for social care; and you can’t fix health and social care without long-term reform. The plan that this Government are setting out today—the plan I am setting out today—will fix all of those problems together. Of course, no Conservative government ever want to raise taxes, and I will be honest with the House: I accept that this breaks a manifesto commitment, which is not something I do lightly, but a global pandemic was in no one’s manifesto. I think that the people of this country understand that in their bones and can see the enormous steps this Government and the Treasury have taken.

After all the extraordinary actions that have been taken to protect lives and livelihoods over the last 18 months, this is the right, reasonable and fair approach, enabling our amazing NHS to come back strongly from the crisis; tackling the covid backlogs; funding our nurses; making sure that people get the care and treatment they need, in the right place, at the right time; and ending a chronic and unfair anxiety for millions of people and their families up and down this country. I commend this statement to the House.

12:46

[Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

I thank the Prime Minister for advance sight of his statement—I think I had almost as much notice as the Cabinet. May I also thank everybody who works in the NHS and social care? During the darkest days of the pandemic they kept our health service from collapsing, they looked after the elderly when others could not and they rolled out the vaccine, which has finally provided the light at the end of the tunnel. Despite their efforts, we are facing the toughest winter in the history of our health service. Not only do we have the threat of another covid surge, but waiting lists for diagnosis and treatment have reached record levels, we risk cancer survival rates going backwards for the first time ever, and social care remains neglected and strained. It is a crisis, but how did we get here?

The pandemic has undoubtedly placed the NHS under huge strain, but that is only part of the story. A decade of Conservative neglect weakened the NHS. Waiting lists had spiralled—up 2 million before the pandemic. Targets were missed, on cancer, on accident and emergency, and on mental health, before the pandemic. The same is true on social care, with £8 billion cut, despite growing demand, before the pandemic. Carers were on poverty wages, without secure contracts, before the pandemic. There were 100,000 vacancies before the pandemic. And the Prime Minister has just referenced the 30,000 hospital beds occupied by those who should go into the community—this is before the pandemic—and he called that an “indictment of failure”. Who had been in government for 10 years at that stage? Just remind me. Prime Minister, an “indictment of failure” is an accurate description of the situation in our health service and social care before the pandemic, so the pretence that he is “only here” because of the pandemic is not going to wash. He is putting a sticking plaster over gaping wounds that his party inflicted. He made that commitment on social care before the pandemic, and he said he would pay for it without raising taxes before the pandemic.

Yes, the NHS urgently needs more investment, but the backlog will not be cleared unless the Government hit the 18-week target set out in the NHS constitution—the Prime Minister did not mention that. It was set and it was met by the last Labour Government. Let me ask a direct question: if there is to be improvement, Prime Minister, can you commit today to hitting the target and clearing the backlog by the end of this Parliament—yes or no? I know he likes to avoid these questions, but if he cannot answer that basic question, it is clear he has not got a plan.

Let me turn to social care. Under these proposals, people will still face substantial costs. I heard what the Prime Minister said, so I have another direct question for him: can the Prime Minister guarantee that under his plan no one will have to sell their home to fund their own care—yes or no? [Hon. Members: “He just told you.”] Well, let us hear him make the commitment, at the Dispatch Box, that under his plan no one will have to sell their own home to fund their own care, and then we will come back to it.

Social care is about so much more than this. The blunt and uncomfortable truth is that under the Prime Minister’s plans the quality of care received will not improve—there is no plan for that. People will still go without the care that they need—there is no plan for that. Unpaid family carers will still be pushed to breaking point—there is no plan for that. Working-age adults with disabilities will have no more control over their lives—there is no plan for that. Pay and conditions will not improve for care workers—there is no plan for that. Let me spell it out: a poorly paid care worker will pay more tax for the care that they are providing without a penny more in their pay packet and without a secure contract.

[The Prime Minister]

indicated dissent.

[Keir Starmer]

The Prime Minister shakes his head; my sister is a poorly paid care worker, Prime Minister, so I know this at first hand.

This is a tax rise that breaks a promise that the Prime Minister made at the last election, a promise that all Conservative Members made—every single one of them. It is a tax rise on young people, supermarket workers and nurses; a tax rise that means that a landlord renting out dozens of properties will not pay a penny more, but the tenants working in full-time jobs will; and a tax rise that places another burden on businesses just as they are trying to get back on their feet. Read my lips: the Tories can never again claim to be the party of low tax.

The alternative is obvious: a timetable and plan to clear waiting lists, just as we did under the last Labour Government, and a comprehensive reform plan for social care that deals with the inadequacies that I just pointed out and drives up the quality of provision—not just tinkering with the funding model. We do need to ask those with the broadest shoulders to pay more, and that includes asking much more of wealthier people, including in respect of income from stocks, shares, dividends and property. [Interruption.] Chancellor, I was listening. The Chancellor knows the numbers just as well as I do—he will have done the sums and we have done them. Tinkering and fiddling with dividends will not do it. The Government are placing the primary burden on working people and businesses struggling to get by.

As I have said to the Prime Minister, if the Government come forward with a plan to genuinely fix the crisis in social care and they have a fair funding model, yes, we will work together. Thousands of families who are struggling with the current system and only want the best for their loved ones deserve nothing less.

[The Prime Minister]

Now we know why over decades the Labour Government totally refused to deal with this problem, and now we know why both Blair and Brown failed to do it: the right hon. and learned Gentleman has absolutely no plan. I was waiting, and I am amazed that he sat down. What is his answer to the backlogs in the NHS? What is his answer to the problems in social care? The Opposition have absolutely no plan. They have no idea how they would raise the money.

Let me answer some of the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s questions. We will of course be investing in social care. I thank his sister for what she is doing in social care, but we have lifted people’s wages across the country with record increases in the living wage; we are investing in 700,000 training places for people in social care; and we are making sure that we invest £500 million—that is in the plan I announced today—in the social care workforce.

What this plan will also do is enable us to get our wonderful NHS back on its feet and enable it to deal with the backlogs. The right hon. and learned Gentleman totally failed to explain how a Labour Government would do that. One year of capital gains tax would not even begin to deal with this problem. He has not got a solution and it is deeply irresponsible of him to come to this place without having any kind of alternative.

Let us be in no doubt: if we did what we have heard from the Labour party over the past few weeks, we would still be in lockdown, because the right hon. and learned Gentleman opposed coming out of stage 4; we would have absolutely nothing by way of dealing with the NHS backlogs; and after decades of inertia from the Labour party we would have absolutely no way of dealing with the anxiety of millions of families across this country who face the prospect of catastrophic social care costs.

This Government are dealing with those things—we are dealing with all of them. We are getting on with it. We are taking the decisive action. We are doing it all together. This is the Government who get on and deal with the people’s priorities; this is the Government who tackle social care; and, indeed, this is the party of the NHS.

[Jeremy Hunt (South West Surrey) (Con)]

Raising taxes is an incredibly difficult thing for any Conservative Government to do, so I thank the Prime Minister for biting the bullet on this intractable issue that I and many former Health Secretaries have wrestled with.

Does the Prime Minister agree that the demographic challenge—which I know he is personally trying to address with a bit of population growth in Downing Street—means that whether someone pays insurance in America, social insurance in Germany or taxes in the UK, everyone is going to pay more for their health and care? Any Government have a responsibility to make sure that resources are allocated where the electorate’s priorities are, and in this country that is health and social care.

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my right hon. Friend not only for his support but for all the campaigning and hard work that he did when he was Secretary of State—the first Secretary of State for both health and social care because he sees that the two things go together, unlike the Labour party. What he said is entirely correct.

[Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)]

I thank the Prime Minister for an advance copy of his statement. Let me quote from it:

“Although Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own systems, we will direct money raised through the levy to their health and social care services.”

Let me tell the Prime Minister that health is devolved to the Scottish Government. The Prime Minister can get his mitts off our health system, because the people in Scotland trust the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government to run health and they certainly do not trust the Prime Minister—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Quite rightly, we heard the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition; I expect everybody to listen to the leader of the SNP.

[Ian Blackford]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. When we have an attack on devolution, we have the baying mob of the Tories trying to shout down the voices from Scotland.

Government briefings in advance of the statement on social care told us that this was supposedly a key part of securing the Prime Minister’s legacy in office. Well, the Prime Minister is certainly creating a legacy, but it is definitely not the one in his vivid imagination. The real legacy of this Government is now well defined: a Tory Government who blatantly break manifesto promises and blatantly break international law.

It is telling that as we hopefully emerge from the covid crisis, the first act of this Prime Minister is to impose this regressive tax. The scandal of the tax hike is that it will fall hardest on the young and the lowest paid—the two groups that have suffered the worst economic consequences of the pandemic. Pre-covid and post covid, the pattern is the same, and this Government have learned nothing. Westminster keeps adding to the growing burden that young people face while stripping them of the benefits that previous generations enjoyed.

The unfairness of this tax hike will be especially felt in Scotland. The Scottish Government are responsible for social care and already funds provision—including SNP policies such as free personal and nursing care—from existing budgets and tax receipts. We have done it. As the Prime Minister well knows, by raising this levy across the UK, the Tories are taxing Scottish workers twice and forcing them to pay the bill for social care in England as well as at home in Scotland. This is the Prime Minister’s poll tax on Scottish workers to pay for English social care. Scottish people remember that it is this Prime Minister who said that

“a pound spent in Croydon was of far more value to the country than a pound spent in Strathclyde.”

Can the Prime Minister explain to the people of Strathclyde and across Scotland why he is now going after the pounds in their pockets to solve a social care problem in Westminster, which has failed to fix problems in Croydon and right across England? If their pound is really of less value, as the Prime Minister claims, why are we paying the price? Is he willing to stand up and explain to the families in Scotland why we are being hit by another Tory poll tax?

[The Prime Minister]

The NHS is a UK institution and we are all proud of it, and we are proud of what NHS Scotland does as well. The right hon. Gentleman is completely wrong in what he says about those who pay this tax. The burden falls most heavily on those who have the broadest shoulders, as it should, and it is the richest 14% who pay at least half the taxation. As I have just explained to the House, there is a massive Union dividend of £300 million across the whole of the United Kingdom, and the whole of the UK will find that there is more money for health and social care, which is, I think, what the people of Scotland will understand.

[Dame Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

There will be millions of people right across the country who are so relieved today that, at last, the matter of health and social care will be resolved, with fairness to everyone. Can the Prime Minister reassure the many people who are concerned about prevention? We need early intervention, providing support for families with the very youngest children in our society, so that they too can have healthy and fulfilled lives throughout the United Kingdom.

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my right hon. Friend for everything that she does on this issue of early years. She and I have campaigned on this together. I have listened to her attentively over many years and I know that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor is determined to ensure that we get the proper funding for early years because the investment that we make in those first three years repays society and families massively.

[Dame Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)]

Let us set aside for a moment the Prime Minister’s unbridled record on reneging on his promises, because, today, he has chosen what I consider to be the least progressive option to fix both our health and social care system. It is unfair between generations, unfair between individuals and unfair between those who derive their income from assets or from work. He is ignoring a raft of better alternatives: raising income tax; and making dividend tax equivalent to income tax or capital gains tax. Why?

[The Prime Minister]

The simple reason that I gave earlier is that none of those measures raise anything like the funding that we need. I have explained that very clearly, and I think that colleagues understand it and I think the country understands it. People are very suspicious. They know that this country has been through an enormous fiscal impact from the pandemic. They know that the Government have put their arms round people and spent £407 billion. They would be very suspicious of a Government who pretend that they can get the NHS back on its feet without some kind of serious, responsible, fair, fiscal effort and that is what we are doing.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend for gripping this issue. We are not in Government to be afraid of doing anything for fear of offending anyone. I will study the plans that the PM has promised to set out and I thank him for them. On behalf of my constituents and their families trapped right now in the spiral of rising care costs and fast disappearing resources, may I urge him and the Health Secretary, as we develop the new system that he has promised, to consider those for whom this is an issue in the present and not just many years into the future.

[The Prime Minister]

I absolutely agree with what my hon. Friend has said. The tragedy of decades of failure to tackle this matter is that people are now facing these costs. What we are doing is investing—as we have done throughout the pandemic—about £6 billion, I think, in dealing with the immediate costs of social care to try to help people through this very difficult time. What this package offers is a way of developing a long-term solution, enabling, we hope, the private sector to come in and give people a long-term plan to fix the costs of their own social care, knowing that the Government will remove the risk of those catastrophic costs. That is the advantage of what we are doing today.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

Putting aside the unfairness of the national insurance tax rise that the Prime Minister is proposing, is it not the case that the expenditure cap will be his poll tax? In his Uxbridge constituency, the average price of a house is £500,000; in parts of mine it is £130,000. That would leave people in his constituency with an inheritance of more than £410,000 per family, and in mine £44,000 per family. That is unjust and unfair. It is not about levelling up, is it, Prime Minister? It is about doubling down on everything that is wrong, and yet again the poorest will pay the most.

[The Prime Minister]

This is a massively progressive measure that increases the floor on people’s liabilities four times. It protects people up and down the country from catastrophic costs, which anybody can face. Everybody across the country will benefit not only in the investment in social care and in care workers, but in making sure that we deal now and deal properly with the NHS backlogs and their effect on our NHS, which is what this country wants to see.

[Mr Speaker]

Let me just say to Members that we will be running this statement for around an hour, so, please, let us try to rush on and get through.

[Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

During the summer recess, I spent a week looking after my father who has advanced Alzheimer’s as my mother had a respite holiday. I pay tribute to all those who look after their loved ones in similar circumstances and all those who work in the care service. I certainly welcome the Prime Minister’s statement today. May I seek assurances that, through the health and social care levy, money raised will go to fund local authorities that do so much brilliant work in this area as well as the NHS?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend asks the question that everybody wants to be certain of. Absolutely, this is a legally hypothecated levy, but we will ensure that the funds that are fixed for social care go to social care so that we deal with the problem of the catastrophic costs. This will not be dispensed by the NHS, but by the Treasury in the normal course of Government spending.

[Ed Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)]

I am a carer and I have been a carer for most of my life. Like millions of others caring for their elderly, ill or disabled family members, I have desperately wanted a plan to fix the country’s social care crisis after the Conservatives failed to implement the Lib-Dem plan legislated for in 2014, but this is not that plan. Where is the plan for the care staff to fill the 120,000 vacancies so that there are people to provide the care? Where is the plan for working-age adult care—care for physically and learning-disabled adults, which is the fastest growing care challenge? Where is the plan for the crisis facing millions of unpaid family carers whom the Prime Minister always forgets, and what is his message to the low-paid, the young and the small business owners hit by covid who now face his unfair tax? This Prime Minister has not a clue about fairness and he just does not care.

[The Prime Minister]

After a long career of listening to Liberal Democrat opportunism, I do not think that I have heard anything quite so absurd. The right hon. Gentleman calls for more funding and then attacks the Government for providing the wherewithal to do exactly what he wants. We will be spending half a billion pounds supporting carers, and there will be 700,000 more training places. The plan supports adult care. It supports everybody who needs care up and down the country; it is not just care for the elderly.

[Matt Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)]

The reform of social care has been ducked for decades because successive Governments have put it in the too difficult box. I congratulate the Prime Minister on delivering on our commitments and his commitment. May I ask him to ensure that, as well as the money, we integrate properly the NHS with social care so that people can get the dignity that they deserve?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my right hon. Friend, because he played a major part in the gestation of these policies and knows them intimately. He is completely right and has been massively encouraging to the Government over the last few weeks.

We will be bringing forward a White Paper on the integration. Of course this is going to be difficult, but it has to be done. We must have a system whereby people can work across both the health sector and the care sector in an integrated way. We have to have single budget holders and we have to ensure that, for instance, we have single electronic records in both health and social care. These are things that need to be fixed. We need to make sure that people are cared for appropriately and in the right setting, and that is why we are bringing forward the White Paper.

[Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Prime Minister will know that a number of young people are carers for their elderly relatives and family members. I was a carer for my late mother, who suffered from complex needs, including sickle cell anaemia and renal failure. Without those carers, our local government would have to pick up more issues. What assessment has the Prime Minister made of the high vacancy rates in the care sector, and will he be honest and say that this social care plan announcement has no impact on addressing those rates?

[The Prime Minister]

No, this plan does address the problems in the care sector. In addition to the £6 billion that we have put into supporting local government with social care during the pandemic, we are putting another £0.5 billion into supporting the care workforce. I have mentioned the 700,000 training places that we are investing in. We are also trying to ensure that people who become carers—they are wonderful people; I thank the hon. Member for what she has done—get the progression and career structure that they need, and understand how valued and respected they are.

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

The public will welcome the certainty in my right hon. Friend’s announcement today, particularly with regard to the cap and the floor, but does he agree that it is time that we had a real and informed debate about the nature of old age, now that we are all living longer? The longer that we can live independently, the better it is for everyone’s wellbeing, and we can all make lifestyle choices to encourage that. Does he agree that we need a fair debate about new models of care and housing models to encourage exactly that discussion?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is completely right. One of the things that we are bringing in today is the housing and innovation fund, to ensure that we care for people in the right settings. She is completely right that there is no point in having residential care when a domiciliary option would be better, more effective and perhaps less expensive. That is exactly the right approach. The patterns of care and way we do things will change and improve—very rapidly, I believe.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Prime Minister, most people recognise that if we want more services, we have to pay more. But if we are going to pay, it should at least be fair. Despite your claim that this is a progressive tax, it is not. It is a flat-rate tax, the benefit of which will go mostly to better-off people. Those who are less well off will therefore be subsidising those who are better off. At a time when we are trying to create more jobs, young people and employers are going to feel the impact. Could I ask you—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Can I just say that the right hon. Gentleman has been here a long time and knows that I am not responsible—I certainly do not want to be responsible for this—so could he not use “you”? I call the Prime Minister to respond.

[Sammy Wilson]

Will the Prime Minister—

[Mr Speaker]

Sammy, sit down; come on, son.

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman is a formidable campaigner for his constituents, but I believe that these measures do serve them. This plan is progressive; the burden falls most heavily on those who can most afford to pay. It will, above all, help to deal with the current waiting lists in Northern Ireland, which are excessive and need to come down.

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

The NHS has been outstanding during the pandemic. However, as the Prime Minister has said, there is now a large waiting list of people needing treatment. As a hospital doctor, I am delighted to hear about the increased investment in the national health service that we are getting today, but as well as money we will need medical and nursing staff hours to reduce the waiting list. What are the Government doing to increase the numbers of those medical and nursing staff?

[The Prime Minister]

We are massively recruiting NHS staff. I think I am right in saying that, as I stand here today, there are 11,600 more nurses in the NHS than there were this time last year, and we will go on to deliver on our manifesto commitment to recruit 50,000 more nurses.

[Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab)]

Having been a care worker, I know that it is a hard and skilled job that deserves decent pay and recognition, not a Tory tax hike. Does the Prime Minister really believe that his tax hike, which will fall on the shoulders of care workers, is any way to reward the heroes who have got us over the last 18 months?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, because the burdens fall overwhelmingly on those who can best afford to pay, and the benefit for care workers is not only the increase in the living wage, but the colossal investment that we are making in care. That is something that will benefit not just care workers, but their charges: their patients, and the families who desperately need care up and down the country.

[Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)]

A decade on from Dilnot and with the demographic challenges becoming more intense, my right hon. Friend is to be commended as the first occupant of Downing Street to grapple with this immense challenge. Some of the most distressing cases that we encounter as constituency MPs are families who are caught in that tension between those who are in hospital ready for discharge and the local authorities. We see distressed and anxious families—confused, bewildered and vulnerable people. The greatest reform that we can make to the system is to put those who need the care at the very centre of our reforms.

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my right hon. Friend deeply; in that intervention, he has summed up the heart of the issue that I was trying to explain in my statement. It is the anxiety of millions of families up and down the country who face this uncertainty—about the finance, but also the proper setting for their relatives—that we are addressing today.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

The backbone of the social care system is an army of underpaid and hard-working home carers and carers. How does the Prime Minister begin to justify to them a tax rise that not only breaks a promise, but hits them hard in their pockets?

[The Prime Minister]

Because we are investing massively in the sector. We are putting half a billion pounds into supporting care workers and investing in 700,000 training places. We are lifting the living wage by record amounts. Above all, we are valuing care workers and showing the respect to them and their careers that I do not believe has been properly shown before, by any Government.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I welcome that paying for this proposal is going to fall predominantly on the well off and those with the broadest shoulders. My right hon. Friend has pointed out that those who are earning less than £9,500 a year will not have to pay for the proposal, but what other mitigating factors can he put in place to help those on lower incomes to pay for it? Once the financial conditions allow, will he look at continuing to raise the living wage and at cutting taxes for lower earners?

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend is right consistently to campaign in the way in which he does for low earners. We are increasing the threshold for which people can be liable for paying anything at all from £14,000 to £20,000, which is a benefit that has not really come out properly in the conversation. People need to understand that we are lifting the minimum assets for which people can be liable from £14,000 to £20,000; that helps people on low incomes. As my right hon. Friend knows, we are also increasing the living wage. I am pleased to see that one of the effects of the current rebound in the economy, which I know he will be studying, is that wages are now starting to rise again—in exactly the way that some of us who campaigned for Brexit wanted to see.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

When I was first elected to this place in 1997, one of the first people who came to see me in my surgery was the wife of a man who had been waiting two years for open heart surgery, and we are back there again with the waiting lists. There was no righteous indignation from the Tories when the list reached 2 million before the pandemic hit. Will the Prime Minister commit today to hitting the 18-week target for waiting lists, and to clearing the backlog by the end of this Parliament?

[The Prime Minister]

I think what the Labour party needs to do is come up with any type of plan at all. Every day in this country, plan beats no plan. We are putting record investment into the NHS. We have a plan to clear the backlogs—to reduce the backlogs as fast as we possibly can with this levy. What would Labour Members do? Answer comes there none: they have no plan.

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

For years, people have come to my surgery with horror stories about the difficulties of accessing care and the frankly squalid conditions that their loved ones have to be in in residential care. Can the Prime Minister reassure me that, as well as protecting the things people have worked hard for all their lives, we will also protect people from having to put their loved ones into conditions that not one person in this House would ever want for their loved ones?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, because in addition to the caps and the floors that we are introducing to protect people from catastrophic costs, we are also introducing a fair cost of care.

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies said that there were really no good arguments for using national insurance to raise these moneys, and having been briefed on the Government’s plans, care leaders are extremely disappointed, furious and depressed at the Government’s meagre plans on social care. But the question is: why is it necessary at all? This will raise about £12 billion a year, but the Prime Minister’s Brexit bonus of £350 million a week would aggregate to £18 billion a year. So where is this money, or did it never exist?

[The Prime Minister]

I think the whole country understands that we have been through a pandemic that obliged the Treasury to spend £407 billion on protecting people, jobs and livelihoods by furlough and other measures across Scotland. That was the right thing to do. I think people also understand that it is the reasonable and responsible thing to do now to put the NHS back on its feet with the funding it needs, and to sort out social care at the same time. That is what we are doing.

[Jeremy Wright (Kenilworth and Southam) (Con)]

Is not the starting point in this discussion that greater demand for social care is bound to require greater money to pay for it, and anyone who does not like these proposals needs to explain what the alternative is, which is unlikely to be clear, simple and popular? Is it not the case that, in order to create an insurance market to give people even greater reassurance about their future care costs, we need to put a cap on and that is why the cap is most welcome? Will the Prime Minister do all he can to make sure that that insurance market is stimulated? Finally, will he confirm that that cap applies to those who have care needs regardless of their age?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, I can certainly confirm that my right hon. and learned Friend is right on the last point—that the cap applies regardless of age. He is completely right in what he says about the logical necessity for the cap if we are to have any hope of the private sector coming in with the financial instruments that will help people to protect themselves against the cost up to the limit. That is the virtue of what we are setting out today. And what do we hear from the Labour party? Deafening silence.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

People living with dementia and their families have been particularly affected by the social care crisis. They represent 40% of care home residents and they pay a dementia premium of 15%. On average, they spend £30,000 a year on their care. Dementia is an outcome of different diseases, which are increasing; we are going to see more and more people living with dementia. Therefore, can I ask the Prime Minister whether he will also fulfil his commitment in the general election manifesto for a dementia research moonshot? We know that we can, in the same way that we have developed a vaccination programme, develop cures and treatments for dementia.

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Member is right to focus on the issue in the way that she does. It is a very cruel lottery that one in seven face these catastrophic costs as a result of dementia, while those who have other conditions are funded in full by the NHS. I can certainly confirm that the moonshot programme that was begun by my right hon. Friend the former Secretary of State for Health—one of his many moonshots—continues.

[Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)]

Can the Prime Minister confirm that this funding injection will go directly into frontline NHS services, not middle management, and that patients will be able to see the tangible benefits from it?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes. Not only will it go to frontline services and to beating waiting lists, but we will make sure that this money—this massive, unprecedented investment—is accompanied by the reform, change and productivity gain that the NHS needs to see.

[Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)]

My former colleagues where I used to work as a care worker sacrificed so much during the pandemic and now, under the Prime Minister’s plans, their pockets will be raided with a tax that will hit hardest those who are older, young and less well-off. Does he agree that it is now time for a national care service and a wealth tax to fund it?

[The Prime Minister]

The funding that we need on the scale that we need simply could not be raised in the way that the hon. Member describes or in the way that the Leader of the Opposition has vaguely indicated today; I do not think I heard a clear description of what he actually intends to do. But of course we want to make sure that people in the caring profession get the support and the investment that they need. That is why we are putting money into their training and into supporting carers, but also lifting their wages with the biggest ever increase in the national living wage. We will continue to support that.

[Chris Clarkson (Heywood and Middleton) (Con)]

I declare an interest as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on local government, in thanking my right hon. Friend for making the tough choices that he has today, rather than kicking the can down the road, as the Labour party did for 13 years when it had the opportunity to do something. As welcome as this injection of cash is, can I ask for an assurance that it is going to be met with the same rigorous reform that is necessary to make the system viable for years to come?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes. I thank my hon. Friend for everything he does for local government. Of course we will make sure that we bring forward the White Paper, which will show how we intend to join up healthcare and local government in a way that they have not been since the foundation of the NHS more than 70 years ago.

[Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister is behaving like Father Christmas; he does not know what he has not delivered in government for the last 11 years. In this House last night, we had cross-party consensus on covering the costs of medicinal cannabis. So while Father Christmas is at the Dispatch Box, can he deliver on a Government promise to immediately set up a fund to pay for prescriptions for medical cannabis for children with intractable epilepsy?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the hon. Lady. The prescriptions that she asks for are actually already provided for on the basis of clinical advice.

[Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)]

There has been much debate about how the money is being raised, but of more concern is how the money is going to be spent. My fear is that, once you start spending on perfectly proper things like the NHS backlog, there will never come a point where there is enough money in the new fund to transfer to social care, which needs it now. You cannot spend the same pound twice. So can my right hon. Friend guarantee that the social care sector will itself see a significant uplift in its support in the immediate future?

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend has done great work on this subject and I am indebted to him for some of the advice that he has given to me personally about how to proceed in this. He is right in what he says. The issue is making sure that the funding goes where it is needed and that it is specifically ring-fenced. The investments in social care will be protected by the Government and by the Treasury.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

There are better ways of doing this than to take money from the less well off in work and the young to give to better off pensioners. Can I commend to the Prime Minister and my own Front Benchers the work of the Health and Social Care and Housing, Communities and Local Government Committees in their joint report of 2018, agreed unanimously by all Members of all parties in this House, which would deliver a system that is sustainable and equitable, address poor quality and low pay, and allow the proper integration of health and social care—none of which, from what I have heard today, his proposals would deliver?

[The Prime Minister]

Time and again, Labour Members have stood up and said that there is a better way to do this, without offering a single idea. A plan beats no plan.

[Mr David Jones (Clwyd West) (Con)]

Can my right hon. Friend confirm that the sums passed to Wales under his proposals will not only be ring-fenced for health and social care, but that the Welsh Government will be required to apply the same £86,000 cap as will be applied in England? It would be grossly unfair if care users in one part of the country were to be worse off than those in another.

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend makes a very important point. Members across the House will know that the lower limit in Scotland is £12,500 at the moment. Lifting that to £20,000, as we are now, is something that people in Scotland may want to address. I certainly think that the cap of £86,000 is something that people in Wales will want to see, too. There is a strong benefit to the whole of the UK proceeding as one.

[Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)]

As chair of the all-party parliamentary health group, I have been hearing concerns from older adults across the United Kingdom who are in social care or in the community and have experienced loneliness, anxiety, isolation from loved ones, illness, bereavement and loss. The British Journal of Psychiatry has today documented a significant rise in depression in this group. Will the Prime Minister commit to ensuring that older adults in social care and the community have access to adequate mental health services and that those services are fully funded?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady is completely right to draw attention to the suffering of people throughout the pandemic, particularly in care homes, including the mental stress they have suffered as a result of not being able to see or hold loved ones in the normal way. It has been one of the most appalling features of this pandemic, and we are certainly investing record sums in mental health to deal with that issue and many others.

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

Does the Prime Minister share my disbelief at the Leader of the Opposition’s response to his statement, considering that waiting times for treatment and discharge for my constituents in Wales are much longer than they are in England? Can he confirm that Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland will be net gainers out of the social care levy? Will he further guarantee that the additional sums available will be spent on health and social care in the nations?

[The Prime Minister]

I can certainly confirm that Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland will be getting an increment. There will be a Union dividend in the way that I described, but clearly it is up to those parts of the country to ensure that that money is spent on the people’s priorities, and I believe that the people’s priorities are health and social care.

[Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)]

As well as the 30,000 beds that the Prime Minister talked about, we know there has been a 36% increase in people dying at home through the pandemic in circumstances that we know not much about. The mental, physical and financial torture and cost born by families is unknown and will shock many of us when we hear from our constituents. He may be flying a kite today, but I do think he is breaching a dam, and that is something that we all need to grasp. Targeted help is not a long-term solution. My right hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) highlights what that solution could be, but there is some certainty offered today. Can the Prime Minister clarify whether he is going to bring forward a White Paper? Will he bring forward different forms of legislation? How are we going to understand the impact?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the hon. Lady very much. We are setting out the plan today on the caps and floors and how to deal with social care. We are setting out the plan on nurses’ pay and dealing with the backlogs. What we will also be doing is setting out the finer detail of the integration between health and social care in the ways that I have described: everybody should have electronic records for both health and social care; there should be movement between the two services; community nurses and adult social carers should not be doing these radically different professions with different pay spines—there should be an integration; people should be having care in the appropriate setting; and there should be a single budget holder. Those are some of the things that we will be discussing in the White Paper.

[Shaun Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Con)]

Additional investment is welcome, but that has to come with assurance. My constituents in Tipton, because of the Labour party, are getting turfed out of their care home, despite a £2 million underspend by Sandwell Council on adult social care. Can my right hon. Friend assure my constituents in Tipton that their campaign to save Walker Grange care home is not in vain? Will he ensure that assurance comes with the investment to stop the Labour party turfing out some of the most vulnerable people in my community?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, Mr Speaker, and I think my hon. Friend speaks to the profound indifference of the Labour party to this issue for decades. That is why we are taking the decisive action that we are to address the problems in the whole social care system, to support care homes and to support those who must face the cost of social care.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the Prime Minister agree that any new money must go alongside reform of our NHS? Does he agree that, as we have a system where most people’s entry into the health system is through a GP, it surely cannot be right that in many of the most deprived communities in our country, people cannot get a GP for love nor money? There must be something wrong in many parts of our country that in this day and age, people cannot get a GP and cannot even get a dentist. When can we do something to change that?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman is entirely right in what he says, in the sense that we are doing 50 million more GP appointments. That is part of our manifesto pledge. What we are also going to do as part of these reforms—I do not think anyone wants to see money just funnelled into the NHS without reform—is look at GP contracts to make sure that GPs see the right patients at the right time.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

If there was an easy solution to the problem of social care, it would have happened years, if not decades ago. I believe that everybody in this House, but particularly those from parties offering no alternatives, should welcome how the Prime Minister is tackling health and social care together with a hypothecated tax, which means that this health and social care levy is ring-fenced for all our constituents’ benefit. On the issue of intergenerational fairness, my right hon. Friend said that the recently retired would contribute and the lowest earning would not contribute, so will he encourage the Health Secretary to lay out the details of the tapers as soon as possible, so that everyone can see that this is a progressive levy?

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend the Health Secretary will certainly be laying that out. What everybody in the country understands is that there is no intergenerational issue here, because in the end all families are affected by this. Everybody has older relatives whom we love, and the cost of whose care makes us anxious. Everybody understands that families across the country are liable for this and we must take steps to fix it, and that is what we are doing.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

Confidence in job creation is crucial right now in our economy. What assessment has the Prime Minister made of the number of jobs where employers will look at the extra national insurance contributions and say, “No, I do not think I will take on those extra staff”?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady should remember that 40% of companies will not be affected at all by this. I am sure she also knows that the labour market is so buoyant that not only are there huge numbers of vacancies, but wages are rising, and that is a good thing.

[Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con)]

During the pandemic, the Government stepped in to save lives and jobs. In Rutland and Melton, 47% of jobs would have been lost without those efforts. Does the Prime Minister agree that it would be wrong to meet the cost with higher borrowing and debt, which would be carried by our children? Will he commit to look at those councils that are worse funded, specifically Leicestershire and Rutland, which need real help with social care above and beyond a generic formula across the country?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, Mr Speaker. I thank my hon. Friend for what she says about Rutland and Melton, and we will certainly make sure the councils get the funding they need. She has hit on the fundamental point: borrowing more is no answer. We are borrowing a lot, and in the end borrowing is just future tax rises for younger people or even people unborn. That is not what this Government are going to do.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

Health and social care do need massive investment, especially after Tory austerity has so undermined our national health service over the past 11 years. A 10% tax on the wealth of those with over £100 million would raise £69 billion. Surely a wealth tax is how we should be funding these vital services. Is the truth not that despite the rhetoric and the promises, the Tories do not have the guts to take on the super-rich who fund their party, and that is why they will not back a wealth tax?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution. At least he has the guts, unlike the leader of his party, to say that he would tax people in this country to the tune of £12 billion or £13 billion a year to pay for this. This is a wealth tax on that scale. We believe that this is the right way. What we have not heard from those on the Labour Front Bench is any credible alternative.

[Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend confirm that as a result of this announcement today, the Scottish national health service will receive billions of extra pounds in funding? Does he share my astonishment—and, I am sure, the astonishment of the people of Scotland—at the remarkable reaction of the SNP today? It seems that because the SNP has not asked for it, it does not want Scotland’s NHS to get this extra funding.

[The Prime Minister]

That was brilliantly and succinctly put. Does the SNP want the money or not? Do the people of Scotland want investment in their healthcare and social care or not? There is more money coming for Scotland; let us hope that the SNP spends it wisely.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

A little over two years ago, the Prime Minister stood on the steps of Downing Street and promised the nation an oven-ready deal on social care, yet the announcement of a tax on jobs only promises a plan later this year. Crucially, the detail in the statement says that only people starting care after October 2023 will be helped with these catastrophic costs. What does the Prime Minister say to the 1.5 million people missing out on care and to the millions of hard-working families facing crippling costs between now and September 2023 but paying for it from April next year?

[The Prime Minister]

What I say to the hon. Member is that, frankly, she should take that up with the former leaders of the Labour party, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and all the former Ministers responsible who did absolutely nothing to fix the problem when they were in office. It is this Government dealing with it now.

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

The Prime Minister was absolutely right to focus on the importance of the social care workforce. Unfortunately, the Government’s own estimate is that due to our compulsory vaccination measures, 40,000 people in that workforce will leave the sector by November. Are there urgent measures in his plan that the Government will take to replace those missing care workers so that we can deliver the high-quality care that I think everyone in the House wants to see?

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point about compulsory vaccination. I believe it is the right thing, and, in the ways that I have described, we are making sure that we encourage more people to join the social care workforce, with the £500 million of investment and the training places. We must also understand that many of those social care workers are leaving to join the NHS, where vaccination is not currently compulsory. Almost 10% of NHS frontline workers are not vaccinated. That is something on which we need to reflect, and that is why we are having a consultation on the way forward for the NHS. I do not think it is right that almost one in 10 frontline NHS workers should be unvaccinated against covid.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

It is telling that, in the Prime Minister’s statement, there was not a single word of tribute to our extraordinary social care workforce or any mention of the pay increase that they so desperately need. Many of those social care workers are on low pay and will face a £1,000 cut in their income as a consequence of the Prime Minister’s cut to universal credit, on top of the national insurance increase they face. What has the Prime Minister got to say to our dedicated social care workforce who spend their time caring for our precious loved ones every single day?

[The Prime Minister]

Let me say again what I have said repeatedly: the social care workforce of this country have done an amazing job and continue to do so. They did an amazing job throughout the pandemic as well as before it and beyond. I met more of them today. What they are getting from this package of measures is not only investment in their careers and progression but the long-term structure and respect that they need as a profession and the prospect of integration between what they do and what the NHS provides. That is a massive prize.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on grasping an issue that his predecessors have been ducking for decades. Does he agree that what has been announced restores some equity to a system that relies on pooling our risk and that, in particular, people who have been excluded with dementia, neurodegenerative disease, Parkinson’s disease and the general frailty of old age, and their relatives, can look forward with some confidence to the system that has been there for others also applying to them?

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend knows exactly what he is talking about, because he is a former GP who has seen these issues at the frontline. With this measure, we are not only investing in care and in the NHS but bringing the magic of averages to the rescue of millions.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

Before the pandemic, the Conservative-led Local Government Association said that there was a gap in social care funding and local authority funding of about £5 billion. It has got worse since. Will the Prime Minister therefore state clearly, of the £36 billion to be raised through this addition to national insurance contributions in the next three years, how much will go to local authorities to fund social care? When, in 2023, he brings in the cap and floor system, that will mean less money coming in from people’s own funding, so what will the net addition be for local authorities from the increase in national insurance payments and the reduction in payments from the cap and floor system?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Member makes an exceptionally important point. In addition to the £6 billion that we put into supporting local government throughout the pandemic, we are putting more in precisely to support social care. That will ramp up over time as the system kicks in. The distribution will be set out in due course by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

Nobody in this House, and I doubt anyone in the country, will be surprised that the Prime Minister has the guts to take on reforming social care when none of his predecessors did. I was amazed that in the statement he pointed out that roughly one in three hospital beds are occupied by people who could be better treated and cared for elsewhere. It seems to me from my surgeries that the problem is largely due to local government and the health service not working together. When can we see some improvement in that?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is completely right, and I am sure he speaks for Members across the House who have experienced this problem in their surgeries for years. There is a mismatch between health and social care and there is not a proper system for deciding where people should be treated for their own benefit, and the result is that we get these huge pressures of delayed discharge that make it more difficult to deal with the elective surgery that people need—particularly now. That is why we must do both things at once, and that is why we are doing what we are doing.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

The right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green), the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) and my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) have hit the nail on the head: there is no plan for social care. What the Prime Minister has listed is money to go into the NHS. Will he tell us now when the money will go to local authorities so that it can go to those domiciliary and residential social care providers who actually need it?

[The Prime Minister]

It is all in the plan. The overwhelming bulk of the funding begins with support for frontline NHS electives, for nurses’ pay and for vaccines; then, as the social care plan ramps up, the ratio changes. It will be set out by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

May I quote from a recent report from a joint inquiry by the Health and Social Care Committee and the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee on the future funding of social care, on which I sat together with 12 Opposition Members? It says:

“We therefore recommend that an earmarked contribution, described as a ‘Social Care Premium’, should be introduced, to which individuals and employers should contribute. This can either be as an addition to National Insurance, or through a separate mechanism”.

Does that not show that there is cross-party support for such a proposal and that the Opposition’s objections are simply political opportunism?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that elegant but telling point about the cross-party support that there should be. We are trying to create the conditions by decisive Government action for exactly the kind of insurance systems that I know he wants to see.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

It has been a long time coming, but this announcement is too little, too late for the 34,000 people who have died of covid with dementia. Will the Prime Minister tell us when he will honour his manifesto pledge to double research spending into this cruel disease that took my mum—it was isolating before covid—or is this just another one going the same way as the money for the NHS promised on the side of the bus?

[The Prime Minister]

I am very sorry to hear about the suffering of the hon. Member’s mother. Dementia is a very cruel affliction, and it is because of the cruelty of that lottery about who gets it and who does not that we are putting in the measures that we are. But we are also funding extra research into dementia, and my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary is determined to ensure that we continue with the moonshot that I was referring to earlier.

[Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

May I ask the Prime Minister why he decided to reject other forms of insurance as a model? The Germans brought in an insurance model back in the 1980s, facing the same problems that we had, and it relies on the private insurance sector. The noble Lord Lilley from the other place has brought forward a Bill that would see the Government set up a state insurer. Those retired householders would then pay a premium, which would be fixed as a charge, and then that charge would only be paid upon the death of that individual. Do not those models do a little more to intergenerational fairness?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for his thoughtful question. We looked at all those models of course, Mr Speaker, as you can imagine. I think that the problem is that we need to go for an insurance system that works and has a genuine chance of being set up, and the only way of encouraging the financial services industry to come in and offer products, whether they are insurance or annuities or whatever, is to take away that risk of catastrophic cost. That is a very substantial risk for too many people and it means that the insurance market has not been able to develop. We believe that this is the best way forward for the country.

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

My hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) referred to comments by IFS director Paul Johnson earlier, but Paul Johnson has also said he is

“bemused as to why such a bad tax policy instrument has to be used”,

and pointed out that the under-50s would pay two thirds of the costs of social care if they paid through NI. Prime Minister, that means young people and the lowest-paid bearing the brunt. Many of these are also working with universal credit—people in Scotland paying that and elsewhere. Does he think it is fair to progress this while also cutting the £20 a week from hard-pressed families on universal credit?

[The Prime Minister]

No, because obviously older people continue to pay the levy and the richest 14% pay half the cost of this transformation, and that is entirely the right thing to do.

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

If there had not been a pandemic, how would we have funded this reform of social care without having to raise taxes?

[The Prime Minister]

The pandemic and the cost of the pandemic have impacted both our health and our social care systems. As I have tried to explain to the House today, they are intimately related. The best way to put them on a sound footing—both of them on a sound footing—for the future is to treat them together and to put in the levy in the way that we are.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

We all know that the Prime Minister’s promises are a wee bit dodgy. Today, he promised that his extra taxes will go to the frontline, so by how much will he increase the pay for people in the social care profession or is it just going to be another round of applause?

[The Prime Minister]

People in the social care profession, overwhelmingly, are not paid by the Government as the hon. Member knows, but they are the beneficiaries of the living wage, which the Government have increased by record amounts. What we are doing is investing in their training, investing in their careers and making sure that they get the respect and the progression that they need.

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

The devil, as ever, will be in the detail. However, may I initially broadly welcome these proposals, particularly compared with what we were expecting, which was a rise across national insurance as it stands at the moment? This is a much broader-based levy: it includes those who have retired and those who are receiving dividends. It seems to me that that has a very welcome consequence; the broadest shoulders will pay the most. But can my right hon. Friend also address one of the criticisms of what we feared might have been brought forward today, which was the impact on the young in particular and this issue of intergenerational fairness, and how he feels that this approach is going to be useful in that respect?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my right hon. Friend very much for his support, because it is extremely important, and I think he is completely right. We are trying to make sure that those who can pay the most do pay the most. We are trying to make sure that we address the issue of intergenerational fairness. But there is a bigger point, which I have made repeatedly. This is not something that simply affects one generation, the elderly. There are huge numbers of younger people in care who will benefit from what we are doing and every person in this country has relatives who face the problems that we are trying now to allay or to defeat.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister today was supposed to be announcing a social care plan, but there was no vision, no detail and no real sense of understanding the complex web of issues that create the social care crisis. In particular, he made no mention of the millions of unpaid carers, whose commitment to their loved ones props up the failing system. So will he now say very specifically what is in his plan to identify and support unpaid carers, and particularly young carers, and what resources will he commit to them?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank unpaid carers for everything that they do, and the hon. Member is quite right to point out the huge contribution that they make. What unpaid carers have now is the certainty that if they need to pay for the cost of care in some way or other, there will be a limit and they will not have to continue with their unpaid exertions, their care and love forever, because the Government are coming in to help them.

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s investment into the NHS, particularly into the beds, which have obviously clogged up. We see this in Stoke-on-Trent, where the Royal Stoke University Hospital was built under the last Labour Government, with a disastrous PFI debt that steals £20 million a year from the frontline. It also has 200 fewer beds than the previous hospital. So can my right hon. Friend ensure that previously forgotten areas such as Stoke-on-Trent will get their fair share of funding?

[The Prime Minister]

With the PFI contracts and the endless borrowing that Labour instituted, hospitals up and down the country are paying the price for the approach advocated by the last Labour Government—the completely financially reckless and incompetent approach. That is the opposite of what this Government are doing. We are taking the fiscally responsible, reasonable and right approach to fixing this problem.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister said at the Dispatch Box, though it is not in the printed copy of his speech, that the NHS backlog that we face will get worse before it gets better. How much worse?

[The Prime Minister]

It would be a great thing if the Labour party would support what we are doing. With the package we have brought forward, we will be able to fix that backlog even faster. If the hon. Member or the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), the leader of the Labour party—[Interruption.] By the way, we did not hear from him whether he is going to vote for these proposals or not: as usual, a great vacuum at the heart of the Labour party. Does he actually support these proposals—yes or no? That is what I would like to know.

[Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

I think the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the Health Secretary deserve enormous credit for coming together and working out a plan for this incredibly difficult problem, and I think people outside this place will recognise that. But does the Prime Minister agree with me that one of the most difficult parts of this challenge is ensuring that we bring out the very best now in our NHS—that we bear down on unnecessary costs and increase quality output from the NHS? Does he agree that that is the key to freeing up that extra resource to get to the frontline of social care?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, we cannot simply continue to funnel huge sums into the NHS without getting the productivity gains that I know that everybody wants to see around the country. Of course, we want to value our frontline NHS workers. That is why we have put up the wages of nurses. It is why we are increasing salaries and recruiting many more. But we must see the gains in efficiency that go with the investment we are making. We are investing record sums, and we also need to see improvements in the NHS service as well.

[Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)]

Cabinet Ministers, Tory Back Benchers and Lords, and businesses large and small are all opposed to this proposal. There is universal criticism of how it will affect young people and those who are less well-off who are working, and, to top it all, the Prime Minister cannot resist interfering in the devolved settlement, even though Scotland voted for a majority of independence supporting MSPs. How long—how long—does this Prime Minister think he can carry on like this before he follows in the footsteps of the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) and loses his majority due to a botched plan?

[The Prime Minister]

I leave it to the hon. Lady to speculate on that time, but it is very bizarre that yet again the Scottish nationalists—I think she is a Scottish nationalist—seem to be rejecting the Union dividend that this produces. I hope, and the people of Scotland deserve, that this money is spent on health and social care in Scotland; let us hope it is so spent.

[Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con)]

Many in this House have discussed the burden placed on councils, and I echo the concern that this money must be ring-fenced for the local authorities, who take the lion’s share of the burden for adult social care. Can the Government give greater assurances as to how the funding streams will be safeguarded and directed towards local authorities?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is spot on, and the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care will set out later how we will ensure local councils get the support that they need.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Prime Minister failed to say a word about the broken private care market that fleeces the frail and suppresses the wages of the workers. Why has he failed to lay out plans to end this broken market and introduce a public national care system?

[The Prime Minister]

I know that the Labour party wants to nationalise everything, which would be typically insane since the vast majority of care is provided by the private sector. What we are doing is lifting people’s wages with the national living wage, investing in training and putting half a billion pounds into progression of the caring workforce, and we will also make sure that local councils get the funding they need to support a fair cost of care.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

When people cannot get an appointment with their GP they often turn to hospital A&E departments, or miss out on early intervention which places greater pressure on our health system further down the line. As part of his plan for the NHS to recover, will the Prime Minister make sure that everybody can get face-to-face appointments with their GP without further delay?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is completely right and speaks for colleagues across the House: we need to reform the system so that GPs see the right people at the right time and in the right numbers.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

Mike Cherry of the Federation of Small Businesses has said that these plans unquestionably mean fewer jobs and economic damage and that they are “devastating” for businesses trying to

“get back on their feet”.

Why is the Prime Minister intent on damaging the very fragile recovery we have had for the past year?

[The Prime Minister]

I disagree vehemently with what the hon. Lady says because the economy is coming back much more strongly than many predicted, including the Office for Budget Responsibility, which is a good thing. If we had followed the advice from the Labour party we would still be in lockdown, but we are seeing growth returning and jobs being created, and I do not believe anything in this plan will do anything to dent that confidence. On the contrary, businesses want to know that their workforce have the security of a good health and social care plan to back them up, and that is what this Government are providing.

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

As Conservatives, broken pledges and tax rises should concern us. Our finances are in a perilous state; surely a radical review of the NHS is needed if this money is not going to disappear into another black hole. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Conservative way to raise revenue is to lower taxes, not raise them?

[The Prime Minister]

I do agree with that general proposition, but in the current circumstances, after 18 months in which it has been necessary for the Government to perform the most enormous fiscal exertions to put their arms around the country at a very difficult and dangerous time, it is right that we take these steps to put the NHS back on a sustainable footing and to deal with the problems of social care which make long-term solutions for the NHS—the very reform that my hon. Friend and I want to see—so difficult to achieve.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

Words I never thought I would say: the Prime Minister is right, we cannot fix the NHS without fixing social care. But we cannot fix social care without fixing local government, and of course in the lifetime of this Government £15 billion has been taken out of council budgets, disproportionately hitting some of the least affluent parts of England and impacting on social care outcomes. Councils need assurances now that funding will follow and clarity on when they will get it and how much it will be; does he understand that?

[The Prime Minister]

Actually in the last few years we have seen record increases in local council spending power, and we have continued to support councils throughout the pandemic. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care will be setting out how we propose to support local government going forward with the fair cost of care, but in the meantime may I thank the hon. Gentleman for his unprecedented support for these measures?

[David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)]

I can probably say that in the last 18 months during lockdown I have seen more of the NHS than most people—I have had a neck operation, my baby was born, my back exploded, for want of a better word, and I was paralysed—and I would like to go on record and thank the Royal Lancaster Infirmary for getting me walking again and looking after me and my family.

I say the following in a collegiate sense to everybody. What the Prime Minister has done here is what Andy Burnham wanted to do 10 years ago but never brought it through when he was the last Labour Health Secretary and the shadow Secretary. What the Prime Minister is doing is brave, but I have been saying for years when knocking on doors in my constituency, “Put an extra penny on taxation for the NHS,” and everyone has agreed with me. So, whatever these tax rises are going to be, so be it: we have to protect the NHS—it is our moral duty.

[The Prime Minister]

It is wonderful to see my hon. Friend looking so well, and I echo his thanks to our healthcare professionals for everything they do. I believe it is the fixed view of the British people that after a very difficult time it is fiscally right and responsible to protect frontline healthcare and support the NHS but also at the same time to fix the underlying problems, of which social care is just one.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the Prime Minister for introducing this long overdue measure to address the NHS and social care. Across the United Kingdom, and in my constituency of Strangford, small and medium-sized businesses are critically important in providing jobs and boosting the economy. Can the Prime Minister assure this House that across the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland SMEs will not shoulder the burden, as they can little afford it?

[The Prime Minister]

I am a fervent admirer of the businesses of Northern Ireland and their ingenuity and ability to innovate, which I have seen many times at first hand. I know they are capable of a very dynamic recovery, and indeed believe that is going on right now. I have every confidence in my right hon. Friend the Chancellor to keep bringing forward those business-friendly, supply-side measures which will drive a very strong economic recovery.

[Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s commitment to improve and raise NHS capacity. For decades bed occupancy rates in the NHS have been kept too high in the name of efficiency but at the expense of resilience. When it comes to reforming long-term care we need a clear set of principles to be followed: we need to encourage and make it worthwhile for people to save for a rainy day; we need to support families to look after their loved ones; and we must allow enough money to pass down the generations to make it worthwhile to save in the first place. Can my right hon. Friend reassure us that his proposed reforms will meet these tests?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, and I thank my right hon. Friend for his support; he knows a great deal about this subject from many points of view. It is certainly right to bring in the measures that will help to create a private sector market for support in the way I have described, but also more fundamentally from our point of view—my right hon. Friend’s and my point of view—these are measures that support thrift, that support people who save, and that support people who do the right thing: who pay off their mortgage and work hard all their lives to build up something for their families and descendants. So I think these measures are profoundly in the interests of the people of this country.

[Stephen Flynn (Aberdeen South) (SNP)]

Let us be clear: Scottish taxpayers are being asked to bail out England’s failing social care system from a mess created by the UK Government. I ask the Prime Minister, in all good sincerity: does he believe that his new poll tax will help or hinder the cause of Scottish independence?

[The Prime Minister]

Good luck with that one. That is all I can say to the hon. Gentleman. What the people of Scotland and the whole of the UK are getting is £2.2 billion more across the whole of the devolved Administrations and a £300 million Union dividend. If they do not want to spend it on health and social care, or if they do not want to spend it at all—if he is handing the money back—then let us hear it from the Scottish nationalist party. Do they want it or do they not?

[Mr Marcus Fysh (Yeovil) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend work with me to examine ways that I can see of getting the finance, technology and political sectors together to do this in a way that can be less of a burden on the taxpayer?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes. I thank my hon. Friend. I have been reading some of his brilliant contributions on WhatsApp groups about this issue, and I share his idealism about the ways in which the private sector—the financial services industry—can take advantage of what we are doing to help ordinary people up and down the country to protect themselves in exactly the way that he describes. I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care would very much welcome his help as we work towards the White Paper.

[Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)]

I thank the Prime Minister for at least providing clarity that any reference to a “Union dividend” simply refers to devolved nations getting back the taxes that they pay and having the balance filled up with UK borrowing. In his belated attempts to tackle England’s social care crisis, with hedge fund owners to the left of him and millionaire property owners to the right, can the Prime Minister explain what it was that persuaded him to embed the advantages of inherited wealth and privilege, and instead shift the burden for paying for this policy on to the lowest earning and the youngest in society—those with the least assets?

[The Prime Minister]

I do not think there is anything much inherited on the left, the right or the middle of this particular trio. Again, I find it extraordinary that the Scottish nationalist party would rather not have the Union dividend that this programme produces. The people of Scotland need to look at what is now being offered in terms of raising the thresholds for protection and helping people across the UK, and I hope that we can all move forward together.

[Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)]

I commend my right hon. Friend for keeping a promise that he made on the first day of his premiership and for his frankness about the difficulties of funding the challenges. There will be millions of hard-working families today looking at his proposals for the cap and floor and welcoming them. Can he confirm that the cap will cover all types of care—residential and domiciliary—and that, given that there is likely to be a need for more care workers, there will be up to £500 million as a training fund within the levy?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend, who knows a great deal about this issue and the pressures that the sector faces. I can tell him that, yes, of course it covers both residential and domiciliary, and yes, there is a £500 million fund to help the caring profession, and we will provide 700,000 training places as a direct result of what we are doing today.

Business of the House

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Commons Chamber

14:13

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg)]

Following the statement just made by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on a sustainable plan for the NHS and social care, I should like to make a short business statement regarding business for tomorrow and the rest of the week. The business will now be:

Wednesday 8 September—Consideration of a Ways and Means resolution on health and social care levy.

Thursday 9 September—Motion relating to the second report of Session 2021-22 from the Committee on Standards, followed by remaining stages of the Rating (Coronavirus) and Directors Disqualification (Dissolved Companies) Bill, followed by a general debate on the legacy of Jo Cox. The subject for this debate was determined by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 10 September—Private Members’ Bills.

As usual, I will make a business statement on Thursday.

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

I thank the Leader of the House for advance sight of the statement.

This morning, the Cabinet was bounced into the Prime Minister’s so-called social care plan, and now the Leader of the House is trying to bounce Parliament into accepting it in a vote tomorrow. This is no way to run a Government. It is no way to run a country. This Tory tax rise will not come in till next spring, so why the rush? Does he know that he will never get it past his Back Benchers and through Parliament otherwise? Is he making sure that his own MPs have as little time as possible to consult their constituents or hear from stakeholders and experts? He would not be the first Minister in his Government to forget that emails will be coming into his colleagues’ inboxes right now.

The Leader of the House recently reminded the Prime Minister of the fate of one-term President George H. W. Bush and his words on taxes, which were not heeded. Will the Leader of the House be voting against his Government tomorrow, or was that another example of more empty rhetoric?

The Government are in crisis-management mode, lurching from one disaster to the next. They are trying to cover up the fact that they do not actually have a plan; they only have a tax rise. The haste on this vote is to cover up a litany of broken promises and failures. There is nothing for carers, there is nothing to help people to stay living in their own homes, and there is nothing to help the council funding shortfall that successive Tory Governments have caused.

The Prime Minister stood on the steps of Downing Street two years, one month and 14 days ago vowing to

“fix the crisis in social care once and for all…with a clear plan”

that was “prepared”, but here we aren’t—this is not a clear plan, and it does not seem very prepared. This was just an attempt to fix an NHS funding gap that this Government, and successive Tory Governments before them, caused. Now that we have been waiting for more than two years, why the sudden haste? Today we see why: they just want to rush it through without proper consultation.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

That was a fine example of sound and fury which signifieth nothing. It is entirely routine for matters to be brought before the House in this way. Whenever a Budget comes forward, the Budget resolutions may be voted on that very evening. It has always been the case that matters relating to taxation are dealt with swiftly, because it is important to ensure that people are not able to take forestalling measures and so forth which become possible if taxation is not dealt with properly.

Tomorrow is in fact about dealing with the Standing Orders of this House, which require a Ways and Means resolution before legislation may be brought forward. The legislation will be brought forward in due course, and I will announce it in a business statement. All of this is completely routine and standard. I am afraid that the more the Labour party says that there is no plan, when a plan has been published, detailed by the Prime Minister and announced to the world, the more it shows the vacuity of the opposition—an Opposition who learn nothing and remember nothing.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

I congratulate the Government on the Prime Minister’s giving another statement to the House. That is two in two days, I think. He has been one of the most active Prime Ministers in Parliament.

On the business statement, can the Leader of the House give us an assurance on the amount of time for tomorrow’s debate? I welcome the early debate, but I want to ensure that there is enough time for Members to get in. Has he any view on the length of the debate?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The House may be surprised that, in the absence of call lists, it is much harder to plant questions. However, my hon. Friend’s is extraordinarily useful, because I am pleased to tell the House that the whole of tomorrow will be available for the Ways and Means resolution, subject, of course, to urgent questions at the discretion of Mr Speaker, and statements that may prove necessary.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

I thank the Leader of the House for his short statement.

We are getting this “everything’s normal and as it should be” tone from the Leader of the House, even though he knows that nothing is normal about what he is doing tomorrow. I am sure that he is thrilled that the very thing he profoundly opposes will be debated and voted on tomorrow. I remember reading over the weekend:

“Read my lips: no new taxes.”

He is right; people did remember those words, and they will remember them again. Perhaps we will see those defiant lips move in accordance with a matter of principle for him and see him vote against these measures when they come before the House.

Following on from the question asked by the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), I am wondering whether one day is enough for all this. We need to hear from countless Tory Members apologising to their constituents for breaking their manifesto pledge not to raise tax, VAT or national insurance. We particularly want to hear from all the red wall Tories, who are now going to have to explain to all their new voters that they will have to swallow this regressive move and how it will impact on them. We will want to hear from Scotland, too, as we will be invited to pay twice for the Government’s social care mess for services that we have already legislated on. All I can say to the Leader of the House is that these lips were made for talking.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

One had noticed that the hon. Gentleman’s lips were made for talking. It is done a great deal and usually to the great entertainment of the House. I am delighted, flattered, thrilled by so many people reading my comments in the Sunday Express. I do a weekly wisdom for them. As my wife points out to me, being wise once a week is probably as much as can be expected of me. None the less, I provide these comments for the Sunday Express and I hope people will carry on reading that estimable newspaper and getting my wisdom on a weekly basis.

The time allowed tomorrow is sufficient and there will, of course, be legislation brought forward, as I said. Tomorrow—I am sure the hon. Gentleman is right—many Conservative MPs will want to wax lyrical on the advantages to the United Kingdom of this proposal, which will see a £300 million Union dividend and help bail out the failings of the Scottish national health system, so badly run by the nationalist Government in Edinburgh. Extra money will be going to Scotland and Scotland will receive more money than Scottish people pay in taxation—or, to be more accurate, than Scottish residents pay in taxation—so it is of benefit to Scotland. I might remind the hon. Gentleman about gift horses not being looked in the mouth.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

I have received a brace of emails asking me to be here on Thursday to vote against covid passports. Is the Leader of the House sure there is something he has not told us?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am not entirely sure who my right hon. Friend receives his emails from. It may be from certain conspiracy theorists who think all sorts of things are going to be discussed in this House. I remind him of what I said about Thursday: there will be a motion relating to the second report of the Session 2021-22 from the Committee on Standards, followed by the remaining stages of the Rating (Coronavirus) and Directors Disqualification (Dissolved Companies) Bill, and then a very important general debate on the legacy of Jo Cox. If my right hon. Friend wishes to be here earlier in the morning, he can, of course, hear my business statement, which will update him on any further business.

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

Will the Ways and Means resolution be amendable? In particular, would it be possible to amend the Ways and Means resolution to ensure that the cap on care costs comes into effect at the same time as the higher taxes, instead of 18 months later?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Ways and Means resolutions are amendable. My hon. Friend will have to have a discussion with the Table Office on what type of amendments it will accept, but, yes, the broad principle is that they are amendable.

Pensions Update

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Commons Chamber

14:22

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Dr Thérèse Coffey)]

With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will make a statement on the annual uprating of state pensions and survivors’ benefits in industrial death benefit.

Each year, as the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, I am required to undertake a review of certain benefit and pension rates in relation to the general level of earnings. Just as last year, this year I anticipate an unusual change in earnings due to the effects of the covid pandemic. The unprecedented but necessary covid restrictions we introduced last year protected lives, especially the most vulnerable, many of whom are pensioners, and protected the NHS, but those restrictions caused disruption to the economy, including preventing many people from working, wages falling and, sadly, many people being made redundant.

As we sought to protect lives, so we sought to protect livelihoods. To mitigate the worst impacts, we introduced a £407 billion package of support, including the furlough and self-employment schemes, to support incomes. Nevertheless, last year we saw earnings fall by one percentage point. In response, we legislated to set aside the earnings link, allowing me to award an uprating of 2.5%, as that was higher than inflation. If we had not done that, state pension would have been frozen.

Thanks to our vaccination programme, which started with the eldest and most vulnerable in our society, we have seen that as the economy and businesses have reopened and millions have moved off furlough and returned to work, the labour market has shown strong signs of recovery and earnings have risen at an unprecedented rate. We face a distorted reflection of earnings growth. The latest Office for National Statistics figures from August show an increase in average weekly earnings of 8.8%, compared to the same time last year. Confirmed figures will be published next month, but we expect growth of 8% or more for May to July 2021. The relevant period earnings are taken into account as part of my uprating review.

This year, as restrictions have lifted and we experienced an irregular statistical spike in earnings over the uprating review period, I am clear that another one year adjustment is needed. So tomorrow, I will introduce the social security (uprating of benefits) Bill. For 2022-23 only, it will ensure that basic and new state pensions increase by 2.5% or in line with inflation, which is expected to be the higher figure this year. As happened last year, it will again set aside the earnings element for 2022-23, before being restored for the remainder of this Parliament. That will ensure pensioners’ spending power is preserved and protected from higher costs of living, but also ensure that as we are having to make difficult decisions elsewhere across public spending, including freezing public sector pay, pensioners are not unfairly benefiting from a statistical anomaly. At a time when we have made tough decisions to restore the public finances which have impacted working people, such as freezing income tax personal thresholds at current levels, that would not be fair. Setting aside the earnings element is temporary and only for one year. This means we can and will apply the triple lock as usual from next year for the remainder of this Parliament, in line with our manifesto commitment.

While the earnings growth is a welcome sign of the country’s overall economic recovery given the unique and exceptional events of the past 18 months, this year’s measure is being skewed and distorted, reflecting a technical and temporary period of reverting or rebounding earnings—the differing cohorts of people who were retained or made redundant. As a result, the earnings measure is a statistical anomaly and is not a real-life basis for considering this year’s uprating of state pensions. As other commentators have said, for example the Institute for Government:

“The figure for earnings growth is distorted...the increase is artificially high because so many workers were furloughed last year”.

The Social Market Foundation also endorses my proposal, stating:

“The triple lock should be replaced with a double lock...pensions would still rise, but less quickly, reducing the fiscal burden on the working-age population”.

In addition to those receiving basic and new state pensions, this adjustment will apply to those receiving standard minimum guarantee in pension credit, and widows’ and widowers’ benefits in industrial death benefit. The Bill will not extend to other benefits that are linked to prices, which I will review under the existing legislation, as I did last year.

The Government are committed to ensuring that older people can enjoy their retirement with security, dignity and respect, and that those who have worked hard and put in for decades can be confident that the state will be there to support them when they need it. Since 2010, the full yearly basic state pension has increased by over £2,050 in cash terms. There are also 200,000 fewer pensioners in absolute poverty, both before and after housing costs, than in 2009-10.

I am proud of our record on support for pensioners and of the action we took last year to ensure that pensioners’ incomes continue to increase despite falling earnings among working-age taxpayers. Our recovery is based on the principles of fairness and sustainability as we level up opportunities across the country, invest in jobs, skills and public services while repairing the public finances. This is the fair and reasonable course of action, given the temporary statistical anomalies in earnings we have seen this year as a result of unprecedented interventions in the economy and the labour market. I commend this statement to the House.

14:28

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of her statement and for our telephone conversation this morning after the Cabinet meeting informing me that it would occur.

I believe Governments should keep their manifesto promises. It may be out of fashion—it may even seem old-fashioned—but that is what I believe and that is what is right. Before I address this announcement, I want to make some observations about the triple lock policy itself. The UK state pension is low by international comparison. It compares better when pension credit and the NHS are folded in, and a lot better when occupational pensions are considered, but the core state pension itself is still very important for millions of pensioners. The last Labour Government drastically reduced the link between old age and living in poverty, but there can be no room for complacency. The triple lock and the issue of indexation of the state pension is fundamentally about what the value of the state pension will be in future for working people today when they retire. I reject the presentation of this issue as a source of intergenerational tension or unfairness, because we all have an interest in ensuring that there is a decent state pension in future.

We should never present increased longevity as a problem. The fact that people are living longer is a good thing and it has come about because we have an NHS, because the school leaving age is no longer 14, and because pioneering Ministers of the past, such as Barbara Castle, were prepared to fight for a decent pension and retirement system. There is no doubt that the triple lock has made a significant contribution to restoring the value of the state pension following the Thatcher Government’s decision to break the link with earnings in 1980.

Turning to the Secretary of State’s proposals, the Government’s case, which is that the furlough data and the pandemic have produced a statistical aberration, has to be considered by us alongside the other decision made today, which also breaks the promises in the Conservative manifesto. Of course, we know that the promise on international aid was also broken before the recess. It is more a triple let-down than a triple lock. This decision is not a one-off but a significant repudiation of the basis on which the Government were elected and it would be naive to say otherwise.

I say to the Secretary of State that we simply cannot take the Government on their word alone. Will they show us their analysis that has led to this decision? Will they explain why they could not assess the underlying levels of wage growth with the impact of furlough discounted? Will they publish the legal advice cited as the basis for this decision? Only then could any Opposition or any MP make a decision on what is being proposed.

Finally, while the Prime Minister is well known for making and breaking promises at will, and for frequently being economical with the facts, that does come at a cost. That cost is a lack of trust, so I hope the Secretary of State appreciates that pensioners and workers, as well as the Opposition, need fuller reassurance before any decision can be made on prospective legislation.

[Dr Coffey]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for having read the statement and for recognising some of the challenges that we face. I accept that it is his role and that of the Opposition to suggest that the Government are not taking the right course of action. However, this is where I disagree with him. He referred to the earnings link that was dropped in, I think, the late ’70s or early ’80s. It was not reinstated by the Labour party until the late noughties and was not commenced until the coalition Government were in place. That is why we have followed the triple lock policy for the last decade, recognising that we wanted to restore the earnings link and to see an increase in pensions overall. We have made good progress on that, as I set out, with the £2,050 cash-terms increase in just over a decade.

We have used the earnings link since the policy came into effect a decade ago, and we have done this on the same basis. As for trying to mess about with different bits of earnings, the Office for National Statistics produced some data but we did not find it necessarily reliable, in terms of what could be considered as a substantiated basis to make the change. I have made the recommendation to the Government—that has been endorsed today and I hope that the House will endorse it in the forthcoming legislation—to set aside the earnings link, as we did last year, recognising the challenges of covid and the implications that that would have had last year directly on pensioners. There is the same fairness of approach here.

I do not intend, as is usual, to publish legal advice. That legal advice is quite straightforward. I would summarise it as “The best way to introduce this temporary set-aside is through legislation, just as we did last year.” I intend to take this forward on that basis.

As for making comparisons with other countries, I am conscious that we have a substantial amount of occupational pension here. We also have a whole fringe of pensioner benefits alongside it that are not necessarily available in many other countries. Just this year alone, which is about to come to an end, while the pension cost is about £105 billion, we are spending about £129 billion directly on pensioners. We have genuinely shown a measured approach to supporting pensioners during our time in office. We think this is a sensible thing that will be broadly welcomed by the public, recognising the balancing act that we continue to face.

[Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

Government Members should be incredibly proud of the state pension triple lock. It has transformed the state pension landscape for retired people—no more derisory 75p pension increases, as we saw when Labour was in government—and it has become a key part of the defences that we have built around pensioners to protect them from poverty. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the triple lock that we put in place was never designed for a set of fiscal events of the kind that we have been through over the last 18 months? The difficult decision that she has come to is the right one. When I talk to pensioners in my constituency and elsewhere about the difficult challenges that we face, they understand that. We just need to explain it clearly and with compassion.

[Dr Coffey]

My right hon. Friend is right that the triple lock policy was never anticipated for these extraordinary times. He will know that, as a former Secretary of State. The Lib Dem Pensions Minister, who served a five-year term, has also publicly said again today, as well as recently, that it was simply not designed for this sort of situation. I believe that the pensioners in our country are wise people. They will recognise that a statistical anomaly is not the basis for the uplift this year. Some people will of course be keen to encourage more people to take up pension credit. We estimate that only three in four of the people who could get the benefit are taking it up, in terms of the income guarantee, and we will continue to encourage people to do so. Nevertheless, this is a sensible approach and I thank my right hon. Friend for his support.

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

I, too, thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of her statement. Today’s bonanza of manifesto commitments being broken is like nothing we have ever seen before. I do not think I have seen this many U-turns in one day since I sat my driving test back in 2007. Not only have the Tories hiked national insurance, but now they are waging war on pensioners’ incomes by watering down the triple lock.

Despite all of today’s spin and smoke and mirrors, let us be clear what the Secretary of State’s announcement means for pensioners all across these islands. It is a clear violation of the contract offered to voters by a Tory Prime Minister who says one thing yet does another after he gets a whopping majority in Parliament. The state pension is by far the largest source of income for UK pensioners and the triple lock has maintained this throughout the pandemic, but we know that pensioner poverty is on the rise and the UK’s state pension is already the lowest in Europe. Today’s announcement demonstrates that there is no prospect of closing that gap with a Westminster Tory Government that Scotland did not vote for and has not voted for since the 1950s.

Pensioners in independent countries comparable to Scotland’s size or smaller receive a much higher proportion of the average working wage than UK pensioners. Today’s statement provides yet more clear blue water between an uncaring, austerity-obsessed Government in London and the prospect of a fully empowered independent Scottish Parliament that will ensure dignity and fairness in retirement. Given that Scottish pensioners clearly cannot trust the British Government, will the British Government now devolve powers relating to the state pension to Scotland’s Parliament, or is it easier for Scotland to just vote for independence and end pensioner poverty from London once and for all?

[Dr Coffey]

The hon. Gentleman may want to speak to his Cabinet Secretary because, at the moment, the Scottish Government are not using the powers that have already been devolved. I am conscious that they intend to but it is taking quite a lot longer. One of the reasons given by them, reasonably, is the impact of covid. However, he may wish to take this up with his colleagues in Holyrood.

I am conscious of the concerns about pensioner poverty. As I mentioned, we have seen a reduction, with about 200,000 fewer pensioners in absolute poverty before and after housing costs than over a decade ago. We want to maintain that. It might be informative to the House if I mention that material deprivation, one of the other measures of poverty, is at an all-time low, with 6% of pensioners considered materially deprived. The overall trend of pensioners living in poverty has seen a dramatic fall in recent decades. That started off with the Conservative Government and then continued with the Labour Government. We have seen that halve since 1990. However, I assure the hon. Gentleman that this measure is for one year only. That will be on the face of the Bill, and I am confident that that will not be amended.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State confirm that this is a one-year change and that she is not taking the various suggestions to scrap the triple lock completely, so it will be restored from next year? Secondly, does she believe that when we have put this rise through, the pension will realistically have roughly kept pace with the rise in earnings over the three-year period from before the start of the pandemic, or does she think that the rise will end up being a bit less than earnings on a real basis for the average worker around the country?

[Dr Coffey]

It would probably not be wise for me to go down that route, because we are still trying to estimate the likely uplifts in the different metrics. We will not actually use the figures until later in the year, but because of how the machinery of benefit upratings works, we need to be in a position to trigger it in November. Given my hon. Friend’s position on the Work and Pensions Committee, he may wish to ask that question a little later once we have some more detailed analysis in that regard, if that is okay.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the Chair of the Select Committee.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

Is it still the Secretary of State’s view that it is important that the level of the basic state pension keeps track with earnings over time, as the coalition pension reforms assumed? If so, will it not require some further adjustment after these two exceptional years? Given that pensioner poverty was starting to increase before the pandemic, after a long period in which, as she said, that did not happen, what will her Department do to increase the currently very low take-up of pension credit?

[Dr Coffey]

In response to the first part of the right hon. Gentleman’s question, the legislation is there regarding the earnings link and we are maintaining that. We will be doing further analysis to understand what proportion of median earnings the pension will be, but I have no plans to change aspects of it. We think it is a sensible approach that we have taken to redress the balance, which had moved away.

Forgive me, but I have forgotten the second part of the right hon. Gentleman’s question. [Hon. Members: “Pension credit.”] Okay. The thing about pension credit is that it is split in two: the income guarantee and the savings credit. As I said to the House, our estimate is that 75% of people we think could be eligible take up the income side of pension credit, but the savings side has a much lower take-up. That is because sometimes when people do the calculation, it may be just 1p or 2p a week and they may not think it worth while to do the whole application. However, even with the savings credit side of pension credit come things like the free TV licence and access to other benefits, so we encourage people to take it up. With the income side, we estimate that three in four eligible pensioners are taking it up.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State promise to publish, at the point when she makes her final determination of the proposed increase, a three-year smoothed average or some other suitable computation so that we can see that the spirit of the promise has been kept, even if the letter could not be because of the strange gyrations of the earnings figure? I think that people would be reassured if they felt that over the longer period we had met that requirement.

[Dr Coffey]

I cannot give that commitment to my right hon. Friend today, because I do not know exactly what it involves, so I will take his request away and consider it. I want to emphasise that overall we have seen a variety of increases over the past decade owing to the triple lock policy. I am confident, as I have flagged already, that we have seen a substantial increase in pensioner income as a result of that policy thus far.

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

First, may I congratulate the Government on quite an afternoon? One afternoon, two statements, two broken promises—even for this Government, that is quite an achievement.

Despite all the problems that we have heard about, the triple lock was designed to protect pensioners, 2 million of whom live in poverty in this country, from the days when all they could expect was a 75p increase. Will the Secretary of State clarify two things? First, she said in her statement that the earnings link was set aside last year because of earnings falling by one percentage point. My understanding of the triple lock was that it would always mean the higher of 2.5% inflation or earnings, so would the percentage not have been 2.5% anyway? Secondly, would she be prepared to put it in writing, in legislation, that this is only for one year, so that pensioners do not feel that they have been asked to take the word of a Government whose word is not worth the paper it is written on?

[Dr Coffey]

The one year will be set out in the Bill, which I expect to be published tomorrow. As I have said, Steve Webb—the former Lib Dem pensions Minister, who probably knows more about pensions than any other member of the Liberal Democrat party—has been very public about the fact that this is a pragmatic approach, in effect, and it is not what this was designed for. I also point out that, when I made a similar statement last year, the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain), who usually speaks on DWP matters for the Liberal Democrats, asked about what would happen next year and whether we should anticipate that something like this approach might be needed again. That was a fair question, but it was important that we took things one year at a time because we did not know the future impact.

As I have already articulated to the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine), this will be for one year only. The setting aside of the earnings link is because earnings are built into the Pensions Act. If we had not changed the law last year, we would not have been allowed by law to have increased the state pension at all; it would have been frozen in cash terms. Just as last year we set aside the earnings link to allow the uprating and ensure that state pensions were not frozen, this year we are setting it aside to correct for the fact that we have a statistical anomaly.

[Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)]

It is quite clear that this is one of a number of very difficult decisions that we are having to make, and I think most reasonable people understand the reason: the pandemic and its impact on our economy. We do not do this lightly—we do it with a heavy heart—but it is the responsible thing to do. I have actually had emails from constituents who are pensioners, saying that they should not get an 8% increase this year, because they understand that these are very unique circumstances.

I am grateful that the Secretary of State has confirmed that this will be a one-year change. Will she also lay out what the Government have in place to support the lowest-paid and poorest pensioners at this time?

[Dr Coffey]

Before I answer my hon. Friend’s question, I need to correct part of my last answer: the earnings link is not in the Pensions Act, but in the Social Security Administration Act 1992, so apologies for that.

My hon. Friend is right. I am conscious that we want to help our pensioners at this difficult time. I have already referred to some of the benefits that may be available for people to take up where there is a pension already. We have done a significant campaign in the past year to improve take-up of pension credit and we will continue to signpost people accordingly to take advantage of the benefits that are available to some of our poorest pensioners.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

There is no glossing over this announcement. The suspension of the triple lock will come as a blow to many pensioners in Denton and Reddish—it is a broken promise from this Government.

I know that the prime reason for this statement was the uprating announcement, but it was badged as a pensions update. May I express my dismay that the Secretary of State has not taken the opportunity to respond to the ombudsman’s finding of maladministration in respect of the 1950s-born women’s pensions issue? When will she comment on that?

[Dr Coffey]

The hon. Gentleman may not be aware of how the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman works in this inquiry specifically. The inquiry is happening in a staged process; we are not expected to give a response, because the process is not yet over. Unusually, the ombudsman has chosen to publish part of the judgment thus far, and there are further stages to come. The hon. Gentleman might want to read carefully the statement that was made, because he should be aware that the period of maladministration is linked to the years between 2005 and 2007, when the Labour Government were in power.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

We have become used to the Government’s breaking of manifesto pledges, for instance on overseas aid and a border in the Irish sea, but today we have had two in one day, which is pretty remarkable. First, we heard the Prime Minister announce that he would break his pledge not to increase national insurance—which was not just in the manifesto, but something he had specifically singled out and pledged not to do—and now we have heard about the breaking of the triple lock, which was put in place by the last Labour Government and which played a significant part in reducing pensioner poverty.

We have heard from the Secretary of State that the Department is doing some work to advertise pension credit and encourage uptake, but we did not really hear from her any specifics, or any urgency, about the need to deal with the under-claiming of pension credit. So will she give us some more details about what she is intending to do?

[Dr Coffey]

As I have already pointed out, in terms of income guarantee, three in four of the people we have estimated may be eligible are taking up the approach. Ultimately, it is for people to apply for this extra benefit.

Relative to earnings, the state pension is now the highest that it has been in 33 years, so the policy that we have undertaken has been well and truly honoured. I believe that, because this constitutes a statistical anomaly, it is not an appropriate way in which to be using our public finances. I am very conscious that pensioners will expect us to be taking a sensible approach to sustaining the public finances, and a statistical anomaly is not one of the approaches that I believe they would accept.

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

May I press the Secretary of State on the point raised by the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) about the women born in the 1950s, who have paid national insurance contributions for at least 40 years? Many are having to continue working through ill health or else face financial hardship or claim benefits, and now they face higher national insurance contributions.

Regardless of which party is responsible for the maladministration that occurred, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman has found that there was maladministration. Perhaps more important, at the time of the last general election, many Tory MPs made promises to the WASPI women which have yet to be fulfilled. What I would like to hear from the Secretary of State today is whether she can give them any hope for the future—any hope that she will revisit the issue of compensation.

[Dr Coffey]

I appreciate that this is a statement about the uprating, but let me just remind the hon. and learned Lady of the situation relating to the change in state pension age. It was voted through by Parliament in 1995, and there have been changes in the last decade. The Supreme Court made a ruling. We have been through the cases, and the right of Parliament to set the pension age has been upheld, so we will not be reviewing anything to do with the state pension age in response to the WASPI campaign.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

Given that the Secretary of State and every other Tory MP stood on a manifesto commitment not to increase national insurance contributions and hit the lowest paid—whom people gladly applauded every Thursday some months ago—and also affirmed the retention of the triple lock, how on earth can the people of Weaver Vale and people across Britain trust a word that the Secretary of State or any Members on those Government Benches utter in this place?

[Dr Coffey]

I think that the people of this country are very wise. I think that they will have seen the £407 billion package provided by this Government to support taxpayers. We are doing our best to protect lives and livelihoods, and I am absolutely convinced that our pensioners will not want to statistical anomaly to be the basis of a pension uplift when they recognise the challenges that this country has faced and what it has been through. I strongly believe that we are doing the right thing, and I hope that it will gain the support of the House when we present the legislation.

Bill Presented

Misuse of Fireworks bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Sarah Owen, supported by Rachel Hopkins, presented a Bill to make provision about offences relating to the misuse of fireworks and penalties for such offences; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 21 January 2022, and to be printed (Bill 156).

Transport (Disabled Passenger Charter)

1st reading
Tuesday 7th September 2021 Commons Chamber

Motion for leave to bring in a Bill (Standing Order No. 23)

14:54

[Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to establish a passenger charter for disabled land transport passengers setting out their rights, the legal obligations of transport operators, complaints procedures, passenger assistance schemes and accessibility requirements; and for connected purposes.

This week, our Paralympic heroes return from Tokyo, basking in glory and adorned with medals after a stunning fortnight of gruelling competition and thrilling battles, yet amid all the cheers that they arrive home to, many will also be greeted by the same barriers that disabled people face day in and day out. More than one in five of our constituents live with a disability—more than 14 million in total. Disabled people deserve every opportunity to live their lives to the full, but they face particular challenges simply getting around, for the purpose of work, socialising or everyday necessities.

Our public transport system is poorly integrated and can be a frustration for many of us, but far more so for disabled passengers who may take longer at interchanges, and may need help or support in embarking or disembarking or to recognise destinations. For disabled passengers, predictability is at a premium and up-to-date information is essential, as they may need to plan well in advance for even a relatively simple journey.

To provide a snapshot, here is the experience of Charles, as related to Scope, the disability equality charity. He said:

“Like many disabled people, I rely on public transport. Travelling can be a frustrating part of my day, especially as someone who has a limited amount of vision remaining. I’m the proud owner of a guide dog called Carlo. He's very excitable and eager to be outside for walks and adventures. Carlo fundamentally gives me my freedom and ability to visit new places, but without public transport, we’d both be stuck. I was brought up using public transport and try not to depend on anyone to drive me places, so I’m quite confident and independent. My biggest challenge with public transport is the amount of time involved with planning. A trip can take me double, or even triple the time to travel. Not to mention, having to leave almost an hour early in case of the usual delays or cancellation of services.”

Beyond the necessities of using public transport, for many disabled people, it is a point of pride to be able to do so, a demonstration and unlocking of their ability to lead independent lives. We should be determined to make our transport as accessible as possible. However, according to a 2019 survey of disabled people for Scope, 30% said that difficulties with public transport had reduced their independence, and as many as four in five said that they felt stressed or anxious when planning or carrying out such a journey. It is worth emphasising that the survey was pre-covid, so did not even take into account the additional fears that disabled people will have faced in travelling on public transport over the past couple of years—not least those unable to wear masks, who have often been unreasonably challenged about this.

There has been much legislation and regulation to improve disabled people’s rights over the past quarter-century, but many of those well-intended rules have added up to a patchwork of rights across different modes of transport, both for accessing travel and for raising complaints when disabled people have been let down. If complaints are not made, we cannot know whether existing regulations are being properly followed or enforced. The Office of Rail and Road’s annual rail consumer report 2019 stated that an average of a quarter of disabled passengers had not received all the assistance they had booked, which had left them frighteningly stranded, or humiliatingly relying on asking for assistance from fellow passengers. However, we deserve to know the accurate numbers to improve this unacceptable situation.

Let me give another example of testimony. Here is Ami’s story, again courtesy of Scope. She said:

“There have been countless times, when my mum has booked assistance and yet they don’t turn up until the last minute, causing me a great deal of anxiety. On two occasions, other passengers have had to lift me in my wheelchair on and off the train because assistance never arrived. This is dangerous, not only for me, but for the passengers that are lifting me too. If it were not for their kindness, then we wouldn’t have gotten home, or been able to attend important appointments. Quieter stations understandably have less staff, but they’re often more efficient when assistance is needed. It’s the bigger and busier stations that need to look into why some disabled people are not receiving a positive experience when assistance is required.”

Problems or distressing circumstances can arise across all sorts of types of transport, including fear of being overcharged for a taxi journey, not knowing whether a parent with a pushchair will make space for a wheelchair on the bus, or pre-booked assistance not turning up to help a disembarkation from a train. In each case it is more difficult than it needs to be for a disabled traveller to look up their rights or indeed to lodge a complaint. According to Scope’s survey, one in six disabled people said they had not complained about a problem because they did not know if they had the right to do so. Disabled people deserve better.

This is why my Bill would bring together the pre-existing rules into a passenger charter for disabled people. This would be a simple, accessible document covering all modes of land transport and setting out exactly what disabled passengers can expect, no matter where or how they are travelling. Taking this step would bolster the confidence of disabled passengers in their rights, and signpost how to get recompense if they deserve it. Adding such transparency and accountability should also improve the services required.

A single document would also expose where there are currently irregularities, gaps in provision or other anomalies that can be addressed. This may involve differences between providers or concepts that are not universally recognised, such as quiet areas for people with autism. Codifying a charter for disabled passengers would help operators as well as travellers. I hope that the Government and Members across the House will agree that this is a simple, inexpensive step that we can take to improve the quality of life of disabled people across the country.

Before I finish, I want to thank Scope for its research and tireless campaigning for these measures, and my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood), whose excellent work on preparing and championing this Bill was halted only by her well-deserved promotion. I am glad to see her here today.

Question put and agreed to.

Ordered,

That Charlotte Nichols, Lilian Greenwood, Huw Merriman, Alan Brown, Jim Shannon, Jamie Stone, Florence Eshalomi, Bell Ribeiro-Addy, Paula Barker, Kim Johnson, Ian Byrne and Navendu Mishra present the Bill.

Charlotte Nichols accordingly presented the Bill.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 3 December, and to be printed (Bill 157).

Point of Order

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Commons Chamber

15:01

[Abena Oppong-Asare (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I raise this point of order in response to my question yesterday on the fact that I have received no substantial response to any cases relating to Afghanistan. The Prime Minister said yesterday that

“by close of play today every single one of the emails from colleagues around this House will be answered”.—[Official Report, 6 September 2021; Vol. 700, c. 26.]

By this morning, I had still received no response to any of my cases, and I have received a further 17 cases to which I have received no substantial response. Can you please advise me on how the Prime Minister can be encouraged to come back to the House and correct the record, and on how I can ensure that I receive responses to these urgent cases without further delay?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I thank the hon. Lady for that point of order. I understand her concern about this. I know that undertakings were made yesterday, and the House will want to see them fulfilled, so I very much hope that those on the Treasury Bench will have heard her point of order and will relay it back to the Prime Minister and his office, to ensure that those undertakings are fulfilled.

Elections Bill

2nd reading
Tuesday 7th September 2021 Commons Chamber

Second Reading

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I must inform the House that the reasoned amendment in the name of the Leader of the Opposition has been selected. I also want to add that I will only call people who have put in to speak and who are here at the beginning of the debate. They will be expected to be here for the wind-ups as well.

15:05

[The Minister for the Constitution and Devolution (Chloe Smith)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

I look forward to a thorough and thoughtful debate across the House. Indeed, our work in Parliament is a key pillar of our democracy, a democracy that is underpinned by free and fair elections. Like many public services across the UK, our electoral services have not been untouched by the pandemic. Earlier this year, we faced unprecedented challenges in delivering the most complex combination of polls in memory during a pandemic. Many suggested we should postpone the elections for a second time, but I was not willing to deprive people of the chance to have their say without having done everything in our power to try. That was why the Government provided an additional £32 million of funding, sourced over 5,000 volunteers to support electoral teams and took creative steps to ensure that people could cast their vote. I am proud of the ingenuity and determination displayed by so many to ensure that our citizens were able to exercise their democratic rights. That is no less than I would expect, given the passion and capability of what is often a small number of election staff in our local authorities, to whom I pay tribute today. We cannot take them, or the system, for granted.

We are the stewards of a fantastic democratic heritage. We committed in our manifesto to secure the integrity of elections, restore constitutional balance and defend our democracy against increasingly sophisticated threats. This Bill keeps our elections secure, fair, transparent and up to date. Part 1 of the Bill is about getting the basics of our elections right by updating the security and integrity of the ballot. That is why it introduces new measures that will stamp out the potential for voter fraud from our elections. There are some who suggest that this is not a problem, but I would like to disagree.

Interlinked types of fraudulent criminality are a very real threat to the integrity of our elections. Clear evidence of this was seen at the 2014 election scandal in Tower Hamlets, where the mayoral contest was declared void due to corrupt and illegal practices. The judgment in the case and the witnesses who spoke at the trial tell a story of harm and fraud that struck at an entire community and fatally undermined democracy. Recalling crowds harassing voters, one witness reported:

“I got into conversation with an elderly lady who was frightened to go in and vote and said that she had decided not to vote as a result of the intimidation.”

Another witness described her experience of having her vote stolen by a campaigner for a candidate she did not support. She recalled:

“They came to me and took my signature and then took the blank ballot paper from me. I normally go to the polling station. I told them I was used to doing it myself and didn’t understand why it was different this year.”

Crucially, although it is much harder to identify and prosecute, we know that personation was also one of the corrupt and illegal practices that took place in Tower Hamlets. The Electoral Commission has noted that

“the majority of people in communities affected by electoral fraud are victims rather than offenders.”

This is unacceptable. Why should criminals get two votes, or even more, and their victims lose their voices?

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

Would the Minister accept that, while some of these measures might be necessary, we have only a 30% turnout in some of our elections and this could make turnout even lower due to the added bureaucracy and the added information that people will need to provide in order to cast their ballot?

[Chloe Smith]

I am pleased the hon. Lady has made that point so early in the debate. I join her, as I want everyone here to do, in welcoming turnout and in wanting to raise registration and participation in our elections.

I will more precisely address the points that the hon. Lady understandably makes because, no, I do not think these measures will damage turnout. The point is that the vulnerabilities in our system let people down. The 2016 report on electoral fraud by Sir Eric Pickles, now Lord Pickles, leading international election observers and the Electoral Commission all agree that those vulnerabilities are a security risk. As the noble Lord Pickles said,

“our well-respected democracy is at threat from unscrupulous people intent on subverting the will of the electorate”.

We must do our utmost to guard against that, and we must have measures in place to discourage and prevent it.

Part 1 of the Bill therefore introduces what many would consider to be an obvious requirement—the requirement to prove that the vote a person is casting that day is theirs and theirs alone.

[Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that voter ID is actually voter suppression, and that this Bill misses an opportunity for real engagement in not giving 16 and 17-year-olds the opportunity to vote? Does she agree that this is the perfect time to do that?

[Chloe Smith]

The short answer is no, no and no, and I am happy to explain why. I am sure we will get on to this in the debate, but the point about voter identification is that it is not voter suppression or voter disenfranchisement, which is a word we occasionally hear thrown around. In fact, I look forward to Labour Members explaining why their reasoned amendment suggests that people will be removed from the franchise for general elections. Where in the Bill is the clause that does that? They will not find it, of course, because it is not there. The Bill does not do that, and we should be careful with the words we choose to use, such as “voter suppression” and “disenfranchisement.”

We already have an election check, but the check is so outdated and unfit for purpose that many have forgotten it. People already identify themselves when they go to the polling station, but it is a Victorian test of saying their name and address. The world has moved on, and we need to move with it. Showing photo identification is a reasonable and proportionate way to confirm that a person is who they say they are. Many people would question why it is not already the case.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

A pensioner can bring their bus pass as identification, but the Bill disproportionately disadvantages young people who cannot bring their student card or university or college identification. Will those young people not be disproportionately affected, and should we not expand the range of identification that is recognised by the Bill, as a minimum?

[Chloe Smith]

I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman is getting into the detail of what is actually being proposed, which is excellent. He makes the important point that schedule 1 has a widespread and broad-based list of identification. In fact, 98% of the population hold those forms of ID.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

These proposals were trialled in 2019, and during that trial 2,000 people were turned away for not having the correct form of identification. Of those 2,000, 700 did not return to vote. Whether it is voter suppression is a question of semantics, but it is hardly encouragement, is it?

[Chloe Smith]

Under this Bill, as is clear in the impact assessment and the associated documents, there will be a widespread public communication campaign to ensure awareness so that people know what to bring with them to the polling station, which is only right. That is exactly what we would expect, because we want people to be able to take part in our elections.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

The Minister is making an excellent speech introducing the Bill. There is another side to this issue, as pointed out by the Electoral Commission’s research showing that two in three people would feel much more confident in the security of our voting system if there were voter ID. Surely that has to be taken into consideration by those who have been intervening.

[Chloe Smith]

My right hon. Friend makes my next point for me, and she is right. It is important that we think about what will increase confidence in our elections, and I would love the message to go out loud and clear from the Chamber today, and from the reporting and discourse on this Bill, that we all want participation and we want to talk up our election system rather than talking it down.

I understand there are genuine concerns about this change and our plans to implement it, which is why I have met many organisations that represent voters from different backgrounds to understand what challenges it may present. I will continue to listen and to benefit from their wisdom.

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

I was concerned to hear the Minister imply that concerns about voter suppression are somehow party political. Does she accept that the cross-party Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I am a member, found that the

“introduction of a voter ID requirement may have a discriminatory impact on certain groups with protected characteristics who are less likely to hold…photo ID, including older people and people with disabilities”?

Inclusion Scotland backs up that concern. Given that cross-party finding, what plans do the Government have to mitigate any discriminatory impacts on these groups?

[Chloe Smith]

It might not have been the intention of the hon. and learned Lady to assist me in making this case, but she does because she allows me to make the critical point that this scheme is underpinned by a free local voter card. I have already mentioned that 98% of people already hold the identification that will be asked for by the scheme. For those who do not, we are making sure there is the free alternative of a local voter card.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

When we cut through the noise, is it not true that the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe said that we cannot have definite security in our elections if we do not have photo ID? Is it also not the case that we are being asked to continue a practice that puts us outside international standards?

[Chloe Smith]

That is exactly the case. Indeed, countries around the world already operate this system with ease, and not only other countries. This policy is already successfully and easily operated inside our own United Kingdom, and we need to learn from the Northern Ireland experience.

[Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)]

The Minister alludes to Northern Ireland, which already has this in place. What analysis, if any, have the Government made of the situation in Northern Ireland? Can she tell me that the scheme has not had a negative impact on voter turnout in Northern Ireland? What analysis has there been, and by whom?

[Chloe Smith]

There is a considerable evidence base on what has happened in Northern Ireland, and the Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), would be only too happy to respond further to that point later in the debate. Both he and I are happy to say that there is not a clear direct link between turnout and this scheme, because turnout can be influenced by lots of different factors. The hon. Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan) will accept that, especially when he thinks about how much turnout he would like in a future referendum, for example.

We need to put in place a scheme that commands confidence, that aids people’s confidence in elections and that will not be discriminatory. In answer to the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), the work we have done through our pilots, modelling and analysis, through the Northern Ireland experience and through working with organisations shows us we can be sure that, with the free local voter card, there will be an opportunity for everybody who is eligible to vote to continue to do so. That is fundamental to the concerns that have been expressed.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

I am pleased that the Minister is taking fraud seriously and has come forward with sensible proposals. Is it not the case that, in a world of mass fraud, we are all getting used to having to provide ID and digital identification? Is it not the case that many employees, including Members of Parliament, need a photo pass even to go to work?

[Chloe Smith]

I will make two points on that. The first is that we show identification in everyday life, and reasonably and proportionately so. For example, we show it when we pick up a parcel or apply for a range of other services. Let me give a word of reassurance to my right hon. Friend and to my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), who is sitting behind him: what we have with this scheme is not a form of ID database, beyond, of course, that which is already there in the electoral registers. I offer that reassurance in response to an alternative argument that may come out in today’s debate compared with what we often hear from the left.

I am surprised that I need to use the words of a former Labour Government to say this, but I cannot do it plainer than this. When they introduced this policy in Northern Ireland in 2003, they said:

“If we believed that thousands of voters would not be able to vote because of this measure, we would not be introducing it at this time.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 1 April 2003; Vol. 646, c. 1248.]

The Electoral Commission also states:

“Since the introduction of photo ID in Northern Ireland there have been no reported cases of personation. Voters’ confidence that elections are well-run in Northern Ireland is consistently higher than in Great Britain, and there are virtually no allegations of electoral fraud at polling stations”.

Let me make some progress and set out what else is in this wide-ranging Bill. I must stress that it is not just in-person electoral fraud that this part of the Bill will combat, and that is important because criminals use all kinds of corrupt behaviour together, as we saw in Tower Hamlets and, sadly, elsewhere. Voting by post or by proxy are essential tools for supporting voters to exercise their rights, and they must remain available options for voters who may not wish to, or cannot, vote at a polling station. So this Bill also introduces sensible safeguards against the abuse of postal and proxy voting.

[Mark Fletcher (Bolsover) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that often the victims of postal vote harvesting are those who come from many of the groups that the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) mentioned, including those who do not have English as a first language, and that this is a good protection for them and for our democratic process?

[Chloe Smith]

I fear that that may be right. I know that my hon. Friend and others have experience, for example at council level, where they may have seen this happening at first hand. Today, I want to allow a Bill to make progress that will give confidence that a person’s vote is theirs alone, and that is vital. Did we not see that before when we introduced individual electoral registration? Voices were saying that it, too, would never work, but did we not see that it was about reducing the influence of the head of the household on who was allowed to register? That is an important point to remember.

The part of the Bill on postal and proxy voting includes new limits on the number of postal votes that may be handed in by any one individual, and a limit of four on the total number of electors for whom a person may act as a proxy. In order to tackle “vote harvesting”, the Bill is also making it an offence for political campaigners to handle postal votes issued to others, unless they are family members or carers of the voter.

Of course, stealing someone’s vote is not always done by personation or by taking someone’s ballot physically. As I mentioned, an equally sinister method that we have seen is people using intimidation, or pressuring people to cast their vote in a certain way or not to vote at all. That is known in the law as “undue influence”. The existing legislation on undue influence, which, again, originated in the 19th century, is difficult to interpret and enforce, so we are providing greater clarity, ensuring that there can be no doubt that it is an offence to intimidate, deceive, or cause harm to electors in order to influence their vote.

I have touched on the ways in which the Bill will combat the silencing of democratic voices by those seeking to influence or steal an individual’s vote, and I will now touch upon more ways in which the Bill will empower our citizens.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister will be aware that loud claims of personation were made by the Trump campaign in the United States, which were completely without any basis or evidence, and which led to an assault on the Capitol building in Washington that suspended democracy itself. Does she think that as a Minister she should be promulgating an evidence-free claim that personation is a widespread problem that needs solving, with the cost being to deny millions of people their vote?

[Chloe Smith]

Does the hon. Gentleman, as an experienced Member of this House, think he should be promulgating such nonsense? I do not think so.

One of the truest pillars of our democracy is the trust that we place in our citizens’ choices and the respect we give their decision. While we make voting in elections more secure, we also want to ensure that voters who may still require additional support to navigate that system, such as those with disabilities, have that support. This is why we are introducing key changes from our call for evidence on access to elections, extending the requirements on returning officers to support a wider range of voters with disabilities and extending the definition of who can act as a “companion” to anyone aged 18 or over.

In the same spirit, looking a little further afield, part 2 of the Bill will ensure that the voices of British citizens across the world can be heard, and their vote taken into account on matters that do affect them, by removing the 15-year limit on voting rights of British citizens living abroad.

[Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)]

On people with disabilities, clause 8 talks about people who are blind and about

“such equipment as it is reasonable to provide for the purposes of enabling, or making it easier for, relevant persons to vote”.

Blind people still find it difficult to have this access through existing legislation. Does the Minister not consider that that measure actually weakens the provision that blind people have? Will she meet the Royal National Institute of Blind People and listen to its views, because it has serious concerns about the clause?

[Chloe Smith]

I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman makes that point, because I know a number of hon. Members care about it, and rightly so. I can reassure him and everybody here today that I have been working with the RNIB for months and indeed years to make the improvements we need to the system for allowing blind and partially sighted voters to cast their vote. In answer to his specific question, I do not think that the measures in this Bill weaken that support; I think they strengthen it, by ensuring that a wider range of voters with disabilities—or, should I say, a wider range of disabilities—may be properly supported at the polling station. That is important, as we would not wish some to be unsupported by a phrasing in legislation that is now outdated and overly narrow—that is what our reform seeks to tackle.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)]

On the Minister’s point about empowering citizens, she will be aware of reforms in Wales and Scotland whereby any legal citizen, no matter their nationality, can vote in our respective parliamentary elections and local elections. This Bill seems to be limiting the ability of European nationals to vote in local elections in England and in Westminster elections. Why is Westminster going on a totally different path from Wales and Scotland?

[Chloe Smith]

I am grateful that the hon. Gentleman has raised that point, because there are two things to be said. The first, which I shall come to shortly in my remarks, is about how we are updating the franchise to reflect the position of EU citizens. The other important thing, which is worth making clear at this juncture, is that parts of the devolution settlements apply to electoral policy and so it is important to be clear that in this Bill we are looking at measures that will apply UK-wide—a full analysis is available, of course, in the Bill documents. That means we will have consistency at parliamentary elections, but a natural consequence of devolution is that there may be differences at other levels. I think we would both accept that and seek to work to make those arrangements a success for voters who may experience both sets of arrangements and for the hard-working election staff who may administer both sets.

As I have completed my remarks on overseas electors, I shall carry on moving through the Bill. At this point, I wish to address the Liberal Democrats’ reasoned amendment. It may come as little surprise that, regrettably, they take two opposite positions in one amendment: on the one hand they would like British citizens to participate more—indeed, that was their manifesto position—and on the other hand they do not. The official policy of the Liberal Democrats is to support votes for life, and the policy paper that they published in July 2019 said:

“There is no reason why”

expats

“should be treated any differently to those who continue to live in the UK.”

I agree. The Bill puts in place tougher measures against foreign interference and foreign money, but overseas British citizens are just that—British—and are therefore able both to vote and to donate. There is a long-standing principle, originally recommended by the Committee on Standards in Public Life in 1998, that permissible donors are those on the UK electoral register.

[Mr Carmichael]

The Minister references the Committee on Standards in Public Life; why has she not included in the Bill any of the Committee’s recommendations on campaign finance?

[Chloe Smith]

I shall come to campaign finance shortly, but is that all the right hon. Gentleman has to say on overseas voters?

Let me turn to the voting rights of EU citizens, an important subject that has been asked about. Part 2 of the Bill updates the voting and candidacy rights of EU citizens who reside in the UK and moves to a more reciprocal model that fits our new arrangements. We stand by our commitments to those EU citizens who were resident here before our exit from the EU, so any EU citizen who was a resident before the end of the transition period on 31 December 2020 and has legal immigration status will retain their voting and candidacy rights. That goes beyond our obligations under the withdrawal agreement. For EU citizens who have moved to the UK following our EU exit, local voting and candidacy rights will be granted on the basis of bilateral agreements with the individual EU member states that will reciprocate arrangements for British citizens who live there.

We all want to make progress this afternoon, so let me move on as fast I can through the rest of the Bill. I have set out the ways in which the Bill will bolster the security of our elections; let me move on to the enforcement of electoral law. A critical part of our electoral system is and must continue to be effective, independent regulation, and the Electoral Commission has a vital role to play. Lord Pickles found that the

“current system of oversight of the Electoral Commission—by the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission—does not provide an effective third-party check on its performance”,

so we think it is right for Parliament to have an increased role. The Bill will introduce a strategy and policy statement that will provide guidance to which the commission will have to have regard in the discharge of its functions. It will be subject to statutory consultation, parliamentary approval and regular review.

We will also improve the parliamentary structures that hold the regulator to account. The Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission currently has a limited remit; the Bill will therefore give it the additional power to examine the commission’s compliance with its duty to have regard to the strategy and policy statement. That will allow Parliament to better scrutinise the work of the commission. Together, the reforms will facilitate parliamentary scrutiny of the Electoral Commission’s work while respecting its independence.

It is a shame that Her Majesty’s Opposition’s reasoned amendment misrepresents scrutiny by Parliament and misunderstands—or again wilfully misrepresents the fact—that the commission remains governed, in law, by its commissioners. We are also clarifying that the Electoral Commission should not bring prosecutions, and that prosecutions should remain with the existing prosecution authorities.

Let me move on to political finance, which right hon. and hon. Members have mentioned. We already have a comprehensive regulatory framework for campaigning that is rooted in the principles of fairness, transparency and the importance of a level playing field. We want to ensure that our electoral law continues to uphold those principles, which is why part 4 of the Bill will update and strengthen our political finance laws to restrict all third-party spending to UK-based entities and eligible overseas electors; to increase transparency around third-party campaigning at elections and the registration of new political parties; and to prohibit parties and campaigners from unfairly expanding their spending limits. The Bill will ensure that campaign spending can come only from sources that have a genuine and legitimate interest in UK elections, by restricting all third-party spending to UK-based entities and registered overseas electors, above a £700 minimum threshold.

On the regulation of third-party campaigners, it is right that those who campaign at elections and seek to influence voters are subject to transparency requirements and rules that maintain a level playing field. Those principles already apply. The Bill seeks to balance the burden of regulation, relative to the level of campaign spending, with the importance of a thriving and diverse public debate.

The Bill will not change the definition of what constitutes controlled expenditure for a third-party campaigner. The Electoral Commission already provides guidance, developed with third-party groups, on what constitutes such expenditure. To ensure that any other legitimate categories of third party that may emerge in future are not significantly restricted in their ability to campaign, a power will be given to the Secretary of State to amend the list of legal entities eligible to register as campaigners under section 88(2) of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. Any change to that list made via a statutory instrument will be subject to the affirmative procedure and therefore subject to parliamentary scrutiny in both Houses. The Opposition amendment is simply wrong: the last time I checked, democratic parliamentary procedure on an SI is not “unilateral” change by a Secretary of State.

[Catherine West]

The Minister talks about third-party involvement in our elections. Is she satisfied that the proposed legislation complies with the recommendations from the Russia report from last summer?

[Chloe Smith]

Yes, I am. What we are doing in the Bill, as I have already explained, is moving undue foreign influence out of our politics. We are doing that with this new category of campaign regulation that we are introducing. I have just referred to it and it includes an above £700 minimum threshold. It ensures that campaign spending can come only from sources that have a genuine and legitimate interest in UK elections.

[Catherine West]

indicated dissent.

[Chloe Smith]

The hon. Lady shakes her head, but that is what it does, and that is important.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

We discussed this matter in Westminster Hall back in 2019. As one of my colleagues reminded us, in 2019, the Conservative party received £400,000, with one donation coming from the household of a former Russian Minister under Vladimir Putin eight months after the Salisbury poisonings. There was also money from a personal friend of the President of Syria, Bashar al-Assad. Does the Minister not agree that this does not go far enough to stop this happening again?

[Chloe Smith]

I have three points. First, this Bill does the right thing, as I have just explained. Secondly, the Conservative party does the right thing with regard to our donations, as I am happy to explain and defend at any time. Thirdly, I am already having to pass through so many pages in my briefing to find the bit about the SNP because there are quite a few points about how it handles its donations as well. I do think it is important that a person gets their house in order before they accuse others.

Let me move on to the important matter of notional expenditure. We are talking here about measures that will deliver better transparency for voters and candidates. I am sure that many in this House will welcome the clarification of the law on notional expenditure that is included in the Bill, which will ensure that candidates and their agents can continue to conduct full campaigns without the fear, as found by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee,

“of falling foul of the law through no fault of their own”

and inadvertently causing candidates to exceed their spending limits.

I will go on now to the new electoral sanction of intimidation. A free choice for voters means that anyone entitled to stand as a candidate must feel able to do so. Without a broad range of candidates for voters to choose from, we diminish representation in this country. I am sad to see a rising number of incidents of people trying to exclude others from the debate through violent or illegal behaviour. Voters do not expect violence in our elections. People should not be fearful of expressing their views or standing up in public service. That is why the Bill introduces an additional sanction that will bar an individual found guilty of intimidating a candidate, campaigner or elected representative from running or holding office for five years on top of their sentence.

[Joanna Cherry]

rose—

[Chloe Smith]

If the hon. and learned Lady would like to come in at this point I will give way, but I think that that may be one of the last interventions that I take because I need to make some progress.

[Joanna Cherry]

I am just concerned that the hon. Lady has moved on from dealing with part 4, which deals with regulation of expenditure, before answering the question put by the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), which is: what will the Government do about the recommendations made by the Committee on Standards in Public Life? The Committee published a very full report after a year of work on 7 July suggesting a number of recommendations—I think that it is 47 practical steps to modernise and streamline the way in which donations and spending are reported regularly to then enforce. Will she tell us which if any of those recommendations she will bring forward as Government amendments.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Let me gently remind colleagues that the Minister has been on her feet now for 33 minutes. I know that many colleagues want to contribute, so I am anxious that we make some progress.

[Chloe Smith]

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker, I shall try to be as quick as I can in concluding my remarks.

The answer to the hon. and learned Lady is that, first, we will be responding in full to what the CSPL said. There are some very good points and ideas in there that we are already able to deliver through the Bill, such as diminishing the extent of foreign influence through political finance in our system. There is also much more that has been drawn out over many years by other bodies. I am talking about the Select Committees here, Members of the Lords, the Association of Electoral Administrators and many, many others. There is a lot of discussion and debate about how we should keep our electoral system safe. I am proud to introduce a Bill that does the most important and pressing of those, and which will have the overall effect of keeping our elections safe, modern, transparent, fair and inclusive.

Part 6 of the Bill introduces a new digital imprints regime, which will be one of the most comprehensive in the world. I think that Members on both sides of the House will welcome that, because we all agree that voters all, rightly, want to know who is talking. The Bill will require digital campaigning material to display a digital imprint explicitly showing who is behind it—all year round and wherever they may be in the world. This provision will deliver on recommendations made by many to improve public trust and confidence in digital campaigns at future elections and referendums.

[David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)]

Would this measure translate to websites fronted by political activists masquerading as members of the public concerned about a different cause?

[Chloe Smith]

Political and election material will be included. I look forward to discussing the finer details as we work through the Bill. It is incredibly important that we have that transparency so that voters can make their choice as they think best.

Before I close, I need to deal with the Labour party’s amendment and its position—or, should I say, its many positions? It is a mystery to me why the Labour party seems to think that identification is good enough for its own members, but not for the British electorate. One person, one vote: it is a really simple formula. Why would anybody believe that criminals should get two? This is not what we ought to believe. Why does the Labour amendment say that the Bill restricts the general election franchise? I do not think that the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) will be able to explain why, because it does no such thing. Why would the Labour party be doing this? Because it has its own murky interests in making it up and misrepresenting the Bill. Perhaps the other parties—

[Catherine West]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Until this point, the debate was going quite well, but that allegation is a disgrace. I ask you to withdraw it, Minister. Everyone in this Chamber works very hard in elections and it is in everyone’s interests to have elections that are well run and well respected. That kind of insult makes people denigrate our democracy, which we fight day in, day out to protect, and which we cherish—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. The point of order should be addressed to me, rather than to the Minister. I can assure the hon. Lady that if anything had been said that was disorderly, I would have advised the Minister that it was disorderly.

[Chloe Smith]

Thank you for your guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I do hope that the other parties who supported today’s amendment have those high standards to which we all aspire. They will be able to judge clearly where they see politicking at play. I also hope that the House can judge that as clearly as was set out in the judgment of the Tower Hamlets case, which stated that the convicted perpetrators

“spent a great deal of time accusing their opponents…of ‘dividing the community’ but, if anyone was ‘dividing the community’, it was they.”

The judge went on to say,

“The real losers in this case are the citizens”.

As I have set out, the Government’s vision for UK democracy is a system that is secure, fair, modern, inclusive and transparent. We have a strong history; a robust constitution; a model of democracy that is copied around the world; a thriving tradition of campaigning and passionate public participation; and the highest standards of security, fairness and transparency.

The improvements in the Bill will raise confidence even further in our elections. They are reasonable, proportionate and carefully planned measures that command support and come from common sense. I commend the Bill to the House.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

As colleagues will see, a number of Members would like to speak, so we will start with a time limit of six minutes.

15:43

[Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House declines to give a second reading to the Elections Bill, notwithstanding the need for legislation around digital imprints and some accessibility improvements for disabled voters which do not go far enough, because it infringes on the right of expression of the electorate by allowing the Secretary of State to unilaterally modify and select which groups are allowed to campaign during an election period, creates unnecessary barriers to entry for voting, makes the Electoral Commission subordinate to the executive, would serve to restrict the franchise and thereby reduce the overall number of people able to participate in any future UK General Election and does not make provision for the UK Parliament to match the devolved nations in Scotland and Wales by extending the right to vote to 16 and 17 year olds and other disenfranchised groups.

It is a pleasure to speak in today’s debate. Let me begin by quoting: the law governing elections is “voluminous”, “fragmented” and “extremely complex”, with some provisions

“dating back to the 19th century”.

I used that quote from the Law Commission’s 2016 report back in 2016, when I first became Labour’s shadow spokesperson for elections, a role that I still hold. Since 2016, it is like nothing has happened. The Government did not make any changes on the back of those recommendations, and the Elections Bill continues to make absolutely no progress on them or on the recommendations of many reports that have been published since. In fact, over the past decade the Government have failed to take any action to modernise our electoral laws or to close the loopholes that allow foreign money to flood into our democracy; this Bill actually makes that threat far greater and does not reduce it at all. I think the reason is very clear and those of us on the Opposition Benches have seen right through it: it is because these laws will lead to benefits for the Conservative party. In the Bill we have before us, the Government have not reached out for cross-party consensus as is typical for a Bill of this type which massively changes electoral law and deals with constitutional matters. It would be normal to see a Speaker’s Committee put together before such massive changes were brought forward. There has been no attempt by the Government to reach out for a cross-party consensus on a matter as important as our elections and our democracy.

This Bill is a huge missed opportunity to modernise our electoral law to bring it into the 21st century and try to encourage people to participate in our democracy. Indeed, our democracy is stronger when more people take part in it. In this Bill we see that the leaders would like to choose the voters. I believe that the voters should choose the leaders of their country, yet the flagship part of this Bill is very much about the leaders of this country choosing who are the voters.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

I am a known critic of this Bill, but I will say to the hon. Lady that when I served through over a decade of Labour Government, they did not once consult the Opposition when they changed electoral law—not once.

[Cat Smith]

For years now, I have stood opposite the Minister responsible for the constitution and we have talked about many ways of improving our democracy. I had hoped that this Bill would contain some of the many topics that we have discussed across the Dispatch Box and in Committee, to expand the franchise to make it more inclusive. That might include spending the £120 million that will be spent on the electoral ID system to encourage registration to make sure that the millions missing from our electoral roll are included, making it easier for homeless people to register to vote—but no, none of that is included in this Bill, which would in fact serve to reverse decades of progress. I draw attention to the recent changes made by the Welsh Labour Government to expand the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds.

Some of the Conservative Members here today should consider the implications of this Bill for their constituents whose votes they perhaps relied on to get into this House, and how difficult it is for so many people in this country to have access to ID, because it is expensive—£80-odd for a passport and £43 for a driving licence. This is a paywall to the ballot box.

[Mark Fletcher]

The Minister set out in her opening remarks that 98% of people have access to appropriate ID already and that a free alternative will be available from councils, so I am a little baffled by the argument that the hon. Lady is making.

[Cat Smith]

Is the hon. Member saying that 2% of his electorate should not have access to democracy? That appears to be what he is saying. Yes, 98% of people might well have valid ID, but 2% of the entire UK electorate is a very large number of people. In fact, to use the Government’s statistics, 3.5 million people do not have access to valid photo ID. It seems that one arm of the Government does not quite know what the other arm of the Government is doing. The Cabinet Office is saying that it is fine and everyone has access to ID, but the DCMS is saying that we cannot have ID requirements for access to social media sites because not everybody has ID. It seems they say one thing from one Department and another thing from another Department.

The reality is that requirements for ID discriminate against some groups more than others. Concerns have been raised from across the House and from charities and campaigning organisations that disabled people, older people, younger people and people without the spare cash to buy that passport or driving licence are going to be disenfranchised.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is no such thing as a free service? If local councils are indeed going to be providing voter ID, it will be at public expense. The £120 million that is due to be spent on that could be better spent on voter registration and boosting turnout rather than a disproportionate attempt to control the voting of a minority of people.

[Cat Smith]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. In fact, the Bill contains no details about how local authorities are going to roll out this so-called voter ID, which, as she points out, is not free: it will cost the taxpayer money. This is an expensive waste of taxpayers’ money trying to look for a problem to solve.

We know fine well that voter ID will be an additional barrier for voters. It will be an additional barrier even for the voters that have the relevant ID, because they have to remember to take it with them. We are all Members of Parliament—we all go out and campaign—and we know fine well that sometimes on a wet and rainy Thursday it is awfully difficult to get voters down to the polling station. We should be making sure that our elections take place on public holidays. We should be exploring the idea of weekend voting. We should be looking at ways of modernising our democracy for the 21st century. This Elections Bill does nothing to modernise and everything to put barriers up to participation. The 160 pages of this Bill were written during a global pandemic. At a time when our doctors and nurses were in our hospitals wearing bin bags because of a lack of personal protection equipment, this Government were drawing up legislation to put barriers up to democracy, wasting taxpayers’ money on expensive policies designed to benefit the Conservative party.

[Jonathan Edwards]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Member for giving way. Does she agree that it is important not just to look at the Bill in isolation? When we add it to things such as the boundary review and the scrapping of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, those of us who are cynically minded see a plan to skew the next election.

[Cat Smith]

The hon. Member is absolutely right: this Bill cannot be seen in isolation. Indeed, the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill is before the House currently and allows the Government to decide when an election is held. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill restricts the right to protest. We have to see the Elections Bill in the round and recognise that pieces of legislation are coming one after another. It shows that this Government are scared of transparency and scared of accountability.

Frankly, in the time of a pandemic, it is disappointing that the Government are spending time to restrict democracy and not making sure that we have the support we need for our young people to recover or that we are dealing with the crisis in adult social care. There is so much more that this Government should be getting on with doing, but instead we have this 160-page Bill that restricts democracy and rigs elections in favour of the Conservative party, and it is an absolute disgrace.

Turning to the voter ID part of the legislation, the pilots that took place in 2019 were in just 10 local authority areas in England. This is a UK-wide policy; that is not a reasonable look at the country. The type of voter ID that the Government wish to bring in was trialled in only one of those 10 areas: only in Woking has it been trialled. The Government have the idea of rolling out a policy that could disenfranchise 3.5 million people having only piloted it in Woking. They have the confidence to think it will work across the whole United Kingdom. I believe it is reckless and disenfranchising.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Cat Smith]

The right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) has been trying to get in for some time; I will give way to him.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am most grateful to the hon. Lady; she is always extremely generous. Does she completely disregard the recommendations of the OSCE that identification at ballots is an important part of the security of the ballot? That is an internationally recommended part of the electoral process. Does she completely dismiss that recommendation?

[Cat Smith]

It is a pleasure to see the right hon. Member in his place, and it is always a pleasure to debate these issues with him in very many forums. The OSCE recommendations are designed to give broad brushstrokes around the global issues of democracy. It is true that some countries require ID at polling stations, but they are countries with a national ID card. We do not have a national ID card in this country. It is not part of our culture and I would certainly oppose it, were it proposed. In fact, I believe that the Prime Minister said that if he were ever asked to produce an ID card, he would eat it. I think there is probably consensus that we are not seeking a national ID card, which is why it is so surprising that this piece of legislation requires ID to exercise the basic fundamental human right of voting in a democratic country.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Cat Smith]

This is my final point on this, and then I will give way. There is currently a case before the Supreme Court, brought by Mr Neil Coughlan, who is challenging the legality of the pilot trials. That case is not due to be heard until 15 February next year. If the judge makes any rulings from which we could learn something, it will be too late for this piece of legislation. I suggest to the Government that their attempts to rush this Bill through before we hear from the Supreme Court is reckless.

There is nothing in the Bill about how local authorities are meant to be administering the ID. Frankly, Ministers are living in an alternative reality, where they seem to believe that people are constantly trying to impersonate their neighbours to steal a single vote. I just think that is utterly bizarre. There have been four cases of voter impersonation fraud in the past 10 years. That is from 243 million votes cast. To put that in context, someone is more likely to be struck by lightning three times.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

I take it that the hon. Member is referring to successful prosecutions, but one of the problems is that people are not prosecuted when they ought to be. I made a speech on 19 December 2019—I am sure she has pored over every word of it—in which I pointed out that election officials in Wycombe are not holding people to account even they are walking into a polling station repeatedly in comedy disguises, doing things like changing their glasses, changing their hat, putting sunglasses on, wearing a different coat or whatever. They are not being prosecuted, and that is the problem.

[Cat Smith]

It appears to be all happening in Wycombe. I believe that I was there for the hon. Gentleman’s speech, and I know he takes a keen interest in this issue, so he will know well that where there are widespread examples of voter personation, which is a serious crime, it should be tackled. That is why the law is different in Northern Ireland, where there was a culture of organised crime and gangs stealing hundreds of votes through personation at polling stations; that was legislated against. There is no evidence of that in England, Scotland and Wales, so legislation is not needed. Where there are examples of voter personation, it is right and proper that it is tackled, but as there are not such examples, the Bill is just legislation that puts up another barrier to legitimate voters’ ability to vote.

In the voter trial areas, which were in just a handful of local authorities, we know that 700 voters at local elections who were turned away did not return to use their vote. Given the tiny numbers of accusations of voter personation and the huge numbers of people who were turned away because they did not have ID, we know that the Bill will disproportionately disenfranchise legitimate voters.

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

Thank you for your generosity and time. You said clearly that you think the proposal to introduce voter ID is an attempt to rig elections. Is that why the Labour party requires voter ID to vote in local party gatherings and has a long history of that? Have you attempted to rig your own elections?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. Really, the hon. Gentleman is experienced enough to know that he should not use the word “you”, which refers to me.

[Anthony Browne]

I apologise.

[Cat Smith]

I reassure the hon. Member that I have been a member of the Labour party since 2004—a relatively active member—and I have never been asked to show ID at any meetings. Even if I was asked, I would say that political parties are membership organisations—we know that members are often expelled from political parties, as it often hits the headlines—but the right to vote in elections in a democracy is a fundamental human right. That is slightly different from being a member of a political party.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

Is the hon. Member as concerned as I am that comparisons from other countries show that voter ID requirements disproportionately affect voters from ethnic minority backgrounds?

[Cat Smith]

The hon. Lady makes a good point and is absolutely right. Studies from the United States show that voters from black and Hispanic backgrounds are disproportionally affected by requirements to show ID. Indeed, there are many similarities between the repressive voter suppression laws in some US states and this legislation. I believe that in Texas a voter can show their gun licence to vote but they cannot show a student ID, and in the Bill student ID is not a valid piece of identification but a bus pass is valid. It seems that one type of ID is more valuable than another, and it seems that the type of person likely to hold that ID is very much considered when drawing up the acceptable list.

I turn to changes to the regulation of the Electoral Commission, which seem to be political interference in the regulation of our elections. There is no doubt that the Government’s setting the strategy and policy document for the Electoral Commission is a dangerous precedent. When we look to similar democracies such as Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, we see a complete separation between Government and their electoral commissions. Indeed, at this morning’s meeting of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, Helen Mountfield, QC, a barrister at Matrix chambers, said that the Bill arguably breaches international law and that the removal of the Electoral Commission’s independence is “legally problematic” and breaches the UK’s constitutional standards. To be blunt, we would not allow, say, an arsonist to decide the fire brigade’s strategy and policy direction, and we certainly would not let shoplifters decide the police’s strategy and policy direction. It therefore seems a little bit odd that when it comes to regulating political parties, some parties—those in government—seem to have an awful lot of power to decide the strategy and policy direction of that.

On the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission, this is a Committee that already has an in-built Government majority, and the legislation seeks to strengthen and increase that majority. If we saw this happening in any other democracy around the world, I do not think we would sit back and say that that looked okay. It does not look okay—it does not pass the sniff test—and that bit needs to be changed.

The Bill is riddled with cheap attempts to dodge scrutiny. That seems to be the theme that runs throughout this legislation. In a free and open democracy, democratically elected Governments are scrutinised by opposition parties and civil society. That is part of what makes democracy healthy, and the freedom for civil society to do this and to hold those in power to account is the sign of a strong democracy. This Bill is an attack on some parties more than others, and I would say that the attack on the trade unions—the 6 million people who are members of trade unions—is an attack on all working people’s rights to campaign for fair pay at work and health and safety in the workplace, and it is actually an attack on the people who have got our country through the pandemic.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am really grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way because this piece of legislation is alienating civil society. In particular, charities are really concerned about the measures in this Bill because it is going to have a chilling effect on their campaigning, but most of all push them into having bureaucratic reporting processes. Does she agree that these parts of the Bill need removing?

[Cat Smith]

I agree entirely. Trade unions are already incredibly heavily regulated, and charities will feel stifled and gagged by the legislation before us.

Finally, I want to turn to what the Government are calling the so-called votes for life section of the Bill. Indeed, if we wish to expand the franchise, I would very much support the Government if they wanted to extend the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds. However, it appears that, at one fell swoop, we seem to be advancing more rights to people who do not live in this country than to people who do live in this country.

There is nothing in this Bill that actually helps overseas electors get their ballots back in time. One of the complaints I have heard most from overseas electors is that they do not get their ballot papers in time and cannot get them returned to the UK in time for their votes to count. There is nothing in this Bill that explores the many different options of using modern technology to speed up this process to make sure that overseas electors currently registered under current legislation can actually use their vote. Instead, the motivation behind the change to remove the 15-year limit is about creating a loophole in donation law, and it will give rich Conservative donors unlimited access to our democracy in allowing them to bankroll the Tory party.

I look forward to the Committee stage of this Bill, and I cannot wait to get into the detail of the clauses in Committee with the Minister, but I shall finish by saying that I do believe this Bill tarnishes our democracy. It is an opportunity missed—an opportunity to modernise our electoral law, put it into one piece of legislation and make it fit for the 21sst century, and to use £120 million to encourage voter participation instead of putting up barriers. The Labour party will therefore be voting against this legislation today. I hope that all Members in this House will consider the implications for their own constituents, and I commend the reasoned amendment in my name and the names of others.

16:03

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

Let me start with a comment relating to the question the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) raised about the duty on Governments to be more than fair when they are dealing with electoral legislation. Governments should not, even by accident, put in place electoral legislation that advantages themselves over their opponents. However, I do have to say to her that the most egregious example of that was under Gordon Brown, and the more sanctimonious the Minister, the worse the outcome sometimes. It is incumbent on us to make sure that we do not even accidentally disadvantage the other side in elections.

I want to focus on just one thing today, which is the issue of voter ID. The very fact that the phrase has “ID” in it will tell everybody I am against it—they understand that—but it is not for the conventional reasons. This is not an ID system with a database behind it; it is just an ID card that people have to present. Our country has over the centuries been different from other countries: we do not allow our policemen to come up to people and say, “Can I see your papers, please?” It is important to maintain that distinction between the citizen and the state, particularly when we are talking about the fundamental rights of the individual, such as the right to vote.

The Government quite rightly claim that voter fraud undermines our democracy—the battle on that has already occurred to some extent—but the primary voter fraud has been in postal votes, not in personation. We all know how it has occurred in communities up and down the country, and we should deal with it ruthlessly and prosecute. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker), who used to serve with me as a Minister in the Brexit Department, that the answer to his question is that the prosecution should happen in his constituency. That is what should happen, but let us be clear: since 2014 only three prosecutions have occurred. There have been 30-odd allegations but only three prosecutions, and that is out of many tens of millions of votes cast. So there have been 30-odd allegations, three prosecutions and zero election outcomes influenced; that is what we must bear in mind.

On the back of that, Ministers will want to introduce mandatory voter identification. It is an illiberal solution—unsurprisingly coming from the Cabinet Office, as that is what it always thinks up—in search of a non-existent problem. [Interruption.] I have at least some support on my side of the House.

The Government’s own research found that those with disabilities, the unemployed, people without qualifications, people who had never voted before and ethnic minorities were all less likely to hold any form of ID; those are the sorts of groups we are talking about. In two groups—the over-85s and the disabled—between 5% and 10% had no photo ID. The Joint Committee on Human Rights has warned that the introduction of voter ID may have a discriminatory effect on those groups and other protected groups, and the trial referred to by the Liberal spokesman, the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), when 700 people did not vote as a result of photo ID being required, took place in a set of areas where the numbers of people in these groups were very low; it was basically the southern English test area, not central Bradford or wherever.

This is very serious. We are talking about quite a significant fraction of our population. There are 2 million people in the groups I have described who will have to be met by some ID system, and that must be balanced against three voter convictions. That is the problem we are facing.

[Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)]

Has my right hon. Friend looked at schedule 1, which contains a very broad list of valid means of identification? I would be very surprised if anybody in the country today did not have one of them, and my right hon. Friend also knows that there is the provision of free ID from the local council.

[Mr Davis]

The point I would make is that I am quoting from Government research. I did not do this research; it is Government research. By the way, since my hon. Friend draws me to Government research, Lord Pickles, a real old pal of mine, did a study on this. I have read it and, to summarise, the conclusion was, “I can find no evidence of personation but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening, and of course even if it isn’t happening now it might well happen in the future.” It is the precautionary principle gone mad in the centre of our constitution.

The Government answer, as we have heard several times, is free photographic ID. Nevertheless, the Government’s own research again found that about 42% of people without the ID would not take it up. That is really very serious. These groups are going to be disenfranchised because they do not take it up, and they will turn up at the polling station and find that they are unable to vote. This is in pursuit of three convictions.

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech thoroughly destroying the Government case for voter ID. Would he care to hazard a guess as to why the Government are pursuing this policy?

[Mr Davis]

This is where I differ from the hon. Gentleman. I think that the Government are trying to do their best. I do not think that this is a deliberate action, but I think that the pressure on the Government—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman laughs, but listen: I lived through a Labour Government deliberately gerrymandering the system, frankly, so I do not want to take any lectures on that. I think that the Government are trying to do their best. They have the wrong idea in pursuit of a problem that does not exist, but they are nevertheless trying to do their best. But there is a greater—

[Geraint Davies]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. There is no evidence of gerrymandering. That is outrageous.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

That is not a point of order. I really do not want the debate interrupted by points of order that are actually points of debate.

[Mr David Davis]

I will take another day to give lectures on points of order.

The simple truth is that there is a greater responsibility on the Government than on anyone else to do the right thing and to avoid errors working to their own advantage. That is what I am arguing here today. This voter ID scheme is an illiberal idea in pursuit of a non-existent problem, and that is what we need to address. We need to get rid of it, and that is what I will seek to do on Report.

16:10

[Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

Fundamentally, this Bill is an attack on democracy that will disenfranchise millions, entrench more powers with the Executive, and remove the power of the Electoral Commission to scrutinise. Like many others, I urge Members not to look at the Bill in isolation but to view it in the wider context of the other legislation going through the House at the moment with respect to the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, citizens’ right to peacefully protest, and even the proposed privatisation of Channel 4. That paints a very bleak picture for our democracy.

When the Bill first appeared, in the Queen’s Speech earlier this year, the headline-grabbing proposal was voter ID, whereby photographic evidence would be required before an individual was allowed to cast their vote. However, as we have heard from many others this afternoon, voter fraud at polling stations barely reaches the height of minuscule, and the evidence that we have heard from those on the Government Benches has been based on personal anecdote. We have to ask: what is the problem they are seeking to solve?

Seeing a Government introduce such radical policy changes without a shred of evidence to support those changes sets alarm bells ringing among those of us who believe that every Government should be trying to remove barriers that prevent participation in the democratic process, rather than raising them.

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful point about not taking the Bill in isolation and looking at the cumulative effect. Does he agree that it is definitive of a Government that have lost any confidence in their ability to outrun their outrageous false claims, their untruths and their broken promises that they have to bring this measure in to try to gerrymander the system?

[Brendan O'Hara]

I could not agree more, and I will elaborate on that as I go through my speech.

In all the debate and discussion that have followed the Queen’s Speech in May, the Government have had ample opportunity to produce the evidence that these proposals are a proportionate measure to deal with an identified problem, and they have not. The reason they have not is that there is absolutely no evidence for them to produce. As one leading, albeit unelected, Scottish politician recently said:

“They can’t cite any evidence of it because I don’t think there’s any evidence to cite. In terms of this particular part of the Queen’s Speech, I think it’s total bollocks, and I think it’s trying to give a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist, and that makes it politics as performance.”

It is not often that I agree with the former Scottish Conservative leader, Baroness Davidson, or whatever her title is at the moment, but on this occasion she was absolutely spot on.

In the absence of any evidence that voter ID is the answer to an identified problem, we can only conclude that, for the Conservative party, the problem is not folk turning up at polling stations without photographic ID, but that certain folk turn up at polling stations at all.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

May I ask the hon. Gentleman the same question I asked the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith)? Does he disregard the recommendations of the OSCE?

[Brendan O’Hara]

I do not regard any findings of the OSCE, but what I think is important in this place, looking at UK-wide elections, is that we have a measure that works for United Kingdom general elections, and this is one that absolutely does not. The right hon. Gentleman says we should be reinventing the wheel and starting from scratch. There is a debate to be had, but the imposition of this kind of voter ID now is absolute nonsense and there is no evidence whatever to justify it. This is, therefore, actually a ploy to stop people going to the polling station in the first place. I believe it really is as crude as that. The Government plan appears to have been to conjure up a demon, convince people that that demon is posing a threat to them, and then allow themselves to introduce draconian and totally disproportionate measures to slay the demon they have just invented.

The fatal flaw in that argument is that there never was a demon. No matter how the Government have tried to spin this, people know that there never was a demon and that there is nothing to see. Now, the United Kingdom Government stand accused of a sleazy attempt to gerrymander the register for their own electoral gain.

[Tom Randall (Gedling) (Con)]

In his judgment on the election in Tower Hamlets, Richard Mawrey QC said there was an appreciable amount of personation by false registration in Tower Hamlets. I wonder if the hon. Gentleman has read that judgment.

[Brendan O'Hara]

I would say gently to the hon. Gentleman on the Tower Hamlets issue, which I believe went back to 2014, that to change an entire voting system on what went on in one particular London borough—the anecdotal evidence I have heard is that it was more to do with postal voting than personation. This measure is to do with personation, which has been proven not to be a problem.

This is an utterly reprehensible proposal that would be more at home in Donald Trump’s Republican party than in the United Kingdom. What is more important and more chilling is the brazen way in which the Government are doing it. They seem not to care. We always know it will not be the well-heeled and the affluent middle classes who will struggle to produce a passport, or a driving licence. We know and they know it will be the young, the poor, the marginalised and the minority communities who do not have a passport or do not drive, who will struggle to manage to collect a voter ID card. They will be affected by this registration.

The Government know that there are already between 2 million and 3 million people who do not have that ID. They also know that there are about 9 million people not registered. I think they should be spending an awful lot more time getting people on to the register than organising to take people off that register.

[Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)]

Would these be the same young people who have to show photo ID to get into a bar, a nightclub or a pub every Saturday night?

[Brendan O'Hara]

If the right hon. Gentleman wishes to reduce this debate to that level, he is perfectly welcome so to do, but this is about a fundamental right for people to exercise their democratic right to vote. I urge him to take it a bit more seriously.

Yet again, this highlights the differences between what is happening here and what is happening in Scotland. If ever there was a reason why we need our independence, it is to get away from draconian legislation such as this. In May, when the Scottish National party won an unprecedented fourth term, we did it with a record number of people turning out to vote in a Scottish Parliament election. That does not happen by accident; that was by design. The SNP Government led the way by extending the franchise to all 16 and 17 year olds and, more recently, by allowing all eligible refugees in Scotland and those foreign nationals with settled status the right to vote. It is because we extended that franchise that we now have a thriving, healthy and robust democracy in Scotland. It is telling that, as Scotland, and indeed Wales, extend that franchise, this place seeks to do the exact opposite.

Over the summer, we learned that the Bill goes far beyond plans for voter ID. If it is passed, the Government will assume powers over the running and scrutiny of all future elections. The Bill reveals plans to strip the Electoral Commission of its powers and the independence it enjoys at the moment, and put it directly under the control of the Government, forcing it to conform to a strategy and policy statement which will be written by the Government. This means that the Government—the Executive—will be giving political direction to the organisation whose job it is to independently scrutinise and adjudicate on the fairness of elections. At a time when its powers should be extended, this Government are stripping the Electoral Commission of its powers and making scrutiny far more difficult.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

My hon. Friend is making a fantastic speech. On extending the Electoral Commission’s powers, it has previously said that it does not have enough powers to keep the major parties in check and that overspending and breaches of electoral law have become business as usual, because it cannot fine them enough. Is this not all about taking further control rather than accepting open elections?

[Brendan O’Hara]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We are heading down a dangerous road and I urge Government Members to think carefully before proceeding.

One would have hoped that, at a time when democracies across the world are under threat from the influence of hostile actors, Governments could have taken this opportunity to introduce legislation to tackle those shadowy groups—those unincorporated associations—with anonymous sources of cash that are seeking to influence UK politics. However, given that openDemocracy recently revealed that since 2019, the Conservative party has accepted £2.5 million in donations from these shadowy groups, it was never going to be the anonymous, deep-pocketed bankrollers of the Conservative party who would be targeted in the Bill.

This Bill was always designed to hit the poor, the disadvantaged, the trade unions, the charity campaigners and civic society activists, because it will be the Secretary of State who will get to unilaterally decide who can campaign, what they can campaign on, when they can campaign, how much money they can raise and what they can spend those funds on. At a stroke, a Government Minister could ban a whole section of civic society, including trade unions and charities, from engaging in elections and campaigning or donating. It is fundamentally anti-democratic and people should be outraged by it. But, of course, if those people are unhappy and want to take to the streets to protest, this Government are already planning to block off that avenue to them.

[David Morris]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for letting me intervene. Charities are supposed to be apolitical—how do you explain that?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. I say again that hon. Members really should not use the word “you”; otherwise, it becomes a bit of a conversation down there and we feel kind of left out.

[Brendan O’Hara]

A charity has the right to advocate on behalf of its members and the people it represents. A charity must have the leeway and the bandwidth to advocate. To block that off screams of the anti-democratic road that this Government are determined to go down.

What we have here is a Government who are allergic to criticism, who are terrified of scrutiny and who are determined to give themselves, through this and other pieces of legislation, the powers to silence their critics. They want to prevent public displays of dissent and weaken their political opposition while, at the same time, entrenching the advantage that they already have, all at the expense of democracy.

[Geraint Davies]

Aneurin Bevan famously said that in the struggle between poverty and property, when poverty rises, property will attack democracy. Is this not what we are seeing in terms of voter suppression, getting rid of the right to peaceful protest, and attacking the judiciary and our fundamental democratic rights?

[Brendan O’Hara]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman: we are heading down a very, very dangerous road. The public have to be made aware of that and Government Members have to be aware of where this could lead.

We would not take this in any other walk of life. If this was a casino, we would demand that it be shut down and the owners arrested for loading the dice, marking the cards and allowing the dealers to have aces hidden up their sleeves. If this was a football match, there is no way that we would accept the home team manager being the referee and the assistant manager sitting up in the VAR box. Why, then, are we being asked to accept this? Why are we being asked to let this Government play fast and loose with something as fragile and as precious as our democracy—something that so many have done so much to defend? Why are we being asked to let this Government undermine those independent institutions that are specifically there to scrutinise our elections and preserve the public’s trust in a free and fair electoral system?

This is little more than a grubby attempt to gain electoral advantage. Why are we being asked to potentially disenfranchise millions of poor people and disadvantaged communities? Why are we being asked to accept that a Government Minister can unilaterally decide who can or cannot campaign for what they passionately believe in? Why are we being asked to turn a blind eye to those incredibly rich and powerful bodies that seek to buy their way to influence and power in the UK Government?

Our democracy, as I said, is under sustained attack. The arithmetic of this place means that the only people who can prevent this anti-democratic slide are Conservative Members. If they decide to fall meekly in line with what the Government say and nod this truly, thoroughly anti-democratic legislation through, I fear that history will judge them as those who facilitated one of the darkest days for democracy in the history of this country.

16:25

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

As ever, I will seek to calm the House, if I can, as I perambulate around a few of the issues that the Bill presents. I suggest to the Minister, as an early judgment, that it is perhaps a curate’s egg of a Bill. I will explain why I have come to that assessment, but we must understand at the outset why these matters are important. They are important to protect everybody—democracy itself in its entirety, clearly, but also candidates, agents and volunteers for all political parties who are actors in our great democratic process—and to give due regard to those who ultimately deserve consideration: the voters.

Having listened to the debate so far, I think we need to hit two issues on the head. I suggest gently that it is slightly anachronistic to compare democracy in this country with the events that we saw after the US presidential election. To those who would have us believe that there is something intrinsically wrong with our system, I suggest that they could be accused of suffering from Gerald Ratner syndrome, whereby they completely undermine what they wish to improve.

It is a shame that the Bill was not subject to pre-legislative scrutiny, which might have ironed out issues that have caused a degree of contention. Indeed, it could be suggested that the Bill would have benefited from consideration beforehand by a Speaker’s Commission, which is a cross-party entity—none of us has the monopoly on virtue when it comes to elections or matters pertaining to them.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) said several interesting things about ID. I have a great deal of sympathy for what he said: notwithstanding the substantial list in schedule 1 of acceptable forms of ID, there is work to be done.

May I briefly mention the Speaker’s Committee? I am a member by virtue of chairing the Select Committee on Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs, and for no other reason. I agree that the Speaker’s Committee would benefit from having no majority from a particular party. I see colleagues who are members of it frowning at me, but I simply say that I would be willing to sacrifice myself if we needed to remove a Conservative member. I do not wish to take away from the importance of the Committee’s work, but if it were necessary for me to discharge that heavy burden on to somebody else, I might well do so. I do not want to cause even more offence to Members on the Treasury Bench, as I do occasionally, but I do ask whether it is appropriate to have two Ministers of the Crown as members of the Committee. I think that there is some work to be done; perhaps we will come back to the matter on Report.

On the vexed subject of the Electoral Commission, it is fair to say that opinion is mixed, but the commission is ultimately a regulator—perhaps the most sensitive regulator, because it regulates what we, and those at other levels of representation, do as candidates. o I simply say that we should tread carefully, perhaps recognise some of the work that has been done recently, welcome the new chair of the organisation, and judge it in the years to come.

I appreciate that many other Members wish to speak this afternoon, so with that, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will conclude my remarks.

16:29

[Abena Oppong-Asare (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg), and to speak in the debate.

I want first to discuss clause 1, and the Government’s ill thought out and extremely damaging proposal to require photo ID at polling stations. There is clear and resounding evidence that voting in this country is already safe and secure. Putting these additional barriers in the way of people exercising their right to vote will only weaken our democracy and further erode our trust in the political system, which is already quite weak.

Of course, this proposal will have a greater impact on some groups than on others. Several Members have drawn attention to that, and I want to echo some of their comments in outlining which groups will be most affected. Young people are likely to be impacted, and constituents of mine such as 16-year old Elliot have contacted me with concerns about the Bill suppressing youth engagement in politics. I have been doing quite a lot of work in my constituency in trying to enable young people to get politically engaged. Another barrier will affect older people, who may struggle to access the ID that they will now need. A number of Members, especially Conservative Members, have said that it is not a particular barrier, but I know that many people who have voted throughout their lives, in many cases for the Conservative party, will be disenfranchised.

A 91-year-old constituent wrote to me recently. He told me that he had just given up his driving licence because he is now housebound. Asking him to apply for a new form of ID, in my view, is unreasonable and ludicrous. Another constituent with multiple disabilities also contacted me. That constituent has never had a passport or a driving licence, and is extremely concerned, fearing that the process of application for a new form of ID will be difficult to complete.

I should like the Minister to clarify some points. What assessment have the Government made of how the new law will affect people with disabilities? The Bill provides extremely limited information about the new voter card: there is nothing about the application process, nothing about deadlines, nothing about what documents will be required, and nothing about how long the card will be valid for. The Bill simply says that this vital information will be set in out in future regulations, but as the Electoral Commission has said, we need to have it during the Bill’s passage, and unfortunately it is not there. Will the Government commit to providing full information on voter ID before the Bill moves to its next stages?

Earlier this year, 17 leading civil society organisations called on the Government to think again about requiring photo ID at polling stations. They included Stonewall, the Electoral Reform Society, Operation Black Vote, My Life My Say, and Silver Voices. It is not just the Labour party that is saying this. I urge the Government to listen to the growing consensus from across the political divide, and from impartial charities and representative groups, and to drop this terrible idea.

Let me now turn briefly to clause 25, on joint campaigning by registered parties and third parties. It is of course right for us to have a robust system of electoral finance monitoring and controls, but I have concerns about how the Bill could restrict legitimate campaigning by trade unions and other organisations. I echo the comments of the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith). Trade unions are democratic membership organisations that are already highly regulated when it comes to the financing of campaigns, and the Labour Party is proud of its intrinsic link with the trade union movement. This Bill redefines campaign activity that is currently classified as party spending as joint campaigning, potentially making unions liable for substantial expenditure by the party. That is both unfair and illogical. The Committee on Standards in Public Life has recently stated:

“When considering calls for greater regulation on non-party campaigning it is important to be mindful of the role of non-party campaigning in the broader ecosystem of democracy and pre-election debate.”

Trade unions must be able to engage in the democratic process, campaign on behalf of their members and support political parties without onerous regulations, which will not increase transparency or make election spending fairer. I urge the Government to reconsider how these clauses will operate, and to bring forward revised proposals during the passage of the Bill.

16:35

[Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)]

Thank you for calling me to speak, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is good to be higher up the batting order. I want to highlight to the House that I serve on the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission and that I was acquitted at Southwark Crown court of an electoral law offence under the Representation of the People Act 1983 on 9 January 2019, as Members will be aware. There are three minor issues that I would like to talk about this afternoon, as well as one major one and one potential omission from the Bill. I hope that some of these points can be addressed as the Bill makes further progress.

There has been much huffing and puffing on voter identification this afternoon, as there always is on this topic. It is perceived by some as a means to restrict voting, but I do not believe a word of that. We have ID with us at most times of the day, when we want to collect a parcel or indulge in age-related activities such as going to the pub. I do not think there are many in this House who campaign as actively as I do for civil liberties, and I see absolutely no conflict in this legislation.

[Mr Goodwill]

Has my hon. Friend encountered a situation in which a voter has lost their polling card and, when they are told that they can still go to the polling station, they are astounded that they do not need any form of ID? In fact, many people who lose their polling cards are nervous about going to vote at all, so having ID might encourage people in that situation to go and vote.

[Craig Mackinlay]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that interesting observation. We have all heard this on the doorstep. When people say, “Oh, I’ve lost my card”, we say to them, “Don’t worry, just go!” So yes, perversely the ID card could actually increase turnout, which is the converse of what some people say.

The mischief that clause 1 is intended to address is that of personation. People claim that it is non-existent, and I know that very few cases go to court, but I disagree with those who say it is not taking place. I will not highlight to the House how easy it is and how it has undoubtedly happened in many constituencies. Clause 2, on postal voting, amends paragraph 3 of schedule 4 to the Representation of the People Act 2000, on absent voting in Great Britain. This will restrict the right to a perpetual postal vote to three years, which is good common sense.

Clause 3 brings in a new offence of handling postal votes. Again, a great idea, but in practical terms it is difficult to know how it could really be effective. Let us hope that the threat of prosecution will be enough to bring people away from the appalling activity that, in parts of the country, we would have to call postal vote farming. There have been some convictions for this, which is all to the good. However, I think there is a wider debate to be had on whether postal votes serve the good of the democratic process.

In some local authorities, postal votes arrive two weeks before voting day. I have often wondered how many of those who vote early, who might be floating voters, find themselves thinking in the last few days when the election is getting exciting, “D’you know what? I’ve changed my mind! I wish I’d waited till the end.” That is a problem as we get an increasing number of postal voters. It is almost like that old saying, “For you the war is over”, because they are no longer in the election process.

The increase in postal votes was implemented by the Labour party amid fears that the number of people engaging in elections was going down. I remember, because I am of a certain age, when people had to have a good reason to get a postal vote, such as being on holiday or working away, or being infirm or ill. A debate needs to be had as to whether that was a better process. I value elections and the process of going to a booth, and I am not convinced that the widening of the postal vote mandate that we have seen over the years has not just widened the risk of fraud, harvesting and coercion, away from the reasonable security of the polling station—I have good, robust feelings about the security of the polling station.

On overseas electors, as long as a person is within the net of UK tax they should have the right to vote. Obviously, a person who goes abroad to work for a few years will lose the annual tax charge, but to get rid of their domicile takes a lot longer. A person can be within the net of inheritance tax for a very long time, and it is sometimes difficult to get rid of it completely. I am very comfortable with where this is going.

The change in the Bill that is relevant to me, of course, follows the result of my 11-week trial at Southwark Crown court behind glass, which concluded in acquittal on 9 January 2019. I did not enter the House as the MP for South Thanet to have a lengthy trial based on very abstract and ambiguous legislation. The issue at stake was the construction of section 90ZA of the Representation of the People Act 1983, relating to the meaning of “election expenses,” and section 90C of the same Act, relating to accounting for discounted or free goods and services and the requirement, or not, for a candidate or agent to give assent and proper authorisation for expenditure in order for it to be a valid election expense.

[Mr Steve Baker]

That sounds like a very complex matter, and I am sure my hon. Friend deserves an extra minute to explain it to us properly. I am grateful that he is here to do so.

[Craig Mackinlay]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that assistance.

The matter was tested at the Court of Appeal in front of no less than the Lord Chief Justice, who ruled in summary that authorisation by the candidate or agent is a key feature of an election expense. The Electoral Commission—I make no comment as to its motivation—was dissatisfied with the outcome at the Court of Appeal and took the case to the Supreme Court, which ruled in an entirely contrary way, that spending could be construed as an election expense without receiving formal authorisation or proper deemed authorisation if it is of assistance to that candidate.

Two of the highest courts in the land—one said this and one said that. How on earth is a candidate or agent meant to make any sense of such legislation? I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister for listening to my contributions in the House on this matter and for listening to the private Member’s Bill that I introduced some years ago to amend the 1983 Act appropriately so that proper authorisation has to be given. I now see those words in the Bill almost in their entirety. In clause 16, proposed new section 90C(1A) of the 1983 Act requires clear direction, authorisation or encouragement by the candidate or their agent for an election expense to be so. Thank God we have some clarity.

I would not want to see anybody in this House, friend or foe, go through what I went through. It was not fair, because we had ambiguous legislation. Finally we have a power in this Bill that means we will protect each other for the right reasons. Whether or not we like someone’s politics, it will apply to everybody.

[Geraint Davies]

Is the hon. Gentleman saying it is reasonable for a political party to bus in hundreds of workers and put them in hotels, so long as the agent does not know or authorise it? Is he saying that is a legitimate—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. I am afraid the time of the hon. Member for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay) has come to an end, but I will give him 30 seconds.

[Craig Mackinlay]

I thank the House for its forbearance during those troubled years, and I hope Members will support at least that part of the Bill.

16:44

[Ben Lake (Ceredigion) (PC)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay). The hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara), in his excellent speech, made reference to the way in which the Scottish electoral system is becoming far more inclusive by expanding the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds. Of course, similar efforts are under way in Wales, where the most recent Senedd election saw the franchise extended to all those over the age of 16 with residency rights. As discussions in Wales turn to consideration of the size of the Senedd and further reform of the electoral system, we can say that Welsh democracy is becoming more inclusive, at a time when perhaps the situation at UK level is to the contrary.

Some of the proposals in this Bill are to be commended, including the new sanction on intimidation of candidates and of voters. However, as has been discussed a lot this afternoon, the Bill does introduce a new barrier to democratic participation. As others have eloquently argued this afternoon, the introduction of voter ID requirements is baffling, as it appears to be the Government’s attempt to address a non-existent problem. I appreciate that we will not have agreement on this issue this afternoon, but it is worth reiterating that in 2019 there were 33 cases of polling station irregularities, in an election where more than 32 million ballots were cast. The Electoral Commission’s electoral fraud data details that there have been three convictions for in-person personation since 2014. I understand that we are not going to be able to agree on this point, but surely the Government will consider their own evidence, and the Cabinet Office’s own research found that 27% of those without photo ID were less likely to vote if photo ID was required. When the Minister sums up, it would be good to hear exactly what the Government’s plan is to try to encourage voting among people who have expressed to the Government that they are less likely to vote if photo ID is required.

Another question that arises from the Bill is whether the Government have considered the implications of some of the measures on devolved elections and constitutional arrangements. An example that comes to mind is this year’s Welsh election, where the Senedd general election was held on the same day as the police and crime commissioner elections. If that were to occur again, voters would be required to show photographic ID in order to vote in the PCC election but would not be required to do so for the Senedd election. That exemplifies some of the complexity that the Law Commission identified in its report and the recommendations for electoral laws to be rationalised. My question simply is: have the Government assessed how this would impact turnout and participation in devolved elections? Have there been discussions with the Welsh Government and the Senedd on that point?

Other worrying aspects of the Bill are some of the changes relating to the operation of the Electoral Commission and the strategic priorities of that body, which have been mentioned this afternoon. As the Electoral Commission is funded by, and is formally accountable to, the Scottish Parliament and the Senedd, as well as to the UK Parliament, the UK Government must make it clear that the proposed strategy and policy statement outlined in clause 12 and the related development and approval processes will not undermine the very important relationships that the commission has with the devolved Parliaments. Indeed, the Electoral Commission itself has called for that.

I will draw my remarks to a conclusion, but I will just say that an opportunity has been missed to consolidate and modernise electoral law, which both the Law Commission and, more recently, the Committee on Standards in Public Life have called for. I hope that some of their recommendations can be incorporated into the Bill in future stages.

16:48

[Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)]

I suppose I have been in this place long enough not to be surprised by anything that happens in this Chamber, but I have to say that I am astonished by the level of synthetic outrage that has been generated by part 1 of this Bill. My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), an old friend, gave the game away when he said that it has the word “ID” in it. For him, anything with “ID” in it is a blue rag to a bull. All I can say, as someone who has been privileged to be an international observer of elections on behalf of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, is that ID is common practice around the civilised world. It is not a panacea and it is not going to solve all ills, but it is a useful tool in the prevention of fraud. I think I am right in saying—my hon. Friend the Minister will correct me if I am wrong—that ID has been used in Northern Ireland elections since 2003. If that is so and it is good enough for Northern Ireland, it is surely good enough for the whole of the rest of the United Kingdom.

My main purpose, in taking the Floor for just a few moments, is to say thank you to my hon. Friend the Minister for delivering something for which many of us have been campaigning for some time: the extension of the right to vote, in perpetuity, for expats. I am particularly grateful for part 2 of the Bill and clause 10, which ought to be known as Harry’s clause. Harry Shindler is 100 years old. He is the oldest living member of the Labour party. Harry and I have worked together on this project, with others, for a number of years. It will be a joy to his heart to be able, at the age of 102 or 103, to vote in a general election. Harry could have taken Italian citizenship—he fought at Anzio, came back to the United Kingdom and later retired to Italy—but, proudly British, he refused to become Italian to be able to vote.

At the next general election, Harry will be able to vote. That is one of two issues that expats want to be delivered. We are delivering on one; I hope that Harry and I will both also live to see the day when we deliver on the second, which is the extension of expat pensions in perpetuity.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. To make her maiden speech, I call Sarah Green.

16:51

[Sarah Green (Chesham and Amersham) (LD)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a true privilege to stand here today, among these green Benches, as the Member for Chesham and Amersham.

It should be said that, like so many constituencies, Chesham and Amersham is more than just two towns. We are a collection of proud and vibrant communities, going from the Chalfonts in the south through to the Lees in the north, taking in the Missendens, the Kingshills and so many other villages along the way. Soaring above it all are the magnificent red kites.

In representing the constituency of Chesham and Amersham, I follow the late Dame Cheryl Gillan. I know that many Members and former Members alike mourn her loss. Please let me take this moment to give my condolences to the many colleagues, friends and family members who all sorely miss her. I can only say that I intend to carry on her tradition of speaking truth to power and standing up for my constituents.

Dame Cheryl and I proudly share a Welsh heritage, and it so happens that Chesham and Amersham is something of a destination for Welsh émigrés. One of our most famous late residents was Roald Dahl. If people look closely enough around Great Missenden, they will find, hidden in plain sight, little details and clues to locations from his stories—stories that, like many in this place, I grew up reading.

The inspiration for Matilda’s library is still used by local people today. Danny’s dad’s petrol pump from “Danny, the Champion of the World” can be found, too—along with those pheasants that Danny and his father so loved. Crown House, otherwise known as Sophie’s orphanage from “The BFG”, still stands. I am, however, still on the hunt for a giant peach and a big chocolate factory.

At the heart of the inspiration for many of those wonderful stories is the Chilterns area of outstanding natural beauty, and our woodlands in particular. There is therefore a grim and unwelcome parallel between the story of “Fantastic Mr Fox” and the scene that greets people there today. The damage that Boggis and Bunce and Bean’s diggers wrought as they tore up the land while hunting that Mr Fox echoes the current destruction now taking place thanks to the works around High Speed 2. It is bad enough to watch it from street level, but once you get up and above the works and see the full scale of it, it is devastating. What you see makes your heart sink, where before the views could make your heart sing.

Something else that makes your heart sink are the roads around Buckinghamshire. I call them roads, but they are more like an assault course for unsuspecting drivers. The shocking state of our roads is something that my constituents are desperate to see fixed, but sadly this Government are more interested in fixing a problem that does not exist. There is no evidence of mass voter fraud in this country and yet, with this Bill, the Government want to introduce voter ID at elections. Why? This Bill will result in countless voters being turned away at the polling booth for no good reason. We should be encouraging more people to participate in elections, not introducing barriers to voting. Far from strengthening our democracy, this Bill makes it harder for people to vote and undermines our independent elections watchdog. Like all Members here, I did not enjoy the universal support of every voter, but everyone should be able to cast their vote unimpeded.

It goes without saying, however, that, no matter how any one person voted, every constituent in Chesham and Amersham will be listened to, will be heard and their interests represented in this place by me, and I greatly look forward to working with colleagues across this House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on her maiden speech. I call Maria Miller.

16:55

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I echo your congratulations to the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sarah Green) on not only an excellent maiden speech, but a very gracious one as well? We on the Conservative Benches really appreciate the tribute that she paid to our late colleague. I felt like I was getting to know her constituency all over again after a number of visits there during the by-election. Every village appeared to be a film set and actually was. I did not realise that it was the most photographed area of the country and it is extremely beautiful. The hon. Lady steps into big shoes left by our friend, Dame Cheryl, and I wish her very well in the work that I know she will be doing to well represent the constituents of Chesham and Amersham and, by the sounds of it, to continue the tradition of being a very strong advocate not of HS2, but of her constituents.

Our democracy, like others, is a very fragile thing. Elections are pivotal in the democratic process and I really applaud the Government, but particularly my hon. Friend, the Minister for the Constitution and Devolution, for all that they are doing to put democracy first in their agenda. My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) said quite rightly that the Government have greater responsibility than anybody to ensure that the measures that are put in place are impartial—that they will not be favouring one side or the other. I do not agree with the points that he makes on voter ID; I think that the Bill is absolutely right. Ministers will have to do a great job of work in explaining voter ID to the voters well in advance of any election and I know that they will put that as a priority.

I just want to focus on two measures in the Bill and two measures that are not in the Bill. I would like to highlight my support for two measures, and the first is around the intimidation of candidates. The Bill introduces a new and very welcome electoral sanction to protect those seeking to be elected from abuse either in person or online. The vast majority of people who have stood for election have experienced some sort of aggressive behaviour and this is having a deleterious impact on certain groups. The Minister will know from our conversations the concerns that I have about the impacts on women putting themselves forward for election. We know from research that two out of three women in the UK said that their fear of abuse or harassment was a reason for not pursuing a career in politics. That is not good enough. In a democracy where we are strong because of our representative nature we have to tackle these things head on, so thank you to the Ministers for championing this new sanction in the Bill.

Secondly, there is the accessibility of polls. We sort of take it for granted that everybody can get to vote, but when we look at the evidence in the legislation, we see that the fact that it covers only tactile voting devices is way out of date, so, again, I applaud the Ministers for their tenacity in making sure that the requirement on returning officers is far broader than that; they should be commended for that.

Let me turn to the two issues that I hope I might turn the Ministers’ eyes to as the Bill proceeds through its various stages. The first will come as no surprise to them: it is the length of elections. [Interruption.] There is quite a lot of support for that on these Benches. The Bill is silent on the length of general election campaigns. When I was elected, election campaigns were 25 days. When many colleagues were elected to the Government Benches in 2019, that period was 36 days. The change has happened because we have rewritten the law, and done a carve-out for bank holidays and weekends. It is nonsense that the legislation is drafted in that way. We have to acknowledge and discuss the real consequences for our democracy of the length of election campaigns, but we have not done so enough. Those consequences include the engagement of voters, periods of uncertainty for the economy and the period without an effective Government. The issue is also not covered in the Government’s engagement plan.

Will Ministers please continue to look at this matter, and listen to me again on this gripping subject on Monday when we discuss the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill, when I hope to move new clause 1, which has the support of not only Government Members, but Opposition Members as well?

[Mr Goodwill]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that having a short election would help in situations such as the recent recall of Parliament on the situation in Afghanistan, or the decisions that we have had to make at short notice during the pandemic? Having a shorter election campaign would facilitate a Government being put in place to make those important decisions.

[Mrs Miller]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Of course, he is a co-sponsor—and, in fact, a co-conspirator—on this entire issue, as are many Government Members. I look forward to hearing his dulcet tones on this matter again on Monday.

The second issue that I want to cover is the sensitive matter of the eligibility of candidates in parliamentary elections. There are measures in place that veto certain people from standing in general elections, so this is not a new concept in our legislation. When we are elected we are, as individuals, in unique and powerful positions of trust; we have to accept that. Parties do vet candidates, but sometimes—we know—those procedures do not work as they are intended.

Currently people cannot stand to be elected as an MP if they have been made bankrupt, but there are no similar bars for other—possibly more serious—offences. Anybody who is convicted of a sex offence is not barred from standing for election. This is about existing offences that have been tried in court, not allegations. The Centenary Action Group is suggesting an amendment to bring that offence into scope, so that we can strike a better balance between upholding the democratic freedom that people have to stand for election and safeguarding our constituents, who very often, as we all know, include children and vulnerable adults.

Many councillors who deal with issues such as those we deal with here are subject to quite stringent police checks. Now, I am not advocating that course of action, but we have to think about this carefully so that our positions are not open to abuse. I do not imagine that there are many people in this place who would think that a convicted sex offender would have a place on these green Benches.

17:03

[Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)]

May I first say how pleased I am to see the Minister, my constituency neighbour in Norwich, back in her place? She may have been back before today, but this is the first day that I have been back, so I welcome her to her place.

I will start with a question. If your policies are unpopular with most voters and your own party’s demographics are shrinking, what do you do? Do you change your policies so that your party’s platform is more appealing to more voters, or do you make it harder for people to vote? After reading the Bill, I think we now have this Government’s answer.

Such is the extent of the crisis of democracy, there is truly no shortage of issues that the Elections Bill could have addressed. Our first-past-the-post electoral system already means that millions of people’s votes are wasted. When the House of Commons and the House of Lords are taken together as our legislature, half our legislators are not elected. We do not even have a constitution that is publicly accessible or that has public consent. This Bill does nothing about any of these issues or the many more real problems in our elections and our democracy. Instead this Government are pouring oil on the bonfire of democracy that is taking place not just in the UK but across the world.

When public confidence in the running of elections is at its highest since 2012, we are left to ponder the obvious question: whose interests is this Bill actually serving? It certainly is not the interests of the estimated 2.1 million people who will be put at risk of being excluded from voting because they do not have recognisable photo ID. Nor does it serve the interests of working people and civil society. Their right to freedom of expression in elections through trade unions in campaigning will be hamstrung by punitive red tape and put at risk through the Government’s control of the Electoral Commission. I think it is pretty clear: the beneficiaries of this Bill are this Government and their vested interests. It is this Government who benefit from the disproportionate exclusion of the very voters hit hardest by their policies. It is the wealthy tax exiles, not members of the public, who will benefit from rules that will enable overseas electors to influence parties in elections through donations.

However, as even Conservative Members have noted, the most cynical aspect of this Bill is of course the phantom problem of voter fraud that has been summoned by this Government to create a smokescreen for naked self-interest.

[Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman says that voter fraud is not an issue, yet in my constituency during a by-election less than a month ago, over 30 pre-filled-in voting ballots were found dumped in a bin in a church. My community of Rutland and Melton is perhaps not normally considered a hotspot of voter fraud. If there is not voter fraud going on, why are we currently having to investigate such ballots being found around our country?

[Clive Lewis]

That is a fair point. Let me retort with an alternative statistic for you. There were 34 allegations of impersonation in the 2019 general election, out of 58 million votes. I took out my calculator and that works out that there was 0.0000058% fraud in the last election.

The Government have produced a piece of legislation straight out of the far-right playbook from the United States to look for a problem that does not exist. This tactic is drawn straight from the authoritarian playbook of racist American legislators. Their voter suppression laws have been and are being used to reinstate Jim Crow-era mass disenfranchisement via the back door. The Southern Poverty Law Centre, which has commented on such legislation, says:

“The real reason these laws are passed is to suppress the vote, and that is in fact what happens.”

We have a crisis of democracy precisely because established institutions have failed to represent the public as a whole—failed to challenge economic self-interest in favour of the common good. The truth, as this Government know, is that their ideology of destructive and unequal growth, fuelled by oil and gas, is not shared by the British public. Even the super-wealthy see the uninhabitable world this system is creating. They choose to flee to private islands or hide out in vast compounds in the depths of New Zealand and elsewhere. This Bill, along with the protest ban and the attacks on the independent judiciary and human rights, is a buttress against the public. Authoritarian control is being shored up because this Government know they cannot win public consent freely and fairly for policies that will continue to impose poverty on an ever-greater number of people so that wealth can be extracted for a few. [Interruption.] You sit there looking incredulous, yet that is what your politics and your policies do, day in day and day out.

[Anthony Browne]

I wonder whether the hon. Member is aware that actually voter ID is very common in other countries. You said that it is a racist policy to bring back Jim Crow laws from the US. Are you aware that the world’s most successful multi-racial democracy, Canada, uses voter ID, as well as highly respected democracies such as Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Italy and France? They all use voter ID.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. Before the hon. Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) answers that, can I please remind everybody, on all sides, not to refer to “you”, because that is me, and I have no views on this matter, as you know?

[Clive Lewis]

The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire will also know that many of the countries he mentioned already have ID cards fully in use by their populations. As you well know, we do not have them here. I know you are talking about a regional ID scheme, but if you are talking about a national ID scheme, fine, make that comparison. I do not believe you are, so I do not believe it is a fair comparison.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

“He”, not “you”.

[Clive Lewis]

I will conclude with my question to Members on the Government Benches: how comfortable are they with Government Front Benchers who are eroding the fabric of our fragile democracy? When will they speak up and express misgivings like the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) about the Government’s fleeting, rocky relationship not just with the truth but with democracy? Choose soon, because history will not judge your silence well.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

There will be a five-minute limit from now on. It is nothing personal, Steve.

17:10

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

Mr Deputy Speaker, it is the second time you have done that to me; the first time was my maiden speech.

I welcome this essential Bill. What I want is a fair vote for everyone, and that is why I was very pleased to lead the first Adjournment debate of this Parliament on 19 December 2019. Further to the speech of the hon. Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis), I am clear that in Wycombe, the victims of electoral malpractice are ethnic minorities. Overwhelmingly, it is ethnic minorities whose votes are stolen, in some cases very deliberately.

First, I want to welcome some provisions and then, if I have time, I will say where the Bill could go further. On postal votes, proxy votes and voter ID, I welcome the provisions in the Bill, but I particularly want to emphasise, because I suspect no one else will, the importance in the undue influence measure of provisions about spiritual injury and spiritual pressure. I have thousands of British Muslim supporters in Wycombe, and I know from my friends and supporters that they were accused in the most strident and offensive terms, which I will not repeat, of being apostate, because they declined to vote for the Muslim candidate. That is an absolutely outrageous way to polarise our politics. If I did it as a Christian, there would rightly be national outrage, so I am pleased to see that provision in the Bill.

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech, and I draw his attention to the words of the judge in the Tower Hamlets case, who made the same point. He said:

“The real losers in this case are the citizens of Tower Hamlets and, in particular, the Bangladeshi community. Their natural and laudable sense of solidarity has been cynically perverted into a sense of isolation and victimhood, and their devotion to their religion has been manipulated—all for the aggrandisement of Mr Rahman.”

That is the reality of these sorts of fraud cases.

[Mr Baker]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I am clear that in speaking in support of the Bill I am standing overwhelmingly for my ethnic minority voters in Wycombe. I am absolutely clear about that in my mind. I am clear that they are the most strident supporters I have on this matter in my constituency.

I will not repeat the matters that I raised on 19 December, because that took several times longer than the time I have remaining, so I will point out five areas where the Bill could go further. The first is that many people are incorrectly listed on the electoral roll, entitling them to vote. Many of the issues are already illegal, but there is a strong argument that if the electoral roll was much more tightly governed, the opportunity for criminality, and particularly the misuse of postal votes, would be reduced.

There needs to be a national check for uniqueness, but without a national database. I am grateful to the Electoral Commission for meeting me; I have shown it a technique that could be used with a kind of digital fingerprint to guarantee uniqueness. We need to ensure that people only vote once in the UK. I have seen a WhatsApp message where somebody said, “I have voted in Birmingham; I am now coming to Wycombe to vote against Baker.” I do not mind people voting against me if they are so convicted, as it were, but I do mind them voting twice.

The second point is that people register to vote at an address where they do not reside. I could take Members to a small Edwardian three-bedroom house in Wycombe where 12 electors are registered to vote. We absolutely know that they do not reside there. It is very important that people register to vote only where they reside. It is also important that people do not end up abusing the postal vote system by applying for a postal vote on someone’s behalf and then casting it without their knowledge. We also can give examples of where that can be done, although I do not have time now.

Thirdly, there are instances where foreign nationals here legally in the UK—very welcome they are, too—and with a national insurance number are not entitled to vote. We have examples of some people of Turkish nationality and some EU nationals. In some cases, people just do not know that they are not entitled to vote in a national election. We need to ensure that we tell them. I could give anecdotes of people who find they have inadvertently voted and wished they had not, because they had no intention of breaking the law, so we need to educate them.

Fourthly, I realise and accept that at this stage the Minister almost certainly cannot do anything about the national uniqueness of the electoral roll—I put that on the record so that we can come back to it—but this is an area where I think he could go further. When someone wishes to make an objection to someone’s name being on the roll at a particular address, the name of the objector must be disclosed. That is a reasonable principle of justice to ensure that the accused knows the name of their accuser. The point for me is about when their name is disclosed. It seems that just as an accused person is revealed when they are charged—not when they are arrested—so it could be the case that a person challenging the electoral roll is named publicly only at the moment when someone is charged so that that person knows who their accuser is for the purposes of the criminal justice system and the accuser does not end up exposed to intimidation for challenging registrations on the electoral roll. I make that case because such challenges need to be made and there is a problem with people either not making them or making them and subsequently feeling they were or could have been intimidated.

Finally, the Minister needs to do much more to educate voters about what the law is. For example, I am sorry to say that we cannot assume that just because a postal vote is completed by an elector in their own home, it has been completed freely. I know of one lady from an ethnic minority community who asked to cancel her postal vote because it had been taken from her and given to a candidate. I personally reported that candidate to the police. That is just one example concerning the treatment of women, which is not equal everywhere. In particular, I fear that women are not being given the opportunity to cast their vote freely. However they choose to vote, they should have their choice. In so far as it is up to me, I am not having this country go back to the pre-suffragette era in which women’s votes were abused. That requires us to be realistic and understand that some women cast their votes at home under duress.

I welcome the Bill and am grateful to the Minister, who will have my full support. Let us not listen to some of the nonsense we have heard today.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I apologise to colleagues for this brief intervention, but I have heard that the all-party parliamentary China group has invited the ambassador of China on to the estate next week. As one of many in this place who has been sanctioned by the Chinese Government, I find that reprehensible, because Mr Speaker himself condemned the sanctioning of Members of Parliament here in very strict terms.

I have notified the chair of the all-party group, my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham), as well as the vice-chair, the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), who I see in his place. I wonder if you would give your view, Mr Deputy Speaker, about whether such a visit should happen. The representative of the Government who have sanctioned us, trolled us, broken some of our email accounts and taken our characters around the world is coming to Parliament next week, and I think that is unfathomable.

[Mr Carmichael]

Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. As vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary China group—in fairness, one of 22 vice-chairs—may I say to the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) through you that I very much share his concerns? It is obviously necessary for us to engage in every way possible, but when the engagement is of the nature he described, that goes beyond normal engagement, and that should be a matter of concern across this Chamber.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I am extremely grateful to Sir Iain Duncan Smith for his point of order and giving me forward notice of it, as well as to Alistair Carmichael following on. I am also grateful that he informed the chair of the all-party parliamentary China group. The Speaker and Deputy Speakers are not responsible for the operation of APPGs. In the first instance, I suggest that he put his points to the officers of the APPG in question. Indeed, the vice-chair having said what he did gives incredible strength to the arguments.

Further, if the right hon. Gentleman believes that the APPG has breached the rules, he is advised to contact the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. He might also wish to know that the Standards Committee is undertaking an inquiry into APPGs. As he just stated, it is a matter of public record that Mr Speaker is very concerned about the sanctioning of any Members of this House by the Chinese Government for carrying out their duties as Members of Parliament.

17:20

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

Can I first say to the Minister for the Constitution and Devolution that I am glad to see them back at the Dispatch Box? I also commend them for their passion for the legislation they are bringing forward on behalf of the Government. I do not necessarily agree with the vast majority of it for very simple reasons, and I want to bring my words to three specific points on voter identification, assistance for excluded groups and the regulation of expenditure.

First, on voter identification, I am glad that the right hon. Member for—I can never remember his constituency. [Hon. Members: “Haltemprice and Howden.”] Exactly. It is double-barrelled and it always gets me. I am glad that the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) is here on voter ID. I do not necessarily share the same opinion, for a very specific reason. One other hon. Member, the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke), has already mentioned the OSCE report on voter ID. There has been a failure to recognise in the debate so far not only that the vast majority of nations that use them have used them for a long period of time, but that some of them—for example, Estonia—not only use them to allow a citizen to go and vote, but to allow them full access to the vast majority of records the state owns on them. Therefore, your ID card—your digital ID card—will allow you to read your medical records, your police record and a vast swathe of public information held on you, the citizen. Their digital ID is yours; it is not the state’s.

The idea that also needs to be discussed and highlighted quickly is the idea that we do not have ID numbers in the United Kingdom, including Northern Ireland. The vast majority of us over the age of 15 have a national insurance number and the vast majority of us have an NHS number. Those of us representing Scottish constituencies also have our community health index—called the CHI. The issue about voter ID-specific cards is therefore a worry to me. Why are we duplicating a specific voter ID card when ID numbers already exist? Why go to the expense of creating and duplicating existing structures? I am afraid that I did not hear the answer to that in the Minister’s opening speech, and perhaps they will come back to it, if they wish, in their conclusion.

I think the onus in the legislation is on local government to provide the cards. Where does the ownership of the card reside: is it with the Government or with the local authority? The Minister mentioned the fact that it would not be connected to any databases, and that gives me the idea that it is owned not by the local authority, but by the Government. Therefore, there needs to be clarity about that ID in that it is not connected to any other single database other than someone’s voter number on the voter roll. That needs clarification.

On assisting those who are excluded, there has been no mention so far, for example, of the Gypsy, Traveller and Roma community. A proportion of the Gypsy, Traveller and Roma community still lead a nomadic lifestyle, and they will find it extremely difficult—moving from local authority to local authority or between the nations of the United Kingdom—to access a specific local authority to give them a specific voter ID. Perhaps the Minister can say a few words about that in summing up because the Gypsy, Traveller and Roma community in recent months has found some of the legislation that has gone through this place very difficult.

Then we come to the regulation of expenditure, and I referred in my intervention on the Minister to unincorporated associations. Much has been made by Government Members about the independence of charities, for example. Not all charities that use the word “charity” are actually registered charities; they are usually unincorporated associations. They are the small organisations in each of our constituencies that go about their business doing civic duties and civic activity. But the unethical and unprincipled element of the unincorporated associations which needs to be clarified in this Bill is about how they are utilised to undermine democratic principles and fund political organisations by the back door.

There needs to be clarity in the Bill. The Minister needs to identify why we cannot use existing ID numbers that we already have, and how we can tackle the issue of the Gypsy, Traveller and Roma community and also make sure that unincorporated associations are not a back door to undermining the very principles of democracy across these islands.

17:25

[Damien Moore (Southport) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate to express my support for the new legislation to strengthen the integrity of UK elections and protect our democracy, but I want to begin by thanking the many people inside and outside Parliament who worked so hard, particularly over the last year, to preserve and protect our democratic process despite the ensuing chaos caused by the pandemic. We owe a debt of gratitude to the workers and volunteers who administer our elections, and we owe special thanks to Lord Pickles because without his work and dedication to tackle electoral fraud in our voting system, I doubt this Bill would have come before us so soon.

I also thank my hon. Friend the Minister for the Constitution and Devolution for getting this done despite the competing priorities of Government and her own personal battle. At a time when Government could be forgiven for prioritising other incentives, the refreshing display of focus and determination we are seeing today from the Government reflects a belief in the need to strengthen the integrity of our elections and protect our democracy.

Many Members will recall that only in the last Parliament I put forward my own private Member’s Bill on this topic, and I am glad to say that many of the changes I proposed around postal voting then have found their way into this Bill.

Many Members on the Opposition Benches have argued strongly that this Bill unnecessarily introduces measures that will make it more difficult to vote in future elections, that the UK has relatively low levels of proven electoral fraud, and that voters should feel confident about their vote, or that this might disenfranchise voters. In truth, the opposite is the case. This Bill will strengthen the security of our voting process by introducing a requirement for voters to show an approved form of photographic identification before collecting their ballot paper to vote in a polling station. There are already checks in place to confirm a voter’s identity when they register to vote and to vote by post. However, there are no similar checks in place at polling stations in Great Britain to prevent someone from claiming to be someone else and voting in their name.

This Bill will bring the rest of the UK in line with Northern Ireland, where photographic identification has been used successfully since 2003. For those concerned that any eligible voter who does not have one of a broad range of accepted identification documents will be precluded from taking part in the democratic process, the Bill and the Minister have made it clear that a proposed voter card will be available from their local authority free of charge. Furthermore, the Elections Bill places British citizens’ participation at the heart of our democracy, supporting voters to make their choices freely, securely and in an informed way without fear of interference.

Stealing someone’s vote is stealing their voice, so I welcome the Government’s attempts to stamp out any potential for voter fraud by including sensible safeguards for postal and proxy voting, which will see party campaigners banned from handling postal votes, put a stop to postal vote harvesting, and make it an offence for a person to attempt to find out or reveal who an absent voter has chosen to vote for.

I also welcome the steps taken by this Government to introduce a new electoral sanction to protect campaigners and those standing for or holding elected office from inexcusable intimidatory or abusive behaviour both in person and online, something many Members on both sides of this House have experienced and feel strongly about. As my hon. Friend the Minister has said:

“Robust debate has always been a fundamental part of our democracy, and freedom of expression is part of its appeal—but a line is crossed when disagreement mutates into intimidation and abuse that shuts down free debate.”

Finally, I welcome the steps taken in the Bill to better support voters with disabilities to exercise their democratic right by removing restrictions on who can act as a companion to a disabled voter at the polling station and requiring local returning officers to provide support for a wider range of needs. In my constituency of Southport, this is not only appropriate but necessary to strengthen the integrity of our voting system and ensure voters, irrespective of their age or disability, can participate. Too often during elections, I am contacted by residents—they have an above average age demographic—who are dissuaded from taking part in the democratic process not because of their apathy, but because of a lack of confidence in a system that makes it too difficult to vote in person with a disability.

The Bill builds on the good progress that the Government have made defending democracy. The changes that it will deliver will work alongside the measures in the online safety Bill and the counter-state threats Bill, which were announced in the most recent Queen’s Speech, to protect our globally respected UK democracy from evolving threats and ensure the systems that underpin it are fit for purpose in society today. It will introduce a number of important changes that the Electoral Commission and others have previously argued will bring benefits for voters, including extending imprint rules to digital campaign material, allowing more flexible support for disabled people, and improving transparency. I will be supporting the Bill, and I encourage hon. and right hon. Members across the House to do the same.

17:30

[Beth Winter (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

This Bill is an affront to our democracy. It will interfere with and undermine the independence of the Electoral Commission, it will impose excessive and unnecessary restrictions on campaigning groups and, worst of all, it will not only disallow the voting rights of millions who do not have ID but lead to an even lower level of voter engagement. This Bill is unnecessary, costly and a Conservative power grab.

Although the proposal to introduce voter ID has been widely covered already, I feel that I must emphasise that we should be working to encourage and support the people of the UK to exercise their democratic right to vote, not disenfranchising them. That is particularly likely to be the case for the most disadvantaged groups, who are already the most marginalised in our society.

I would like to bring to the Minister’s attention a joint statement on voter ID by a coalition of 19 Welsh organisations, which highlights how proposals in the Bill risk the disenfranchisement of already marginalised groups in Wales that they work with and represent, including homeless people, people with disabilities, older people, ethnic minorities, young people, Gypsies and Travellers, and the Roma community in Wales. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s response to that joint statement.

In contrast, I am extremely proud that the Welsh Government have taken exactly the approach that I feel is needed by taking action to encourage young people to vote—16 and 17-year-olds voted for the first time in Senedd elections in May this year—and making it easier for people to vote across the board. We are also looking to trial polling stations in schools and colleges to tackle low youth turnout at elections, and we are considering putting polling stations in supermarkets and leisure centres. These steps will make it easier for people to vote and make our democracy a more vibrant one where everyone’s vote counts.

If the Government press ahead with their proposals, my constituents will notice a stark difference between Welsh elections and Westminster elections. They will enjoy easy and accessible elections for local government and the Senedd, and they will face enormous barriers and inconveniences when it comes time to elect their MP. I would be interested to hear what discussions Ministers have had with the Welsh Government on the proposals in the Bill.

There is much more to this Bill than voter ID. It threatens the independence of the Electoral Commission with Government and parliamentary interference. It gives the Government and the Tory party the ability to set the strategic plan for the body that oversees elections. That is significant, as the Electoral Commission has investigated many key Government allies in recent years, including Vote Leave, and the Conservative party for its 2017 election spending. It is clear to me that these proposals will undermine the Electoral Commission and stifle oversight and criticism.

I also have grave doubts about the proposals surrounding third-party campaigners and the impact that they may have on important campaigning groups, charities and trade unions. The majority of campaign work during elections is done by individuals and groups that are not members of political parties, and results in increased voter registration and turnout. As the Committee on Standards in Public Life commented,

“third-party campaigning is a good thing, because it encourages people to vote”.

What we should be doing is putting measures in place that encourage people to vote, as we are doing in Wales. This Bill does the opposite, and I oppose it.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Without my even imposing a four-minute limit, which I am about to do, you did it in four minutes, so congratulations. Four minutes—James Grundy.

17:34

[James Grundy (Leigh) (Con)]

I welcome the Bill. The provisions within it are long overdue. Given how thoroughly the ground has been gone over on some of the main planks of this legislation, I do not intend to go over it again. I do, however, wish to raise a number of technical points relating to the governance of local elections. Having stood in local elections as a candidate, or acted as an agent for more than 20 years in the seat I now represent, I have some experience of that.

First, I welcomed the changes to the nomination process for this year’s set of local elections, whereby only two signatures were required on the nomination paper, instead of the normal 10. This greatly reduced the administrative burden for both political parties and independent candidates in the local elections, leading to a considerable increase in participation, especially by independent candidates and those from minor parties, and making it easier for major parties to field candidates across wards they might otherwise have struggled to do so in. I hope the changes will be made permanent. I understand that this system, or one very similar to it, has been in place in Scotland since 2007 without either incident or much controversy. I hope that such a measure will be incorporated in the Bill.

Hon. Members will also be aware that many metropolitan boroughs are undergoing local government boundary reviews at the moment, meaning that in short order they will have what are known as all-out elections. Most metropolitan boroughs normally elect by thirds, with three-member wards. Broadly speaking, those wards tend to be very large compared with some of the more rural areas, with electorates ranging from roughly 10,000 to 20,000 depending on the local authority.

In all-out elections in three-member wards, the number of candidates can of course triple, so five candidates can become 15. That can lead to very long ballot papers, which can lead to confusion for electors, especially the elderly, and can be very difficult to tally for counting staff, given that candidates from the same party are scattered across the ballot paper. This can turn a count that would normally be completed in a few hours into a daylong event.

I propose that, when multiple candidates are up for election in the same ward, candidates should still be listed individually on the ballot paper, but should be grouped on the ballot paper by political party for the ease of the public in finding their candidates of choice and for the ease of counting staff in tallying votes at the count. That change would reduce confusion for electors and considerably foreshorten the length of local election counts in this type of all-out elections.

Finally, there is the matter of the relatively recently established metro Mayor elections. [Interruption.] I know, I know. Currently, mayoral elections can overlap with local elections in the metropolitan authorities they cover. Unfortunately, this has led to unforeseen consequences for the administration of these elections, particularly the count. Earlier, I alluded to the fact that local election counts in a metropolitan borough such as Wigan can be over in an hour or two in normal circumstances. The recent combined local and mayoral elections in Greater Manchester, including polling day, took three days to administer as opposed to the normal one. On the Friday of the count, staff had verified the ballots cast in the local election by 10 am, but were forced to wait until 4 pm before they could start counting them due to issues with the verification of the mayoral ballots—a six-hour wait before counting could even begin. The mayoral ballots had to be verified again on Saturday morning before they could be counted. Most staff and counting agents were exhausted after three very long days across—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. We have to leave it there. I am terribly sorry.

17:38

[Owen Thompson (Midlothian) (SNP)]

I draw the attention of Members to the fact that I am a member of the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission.

I consider it a privilege to take part in our political landscape, where democracy comes in different shapes and sizes and where it is the voters’ place to march in the streets and to choose who they put in this place. The presence of non-party campaigners—charities and campaign groups in the third sector—add a diversity of voices and expertise to our politics, bringing overlooked issues on to the political agenda and in so doing helping us all to make better decisions. That considered, clause 23 seems almost incomprehensible to anyone who values having a participatory democracy or an engaged society. The clause essentially hands Ministers the power to create conditions on whether certain bodies can take part in the electoral process, or remove them all together. They could be used, for instance, to bar anyone who has been in police custody from campaigning, which would take out thousands of environmental campaigners. It could even be used to create an outright ban for certain organisations, such as trade unions.

Additionally, lowering the spending limit for groups to register as non-party campaigners to £700 essentially hands the Government the power to disqualify any group from campaigning, while the new limitations on joint campaigning could clamp down on electoral pacts. I find that somewhat ironic given that the party of Government here, only four months ago, were calling for just such Unionist pacts in the Scottish elections.

This piece of legislation gives the Government of the day power over what kind of campaigning they consider acceptable during election periods and who can campaign. It is a naked attempt to swing elections in the ruling party’s favour by letting them write the rules for their own re-election. The Government or Opposition parties do not have to agree with what campaigners are calling for, but we should at least accept the right to participate. Instead, by narrowing our public life and stifling what makes our politics pluralistic, this Government are reading the same playbook as Orbán and Hungary.

Even Parliament is being attacked. Clause 23(2) explicitly ensures that this place will have no power to annul a statutory instrument that seeks to amend or remove the list of who counts as a non-party campaigner. This compounds the Bill’s attack on accountability, with the Electoral Commission’s independence being shattered by the new requirement to conform to a strategy document written by the Government, and its powers to prosecute being removed.

These might seem like technical changes, but they tie into this Government’s broader agenda of shrinking participation in extra-parliamentary political life until democracy is something that happens only in this place. If the Government get their way, which, by the sounds of it, looks quite likely tonight considering their insistence on keeping their unfair majoritarian voting system, we will soon be living in a society where the right to protest is severely restricted by the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, where the Electoral Commission is toothless, and where even the process of going to vote is complicated unnecessarily by the requirement for voter ID restrictions.

It is only a few years since similar measures saw the US downgraded by the “Democracy Index” to a “flawed democracy”. Is that the trajectory for this country? Is that really the Government’s vision for a country that they make such a song and dance about loving—a disenfranchised and disengaged electorate with nothing to protect them from the insulated ruling classes fiddling the rules to stay in power?

With so much of what we see from the Government, it is impossible not to draw contrasts. The Scottish Government have increased the franchise to include 16 and 17-year-olds, asylum seekers and those serving custodial sentences with less than a year remaining. Scotland just held its most inclusive election ever, while this Government seemingly advocate leaving politics to the Etonians. Whenever this Government take steps to frustrate democracy, they justify them by conjuring scenes of rampant voter fraud. This simply is not the case and the Bill must be opposed.

17:42

[Mark Fletcher (Bolsover) (Con)]

There have been moments today, listening to Opposition Members, when I have felt like I have been missing my tin foil hat. My hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Tom Randall) and I turn up to all these events united in a purpose, because we both lived through an experience in Tower Hamlets that is incredibly difficult to forget. When I am told that there is no problem with our elections, I find it very hard to square that with my experiences.

One of the key things, as I mentioned in a recent Westminster Hall debate, relates to what happened in Tower Hamlets. There was a tremendous injustice and a court case that overturned an election. Some people involved included one of my political mentors, Councillor Peter Golds. However, we were not campaigning for the Conservatives to win an election. This was not about the Conservatives—for some strange reason, the Conservatives are not a great electoral force in Tower Hamlets. It was very much about an independent group that had won the election, and in fact, the Labour party was the runner-up.

During the campaign, we saw postal vote harvesting on an immense scale. We saw a level of personation that was mind-blowing to those of us who care about our democratic system. We saw intimidation and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) mentioned in what I thought was an astoundingly good speech, “undue spiritual influence”. That had been on the statute book for a long time but no one considered it particularly relevant any more. There was a great injustice and those of us who were political campaigners could see it play out, because after a while we knew what we were looking for. No matter who we complained to—the Electoral Commission or the Metropolitan police—no action was taken.

I appreciate all the points that Opposition Members have made that there is not really an issue because there are very few cases, but we had a court case on these issues that was brought not by any of the authorities that oversee elections, but by four members of the public who acted as electoral petitioners. They were the ones forced to undertake that action, because our system was failing. When people say that there is no issue in this country, that personation is not a problem or that we should be looking at every other issue that has been listed today, I say politely that we have ignored this issue for a long time and our authorities would not act.

The judge in the Tower Hamlets case, whom my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell) quoted earlier, said:

“The real losers in this case are the citizens of Tower Hamlets and, in particular, the Bangladeshi community…Even in the multicultural society which is 21st century Britain, the law must be applied fairly and equally to everyone. Otherwise we are lost.”

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Can my hon. Friend think of any other example of Members saying in this House that victims should be ignored because there is not much of a problem?

[Mark Fletcher]

No, I cannot easily recall such an issue, and I hope that that is never our approach in this House.

I appreciate that Opposition Members have raised many points that they feel equally strongly about, but I just think that they are in the wrong ballpark. If they were being consistent, they would be campaigning to repeal the voter ID laws in Northern Ireland, which are incredibly successful and were brought in by a Labour Government.

I just think that there is a huge inconsistency in what has been happening today. I am no fan of the Electoral Commission, which I think could be abolished and replaced tomorrow with something considerably more successful, but the commission has called for voter identification. My right hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) has repeatedly made the point that international organisations have called for voter ID to be brought in. The vast majority of people in this country have an ID that they use day to day. For those who do not, who are absolutely a fair group of people to talk about, there is a readily available system in the Bill with financial support to ensure that they are not disfranchised. I honestly cannot work out why the Opposition are making such a song and dance about a system that will be strengthened.

[Geraint Davies]

The Tower Hamlets investigation in 2012 found only three cases after 64 allegations, yet on the back of it the hon. Gentleman is making out that we should deny millions of people the right to vote. It is ridiculous.

[Mark Fletcher]

I am pretty sure that I dealt with the point about numbers in the first part of what I said. In regard to the idea that millions will be disfranchised, I think a number of 3.5 million was produced by the Electoral Commission. That is now five years out of date—forgive me if I am off by a year or two—and does not take into account the range of identification that can be used under the Bill, so in fact the number goes down substantially. Further to the point about the Bangladeshi community, 99% of ethnic minority people in this country have some form of identification that would allow them to vote under the Bill, so, again, I cannot quite understand why such a song and dance is being made.

Having trust in our electoral system is so vital to this country. All of us who are willing to stand up for those who have had their votes taken away stand in support of the Bill.

17:48

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher) appeared to accuse some Members on the Opposition Benches of having tin foil hats, but I have to say that that was a particularly shiny and reflective contribution.

The reality is that the Bill will create more problems than it seeks to solve. The short-term effect of voter identification will be to suppress turnout, particularly among people for whom it is already low. As others have said, the Government are effectively trying to stop what they consider to be the wrong kind of voters getting to the polls in the first place. What is someone supposed to do if they turn up on a wet Thursday night, as the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) said, and at quarter to 10, just before the polls close, they discover that they do not have their ID on them? They will effectively be disfranchised because they cannot go back and pick it up. The Electoral Reform Society estimates that at least 2.1 million people without photo ID will miss their chance to vote.

Let us consider what this Bill could have done. It could have introduced automatic voter registration. It could have expanded the franchise to match what is happening in the devolved nations, and it could, as others have said, have created room for experiments to make it easier to vote in different places and at different times from those that we are traditionally used to in this country. I also echo the concerns of the RNIB. I think that Ministers rightly want to ensure that there is support for everyone who has particular requirements when it comes to votes, but that can be a both/and; it does not have to be an either/or.

As my SNP colleagues have already said, this has to be seen in the wider context. The repeal of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, even the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020—all those are laws that enhance the power of the Executive and reduce the ability of voters and legislatures to hold the Executive to account. The Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill, which will be considered next week, means that only the Government—indeed, only the Prime Minister—will know the date of an election, and only the Government will know when the different regulated periods will actually kick in and people can campaign accordingly. That will make it very difficult for everyone else, irrespective of whether they are a political party or a third party, to understand how they are supposed to fit into those regulated periods. On top of that, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill will give the Government increasing powers to shut down dissent and suppress opposition. As for the United Kingdom Internal Market Act, it is the greatest power grab since devolution. The UK Government are now routinely legislating at will, and with complete disregard for the consent or otherwise of the devolved Parliaments.

Let us compare and contrast that with what is happening in Scotland. The Scottish election in May was held on the widest and most diverse franchise ever enacted in these islands: 16 and 17-year-olds, European nationals and refugees with settled status were all acknowledged and welcomed into democratic participation. What this Bill will bring about is a UK Government elected on an increasingly narrow and difficult franchise, and devolved Governments elected on increasingly wide and more inclusive franchises. That will have consequences for the legitimacy and the mandates of those respective Governments. Today, this Government are breaking one of their key manifesto promises while trying to deny the Scottish National party and the Green party in Scotland the right to implement their manifesto pledge on an independence referendum.

There is a tradition in this House of Representation of the People Acts that have sought to widen the franchise and make it easier and fairer for more people in different parts of society to vote. What we are presented with today is a Misrepresentation of the People Bill—a Bill which, possibly for the first time since 1832, will seek to reduce the number of people eligible or able to vote, will suppress democratic participation, and will put up greater barriers to political engagement. European nationals—the Minister keeps asking about this—who could vote in local elections in England are now no longer able to do so, as a direct result of the Bill. That is a reduction of the franchise, and it is part of a wider Tory agenda to centralise and control, but what it will do is strengthen the mandate and the legitimacy of the devolved institutions—and that includes the mandate for a second independence referendum.

17:52

[Alberto Costa (South Leicestershire) (Con)]

Let me directly address the comments just made by the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) by warmly welcoming the Government’s proposals in the Bill, particularly those aimed at finally enshrining in law the rights of certain EU citizens to vote in local elections in England and Northern Ireland, elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly and police and crime commissioner elections in England and Wales.

As Members will recall, I, along with some others, have long championed the rights of UK citizens living in the EU and EU citizens living here in the UK. Safeguarding those rights has been an essential promise in our leaving the EU. In the UK, there are millions of EU citizens who have made it their home, contributing to our economy, wellbeing and culture. Likewise, there are over a million British citizens contributing to the economic wellbeing of the EU countries that they now call home.

Following the motion on citizens’ rights that I put before the House in February 2019, the House reaffirmed its determination to protect the rights of citizens affected by the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. It was the only occasion, as far as I can recall, when the House was absolutely unanimous on a major Brexit issue. I am very proud of having helped to protect the rights of millions of innocent people.

This Bill builds upon those commitments by ensuring that EU citizens with settled status will continue to hold the franchise for local elections in England, elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly and elections of police and crime commissioners in England and Wales. The Bill will provide EU citizens with the necessary protections and peace of mind by ensuring that their voices continue to be heard at local and regional levels in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

[Anthony Browne]

I very much praise my hon. Friend for the work he did on protecting the rights of EU citizens. I think the whole House was grateful to him for that. I support the view on reciprocity. Does he think that the UK Government should encourage other EU countries to enable British citizens who live there to vote?

[Alberto Costa]

I thank my hon. Friend for that excellent intervention. That is exactly the ask that I have for Government Ministers this evening.

For EU citizens who may have arrived and settled after the implementation period’s completion—that is, from 1 January this year—I would like to welcome the additional steps this Government have taken in the form of bilateral arrangements with several EU member states, to which my hon. Friend has just alluded. Agreements are already in place with Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg and Poland. They mean that citizens of those nations who may have arrived after the transition period will also be afforded the right to vote in our local elections, and similarly, reciprocal arrangements will apply to British citizens resident in those countries. That goes beyond the obligations envisioned by the EU in the withdrawal agreement, and the Government are to be commended for their choice to enter into bilateral arrangements with those individual EU member state countries, ensuring that wherever possible we enhance the rights of UK citizens living in those countries as well as the citizens of those countries living here.

[Patrick Grady]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Alberto Costa]

Not at the moment.

I understand that the Government are open to further such agreements with other EU member states, and that is a most welcome prospect. It would mean that their residents and British citizens could benefit from future voting arrangements. As chairman of the all-party parliamentary group for Greece, I recently met the secretary-general of the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Demiris, in Athens, and informed him of the UK Government’s offer to enter into bilateral agreements with EU states on the granting of mutual franchise rights in municipal elections, as envisioned in this Bill. I would welcome the Government writing to me to explain what measures they are taking to proactively encourage uptake of their offer to enter into such bilateral agreements.

[Chloe Smith]

indicated assent.

[Alberto Costa]

I think the Minister is nodding to suggest that she will write to me on that matter.

But the Government have gone further still. EU nationals who do not fulfil the qualifying criteria set by the Bill—for instance, those who have come to the UK post the implementation period completion date of 1 January 2021 and do not hold settled status, but who were elected into a public role as defined by the Bill in schedule 7—have the protection afforded by the provision of part 4 to continue in office for the period of their elected term. Again, this is a sensible, welcome measure to protect the rights of those EU citizens. I will be supporting the Government’s Bill, and I very much look forward to seeing these important rights finally enshrined into law.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. The wind-ups will begin at 6.40 pm. This will be the last speech of four minutes, and we will then move to a time limit of three minutes.

17:58

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I want to take a few seconds to place on record my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sarah Green) on her excellent maiden speech. I am sure it is a matter of easy consensus in the House that Lib Dem maiden speeches are all too rare these days, and I thought my hon. Friend’s speech was exceptionally fine. As a former Chief Whip for my party, I was delighted to hear her declare her intention to prosecute her constituents’ case with an independence of mind to match that of the late Cheryl Gillan.

“If I am ever asked, on the streets of London, or in any other venue, public or private, to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am…then I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.”

Those are not my words, but the words of the Prime Minister. I think we should watch the Division lists this evening with some interest. I have no doubt that he will perform that feat of gastronomic improbability while lying in front of a bulldozer to stop the creation of a third runway at Heathrow.

The difficulty that the Government face in introducing the Bill is that their proposals for voter identification seek to produce a solution for which there is no obvious problem. That is not to say that voter personation does not happen. We have heard instances of it described today, and indeed we knew for many years that it was a substantial and real problem in Northern Ireland. That is why, having identified the problem, it was right for the then Government to act to end it. But to justify the measures in this Bill, the Government should first have provided evidence to show there is a problem, and they have singularly failed to do so.

The hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) said the Bill would have benefited from prelegislative scrutiny, and he is absolutely right. The cost-benefit analysis is to be seen in the pilot that the Government carried out in 2019 when, of the 2,000 people who were turned away from polling stations, 700 did not return, which should give us serious pause before we go down this road.

If the Treasury Bench, having missed the opportunity for prelegislative scrutiny, are able to get this Bill, in its current form, through both Houses—I anticipate that will be a bigger ask in the other place—they should undertake a programme of post-legislative scrutiny to ensure that the promises they make tonight are honoured in the execution.

My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) told me that she appears on the electoral register as Christine Jardine, but her passport shows her married name. That is by no means unusual, as in Scotland one’s name is the name by which one chooses to be known. That sort of thing could have been teased out by prelegislative scrutiny, but it is now too late.

There are many other issues about which I am concerned but, unfortunately, time is against me. I will vote against the Bill tonight.

18:02

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

The first time I went to a polling booth, I brought some ID with me. I assumed that surely I would need to prove who I am, so I was stunned when I was told, “Actually, no, you don’t need to show any ID.” I remember little 18-year-old me thinking that democracy is our most valuable asset, yet anyone can vote in someone else’s name without anybody checking.

It is often said that justice not only needs to be done but needs to be seen to be done, and the same could be said of democracy. Democracy not only needs to be fair; it needs to be seen to be fair. We have to accept that we have a problem in this country. At the last election, a constituent came to me after he went to vote but found that somebody had already voted in his name. There was nothing he could do. His vote was stolen. Would Opposition Members say to him, “Well, actually, the Government should not do anything to stop your vote being stolen in future”?

It is often said, and many Opposition Members have been saying it, that the rate of voter fraud in the UK is very low, but how would we know? By definition, it is a hidden crime. Reported cases are low, but we do not know the actual rate. The truth is that, without safeguards, bad practice drives out good practice, or it can do. Like MPs’ expenses or phone hacking by journalists, if people do bad things and others see them get away with it unpunished, those people will think they can also do it.

I worked for the Prime Minister when he was Mayor of London. I was not as directly involved in Tower Hamlets as some of my hon. Friends, but I knew many of the politicians. The electoral fraud happening there was an open secret for years, totally undermining local democracy. I wondered why nothing was done about it, and I was very frustrated.

[Alberto Costa]

Does my hon. Friend agree that Peter Golds, an excellent Tory councillor, has done so much to highlight that very issue?

[Anthony Browne]

Absolutely. Peter Golds is one of the politicians I talked to at the time, and he has done excellent work in trying to restore trust in democracy in Tower Hamlets. Ridiculously, it was not until 2014 that the courts annulled the election; we should never have been able to get into that situation. There are endless stories in the media about voter fraud. Confidence in the integrity of democracy is being eroded, and there is a clear solution. The Electoral Commission said, after its research, that two thirds of voters say they would have more confidence in the security of the voting system if there was a requirement to show voter ID. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) has said, the OSCE, which normally bothers itself about the emerging democracies in eastern Europe, said after the 2010 UK elections that

“serious consideration should be given to introducing a more robust mechanism for identification of voters.”

I agree with that.

I also agree with Opposition Members that this must not lead to the disenfranchisement of voters. However, as we have heard, 99% of voters already have a photo ID of some sort and those who do not can get free photo ID from their local council. Labour introduced voter ID in Northern Ireland in 2003 and there is no evidence of disenfranchisement there. As I mentioned, many of the leading and most respected democracies in the world have already got voter ID—Norway, Sweden, Canada, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and Austria have it. We are in many ways an outlier in Europe. Voters are losing confidence in democracy in Britain and we have a duty to ensure that democracy is both fair and seen to be fair. We must introduce voter ID, and I commend this Bill to the House.

18:06

[Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)]

I refer to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am pleased to be called to speak in the debate on this Bill as it directly threatens the functioning of our democracy. On 13 July, I held a Westminster Hall debate on the Government’s voter ID proposals, when I made the point that voting is safe and secure in Britain. The introduction of photographic voter ID will only work to reverse decades of democratic progress in the UK. As we have heard, according to academic research 99% of election staff do not think that fraud has occurred in their polling stations and 88% of the public say that they think our polling stations are safe. So this Bill offers a solution without a problem. There was just one conviction for personation out of more than 59 million votes cast in 2019.

The Electoral Reform Society has said that in the US and the UK the richer someone is, the more likely they are to have photo ID, and that gets to the nub of the issue. It does not matter how the Conservative party tries to dress it up, these plans will make it harder for working class, older, black, Asian and ethnic minority people to vote, and for those who are unemployed or disabled to do so. According to the Cabinet Office’s figures, this move is going to cost the taxpayer £120 million over 10 years.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has warned the Government that photographic voter ID will disproportionately impact voters with protected characteristics, and if voters are disenfranchised, it would violate article 1, protocol 1 of the European convention on human rights, which was incorporated into domestic law by the Human Rights Act 1998. The Windrush scandal showed how some communities struggle to provide official documentation, and we have seen the severe consequences of that. Some 3.5 million citizens do not have access to any form of photo ID, and the Government’s solution of free voter ID also does not stand up to scrutiny, because their own research found that 42% of those without ID would not apply for a voter ID card. The Association of Electoral Administrators has raised serious concerns about the huge administrative burden that will be placed on already overstretched local authorities. So can the Minister confirm that the plan is to make councils such as my local Luton Borough Council, which has had more than £150 million stripped from its budget in the past 11 years, deliver and enforce photo ID cards, alongside the added burden of registering millions of new overseas electors, and on top of boundary changes? The proposed plan is not credible and it is out of touch with reality.

In my concluding remarks, I very much wish to echo the comments made by my hon. Friends the Members for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare) and for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter) about our opposition to the Bill’s attack on free and fair campaigning by non-party activists such as trade unions and charities in respect of campaigning for or working with political parties to a joint goal. This legislation erodes our democracy and takes votes and power away from working people, and I will be opposing it.

18:09

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

I can do no better than repeat what my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher) said about voter ID, which has been explored a lot today. I should add that I have heard many odd conspiracy theories from the Opposition in this debate, not least from the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter), who said that Vote Leave was a branch of the Government. I think David Cameron and George Osborne might take issue with that.

In the brief time I have, I want to focus on the parts of the Bill that deal with online campaigning, digital media and digital imprints. Probably one of the most dangerous and pervasive abuses in our political system has come through the growth of social media. I am lucky: I am a man—I do not get the horrific abuse that women get when they stand in politics. Men can have sympathy with that but not empathy, because I have never been told that I am going to be raped and murdered, that my children are going to be killed or anything like that, but women experience that on social media on a daily basis. The provisions in the Bill to crack down on the intimidation of candidates and people who put themselves forward for public services are extremely welcome.

There is an important point to be made about faith in democracy. Lots of people have mentioned the American election, and I also want to do so. What happened on 6 January was an utter disgrace, and everybody who values democracy believes that, but it was mainly amplified to that public by social media and the outputs that stirred it up. We cannot stop that, but when there are other campaigns with conspiracy theories underneath, we can demand that there be an imprint on social media content to say where it has come from.

In general election campaigns, conspiracy theories are pushed that seek directly to undermine the validity of democratic arguments. We in this Chamber may have huge disagreements, but we all know that we cannot have a democracy unless we disagree with each other, and there should be an honest debate about that among us. If stuff is being published and we do not know where it comes from, we have to question its validity. Equally, if we say that it is from the Conservative party, the public will view it as a message from the Conservative party and certain things will be built in in respect of how people interpret and view that.

The steps in the Bill that cover the development of electronic media over the past couple of decades are an important, modern way to address an issue that so far has not been addressed. As an overall package of measures, the Bill has my full support.

18:12

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

Much of the opposition to the Bill has been focused on concerns about voter ID, but there are broader concerns that I wish to address.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights has produced a detailed report of the human rights implications of voter ID, and I commend it and our recommendations to the House. I believe in evidence-based policy making, and from the evidence the Committee heard we concluded that the voter ID measures risk making voting less accessible to some people and will have a discriminatory impact on some voters with protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010, including the disabled, certain ethnic minorities and Gypsy and Traveller communities.

We on the Committee want the Government to explain why they have concluded that a voter ID requirement is necessary and proportionate, given the very low number of reported cases of fraud at polling stations; the even lower number of convictions and cautions; the potential for the requirement to discriminate against voters with protected characteristics; and the lack of any clear measures to combat potential discrimination faced by those groups, including disabled people and older people. I hope that I might hear from the Minister the answers to those question, which were posed by a cross-party Committee of MPs and peers.

Many Members ask why the Government are focusing on voter ID, given the lack of evidence that it is a significant problem. I wonder whether perhaps it is in the Bill to distract us not just from what else is in the Bill that should not be there but from what is missing. Part 4 seeks further to regulate third-party campaigning in elections, but an opportunity to comprehensively update our rules on transparency in political finance has been missed. As other Members have said, the lack of transparency in respect of donations from unincorporated associations is a particular concern.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

The Bill fails to understand the total degradation of democracy through unincorporated organisations. Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that the Government need to grasp that thorn and deal with it?

[Joanna Cherry]

Indeed, I do, but I do not think that the Government want to grasp that thorn. We already know that some Tory and Unionist associations in Scotland are doing rather well out of dark money from such sources.

It is part 3 that contains perhaps the most egregious aspect of the Bill. The Government seek to take to themselves the power to prepare a strategy and policy statement for the Electoral Commission. I know that the Bill also says that Parliament must approve that strategy, but, with the Tory majority on the Government Benches, it is unlikely to be more than a rubber-stamping exercise.

The Speaker’s Committee is the primary mechanism through which the Electoral Commission is accountable to Parliament. It will have the job both of evaluating the commission’s performance against the statement to be produced by the Government and of holding the commission accountable. However, as I understand it, for the first time ever, the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission is now composed of a majority of MPs from the governing party. Accordingly, the independence of the commission and its accountability to Parliament—not to the Government, but to Parliament —is under real threat from part 3 of this Bill. This Bill is not the way to enhance the independence and role of our democracy watchdog. Part 3 needs radical amendment in line with the recommendations by the Committee on Standards in Public Life, including powers to obtain information and an increase in the maximum fine for wrongdoing.

Before I sit down, I will renew the request that I made to the Minister during my intervention. It is very good to see her back in her place, but I would like her to answer this question: how many of the 47 recommendations made by the Committee on Standards in Public Life are the Government prepared to accept and bring into this Bill by way of Government amendment? I would be grateful if she could answer that question in her summing-up.

18:16

[Tom Randall (Gedling) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher) with whom I have campaigned for many days and hours in Tower Hamlets. My first experience of Tower Hamlets elections was the infamous 2014 election, which was later declared void. As a polling agent at Three Mills Primary School in the Isle of Dogs, I watched from afar as voters ran a gauntlet of activists brandishing leaflets. The activists were very aggressive to voters, especially women, as they entered the polling station. When I went in to speak to the police officer about it, he shrugged his shoulders and said, “Tower Hamlets, innit.”

What I saw at Three Mills Primary School was not the worst. The Mawrey judgment quotes a Labour polling agent who said that she was with her husband in the car and people were banging on the windows with leaflets. She said:

“The situation was so bad that I thought there was going to be some sort of accident. I could not even open a door and we had to go down another road.”

An election was stolen in Tower Hamlets, but despite all the intimidation, it did not actually cross the threshold of an electoral offence, so I am glad that that aspect is being tightened up. There has been a constant refrain today that fraud is rare, but it is like a curate’s egg; if it is bad in parts it affects the whole, and it has been partially bad in Tower Hamlets, Slough, Birmingham and elsewhere. I welcome both the reform to handling proxy votes and postal votes and the introduction of voter ID. As Mawrey identified in his judgment, there was at that election in Tower Hamlets an appreciable amount of impersonation by false registration.

I would like to focus the limited time that I have on the police, because there has been constant talk about the fact that there is no evidence of electoral fraud. Well, there will be no evidence if the police do not investigate it. Before the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee this morning, Peter O’Doherty of Thames Valley police said that the situation was much improved. I did not embarrass him by saying that he was starting from a very low base. Mawrey, in his judgment on conduct at polling stations, said:

“In the light of the two other groups of statements, an unkind person might remark that the policemen and polling staff had appeared to take as their rôle models the legendary Three Wise Monkeys.”

There has been a whole catalogue of allegations, and I do not have time to go through them this afternoon. Many of the allegations that have arisen from the Rahman trial have not been investigated by the Metropolitan police. I think that there is scope—I appreciate that it is outside the scope of this Bill—for complex electoral fraud to be taken out of the hands of the police and possibly placed with a specialist unit.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am listening very carefully to what my hon. Friend is saying. Do his comments basically throw out this argument that only three people have ever been prosecuted?

[Tom Randall]

I will give my right hon. Friend one example, of which there are many. In the Mawrey judgment of 2014, Kabir Ahmed was found to have used a false address to register a vote, but no further action was taken. Having had no action taken against him, he was elected as the Aspire candidate in the Weavers ward by-election in Tower Hamlets last month. There are people who are getting away with it, and people will continue to get away with it if no action is taken.

I support the Bill but there needs to be a culture change, with the development of specialist officers, perhaps from a different agency within the police, other than a county force. I welcome these measures, but they are just a start. If we are going to increase the number of convictions for electoral fraud, we need to ensure that we have the systems in place properly to investigate these cases, and then we will have numbers to show how widespread the problem can be.

18:20

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

As you may know, Mr Deputy Speaker, Aneurin Bevan famously said that in the struggle between property and poverty, as poverty grows, property will attack democracy. That is what we see today. We need to answer the question: cui bono? Who benefits? We know that 3 million people do not carry photo ID and that 40% will turn away from voting if they forget their ID, which people often do. Something like 30% of people do not vote in general elections anyway, and our focus should be to increase the franchise, not decrease it.

Poverty is spiralling upwards. Universal credit is going to be cut, and 7 million people in Britain are in hunger and poverty. We know that the plan is to tax jobs with national insurance, rather than a progressive tax. This Bill is designed to ensure that those who are hit hardest—the poorest—will find it more difficult to vote. I very much support evidence-based policy, but this is not evidence-based; it is looking for the evidence. To tighten up on personation, we could just get the police to do more checks within the existing law.

These provisions are part of a pattern of consolidating power and preventing democracy from turning the Government over to another political party. We have seen it in the banning of the right to peaceful protest; with the up and coming review of judicial power; with the boundary changes, the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 and even the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011. All those things consolidate power and do not support the fundamental values that all parties should support: justice in the rule of law, democracy and human rights. We see the restriction on what charities and communities can say, while we allow overseas donors more influence in our politics. We see the Electoral Commission politicised. We saw the rhetoric of the Trump supporters, who said, “Stop the steal”, alleged personation and stormed the White House. We are supporting that sort of thinking, which is without basis.

This Bill is a missed opportunity. As has been mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter) and others, in Wales we are moving forward with democracy, including through 16-year-olds having the vote and proportional representation options in local government. Our focus should be to enhance, renew and embolden our democracy, our human rights and the rule of law, but I fear that this Bill is part of a pattern to diminish them, and that over time we will all regret this fundamental mistake.

18:23

[Robbie Moore (Keighley) (Con)]

Even before I was elected to be MP for Keighley, it was clear that the framework in which elections took place left the door wide open to electoral fraud. In fact, my constituency is deemed to be at high risk of such fraud, with one in five reports of electoral fraud coming from the West Yorkshire area. These includes cases of bribery, false statements and exerting undue influence on voters.

The key reason for the problem is the national postal vote system. Changes to the system are required. The Bill shows encouraging signs, shortening the time in which someone may register to vote by post, prohibiting political campaigners from handling postal votes and limiting the number of electors on whose behalf someone may hand in a postal vote. All those measures will help, but I fear that we could do more to protect the postal vote system. That is why I politely ask the Government to explain how the changes to postal voting will help to stop electoral fraud in its entirety. What reassurances can the Government give that merely shortening the amount of time that someone can have a postal vote before simply renewing it will stop such a postal vote being misused in that shortened period? Equally, how will prohibiting political campaigners from handling postal votes in public stop what we all know goes on behind closed doors?

In Keighley there are known situations with the head of the household guaranteeing multiple postal votes to candidates, postal vote harvesting, false registration, undue pressure being put on individuals to pass across their postal vote, and multiple individuals being registered to a single household when it is known that they are not all residing there in their full capacity. In Keighley we have known about these issues for far too long.

I hope that the Bill, as it progresses, will help to address some of these issues, but I would like the Government to go further to address some of the others. For example, why not have postal votes apply only for specific reasons such as for those who are sick or elderly or those who can demonstrate that they have to be away from home for specific reasons? More debate is worthy on that. Likewise, the right to automatic renewal for a postal vote should be reviewed, and when a reapplication is made for a postal vote, proof of identity must be given.

Our elections are precious. What I want to see in Keighley and beyond must be shown to work and must be done to improve our electoral system, particularly for postal voting.

18:26

[Kenny MacAskill (East Lothian) (Alba)]

I have two caveats and two anecdotes. First, all legislation requires to be taken in the round and in the general context that Members have mentioned, and that is why I am concerned about this Bill as a whole as opposed to just specific aspects. Secondly, it is a privilege to be an elected Member, and we have a duty to nourish and cherish democracy. In that respect, this Bill fails because it challenges democracy.

Of my two anecdotes, one describes what needs to be done to support the democratic aspects that we should all welcome as elected Members, and the second is a warning about the apparent direction of travel. First, I commend to the Minister, and anybody else in the House, “Civic Literacy” by Professor Henry Milner, formerly of Laval and of Oulu in Finland, whose book explains what works about why people vote. He correlated and contrasted why countries such as Belgium and Australia, where it is a criminal offence not to vote, have a lower turnout than in Scandinavian countries where it is not. He explains the aspects that matter. Much of it is not about legislation. It is perhaps very laissez-faire, but in a much wider context. It is about public sector broadcasting, which is why comments made about Channel 4 are important. It is about a quality press. It is about civic education in schools. These aspects are important and that is the direction of travel we should be pursuing.

[Alberto Costa]

The hon. Member is explaining some very noble values about the democratic process, all of which I agree with, but can he explain why in his current party, Alba, and in his previous role as a Scottish Government Minister in the SNP Government, he denied hundreds of thousands of Scottish women and men the right to have a vote in the Scottish independence referendum, which was about breaking up the very nation that they came from? Can he please explain why there was a democratic deficit there?

[Kenny MacAskill]

That is a past debate, and the people of Scotland will decide the future in a referendum in due course.

Let me deal with the warning. It comes not from the OSCE, which has been mentioned, but from the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. I remember a friend of mine who worked for it sending me a CD of what had happened in the Soviet Union as it was about to collapse and before the Commonwealth of Independent States—the Russian Republic—was formed. The Heritage Foundation moved in, giving lectures to people who became oligarchs—governors of huge tracts of land probably larger than the United Kingdom. They were taught two things about democracy. The first was, “Don’t bother about turnout, because the lower the turnout, the higher the leverage for you.” That was teaching people about democracy—those who had not had it since the Russian revolution. That is the direction of travel. Secondly, it was about demonising minorities. When we look at Putin’s Russia, we see voter suppression and indeed demonisation of those from the Caucasus or elsewhere.

That is the threat that we face. We have to take actions as a legislature that encourage people to participate, not take steps that discourage people from participating. That is about electoral politics, and it is what we should be doing.

I cannot remember who it was, but someone made comparisons with the southern states of the United States and what we are sadly seeing replicated not just in the Jim Crow states but in other states. The direction of travel is not perhaps yet south of the Mason-Dixon line, but the direction being pursued by this Government with this piece of legislation and with wider aspects is most definitely the type of thing that we used to think was left in the history books. Those things come from the Mason-Dixon line and were fundamentally about disenfranchising people whom those in power did not wish to vote, because they knew that the ability of the wider electorate to participate would threaten their power. It is for that reason that I oppose this Bill.

18:30

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

As many colleagues have said, confidence in our electoral system and the ballot is crucial. Members may not be aware, but we experienced a very troubling incident in 2017 in Newcastle-under-Lyme. It was a case of incompetence, rather than fraud. In the general election of 2017—I was not a candidate then—approximately a thousand people in Newcastle-under-Lyme were disenfranchised. Approximately 500 students who tried to register when the snap election was called were not registered in time, and approximately 500 people who sought postal votes because they were going to be on holiday did not get their postal votes. This was incompetence, not fraud, but an investigation was carried out. It did not go to an election court.

The Association of Electoral Administrators produced a report on the failings of the council at the time, and the strength of feeling among the voters who missed out on their votes was very strong. One constituent of mine, who applied for a postal vote and did not receive it, wrote a letter to the chief executive of the council:

“For me a vote is not merely a mark on a paper; it symbolises my inalienable right to choose who shall govern me and set the tenor of my life for the next five years. This right and privilege has been won for us over many generations by brave and dedicated men and women and is a precious gift. That I have been robbed of it by some administrative incompetence is an insult to their legacy and a grave disservice to me.”

That is how he felt about being robbed by incompetence, but we have heard today of many cases where people have been robbed of their votes by fraud.

We have heard anecdotal evidence from individual Members. My hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Anthony Browne) gave us a case, and my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) described very troubling cases. We have heard Government Members who directly experienced what happened in Tower Hamlets in 2014, including my hon. Friends the Members for Gedling (Tom Randall) and for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher). People had their votes stolen. We all want people to vote—I completely subscribe to what my constituent said—but we want them to vote once, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe said—and the Bill will ensure that happens. It will make sure that people cast their votes once and once only, and not under the duress that we have seen far too often.

I do not have time to go over some of the other cases, such as the Slough case or the Birmingham case, which was described as “a banana republic”. The judge in the Slough case at the election court in March 2008 noted:

“Recent legislation has addressed and largely solved the problem in Northern Ireland but there has been a flat refusal to introduce similar measures in mainland Britain.”

Finally, over 13 years later, we are introducing those measures that were called for under a Labour Government way back in 2008. I welcome what the Minister said in her speech.

People need ID to collect a parcel, to use a concessionary bus pass and even to attend Labour party meetings, as others have said. People need ID to vote in Northern Ireland—legislation introduced by Labour. As for the issue of why people should be disenfranchised by not having ID, we have addressed that point in the Bill—there will be free ID for everybody. We will make sure that people know how to access that ID.

I do not have time to go into the other elements of the Bill that I support. I hope to be able to engage with the Minister as the Bill progresses through Committee and on Report. I wholeheartedly support this legislation.

18:33

[Paul Bristow (Peterborough) (Con)]

My constituency regrettably has seen proven electoral fraud. Local politicians have gone to prison for electoral offences. It continues to have wards with postal vote rates that are way in excess of the national average, and local concerns about personation were sufficiently serious that my council had to install CCTV cameras at polling stations on the day I was elected.

One of the worst arguments—we have heard it regularly today—against voter ID at polling stations is the claim that there is no evidence of a problem. We have a system that largely operates on trust, making it almost impossible to detect acts such as personation, yet critics of this Bill take this failure to detect an undetectable crime as proof that it does not exist. Quoting statistics is pointless. Any of us can have a guess at its prevalence, but, having spoken directly to people who were denied a ballot paper because they were marked as having already voted when they had not, I take my own view.

Opposition Members may say that there is not a problem, but leaving our electoral system wide open to abuse is a problem in itself. That is what their argument misses completely. When most members of the public realise how unchecked and uncheckable our system is, they are shocked. That applies doubly to new arrivals in our country who have often seen electoral malpractice for themselves in other parts of the world, where elections are far from clean. It was notable that during the Government’s photo ID trials, confidence in our electoral system increased most among ethnic minority voters. They are at the most risk of having their votes stolen and are most grateful for safeguards to protect them.

I turn quickly to postal votes. Irregularities are easier to spot, but they can also occur at much greater scale. In 2008, three Peterborough Labour candidates were convicted of electoral fraud offences. They were diverting postal ballots to addresses that they could access, collecting them and fabricating votes. The main protagonist received a 15-month sentence. That was postal vote harvesting with a capital H, but other forms have not been addressed. Still now, every time we have an election, those same activists are seen and photographed leading postal vote teams and pictured telling at polling stations. They have even turned up to recent elections. At my count in 2019, the same people were there.

This is an issue in Peterborough and we cannot bury our heads in the sand. For that reason, this is a long-awaited Bill that will clean up democracy and restore faith in the electoral system in my city.

18:36

[Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)]

Last week, my daughter turned 18. It was a day of enormous pride for her and for us. I would like to say that she was proud because she was adopting her civil responsibilities in full, but actually it was because she could buy alcohol. She celebrated the fact by getting on her bicycle with a friend and bicycling off to the local village shop. She was asked to present ID, and she was delighted to do it as part of the rite of passage of attaining adulthood. The point of that story is that we require ID when the act being undertaken is either important, such as collecting parcels or learning to drive a car, or personally damaging, such as buying alcohol or cigarettes or—it is a cheap joke—attending Labour party conferences.

In my view, the right to vote is as important as collecting a parcel, and the theft of a person’s right to vote is every bit as damaging to society as the 17-year-old buying a pint. It is a key right of citizenship, and it provides the basis of all our political power in this place and around the country. I think it extraordinary that up until now this right has not been protected in any way other than being asked to give a name.

ID protection is long overdue to maintain public confidence in the system. We have heard evidence from hon. Members that two thirds of the population would have their confidence in the fairness of voting increased with photo ID, and research on the 2019 voter ID pilot found that, among ethnic minorities, a staggering 97% of respondents said that they had increased confidence in elections being free from fraud and abuse when photo ID was used. This is really important stuff. We heard from my hon. Friends the Members for Gedling (Tom Randall) and for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher) that this is not the PR stunt that Opposition Members suggest; it is real. The risk of electoral fraud does exist and needs to be tackled. We have heard the evidence from Tower Hamlets and Birmingham that shows how ethnic minorities in particular are targeted and how their rights have been infringed more than any other section of our community’s. They deserve better, and that is why the Government are standing up for them.

The Opposition say that there is no hard evidence of fraud. That is reminiscent of the response of the Labour Government back in the day when they were faced with the evidence of organised electoral fraud by sitting Labour councillors in Bordesley Green and Aston. The election judge said that

“there is likely to be no evidence of fraud, if you do not look for it. Especially if a policy decision is made not to look for it.”

He described Labour’s position as

“a state not simply of complacency but of denial.”

We have heard the same denial today.

I am glad that the Government are not complacent on electoral fraud and, unlike Labour, not in denial. Photo ID is the right step to take to look for fraud. I fully support the Bill.

18:40

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to close this debate on behalf of the Opposition, and I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare), for Norwich South (Clive Lewis), for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter), for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) and for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) for their contributions. I congratulate the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sarah Green) on her excellent maiden speech, really bringing her constituency to us—I feel that we lived part of her beautiful constituency—and I am sure she will be standing up for her constituents in the years ahead.

Labour will be voting against this legislation today. My colleagues on the Labour Benches behind me have laid out in clear terms the dangerous consequences of this legislation. This legislation is unnecessary and expensive, costing £120 million over the next 10 years—at least. It will have a chilling effect on democracy and it is an attack on free and fair campaigning. This legislation will see legitimate voters turned away from polling stations and local councils tied up in mountains of red tape and expense. It is a shameless attempt by the Government to rewrite the rules and rig democracy in favour of the Conservative party.

If passed, this legislation will reverse decades of democratic progress in the UK. The Government have not been honest with us here today or with the British public about the true intention of this Elections Bill. It has been presented as a quick-fix solution to polish up our democracy and introduce integrity into our system, but the truth is that our democracy does not have an issue with integrity; it is the Conservative Government who have the issue with integrity.

This Bill will disenfranchise millions of voters, and we all know that the Tories do better in elections the lower the turnout. It is time to be honest about what this Bill will mean in practice. This Bill will make it harder for working-class people, older people and people with disabilities, as well as black, Asian and minority ethnic people and people with learning disabilities to vote. If Government Members do not agree, will the Minister commit to an equalities impact assessment to work out whether this will be true? There are concerns from so many groups representing those people saying that it will disenfranchise those groups of people.

The voter ID proposals are simply not proportionate to the risk of voter fraud. The Electoral Commission’s own advice, following the pilot schemes in 2018 and 2019, is that

“we are not able to draw definitive conclusions, from these pilots, about how an ID requirement would work in practice”—

how will it work?—

“particularly at a national poll with higher levels of turnout or in areas with different socio-demographic profiles not fully represented in the pilot scheme.”

It very clearly concluded that the significant staffing and financial impact was disproportionate to the security risk of voter fraud. In the pilot, more than 1,000 people were denied a vote because of a lack of ID—1,000 people. Even if one person lacked their ID to vote, that should be a reason to rethink this Bill entirely.

Local by-elections took place across Great Britain between January and March 2020 and there were eight Scottish council by-elections in the autumn of 2020, and there are just three cases of voter fraud under investigation. This is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut and risks disenfranchising the 3.5 million people who do not have a photo ID for the sake of a tiny handful of fraud allegations. In 2019, there was a record turnout of 59 million votes, as many Members have said, but just one conviction for personation. Someone is more likely to be struck by lightning three times than to be convicted of voter personation, so why put in place this Bill?

[Alberto Costa]

I have sat here patiently and listened to the hon. Lady’s comments. I must confess I am not sure what Bill she is referring to. She is making a litany of allegations which are beyond surreal, if there is such a phrase. Can she please explain clearly why she thinks the people of Britain, who are astounded that there is not some form of proper voter ID, should not be given that security and certainty when going to the electoral vote?

[Fleur Anderson]

We do not have a national ID card and this image of people bursting out trying to get to the polling station at all costs is not the experience. It is hard to encourage people to vote. It is hard to encourage the most marginalised groups to go out and vote. They are the groups that will lose out the most from this. They find it hard to go out and get an ID. They will be the ones who will be turned away, who will not remember to bring the ID, who will not be able to bring it. All the rules on how to get this free photo ID are not clear: how will they go down to their town hall, what will they have to prove? There is barrier after barrier for the most disenfranchised people, as has been raised by many Members.

My hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead raised the issue of the barrier for young people and older people. My hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South spoke of the disenfranchisement of those hit hardest by the Government’s policies. My hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley raised the concerns of 19 Welsh organisations—surely Conservative Members cannot just disregard those disadvantaged groups. She also raised the amazing work of the Welsh Government to make voting easier, while this Government will be making voting more difficult.

My hon. Friend the Member for Luton South raised the disproportionate outcome of these measures. My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) raised the important issue of the glaring omission of student ID cards from the list of IDs. My hon. Friends the Members for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) and for Swansea West made passionate interventions about deeply concerning issues of voter suppression that is in keeping with the US Republican party. We cannot be deluded by Ministers into thinking the voter ID laws we are debating today are any different from the dangerous laws passed by the Republican party. The parallels we have drawn and the similarities are worth serious investigation. American civil rights groups have been fighting for years to combat restrictive voter suppression laws, particularly those affecting ethnic minority communities.

It has been asked, who opposes these measures? Leading civil rights groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the Southern Poverty Law Center came together to warn the UK Government that UK Government voter ID policies will harm democracy. Did this make the Minister think twice about that policy? When Age UK said that compulsory photo ID will make 4% of over-70s—that is equivalent to 360,000 people—less likely to vote, did the Minister reconsider that policy? When Lord Woolley of Woodford, director of Operation Black Vote, said in evidence to the Joint Committee on Human Rights that

“tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, might be impeded by this imposition, clearly it is not proportionate and could actually have a monstrous negative effect”

did this make the Minister reconsider her policy? And when the Royal National Institute of Blind People raised serious concerns about the impact of these measures on blind people, did that make the Minister rethink the policy?

On the provisions on joint campaigning, these clauses are an attack on freedom of speech and association and undermine the independence of trade unions, charities and advocacy organisations. I was working for a charity when the gagging law came into place and saw the chilling effect on democracy. These measures are completely unnecessary. They risk tying up organisations in red tape and risk effectively gagging charities and pressure groups, who are a vital voice for marginalised people in our elections, but they will err on the side of caution for fear of falling foul of this law. That will have a chilling effect on our democracy with far-reaching impacts.

These measures are illogical. Political parties and non-party campaigners are different; they have vastly different expenditures at election time. It is unfair to apply these regulations jointly to such different organisations. The measures also breach key principles set out by the Committee on Standards in Public Life, as has been raised by Members.

Trade unions represent millions of working people, but the Government have shown in this Bill a commitment to cut those people out of our democracy. On foreign donations, the Bill is another example of the Conservatives bending the rules to benefit themselves. That is a wholly unnecessary change that weakens our electoral integrity.

If the Conservatives were serious about improving democratic engagement, they would extend the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds, as well as concentrating efforts on registering the millions of adults in this country not currently on the electoral roll, starting with automatic registration. If they were serious, they would increase transparency and avoid opaque practices such as the use of private emails for Government business. They would be building pathways to voting, not putting up barriers.

This Bill is not necessary and not proportionate. It is a waste of taxpayers’ money that creates more problems than it solves. It reverses decades of democratic progress and needs to be completely overhauled.

18:50

[The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mr Robin Walker)]

I thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and all hon. and right hon. Members who have contributed this afternoon. It is a pleasure to once again take part in a full debate in this Chamber. May I take the opportunity to welcome the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sarah Green)? I congratulate her on a very gracious maiden speech and the kind tribute that she paid to her predecessor, who was a dear friend of so many on the Government Benches.

I welcome the opportunity to close this debate as the Minister with responsibility for elections in Northern Ireland, a part of our United Kingdom where photographic ID has been used successfully to support the integrity of elections for a number of years and where, thanks to legislation introduced by the last Labour Government with cross-party support in both Westminster and Northern Ireland, there is a higher degree of confidence in the integrity of elections than in any other part of the UK. One of the hon. Members from the SNP, who is no longer in his place, intervened to ask the Minister for the Constitution and Devolution about the evidence from Northern Ireland, and I want to talk a bit about that.

As we have heard, voters in Northern Ireland have first-hand experience of one of the measures at the heart of this Bill: the requirement to show photographic ID at polling stations. That requirement is an accepted and non-controversial part of elections in Northern Ireland that has been in place for decades and enjoys cross-party support. Although turnout in Northern Ireland is, historically, usually lower than in Great Britain, in the first election after the introduction of photographic ID, turnout in Northern Ireland was unusually higher than in England, Scotland or Wales.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

We have heard a lot of spurious arguments today about voter ID. Was that not exemplified just now by the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson), who said that low turnouts favour the Conservative party? There was a 59% turnout in 2001. I would like to erase the history of Tony Blair, but I believe that he had a 166 majority.

[Mr Walker]

My right hon. Friend makes a powerful point. Certainly, in my experience, the higher the turnout in my constituency, the higher my majority has turned out to be.

This measure in Northern Ireland has helped to prevent electoral fraud, and it has not affected participation. Labour Ministers said at the time of its introduction—I want to quote this in full—that the measures

“will tackle electoral abuse effectively without disadvantaging honest voters,”

ensuring

“that no one is disenfranchised because of them.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 1 April 2003; Vol. 646, c. 1248.]

They added that

“the Government have no intention of taking away people’s democratic right to vote. If we believed that thousands of voters would not be able to vote because of this measure, we would not be introducing it at this time.”—[Official Report, 10 July 2001; Vol. 371, c. 739.]

I do not always agree with pronouncements from the Front Bench in the era of Blair and Brown, but in this case they were 100% right. There is no evidence that ID has negatively impacted turnout. Levels of satisfaction with the electoral process are usually slightly higher in Northern Ireland.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I endorse what the Minister has said. We as a party will be walking through the Lobby with the Government tonight to support the Bill. Photo ID has been a success for Northern Ireland. We can vouch for that. It has stopped fraud and corruption. I had a discussion with the Minister earlier. The RNIB has expressed some concerns about the legislation. Will he agree to meet the RNIB to discuss those concerns?

[Mr Walker]

I am certainly happy to offer that meeting. My hon. Friend the Minister for the Constitution and Devolution mentioned earlier that she has had a number of meetings with the RNIB already and has been working with it, but she will continue to meet it as the Bill progresses, because that is vital. I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s illustration of the support for this measure in Northern Ireland.

[Brendan O'Hara]

rose—

[Mr Walker]

I want to address some of the evidence that the hon. Gentleman’s party asked for. One survey conducted just a few years—

[Brendan O'Hara]

It is on that point.

[Mr Walker]

I will address the point that the hon. Gentleman’s party raised. One survey, conducted by the Electoral Commission in 2009 under the last Labour Government, just a few years after the introduction of photographic ID in Northern Ireland, found that 100% of respondents in Northern Ireland experienced no difficulty with presenting photographic ID at polling stations. As part of its post-election questionnaire in 2019, the Electoral Commission reported that 83% of voters in Northern Ireland found it very easy to participate in elections, as opposed to 78% across Great Britain, including, of course, Scotland.

[Brendan O'Hara]

Can I just clarify whether the Minister is drawing a clear and direct parallel between the situation in Northern Ireland in the 1990s and the situation in the United Kingdom in 2021? Is there a clear and direct parallel that joins the two that explains this legislation?

[Mr Walker]

The hon. Gentleman should want us to learn from what works in one part of the UK for the whole of the United Kingdom. I am very pleased to see the United Kingdom aligning further, with Northern Ireland leading the way as Great Britain takes forward a measure to protect the integrity of elections, which has been tried and tested to great effect in Northern Ireland.

Some of the wider claims we have heard in today’s debate are simply not borne out by the experience of Northern Ireland. They echo some of the scaremongering when this Government successfully introduced individual electoral registration. Many Opposition Members cried that that would result in mass disenfranchisement, but we saw the effect in the last UK general election, when a record number of people were registered to vote. The Minister for the Constitution and Devolution, one of the hardest working Ministers with whom I have had the pleasure to work and herself no stranger to Northern Ireland, excellently articulated the reasonable and considered approach we are taking across the Bill.

We heard a number of very powerful speeches in support of these measures from my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay), my right hon. Friends the Members for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill), for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale) and for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), my hon. Friends the Members for Wycombe (Mr Baker), for Southport (Damien Moore), for Leigh (James Grundy), for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher), for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa) and for South Cambridgeshire (Anthony Browne), my right hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke), and my hon. Friends the Members for Gedling (Tom Randall), for Keighley (Robbie Moore), for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell), for Peterborough (Paul Bristow) and for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew).

I want to try to answer some of the points that have been raised and some of the questions that have been put to me in Members’ contributions. Before I do, however, I think it is worth reflecting on the work undertaken to get to this point and the long pedigree of some of the measures in the Bill. This is not just a product of the Government or the Cabinet Office; it has been inspired, informed and enhanced by the input of a wide variety of organisations and individuals. We are grateful to a number of parliamentary Committees, many of whose thoughtful contributions are reflected in the measures and some of whose Chairs we heard from in today’s debate. To highlight just a few individuals, the important contribution of Lord Pickles has been critical in understanding the very real risks and challenges our electoral system faces. Similarly, the reports by colleagues in this House, as well as by the House of Lords Select Committee on Democracy and Digital Technologies, have highlighted key considerations, from the need for more transparency in areas of digital campaigning to political finance.

Along with the valued contribution of the electoral sector experts, I know the Minister for the Constitution and Devolution has been meeting a wide range of organisations in the voluntary and community sector, which have raised some important points and will play a vital role in ensuring that the detail that will be developed in secondary legislation will meet the needs of all those who manage and use our electoral services. In particular, she is committed to continue engagement with people with disabilities, other minority groups and some of the key groups of vulnerable people who have been all too often, as my hon. Friends the Members for Wycombe and for Bolsover pointed out, the major victims of electoral fraud.

I want to turn to some of the specific questions that have been asked. The hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) and her colleague the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare) asked about an impact assessment. I would direct them to the 21-page equality impact assessment and the 120-page impact assessment published alongside the Bill.

The hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) and the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) asked about the recommendations of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. I welcome the report published by the Committee in July. As the Minister for the Constitution and Devolution said, the recommendations will be given full and proper consideration, and the Government will respond. In fact, I should point out that we are bringing forward measures in the Bill which are closely linked to recommendations made in that report, such as a new requirement on political parties to declare their assets and liabilities over £500 on registration, and a restriction of third-party campaigning to UK-based or otherwise eligible campaigners.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) made a powerful speech, as he always does. Like many on the Government Benches, I happen to disagree with him on this particular one, but let me point out that the Government research he quoted also found out that 98% of people across the age groups have access to accepted forms of photographic ID already, 99% of people from ethnic minority groups have that level of access, and 99% of those aged between 18 and 29 already have an acceptable form of photographic identification.

The hon. Members for Ceredigion (Ben Lake) and for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter) asked about important issues of engagement with the devolved Administrations. Devolution means that we already have different arrangements for devolved and reserved elections. We do engage regularly and I can offer him the reassurance he sought that the strategy document will not undermine the partnership between the Electoral Commission and the devolved Administrations.

There are many other points that I would like to address, but I will not have time. Let me conclude by thanking hon. Members for all their valuable contributions. The Bill will place British citizens’ participation at the heart of our democracy and will keep it modern, secure, transparent and fair, so that our democracy can continue to thrive. I know that my hon. Friend the Minister for the Constitution and Devolution will do an excellent job of steering it through Committee, and I look forward to a lively debate in the next phase of its passage. I commend the Bill to the House.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

18:59

Division 60

Ayes: 230

Noes: 329

Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 62(2)), That the Bill be now read a Second time.

19:14

Division 61

Ayes: 327

Noes: 228

Bill read a Second time.

Elections Bill (Programme)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),

That the following provisions shall apply to the Elections Bill:

Committal

(1) The Bill shall be committed to a Public Bill Committee.

Proceedings in Public Bill Committee

(2) Proceedings in the Public Bill Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Wednesday 3 November 2021.

(3) The Public Bill Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.

Proceedings on Consideration and Third Reading

(4) Proceedings on Consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which proceedings on Consideration are commenced.

(5) Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.

(6) Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings on Consideration and Third Reading.

Other proceedings

(7) Any other proceedings on the Bill may be programmed.—(Scott Mann.)

Question agreed to.

Elections Bill (Money)

Queen’s recommendation signified.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 52(1)(a)),

That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Elections Bill, it is expedient to authorise—

(1) the payment out of money provided by Parliament of—

(a) any expenditure incurred by a Minister of the Crown under or by virtue of the Act, and

(b) any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable under any other Act out of money so provided,

(2) the payment out of the Consolidated Fund of any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable under any other Act out of that Fund, and

(3) the payment of sums into the Consolidated Fund.—(Scott Mann.)

Question agreed to.

Business without Debate

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Commons Chamber

Business Of The House (9 September)

Ordered,

That, at the sitting on Thursday 9 September, proceedings on the business determined by the Backbench Business Committee shall be entered upon immediately after the conclusion of the remaining stages of the Rating (Coronavirus) and Directors Disqualification (Dissolved Companies) Bill, and, notwithstanding the provisions of paragraphs (2) and (4) of Standing Order No. 14 (Arrangement of public business) insofar as they relate to the timing of half days, may be proceeded with until 5.00 pm or for three hours, whichever is the later, and shall then lapse if not previously disposed of; and those proceedings may continue, though opposed, after the moment of interruption.—(Scott Mann.)

Delegated Legislation

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),

Insolvency

That the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act 2020 (Coronavirus) (Extension of the Relevant Period) (No. 2) Regulations 2021 (SI 2021, No. 718), a copy of which was laid before this House on 21 June, be approved.—(Scott Mann.)

Question agreed to.

Education

Ordered,

That Jonathan Gullis be discharged from the Education Committee and Nicola Richards be added.—(Mike Freer, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.)

Local Policing

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Commons Chamber

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Scott Mann.)

19:28

[Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)]

I am delighted to have secured this Adjournment debate. The safety and security of our people and their property is one of the primary roles, if not the primary role, of any Government. In this country, we are lucky that we have in our police forces, a body of dedicated, professional men and women, ready and willing to take upon themselves the heavy duty of policing our country, by consent of the public, and ensuring their safety. In the Conservative party, we have a Government who are committed to supporting the police service, and all those who serve in it, to carry out their increasingly complex and difficult job—it is in our DNA. It was Sir Robert Peel, the father of the modern Conservative party, who, through his Metropolitan Police Act 1829, created the first civilian, professional, centrally organised police force for Greater London, established on the principal of policing by consent. This is about recognising

“always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.”

That is why the Conservative party has committed itself to putting 20,000 more police on the streets of England and Wales, backed by a £750 million recruitment campaign, and we are giving police enhanced powers to crack down on violent crime. As a party, we are committed to maintaining the local, democratic accountability of police forces throughout England and Wales through elected police and crime commissioners.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for initiating this debate. The simple and sad reality in the west midlands is that in 2010 we had 1,821 community officers but by 2018 we had 716. Despite the efforts of our PCCs, David Jamieson and Simon Foster, all that the Government are promising in the next stage is 1,000 officers. That means we will be more than 1,000 police officers down on where we were in 2010. Does the hon. Member understand the real concern that there is on behalf of beleaguered communities such as Stockland Green in my constituency, which is seeing serious rises in crime and antisocial behaviour? In all honesty, the Government have let the police service and the public down.

[Andrew Bowie]

The hon. Gentleman raises an incredibly important point. All of us who represent communities across the whole breadth of the United Kingdom understand the importance of having a locally visible police service so as to maintain public safety and, in essence, make people feel safer. That is why the Government are investing so much in the recruitment of more police officers. If the hon. Gentleman is suggesting, as I think he is, that more could be done and more police officers should be recruited in the west midlands, I absolutely support him in that call and urge the Government to listen to him. If more police officers are needed in the west midlands, that is exactly what the west midlands should get.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate and support what he just said about community policing. The difficulties to which the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) referred are replicated throughout the whole of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that community policing, to which he has referred, with local faces and compassion, understanding and an unwavering desire to serve the local community, is what is needed? Furthermore, does he also agree that the creation or enhancement of such a force needs the necessary investment and funding?

[Andrew Bowie]

I absolutely agree with everything that my hon. Friend said. Given that we are speaking about police forces throughout the whole United Kingdom, we should pay special recognition to the Police Service of Northern Ireland, which does so much on a daily basis, in incredibly difficult circumstances that are not faced by any other police service in this country, to maintain the peace and safety of the people in my hon. Friend’s constituency of Strangford and, indeed, throughout the whole of Northern Ireland. I am glad that he brought that point to the House.

Policing is, of course, devolved. That decision was taken in 1999 and is one that I wholeheartedly support, for I believe that, just as with our continued support for locally elected police and crime commissioners, the power over such things should lie at the level that is the closest possible to the public. But that does not mean that policing exists in a vacuum or silo, and that is even more true in the digital age. Our forces co-operate on a number of fronts, up and down the country. That being the case, I envisaged this debate as an opportunity for MPs from every part of the United Kingdom—we have heard from the west midlands and Northern Ireland—and of all parties to reflect on the challenges faced by local policing in their constituencies, whether because of geography, financing or the impact of covid-19.

Let me give some examples. In my constituency, following the tragedy on the railway at Carmont last year, we saw the British Transport police keeping passengers safe and working closely with Police Scotland to secure the site and assist the investigation. In the largest joint operation to take place in Scotland—and perhaps throughout Britain—Operation Venetic involved police forces throughout the UK and the National Crime Agency. It resulted, in July last year, in 59 arrests; the seizure of £7 million of laundered cash, along with guns, ammunition, explosives, stolen vehicles and industrial pill presses; and a major haul of drugs of every classification. It ended in the takedown of a digital platform, EncroChat, used by criminals around the world to get poison into all our communities—technology that did not respect borders, political or geographical.

In the north-east of Scotland, which is my part of the world, we have seen many examples of what is known, perhaps too blithely, as cuckooing. It is the last step in what is often referred to as county lines drug trafficking, where dealers from large cities expand their operations into smaller towns. They endeavour to exploit young and vulnerable people to sell drugs, carry cash and weapons, bringing violence, coercion and abuse. They may also take over a vulnerable person’s house. Again, this is where policing blurs lines between public protection and being present and knowledgeable in the communities where officers live and work, acting on intelligence that has been passed on by colleagues in the north of England or the Metropolitan police.

That brings me on to the subject proper of local policing, particularly the presence and visibility of local officers. Even today, I have obtained figures that show a serious reduction in the number of beat bobbies since 2017—almost 80 officers in A division of Police Scotland alone. Of course it can be shown that the number of national officers has increased, but that is of little value to someone who has been broken into in Kemnay or in Laurencekirk in my constituency. Our hard-working officers on the frontline in Aberdeenshire, which I am lucky to represent, deserve to be fully resourced, and I am sorry to say that the closure of stations across my constituency will only heighten the problems. Communities such as Portlethen, which I represent, deserve more police patrolling in their streets, just as they do in the west midlands and in Northern Ireland. Indeed, if Portlethen police station closes, officers will be based 10 miles away in Stonehaven.

Sadly, despite the excellent work of individual officers and cross-border working on so many issues, we have seen over the past few years an increase in the centralisation of police services in Scotland. In 2013, we saw the loss of local accountability following the merger of eight police forces in Scotland into Police Scotland, which is governed by the Scottish Police Authority and accountable solely to Scottish Ministers. In 2017, we saw the closure of the Aberdeen and Inverness Control Rooms, which followed Dumfries, Stirling and Glenrothes, with the whole country now covered by Dundee, Motherwell and Glasgow.

It is now questioned whether Peel ever said that

“the police are the public and the public are the police”,

but that very principle is at the heart of how the police in the United Kingdom operate. Very often, it is about the presence of the police in the community that can make people feel safer and more secure. At the very heart of that principle—at the very heart of how we police this country and of how our people are protected from harm—is the idea of local community policing, by which I mean a police presence in each local community.

Police Scotland, especially the north-east division, is an excellent police force. Its officers carry out their duties diligently and with commitment to the people of the communities they serve. I am proud to say that I often hear constituents praising police officers, but I fear that the work that they do, particularly in the Old Grampian police area in the north-east of Scotland, is being undercut by decisions being made elsewhere.

Across Scotland, since 2015, 134 police stations have been closed, including five in Aberdeenshire, a large part of which I am privileged to represent. In Aberdeenshire, notwithstanding the incredible work of local police officers, crime has increased by 5% in this period. Figures show that police numbers have dropped by almost 80 since 2017. How is the main priority of local policing—keeping people safe through a community-based approach—to be achieved if we do not have the numbers or the proper resources? Our communities and our hardworking officers on the frontline deserve better.

I know that the Minister on the Front Bench has no responsibility for these decisions being taken in Edinburgh, but as a constituency MP, I have had hundreds of emails and letters about local policing matters since my election to this place in 2017. Although I know that, by the powers of his office, he cannot effect most of these decisions, I believe that I have a duty as a locally elected representative to raise these concerns brought to me by my constituents in this sovereign parliament of the United Kingdom, to which I have been lucky enough to be elected.

In response to a local consultation on the proposed closure of its police station, more than 100 residents of Portlethen, a large and growing commuter town on the edge of Aberdeen, expressed their concern that a permanent presence in their community would be lost. Many people expressed their concern that, on the occasions that they had knocked on the door, there was no one in; and few people had called in due to the common knowledge that it was unstaffed most of the time. However, to me that is a result of understaffing and a lack of investment, not an argument to close the station and create a hub at Stonehaven, 10 miles further down the coast. Portlethen is a growing town, close to Aberdeen city, on the east coast main line.

I am not for one minute suggesting that I or the community are wedded to the existing building—having visited it, it is clear that it is not what the public expect of a modern police station—but to remove the permanent physical presence of the police from Portlethen altogether is a move based on budgetary decisions in Edinburgh rather than on the needs of the local area. It will mean that police officers will be worked even harder than they are; that they will, by necessity, provide a more reactive service with less ability to provide proactive intelligence gathering; and, ultimately, a reduction in the level of community policing that we know is valued by all our constituents across the UK.

The North East division of Police Scotland is 60 officers under establishment. We know the pressure that police services across the country are under, not least in this year of dealing with enforcing covid regulations, securing the G7 and preparing for COP26, on top of all their usual duties. The closure of Portlethen police station, as an example of a move away from having a permanent police presence in our communities, is a worry to many people. I urge those in charge to look at alternatives—not necessarily maintaining the present building, but using imagination and investment to build a better and more visible police force in my part of the country.

Let me be clear that I do not blame Police Scotland. I do, however, point the finger of blame at others with responsibility. For example, one of the biggest barriers to keeping police offices open, even for a few hours a week in more rural areas, is actually non-domestic rates. This issue is not specific to Scotland, but Police Scotland’s capital spending is ranked at 38 out of the 42 UK forces when considered per employee. I wonder whether we would be seeing these decisions in Scotland today if we had more local accountability in Scotland—elected police commissioners, or even local authority police boards with a connection to local communities.

Every constituency in this House is represented by passionate, committed Members of Parliament. We know and hear the concerns of our constituents on a whole heap of issues every day. I could not not raise those concerns when presented with this opportunity today. I therefore thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for indulging me in raising on the Floor of the House what is nominally a devolved issue. I also thank the Minister, who I know will join me in thanking all those in the police service across the entire UK for keeping us safe; will commend the police forces for their incredible cross-border work across our one nation; and will reiterate our commitment to and our championing of local policing, be that in Aberdeenshire or anywhere else on these islands.

19:42

[The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)]

I heartily endorse my hon. Friend’s closing remarks. We offer our eternal thanks to those who keep us safe on a daily basis. I am privileged to see them in operation at close hand, and have done so for more or less the past decade. My admiration for them grows every day. As he said, they have our thanks both individually and collectively, as a United Kingdom body of men and women to be admired and protected.

I commend my hon. Friend for bringing his constituents’ concerns to the Floor of the House. One of the great characteristics of our democracy, which I have outlined to my constituents again and again—not least during the Brexit debates that raged in this country—is that somebody can get hold of us by the lapels in the high street in Andover or in Portlethen, and give us a good shake; then, on a Tuesday evening, we can show up in the House of Commons and grab the Minister responsible by the lapels, and give him or her a good shake; and the Minister in turn can grab the Home Secretary or, indeed, the Prime Minister, and give them a good poke about something that matters to people in a relatively small community. I am hesitant to raise the spectre of Brexit in this debate, but as I said to my constituents at the time of the referendum, “What would the Interior Minister of a new United States of Europe care about the police station in Portlethen or the number of police officers in Andover?” It is marvellous that we are able to bring these issues to the Floor of this House and to debate them with the people who are responsible.

Sadly, though, as my hon. Friend pointed out, in this case I am not my proxy, for policing runs only in England and Wales. I am therefore obviously twice removed in the situation. First, it is obviously a devolved matter. Secondly, it is a matter that falls under operational independence. It is effectively for the chief constable in each area to decide on strategy, workforce planning, and the buildings and vehicles deployed in aid of the protection of the communities they serve. Although they will obviously listen closely to local communities, it is fundamentally their decision. Having said that, I do understand the strong concern that my hon. Friend has raised about the notion of presence. One of the key concerns that we all hear as constituency Members of Parliament is this concern about police presence: the idea that there should be governed, guarded space in the public realm; that every street in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland should be safe for public use so that people can go about their business unmolested; and that the guardians of that should be the police.

This was illustrated to me very strongly back in 2011, when I was deputy Mayor for policing in London and Assembly Member for West Central. There was a horrible murder in Shepherd’s Bush, and the then borough commander in Hammersmith and Fulham—a chap called Kevin Hurley, who went on to be the police and crime commissioner in Surrey—called a public meeting that I attended. There was a row of people at the front of this very large public meeting, with 300 people there, and one of the issues that came up was the fact that Shepherd’s Bush Green police station was not open 24 hours a day; it was closed at night and people were concerned about it. Kevin said, “That’s great: I will reopen the police station if you want me to. Now tell me, which police officers would you like me to bring in off patrol to man the desk?” Of course the audience said, “No, no—we don’t want you to do that.” He then said, rather smartly, “Well, why don’t we leave the lights on so it looks like it’s open?” They thought that was a jolly good idea because the police station was a proxy for presence. It was as important to them as I know the police station in Portlethen is to my hon. Friend’s constituents.

By the way, while that might not be a suitable building, it is a small, handsome stone building with a great history to it, as my hon. Friend said, as part of the former Grampian police, so I can see why there is disappointment locally that it may be closing. I know that he is engaging very closely with Police Scotland and has been quite innovative in his suggestions of a replacement—not least, I understand, some presence in the local Asda, which might also be a useful proxy for a police station and somewhere that police officers could operate from. However, as I say, I am twice removed from that decision. I urge him and his constituents to keep up that engagement with Police Scotland, not least because, if the police station does go, that underlines the need for, exactly as he said, a strong presence on the streets of Portlethen, as he wants across the whole of his very beautiful constituency.

I urge my hon. Friend to keep pushing on this, not least because in England and Wales there is a desire, as the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) mentioned, that we are trying to fulfil with the recruitment of 20,000 extra police officers. Of course, that is 20,000 gross. The overall recruitment over three years will in the end, to backfill retirements, need to be about 45,000. That will push many police forces up to levels of policing that they have not seen for some time. On top of that, a lot of police and crime commissioners are recruiting beyond their allocation from the police uplift so that some parts of the country will have more police officers than ever before. The Kent constabulary, for example, can already boast that it has the highest number of police officers that it has ever had in its history.

In response to the hon. Gentleman’s challenge, which is a fair one, I urge him to look to his police and crime commissioner to do the same as a number of other commissioners and put their money behind their own part of the recruitment campaign. West Midlands is doing well. There is a large allocation of new police officers coming, but there is always more that can be done. I urge him to support us in trying to get the maximum number of police officers we can for the money that is allowed to us.

I am very pleased that my hon. Friend underlined the integral nature of Police Scotland—the vital part that it plays in the architecture of UK policing. It is absolutely the case that, while the governance and accountability framework for Police Scotland is devolved, its role in the safety of the whole United Kingdom is absolutely critical. UK policing can only succeed or fail as a whole. This was neatly outlined to us—I was pleased that he mentioned it—with the advent of Operation Venetic. This extraordinary operation—a magnificent achievement by the National Crime Agency, which of course works across the whole of the UK—cracked open the bespoke criminal communications system known as Encrochat. It revealed some awful horrors across the whole of the United Kingdom that we were able to get ahead of. Chief among them was the targeting of Scotland by organised crime specifically for the trafficking of drugs. My hon. Friend mentioned some of the remarkable results that continue to come from the intelligence gathered as part of that operation.

The most impactful result for me was that, as part of Operation Venetic, Kent constabulary was able to bust open a factory in its county that was manufacturing street benzos—benzodiazepines—specifically for use in Scotland, where they are a plague in places such as Glasgow, causing so many drug deaths, which are a terrible tragedy in Scotland. They were being manufactured for export to Scotland. As part of that raid, the police recovered 27 million tablets, which for a country of 6.5 million people is quite a few tablets each and a hell of a lot of money that would have been drained out of Glasgow, all of it leading to degradation and misery north of the border. The role that UK policing can play together, particularly to suppress drug supply and take on organised crime, and the critical nature of Police Scotland in that, has never been more important.

I was very pleased just a few weeks ago to pay a very interesting visit to Police Scotland to see the work that it is doing, not least at Gartcosh, its crime campus. I am very impressed by the work it does and by the leadership of Police Scotland at the moment, but I am convinced that there is always more we can do together, not least because the drugs problem in Scotland—the solving of which is as dear to my heart as solving it in Andover or anywhere else in England and Wales—is one we will only crack together. Scotland has some advantages, in that the ability of gangs to get drugs into Scotland is restricted. There are basically two roads in and two rail lines in, give or take, which gives us enormous opportunities for interception, but the greater sharing of technology, the putting together of our heads and the binding of our efforts as one United Kingdom to confront this plague and crime will be successful. That is a key part of our “Beating crime plan”, which we published just before the recess, making sure that we work together as a whole country in fighting crime, at the same time as getting the basics right.

One of the chapters in our “Beating crime plan” is about excellence in the basics, and it speaks to the desire of local policing. You, Mr Deputy Speaker, I and every Member in this House want to ensure that our constituents know they are safe, feel safe and see that they are safe on a daily basis, because the brave men and women of Police Scotland, Hampshire police, West Midlands police, the Police Service of Northern Ireland and all those police forces are able to be out there, visible, doing their job and protecting us all for the good of the whole.

I do not think that my hon. Friend should in the slightest apologise for bringing this matter before the House. This is what we are here for. If we are not here to talk about the problems, worries and concerns of our individual constituents, what on earth is the point?

Question put and agreed to.

19:51

House adjourned.

Draft Occupational Pension Schemes (Administration, Investment, Charges and Governance) (Amendment) Regulations 2021

Tuesday 7th September 2021 General Committees

The Committee consisted of the following Members:

Chair: †Christina Rees

† Baker, Duncan (North Norfolk) (Con)

† Buchan, Felicity (Kensington) (Con)

Butler, Dawn (Brent Central) (Lab)

† Clarkson, Chris (Heywood and Middleton) (Con)

† Coyle, Neil (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)

† Drummond, Mrs Flick (Meon Valley) (Con)

† Everitt, Ben (Milton Keynes North) (Con)

† Griffiths, Kate (Burton) (Con)

† Hillier, Dame Meg (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)

† Howell, Paul (Sedgefield) (Con)

† Jupp, Simon (East Devon) (Con)

† Mak, Alan (Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty's Treasury)

† Opperman, Guy (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions)

† Osborne, Kate (Jarrow) (Lab)

† Rodda, Matt (Reading East) (Lab)

† Stephens, Chris (Glasgow South West) (SNP)

† Tami, Mark (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)

Chloe Freeman, Committee Clerk

† attended the Committee

Second Delegated Legislation Committee

Tuesday 7 September 2021

[Christina Rees in the Chair]

Draft Occupational Pension Schemes (Administration, Investment, Charges and Governance) (Amendment) Regulations 2021

14:30

[The Chair]

Before we begin, may I encourage Members to wear masks when they are not speaking? That is in line with current Government guidance and that of the House of Commons Commission. Please give each other and members of staff space when seated and when entering and leaving the room. Members should send their speaking notes by email to Hansardnotes@ parliament.uk.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Guy Opperman)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Occupational Pension Schemes (Administration, Investment, Charges and Governance) (Amendment) Regulations 2021.

Thank you, Ms Rees, for your chairmanship.

The regulations continue the Government’s reform of the defined contribution automatic enrolment pension schemes. Thanks to automatic enrolment formulated under the Labour Government, brought forward under the coalition and very much expanded under this Government, 10 million-plus of our citizens are now saving 8% in occupational pensions. That is something of which we should all be very proud and it affects each and everyone’s constituency; there are over 10,000 members in pretty much every constituency up and down the country, sometimes many more than that, who are now paying into an automatic enrolled pension.

The regulations ensure that the best interests of those savers are driving the administration, governance and investment strategies of those schemes. We are introducing a new value-for-members assessment that will ensure that members of smaller schemes are not suffering from poorly governed, underperforming schemes. The regulations also require the trustees of certain occupational DC schemes to publish information on the performance of their investments for the first time and we will ensure that the competition on overall member value replaces a narrow focus on cost. By allowing occupational DC schemes to smooth performance fees within the charge cap, it will make it easier for trustees to pay higher fees but only where they have evidence that that will produce greater returns to members.

The Government are genuinely committed to building on the success of automatic enrolment with a consolidated, innovative, member-focused market for saving in occupational DC schemes. I commend the regulations to the Committee.

14:32

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

We are told that this instrument seeks to increase the requirements placed on trustees of occupational defined benefit schemes in order to require trustees of some schemes to disclose investment returns and demonstrate value for members. It also aims to increase flexibility by altering the rules on the charge cap and other technical changes.

As my colleagues in the other place set out yesterday, we understand that the proposed changes are designed to enable and encourage DC schemes to invest in a broader range of assets, including private equity and venture capital, the theory being that that will benefit the British economy and indeed the interest of pension scheme members. I am told, however, that the Government have been lobbied heavily by the private equity sector on this matter. Given the pressure on time, and the issues being discussed in the Chamber, I ask the Minister whether I may write to him to explore some of the more detailed issues within the regulations.

[Guy Opperman]

I would be happy to write to the hon. Gentleman in full detail in response to any and every question that he wishes to raise.

[Matt Rodda]

Thank you.

14:34

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

I know that we want to be quick, but I have a couple of general comments and questions. As someone with a trade union background who has been on a picket line and taken industrial action to preserve occupational pension schemes, it is a topic close to my heart. I know that the Minister appreciates that and the work of those of us who serve on the Work and Pensions Committee on that issue, and indeed the impact of the Carillion inquiry, which raised key questions about pensions.

The proposed regulations are fair, but the Minister will recognise the ongoing issues associated with smaller pension pots, which can become uneconomic for both the providers and the members. Just how is he going to ensure that members’ interests in those smaller schemes are protected? Is he looking to enhance the auto-enrolments? There are still too many people excluded. How will the Government also ensure that there is not a sizeable gender pay gap? Will he also consider lowering the age of the threshold for ongoing auto-enrolment membership?

14:35

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

I should declare my interests as a trustee of the parliamentary contributory pension fund.

The regulations raise the issue of the fees for small pension funds. To echo the comments of the hon. Member for Glasgow South West, although the auto-enrolment scheme was a great leap forward in enrolling people in jobs that never had pensions before, many people will jump from small pension scheme to small pension scheme, with small pots in those different schemes. Some of the those schemes will survive and some will wither away over time. Does the Minister have any plans to look at the fees for the auto-enrolment scheme, and in particular the gender equality issues that affect that? Is he looking to transfer transparency from the proposed scheme to other schemes?

14:36

[Guy Opperman]

I can briefly answer both points. To take the 2017 automatic enrolment review, which is starting from the first pound and obviously extending automatic enrolment, it is absolutely the Government’s intention to achieve that by the mid-2020s. It is obviously a process that needs to be gone through with the Leader of the House and with the Prime Minister. It is slightly above my pay grade as to when that comes in, but it is definitely the intention, and we have gone on record to say that it will be in place by the mid-2020s.

In respect of consolidation and small pots, the hon. Member for Glasgow South West will be aware from his work on the Select Committee that we are doing a lot of work on de minimis small pots to ensure that they are not swallowed up by the charges. We are bringing forward legislation to address the issue faced by people with multiple small pots that are eaten away by charges. We are consulting on how to legislate, engaging with industry, the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association and other organisations to achieve that. The findings of the 2017 review will make a great difference in terms of the gender pay gap and the extent to which there is a pensions disparity. I am happy to write to both hon. Members in more detail to set out things so that they have a full version from me.

Question put and agreed to.

14:37

Committee rose.

Ministerial Correction

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Ministerial Corrections

Tuesday 7 September 2021

Education

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Ministerial Corrections

Topical Questions

The following is an extract from Education Questions on 6 September 2021.

[Nick Gibb]

We are committed to arts education. The proportion of those who are taking at least one GCSE in an arts subject has remained broadly stable over the past 10 years. We are also committed to very significant funding for arts and music projects, with £620 million over the past three years, including £79 million for the 119 music education hubs and £148 million for the music and dance scheme. We are very committed to the arts and to drama in our schools.

[Official Report, 6 September 2021, Vol. 700, c. 20.]

Letter of correction from the Minister for School Standards, the right hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Nick Gibb).

An error has been identified in the response I gave to the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves).

The correct response should have been:

[Nick Gibb]

We are committed to arts education. The proportion of those who are taking at least one GCSE in an arts subject has remained broadly stable over the past 10 years. We are also committed to very significant funding for arts and music projects, with £620 million over the past five years, including £79 million for the 119 music education hubs and £148 million for the music and dance scheme. We are very committed to the arts and to drama in our schools.

Petition

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Petitions

Tuesday 7 September 2021

Post box in Stoke village

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Petitions

The petition of residents of Stoke and surrounding communities in Plymouth,

Declares that Stoke village is a vibrant shopping centre and the heart of the local community but that the loss of its post box is detrimental to the local shops and community; and further that the Royal Mail should restore its post box in Stoke Village as soon as possible.

The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to support the campaign for a new post box in Stoke Village and call on the Royal Mail to install it without delay.

And the petitioners remain, etc. —[Presented by Luke Pollard, Official Report, 7 July 2021; Vol. 698, c. 1020.]

[P002673]

Observations from the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully):

It is important that people and businesses can access postal services and can send and receive letters and parcels regularly. That is why the Government are committed to ensuring the provision of a sustainable, efficient, accessible, and affordable universal postal service in the United Kingdom.

Royal Mail is a fully independent private business, and the Government do not have a role in the day-to-day operational matters of the company, including the location of specific post boxes.

However, the Office of Communications (Ofcom), as the independent regulator for the postal sector, requires Royal Mail to ensure there is a post box within half a mile of the premises of at least 98% of users of postal services. Royal Mail is also required to report annually to Ofcom the number of customer complaints received about the provision and/or location of post boxes.

Royal Mail has advised the Government that the post box in Stoke Village was situated on private land and Royal Mail had received a request from the landowner to remove it. Royal Mail is required to remove a post box if it has received such a request from the landowner.

In such circumstances, Royal Mail reviews the provision of postal services in the area to decide whether a post box should be reinstated elsewhere. Royal Mail advises that there are a number of post boxes in close proximity to the one which was removed and that one of these has been updated to a later collection post box.

Consequently, after taking into account all of the relevant factors, we understand that Royal Mail has taken the operational decision to not install a replacement post box.

Ofcom is carrying out a review of the future regulatory framework for post which it aims to complete in 2022. As part of this review, Ofcom will consider its approach to regulating the universal postal service and has sought views on the accessibility of the service, particularly for vulnerable people and those who may be more reliant on postal services. A call for inputs was launched on 11 March 2021 and closed on 20 May 2021. Ofcom intends to publish a full consultation on the future regulation of postal services later this year. More information about the regulatory regime can be found on Ofcom’s website www.ofcom.org.uk.

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill (First sitting)

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

The Committee consisted of the following Members:

Chairs: † Sir Christopher Chope, Judith Cummins

† Bacon, Gareth (Orpington) (Con)

† Britcliffe, Sara (Hyndburn) (Con)

† Bruce, Fiona (Congleton) (Con)

† Donelan, Michelle (Minister for Universities)

† Glindon, Mary (North Tyneside) (Lab)

† Hardy, Emma (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)

† Hayes, Sir John (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)

† Holden, Mr Richard (North West Durham) (Con)

† Johnston, David (Wantage) (Con)

† Jones, Mr Kevan (North Durham) (Lab)

† McDonnell, John (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)

† Nichols, Charlotte (Warrington North) (Lab)

† Russell-Moyle, Lloyd (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)

† Simmonds, David (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)

† Tomlinson, Michael (Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty's Treasury)

† Webb, Suzanne (Stourbridge) (Con)

† Western, Matt (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)

Kevin Maddison, Seb Newman, Committee Clerks

† attended the Committee

Witnesses

Professor Kathleen Stock OBE, Professor of Philosophy at University of Sussex

Dr Arif Ahmed MBE, Reader in Philosophy (also Fellow of Gonville and Caius College) at Cambridge University

Trevor Phillips OBE

Professor Nigel Biggar CBE, Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford University

Public Bill Committee

Tuesday 7 September 2021

(Morning)

[Sir Christopher Chope in the Chair]

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

[The Chair]

[The Minister for Universities (Michelle Donelan)]

[The Chair]

[The Chair]

[The Chair]

The Committee deliberated in private.

Examination of Witnesses

Professor Kathleen Stock and Dr Arif Ahmed gave evidence.

[The Chair]

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

[Matt Western]

[Matt Western]

[Matt Western]

[Matt Western]

[Matt Western]

[Matt Western]

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

[Mr Jones]

[Mr Jones]

[Mr Jones]

[Mr Jones]

[Mr Jones]

[The Minister for Universities (Michelle Donelan)]

[Michelle Donelan]

[Michelle Donelan]

[Michelle Donelan]

[Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

[Emma Hardy]

[Emma Hardy]

[Emma Hardy]

[Emma Hardy]

[The Chair]

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

[Fiona Bruce]

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

[John McDonnell]

[John McDonnell]

[The Chair]

[John McDonnell]

[The Chair]

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

[Sir John Hayes]

[The Chair]

[Sir John Hayes]

[The Chair]

[Sir John Hayes]

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

[The Chair]

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

[Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)]

[Charlotte Nichols]

[Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)]

[Matt Western]

[Matt Western]

[Matt Western]

[Charlotte Nichols]

[The Chair]

[The Chair]

[Matt Western]

[Matt Western]

[Matt Western]

[Michelle Donelan]

[Michelle Donelan]

[Michelle Donelan]

[Michelle Donelan]

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

[Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)]

[Felicity Buchan]

[Emma Hardy]

[Emma Hardy]

[Emma Hardy]

[Emma Hardy]

[Emma Hardy]

[Emma Hardy]

[The Chair]

[Fiona Bruce]

[Fiona Bruce]

[Fiona Bruce]

[Fiona Bruce]

[Fiona Bruce]

[John McDonnell]

[John McDonnell]

[John McDonnell]

[John McDonnell]

[John McDonnell]

[Charlotte Nichols]

[Charlotte Nichols]

[The Chair]

[The Chair]

The Chair adjourned the Committee without Question put (Standing Order No. 88).

Adjourned till this day at Two o’clock.

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill (Second sitting)

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

The Committee consisted of the following Members:

Chairs: Sir Christopher Chope, † Judith Cummins

† Bacon, Gareth (Orpington) (Con)

† Britcliffe, Sara (Hyndburn) (Con)

† Bruce, Fiona (Congleton) (Con)

† Donelan, Michelle (Minister for Universities)

† Glindon, Mary (North Tyneside) (Lab)

† Hardy, Emma (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)

† Hayes, Sir John (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)

† Holden, Mr Richard (North West Durham) (Con)

† Johnston, David (Wantage) (Con)

† Jones, Mr Kevan (North Durham) (Lab)

† McDonnell, John (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)

Nichols, Charlotte (Warrington North) (Lab)

† Russell-Moyle, Lloyd (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)

† Simmonds, David (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)

† Tomlinson, Michael (Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty's Treasury)

Webb, Suzanne (Stourbridge) (Con)

† Western, Matt (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)

Kevin Maddison, Seb Newman, Committee Clerks

† attended the Committee

Witnesses

Professor Stephen Whittle OBE, Professor of Equalities Law at Manchester Metropolitan University

Smita Jamdar, Partner and Head of Education at Shakespeare Martineau

Thomas Simpson, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Public Policy, University of Oxford, and Associate Fellow at Policy Exchange

Dr Bryn Harris, Chief Legal Counsel at Free Speech Union

Public Bill Committee

Tuesday 7 September 2021

[Judith Cummins in the Chair]

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

The Committee deliberated in private.

Examination of Witness

Professor Stephen Whittle gave evidence.

[The Chair]

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

[Matt Western]

[Matt Western]

[Matt Western]

[Matt Western]

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

[Sir John Hayes]

[Michelle Donelan]

[Michelle Donelan]

[Michelle Donelan]

[Emma Hardy]

[Emma Hardy]

[Emma Hardy]

[Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)]

[Mr Holden]

[Mr Holden]

[Mr Holden]

[Mr Holden]

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

[The Chair]

Smita Jamdar: Hello. My name is Smita Jamdar and I am a partner and head of education at Shakespeare Martineau. I am here in my capacity as an adviser to a number of universities, over many years.

[Matt Western]

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

[The Chair]

[Mr Kevan Jones]

[The Chair]

[Matt Western]

[Mr Kevan Jones]

[Matt Western]

[Matt Western]

[Emma Hardy]

[Emma Hardy]

[Emma Hardy]

[Michelle Donelan]

[Michelle Donelan]

[Michelle Donelan]

[Matt Western]

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

[John McDonnell]

[John McDonnell]

[John McDonnell]

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

[Fiona Bruce]

[Fiona Bruce]

[Fiona Bruce]

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

[Emma Hardy]

[Emma Hardy]

[Emma Hardy]

[Emma Hardy]

[The Chair]

[The Chair]

[Matt Western]

[Matt Western]

[Matt Western]

[Matt Western]

[Matt Western]

[Matt Western]

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

[Michelle Donelan]

[Michelle Donelan]

[Michelle Donelan]

[Michelle Donelan]

[Emma Hardy]

[Emma Hardy]

[Emma Hardy]

[Emma Hardy]

[Emma Hardy]

[Emma Hardy]

[Emma Hardy]

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

[Fiona Bruce]

[Fiona Bruce]

[Fiona Bruce]

[The Chair]

[Mr Jones]

[Mr Jones]

[Mr Jones]

[Mr Jones]

[Mr Jones]

[Mr Jones]

[Mr Jones]

[Mr Jones]

[Sir John Hayes]

[Sir John Hayes]

[Mr Jones]

[Mr Jones]

[Sir John Hayes]

[Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)]

[Gareth Bacon]

[Gareth Bacon]

[Mr Kevan Jones]

[Gareth Bacon]

[Matt Western]

[The Chair]

[The Chair]

[Matt Western]

[Matt Western]

[Matt Western]

[Matt Western]

[Matt Western]

[Matt Western]

[Matt Western]

[Mr Jones]

[Mr Jones]

[Mr Jones]

[Mr Jones]

[Mr Jones]

[Matt Western]

[Matt Western]

[Matt Western]

[The Chair]

[Michelle Donelan]

[Michelle Donelan]

[Fiona Bruce]

[Fiona Bruce]

[The Chair]

[Fiona Bruce]

[Emma Hardy]

[Emma Hardy]

[Emma Hardy]

[Emma Hardy]

[Emma Hardy]

[Emma Hardy]

[Emma Hardy]

[Emma Hardy]

[Emma Hardy]

[Emma Hardy]

[Sir John Hayes]

[Sir John Hayes]

[Mr Jones]

[Sir John Hayes]

[Mr Jones]

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

[The Chair]

Adjourned till Monday 13 September at half-past Three o’clock.

Written evidence reported to the House

HEFSB01 Benjamin Marler, Founder and Vice President of the Debate Society, Union of Students, University of Derby

HEFSB02 Jim Dickinson, Wonkhe

HEFSB03 Professor Nigel Biggar, CBE, Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology, University of Oxford

HEFSB04 Taylor Vinters LLP

HEFSB05 University of Cambridge

HEFSB06 Arif Ahmed MBE, Reader in Philosophy (and Fellow of Gonville and Caius College), University of Cambridge

HEFSB07 Universities UK

HEFSB08 Prof Ross Anderson FRS FREng, Professor of Security Engineering, Cambridge University and Edinburgh University

HEFSB09 Free Speech Union (Confidential)

Health and Care Bill (First sitting)

Committee stage
Tuesday 7th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

The Committee consisted of the following Members:

Chairs: Steve McCabe, † Mrs Sheryll Murray

† Argar, Edward (Minister for Health)

† Churchill, Jo (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care)

† Crosbie, Virginia (Ynys Môn) (Con)

† Davies, Gareth (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)

† Davies, Dr James (Vale of Clwyd) (Con)

† Foy, Mary Kelly (City of Durham) (Lab)

† Gideon, Jo (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con)

† Madders, Justin (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)

† Norris, Alex (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)

† Owen, Sarah (Luton North) (Lab)

† Robinson, Mary (Cheadle) (Con)

† Skidmore, Chris (Kingswood) (Con)

† Smyth, Karin (Bristol South) (Lab)

† Throup, Maggie (Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty's Treasury)

† Timpson, Edward (Eddisbury) (Con)

† Whitford, Dr Philippa (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)

† Williams, Hywel (Arfon) (PC)

Huw Yardley, Sarah Ioannou, Committee Clerks

† attended the Committee

Witnesses

Danny Mortimer, Chief Executive, NHS Employers

Dr Navina Evans CBE, Chief Executive, Health Education England

Amanda Pritchard, Chief Executive, NHS England and NHS Improvement

Mark Cubbon, Chief Operating Officer, NHS England and NHS Improvement

Public Bill Committee

Tuesday 7 September 2021

(Morning)

[Mrs Sheryll Murray in the Chair]

Health and Care Bill

09:25

[The Chair]

I have a few preliminary announcements. Please switch off all electrical devices or turn them to silent. Tea and coffee are not allowed during sittings of this Committee. I encourage Members to wear masks when they are not speaking; this is in line with Government guidance, and that of the House of Commons Commission. Please also give each other and members of staff space, both when seated and when entering and leaving the room. Members should send their speaking notes by email to [e-mail], and when officials in the Gallery communicate with Ministers, they should do so electronically.

We will consider first the programme motion on the amendment paper, then a motion enabling the reporting of written evidence for publication, and then a motion allowing us to deliberate in private about our questions before the oral evidence sessions. In view of the time available, I hope those matters can be decided without debate.

I call the Minister to move the programme motion, which was discussed yesterday by the Bill’s Programming Sub-Committee.

Ordered,

That—

1. the Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at 9.25 am on Tuesday 7 September) meet——

(a) at 2.00 pm on Tuesday 7 September;

(b) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 9 September;

(c) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 14 September;

(d) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 16 September;

(e) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 21 September;

(f) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 23 September;

(g) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 19 October;

(h) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 21 October;

(i) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 26 October;

(j) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Wednesday 27 October;

(k) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 28 October;

(l) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 2 November;

2. the Committee shall hear oral evidence in accordance with the following Table:

[The Chair]

Copies of written evidence received by the Committee will be circulated to its members by email and made available in the Committee Room.

Resolved,

That, at this and any subsequent meeting at which oral evidence is to be heard, the Committee shall sit in private until the witnesses are admitted.—(Edward Argar.)

[The Chair]

If everyone is agreed, we will go into private session to discuss lines of questioning.

09:27

The Committee deliberated in private.

Examination of Witnesses

Danny Mortimer and Dr Navina Evans gave evidence.

09:29

[The Chair]

Some of our witnesses will be giving evidence today by video link, while others will appear in person. It is helpful, particularly when witnesses are giving evidence by video link, if Members could direct their questions to specific witnesses. Before calling the first panel of witnesses, I remind all Members that questions should be limited to matters within the scope of the Bill and that we must stick to the timings in the programme motion that the Committee has agreed. We have until 10.30 for our first panel. Do Members wish to declare any relevant interests in connection with the Bill?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Jo Churchill)]

I have no relevant interest to declare, but we are unable to see a screen. Would it be possible to erect a screen so that we can see those giving evidence?

[The Chair]

Yes, we can do that. As there are no witnesses giving evidence in person, it would be okay for Members to sit at the witness table, if that would be better.

[Jo Churchill]

That would be great.

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)]

I want to declare an interest as a medical practitioner, although not commonly practising, and as a member of the British Medical Association.

[Dr James Davies (Vale of Clwyd) (Con)]

Likewise, I declare an interest as a serving general practitioner in the NHS, a member of the BMA and as a member of the Royal College of General Practitioners.

[The Chair]

Thank you. I am very keen that we continue this session as quickly as possible. We will now go to our witnesses. Good morning and on behalf of the Committee, thank you very much for agreeing to give evidence. Please introduce yourselves for the record.

Dr Navina Evans: Shall I go first?

[The Chair]

I think that would be good; ladies first.

Dr Navina Evans: My name is Navina Evans and I am chief executive at Health Education England.

Danny Mortimer: Good morning. My name is Danny Mortimer and I am the chief executive of NHS Employers, which is part of the NHS Confederation.

[The Chair]

Thank you very much. Members who wish to ask questions should please indicate that.

[Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con)]

Q Good morning to you both. Having taken big Bills through Parliament before, I am aware that a lot of scrutiny goes into the detail on the statute book, for obvious reasons, but sometimes we also need to reflect on the implementation and how we can make the legislation turn into a reality. Based on the proposals in the Bill, what role do you think you can play to bring about that reality through the development of the workforce to meet the demands on the healthcare system that the Bill is trying to improve the prospects of meeting?

Dr Navina Evans: Thank you very much for the invitation to give evidence today. I am really pleased to note the prominence the Bill gives to the workforce, and the important focus on systems working together, and working together with social care. I think that implementation will work well because we can build on what we are already doing. There is a great deal of collaboration between all parts of the system, and I can give you lots of examples if you wish of how we have developed the workforce over the past few years, particularly through the pandemic. We can build on what we have done together with other parts of the system. HEE plays a unique role because we have relationships with educators, providers of healthcare, the regulators, the professional bodies and NHS employers and other partners, as well with NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care. We play a convening role, and we have already used that experience, ability and capacity to develop the workforce so far. We think the Bill will enable us to build on that.

Danny Mortimer: Navina captures really well the work that is already going on, not least, as she has said, through the pandemic. My members, who are the trusts and ICSs around the country, are already trying to find ways of developing joint approaches to developing their workforce, not least with their colleagues in social care, but also by thinking about different ways in which they can recruit and perhaps make employment in the NHS more accessible to people from harder, under-served communities. Some fantastic work has been going on with the Prince’s Trust, for example, around the NHS, and that has increasingly been done through the organisations that are being formalised through this Bill.

I also think that the commitments that the Government are expected to make later today, not least around investment in social care, will help organisations to work together. We have a pressing need in the health service to invest in the longer term in our workforce, but that is even truer for our colleagues in social care. Again, that is a significant step forward today, which we hope will go even further in the spending review, in helping employers to ensure an adequate supply of people in the longer term, not least with the support of Navina’s organisation, and also by being able to innovate together in developing roles that better meet the needs of the communities they serve.

[Edward Timpson]

Q Do you see the principles set out in this Bill, along with the details in each of the relevant clauses, around integration and collaboration as a natural progression from a lot of the work that has already been undertaken by yourselves and others working in the healthcare system?

Dr Navina Evans: Yes, I do. I think they build on what we have already done well and strengthen our ability to go further.

Danny Mortimer: I agree with that. I think there are some risks. At the heart of the Bill, it is formalising organisations that can lead, innovate and perhaps do things differently from each other in local areas. We have a very centralised healthcare system in this country, and one of the risks is that the vision in Bill of integration and devolution to local areas is not realised, because the centralising impetus is very strong. However, the Bill absolutely captures what has now been many years of growing collaboration and integration between health organisations but also, importantly, with our colleagues and friends in local authorities and social care.

[Edward Timpson]

Thank you.

[The Chair]

I now call Mary Robinson.

[Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)]

Q It is really interesting to hear—I have seen it, as I am sure you all have—how partnerships have been built through covid. There has been a huge amount of joint working and integration. Have you been able to pick out any specific areas of learning over the past year and a half that we would hope to see as we go forward and which would be really useful as we build this integrated network?

Dr Navina Evans: I can give you three areas of learning that we in HEE were really pleased to see. One is around flexibility and better collaboration, which meant that our students and learners had a different kind of learning experience and also were able to contribute in a very real way to the care in service. This has led us to build on the reform agenda for education and training, and we are working with partners in education, the professional bodies and the regulators to see how we can use what we have learned to enhance that.

That is the first thing; the second thing is that we have seen quite a lot of barriers between organisations and systems being broken down. Again, that is something that we in HEE feel we should make the most of, together with partners, for future ways of working. The third area is the use of technology, digital and new ways of working. We have really moved quite significantly in how we work, including in how we learn, teach and train. Again, those are areas that we are very excited to build on. In many of them we had started before, but we accelerated during the pandemic, and we will not be going back. We will only be moving forward.

Danny Mortimer: I think that Navina captures really well that catalysing effect that the pandemic has had. I think that in many parts of the country there has been a much greater sense of there being one team within localities and communities. There have been some fantastic examples of health and social care teams coming together to respond, given the particular impact of the pandemic on social care settings and on the most vulnerable members of our communities. There is more to do, but the recognition that actually there is one workforce and one team, cutting across the NHS and other health organisations in other parts of the public service, is absolutely growing.

I think that the Bill, by formalising arrangements and stretching what is expected of systems, provides real opportunities for those systems increasingly to inform the kind of national work and planning that Navina and her colleagues lead, as well as the kind of informed work that the Secretary of State and the Minister want to take forward for health and social care.

[Mary Robinson]

Thank you.

[The Chair]

I call Dr James Davies.

[Dr James Davies]

Q I am interested to hear your views on the adequacy of the requirements for workforce projections within the legislation as it stands, in relation to both the NHS workforce and social care, potentially, and how you think the devolved Administrations should be brought in. Dr Navina first, please.

Dr Navina Evans: HEE has recently been given a ministerial commission to lead on developing a strategic framework for future workforces planning. We think that this is really timely in relation to the Bill. What we feel really matters in workforce planning is driving actions and solutions. We need to be able to identify future needs and shortages, and then ensure that the systems develop plans, but these plans need to be able to access all levers at all levels. It is quite a complicated business, but we feel that it is timely for us to pay particular attention to it.

There are a number of areas to consider. We need to look at service redesign; workforce redesign and transformation; employer roles, in terms of retention and recruitment; other supply interventions, such as international recruitment; and then—this is particularly relevant for HEE—future supply through education and training. We then want to pull the system together, through our convening role in HEE, and to have two principal ways of thinking about this: the future needs more and different, in terms of workforces and people; and we want to focus on skills, not necessarily just roles. The really critical point about this commission is that it asks us to ensure that we include the regulated social care workforce in our planning, which is a real step forward. We are looking to ensure that planning should track long-term trends in demand, that we should not be too tied to short-term fiscal cycles, and that we are prioritising supply for the whole health and care workforce.

Danny Mortimer: It is very welcome that the Department has commissioned HEE to do the work that Navina has described, but the NHS Confederation is clear, alongside a whole range of other organisations that work on behalf of the health service in particular, that clause 33 is insufficient for the task that the NHS faces in workforce planning. What it sets out, as Committee members will know, is a requirement for the Secretary of State to describe the process of workforce planning every five years. We have proposed to Parliament that that needs to move from setting out the process to actually setting out the requirements that health and social care have, and to do that much more regularly—we propose every two years.

For us, what is in the Bill is positive, because it is good to have the process described for the first time, but actually, as Dr Evans has just touched on, we need to spell out what the health and social care systems need in the longer term, but also in the immediate term. In some ways, that would mirror the work of the Office for Budget Responsibility in terms of advising the Government and Parliament about likely health and social care spending. We then need a corollary that sets out what is needed to respond to that in terms of people. Health and social care is fundamentally made up of the 3 million people who work in it. We sometimes fixate on the buildings and the technology, but it is fundamentally, in its essence, a people business. We think that that is a pressing issue, not least because of the pressures we face. That is not to say that the Government have not and do not invest in workforce numbers—significant decisions have been made in recent weeks around expanding medical school places, for example. But what we do not have is one coherent, single plan that is presented to the country and particularly to Parliament, which sets out what the NHS and our friends in social care will need to meet the demands that are being placed on us by the population, their health needs and quality of life, and also of course any priorities that the Government might set for social care and health services.

[Dr Davies]

Thank you.

[The Chair]

Thank you. I call Karin Smyth.

[Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)]

Q I appreciate that people working together and perhaps substantiating some of those informal arrangements might, in theory, do some of what you hope. However, the employers remain the institutions that make up the integrated care boards—that is the effect of the Bill. You have started to talk about the process. Could you perhaps talk a bit more about how that is enforced, what that means in practical terms for employers and how employers might behave? I am partly thinking of one of the trusts in my area, which, a number of years ago, set up a wholly owned subsidiary company, with the benefit for them of different terms and conditions for staff as a way of saving money. That was obviously detrimental to the healthcare system generally because you are competing for the same sorts of staff. We made the trust stop doing that because we wanted the staff to be treated the same. My point is: the employers, the terms and conditions, the benefits and the way that they will attract staff remain the same. The Bill does not make the ICB the employer or the way to deliver those terms and conditions or ways of recruitment. I think it is a theory. Can you convince us otherwise and show how in practical terms the Bill solves some of those problems?

Danny Mortimer: It is absolutely the case that the individual organisations in the NHS, social care, charitable organisations and local authorities that make up the partnership as well as the board will remain separate legal entities. We do not see that it is desirable for the NHS to move from having 250 separate employers to having 42 employers. What we have in the NHS is a set of national terms and conditions. My organisation has a particular responsibility on behalf of the Secretary of State to negotiate those with our trade union colleagues. We see that they work well for the NHS and I detect no movement among my membership to move large scale away from those national terms and conditions, which cover the vast majority of staff who work in the statutory NHS.

What we see with ICSs is that organisations are increasingly coming together to address shared challenges. We observe that those challenges are not about pay and conditions but about supply. They are about working together to think about how to promote a specific area for people to come and work in, whether that is Nottinghamshire or West Yorkshire and Harrogate, where there has been some fantastic work in promoting careers in the sector as a whole. We see people coming together to work with directly elected Mayors around the skills agenda. There has been some really fantastic work, for example, in the west midlands, with health and social care organisations coming together with local authorities. We see similar work and engagement with the Mayor of London on the skills agenda that he is taking forward. Again, that is being done by organisations working together. That helps partners—local authorities are engaging with health and social care as a team rather than dozens of separate organisations. It also helps us promote careers that span the whole range of settings that we operate in and speaks to the particular priorities of our colleagues in social care. We see some really fantastic examples of that in various parts of the country.

Finally, we see a real opportunity to take forward the work that I have just talked to Dr Davies about. Systems, as they look at their services and their knowledge of the things that they are providing in their communities to your constituents, can inform the national plans that Navina described in her answer to Dr Davies. We can have a much greater connection between local priorities and some of the decisions that are made nationally about how we invest longer term in education. Of course, the NHS workforce is about 50% degree educated or degree equivalent. So there are significant investments that the Department of Health and Social Care, the Office for Students and the education sector make in our workforce. Being able to root that in what it is that local services need and how they are developed seems to us like a fantastic opportunity, and would help us to avoid the problems that we have got into in the last couple of decades with pressure points in various parts of our workforce.

Dr Navina Evans: I will build on what Danny has just described. You have given some really good examples of how local employers are coming together in systems to address workforce issues. I would add a bit more about how we do it and how we can do it even better going forward. Health Education England has a role in developing careers and attracting young people—all people—into the health and care workforce. We play a really big part in that. First, we have found that doing that locally, at a very local level with the communities and organisations that really understand their local populations, has been a really good thing to do. Some of the examples that Danny gave have built on that and we will move forward on that.

Secondly, we have structures in which people boards, at integrated care system level and definitely at regional level, now bring collections of the different organisations together. We have systems that are starting to think about themselves as anchor systems, which means that they can influence employment, the economy and the success of local communities.

Finally, the population health issue has been something that we have really woken up to, and we are cognisant of the fact that we have to focus on and rebalance the health and wellbeing of the population. Through the pandemic, we have learned a lot more about where we need to target our efforts to reduce inequalities. That can only be done really well through collaboration at a local level. Organisations such as mine need to work closely with our partners in NHSE, with the Department and with other national organisations to make sure that we support those local efforts to be sensitive to the needs of their particular population. It is bringing the national priorities, principles and policy into life at a very local level by making sure that we have the systems and structures in place to deliver what is needed locally. We had already started working on that—the work is well under way—and the Bill will enhance our ability to get on with doing that.

[Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)]

Q I want to return to the issue of workforce planning, which obviously is integral to both of your organisations. You have discussed the strategic framework you have been working on, and hopefully that will evolve into a workforce strategy, which is addressed in clause 33 of the Bill. I have tabled an amendment to clause 33 which is to make the workforce report annual rather than once every five years. I think that the pandemic has demonstrated the futile nature of trying to produce a report once every five years, when we know that the nature of the workforce could change radically during that period. Would your organisations agree that it would be better for that report to be produced on an annual basis? Clause 33 states that NHS England and Health Education England

“must assist in the preparation…in this section,”

but only

“if requested to do so by the Secretary of State.”

You have talked about locally led decision making and planning. Do you both agree that we need better co-creation? My amendment covers the fact that a plan should be developed and agreed by stakeholders in particular. Would your organisations welcome this amendment, which would result in an annual workforce strategy and require it to be developed by all other healthcare organisations working in this sphere?

Dr Navina Evans: From HEE’s perspective, we will deliver on the duties that Parliament decides that we ought to deliver. We feel that we have the capacity and the capability. We can organise ourselves to deliver whatever is required of us by the Bill. The work that we do is lithe—it is iterative. We do iterative planning, in a meaningful way, at the national and system level, so we will be able to respond and fit in with whatever is required of us by the Bill and Parliament.

Danny Mortimer: Thank you for the question. Absolutely, there is an opportunity for the Bill to define a wider range of stakeholders. The systems at the centre of the Bill—integrated care boards and integrated care partnerships—are central to that, and their perspectives, as we have just talked about with Ms Smyth, in terms of the needs of their population and the services they need to put in place to respond to them, need to be at the centre of the process that Navina and others would lead on behalf of the Secretary of State. That is the first thing. Secondly, there is an opportunity through those systems to broaden our conversation to include social care as well as health. That is really important to us on this day of all days, in terms of the announcements later.

In terms of the regular appraisal, we absolutely believe that five years is absolutely insufficient for the task. We also believe that it cannot just be about process. It has to be about setting out clear requirements and clear specificity about those requirements over different time periods. There is something about the short-term need, and there is also something about five, 10 and 20 years. It needs to be regular. We have proposed two years because it is a huge amount of work and that feels to us to be a minimum in terms of how regular the perspective could be, but it may well lend itself to an annual update, as you have described.

We also see that organisations such as Health Education England and Skills for Care, which operates in the social care sector, absolutely have the capacity and capability to lead this work. Their way of working, similar to the Department’s way of working throughout the preparation of this Bill, is about engaging, convening and trying to bring stakeholders together to get a broad range of perspectives. That is our experience of the long-term process that Navina and her colleagues are leading on behalf of the Department at the moment. The Bill confirming that would confirm ways of working that we are starting to see develop with stakeholders in a really healthy and constructive way.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

Q Good morning. This Bill is mainly about services in England, apart from the part about the health services safety investigations body and clause 112 on Welsh health bodies requesting help. However, there is significant traffic from Wales to England, and a certain amount in the other direction, to access health and care services. This might impact on services in the north-west of England and along the Welsh border. This is a very broad and quick question: in what ways do you see yourselves and other health bodies in England taking account of the priorities and needs of the Welsh Government and of the Welsh population to access health services in England?

Danny Mortimer: There are important links with Wales, and of course with Scotland as well, in many parts of the country. There are a couple of things to say. The first is that there are undoubtedly things that the English system can learn, and is learning, from our colleagues in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland who are taking similar approaches in terms of how they respond to the challenges we face in social care and health. In my own organisation, we represent organisations in Wales and Northern Ireland, and there is a really rich learning that we can do there.

Secondly, in practical terms, there are good lines of communication and liaison between healthcare organisations that operate along the borders that you have described. It will carry on being really important that those lines of communication, that liaison, the financial arrangements and the sharing of care between different teams on various sides of the borders continue, and we see nothing in the Bill that prevents that. If anything, we see opportunities through better co-ordination in England at a system level to be able to help patients who travel across from Wales into England, or patients who travel from Scotland into England. If anything, I think we can improve the planning and liaison through what is in this interesting Bill.

Dr Navina Evans: We already have very strong four-country relationships, particularly in the education and training space, where we make sure that we share standards, that we do planning around the curriculum and the reform of education, that we ensure quality and that we go for improvements in the way in which we support and train our future healthcare workers. In the regulation space, we work very closely with the General Medical Council, the Nursing and Midwifery Council and other bodies, to make sure that that happens. They obviously have four-country oversight, so we already work very closely with them. Also, all our professional bodies, such as the royal colleges, have to represent members from across the whole UK. In that space, there is a lot of good work that we can continue to build on, learn from and share as a result of this Bill.

[Hywel Williams]

Q I am very glad to hear what you have said. Professional staff are notoriously footloose, as far as Wales is concerned, so there is a certain issue about workforce planning. In my own area, I used to teach in social work education. We have a nursing school at Bangor University, which is a very valuable provision, but I am not sure how many are retained in the health service in Wales—or the other way around, of course.

There is one other point I would make, and this is more philosophical than practical. The Welsh Government’s approach to health is based on a wellbeing model. It is much more proactive than other models. I hope that, philosophically, that sort of approach is useful and interesting for you, and that you will be taking full notice of it.

Danny Mortimer: The second point, in particular, is really well made. That is absolutely the focus that we see integrated care systems taking. The engagement with population health that Navina described is about trying to gear a system much more to long-term investment in the quality of people’s lives.

We have become, in recent years—even before the pandemic—much more geared towards crisis response. That is not in the best interests of the long-term health of the population. It does not help us to address the inequities that we see in our population, and that we saw very starkly during the pandemic.

Navina may be aware of the issues around workforce mobility between the four countries. The co-ordination that Navina leads, and that we have with our professional regulators, is really important. We have a shared workforce, and we have shared approaches to education as well as things such as pay and contracts. That is really important to ensuring that the job market is stable, particularly if we experience supply issues in particular geographies or parts of the workforce.

Dr Navina Evans: I have nothing to add on the movement of the workforce between the four countries, but I take the point that this is something we need to be mindful of, and I will make sure that the issue is a priority in our conversations with our counterparts in the four countries.

On wellbeing services, that is absolutely the way in which the reform of education and the curriculum is moving. Health Education England is working with partners to develop that. Our integrated care systems, and our colleagues running services who are closest to the point of care, and who know their populations best, have been saying for some time that we need to focus on wellbeing, prevention, intervening earlier and keeping people well. That is a priority for our partners in NHS England and NHS Improvement as well. We already have programmes of work to take this forward.

[Hywel Williams]

Thank you.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

Q Good morning. Thank you for coming. I am sure that you will be aware that everyone in the country, and the whole Committee, is very grateful for the work done by frontline health and social care staff, not only over the past 18 months, but over many years. The consequences of that work have been starkly drawn to everyone’s attention by the Health Committee report on staff burnout. What in the Bill will address the issues raised in the report?

Dr Navina Evans: I will give you three points that are really important. One is the absolute priority, focus and prominence given to looking after our workforce. Again, we will build on work that we have already been doing in the last few years. For example, in the interim pupil plan, there is a very strong focus on wellbeing, culture, leadership and retention. We have been working, together with Danny’s organisation and others, on thinking with staff about retention. One thing that is really important is looking after people. There are lots of good examples of work being done all around the country to improve wellbeing and therefore retention, and to minimise or prevent burnout. This is quite high on the agenda for our partners in NHS England and NHS Improvement. It is very high on the agenda for us in HEE, because we look after our students, trainees and learners, who are also part of the workforce, and they tell us what helps to keep them well and prevent burnout. We need to start doing that work, which is part of our business, very early on.

I am pleased to say that our partners in the universities, royal colleges and other professional bodies are really mindful of this. They all have work streams around wellbeing and preventing burnout. In the Bill, we can highlight the importance of this, and build on work that is already being done to look after our staff.

[The Chair]

Thank you. I intend to move to the SNP spokesperson at 10.15 am, and to the Minister at 10.25; the session ends at 10.30. If we can keep questions and answers succinct, that would be appreciated.

Danny Mortimer: Noted, Mrs Murray.

I agree with everything that Navina has said, and it is a huge focus for the health service. In terms of supporting the health and wellbeing of staff, I think the Bill can go further under the terms of clause 33—it represents the conversation that we have had with them a couple of times. Absolutely we should support people and absolutely we should care for them, but if there are gaps in their rotas and in their teams that only increases the pressure on people who are already working flat-out. The pandemic has shown us starkly where those gaps and needs are, but we were experiencing them before the pandemic. There are parts of our workforce—mental health, learning disability nursing and some of our smaller allied health professions, such as therapeutic radiography—that absolutely need urgent long-term investment. We need that investment in staff as well as in the pressing need that we saw covered in social care settings and in hospitals during the pandemic. The requirement for a regular assessment of what the health and social care system requires to meet the needs of the population would help us to support that.

[Justin Madders]

Q You were very clear in your view of what was needed to make clause 33 more effective. In your opinion, would the clause also require some funding requirements to meet the demand?

Danny Mortimer: I do not know to what extent Parliament is able to, or is willing to, pre-commit Governments to funding decisions such as you have described. Absolutely, that would bring clarity for us all in terms of what was needed, and it may well offer clarity in terms of the prioritisations that we have to make on investment in the workforce. We have seen a massive expansion in our medical workforce, particularly in hospitals, in the past 20 years, but we have not seen a similar expansion in the nursing workforce. That is not something that was clearly set out for us and for a Government to help make decisions about. I think a clearer, more effective clause 33 would help a Government to do that, and in turn help a Parliament to support a Government in that.

[Justin Madders]

Q Thank you. I have a quick question for Dr Evans, and then one more question for you both. You have mentioned the commission that you have been asked to form to draw up that strategy. When is that expected to be published?

Dr Navina Evans: We expect to go back to the Minister with our findings by early March. After that, we will have a clearer understanding of when we will publish our framework.

[Justin Madders]

Q May I ask you both whether you have given any thought to, or been able to quantify, the amount of staff and management time that will be taken on implementing the Bill?

Dr Navina Evans: From our perspective in Health Education England, our input is quite confined to the workforce planning. We are able to manage within our existing resources and to redefine and redeploy them. We are also able to work collaboratively with partners who are very willing to help us in this work.

Danny Mortimer: I cannot give you an exact figure, Mr Madders, but I can reassure the Committee that the way in which the proposed change will be implemented is much more about minimising the organisational disruption change that we have experienced with previous reforms, either the one 10 years ago or the one a decade before that. We are seeing a clear commitment to move staff who are currently employed in clinical commissioning groups—the Bill will disband those groups—to the new ICS organisations. That is a very positive way of managing the change rather than that experienced previously, which was hugely time-consuming in terms of management time and hugely unsettling for vital staff in terms of planning services. We are avoiding the problems that we faced in the past. Amanda and her colleagues at NHS England are to be commended for the proportionate and sensible manner in which they are looking to implement the changes, especially in terms of how they impact on people and organisations.

[Justin Madders]

Thank you. For the last minute, I am going to hand over to my colleague.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q I have a very quick question for Danny Mortimer. You have the unenviable task of negotiating with the staff and their representative unions on all sorts of issues—pay, terms and conditions, safety. When you have such negotiations, how high up on the list does a commissioning restructure come in terms of the things that our front-line staff are really after?

Danny Mortimer: We have a really constructive set of relationships in the NHS with our trade unions, on both terms and conditions and the social partnership forum, which the Minister’s colleague Helen Whately chairs and which brings trade unions and employers together.

There is an interest in how the health service organises itself, and there is an interest in how the health service and our friends in social care can better work together to relieve the pressure that our colleagues were experiencing even before the pandemic. Of course, there are other things that people are interested in as well. There are outstanding questions about long-term pay strategy, and there are other issues around working environments and support that Navina touched on. Those are really important as well.

There is a recognition, when I speak to trade union leaders and representatives, of the opportunities available through system working to improve service delivery, and therefore to help their committed members do their jobs better and relieve the pressure that they have been under for far too long.

[The Chair]

I call Dr Phillipa Whitford, the SNP spokesperson.

[Dr Whitford]

Q Thank you very much, Mrs Murray. Dr Evans, we have talked quite a lot about workforce and highlighted the fact that the workforce move around the UK, and therefore work in the four different nations. Registration of nurses and doctors is UK-wide, although only Scotland has registration for care staff. Do you not think that that needs to be recognised to some extent in clause 33, so that we do not end up having Peter robbing Paul? This year, we have seen a shortage of foundation places. Although all four nations have increased medical student places, a young doctor cannot practise unless they get their two years at foundation level. Do we not need to be consulting specifically with the other health Ministers and looking at the workforce in general? I do not mean transferring control of that workforce, but recognising, for the next five, 10 or 20 years, the needs and the strategies of the different nations so that we do not end up stealing from each other.

Dr Navina Evans: Thank you for the question. It is for Parliament to decide what goes into the Bill. We will, of course, work accordingly with the duties. We already work with the four nations around the foundation year programmes, we share a lot of intelligence and recruitment work and we are continuously looking for ways to strengthen that. It is an important priority for us to share learning and recruitment between countries.

[Dr Whitford]

Q Sorry to interrupt, Dr Evans, but this year the foundation places are managed on a UK basis, and this year, at the beginning of the summer, there were several hundred graduates who did not have a foundation place—I hope they have all got one now. That can mean people literally being sent to a different part of the UK, away from their family and their support mechanisms, and we all know how tough these years are. This is being managed at a UK level, and yet the three devolved nations are also trying to tackle workforce issues. If they are not included in this, or at least consulted, do you not see that as a weakness?

Dr Navina Evans: I see that we are addressing exactly those problems around where people go to do their jobs and where the placements are. Having to travel to get the right training jobs is something that we have been grappling with for a very long time in Health Education England, and I remember that we were grappling with it when I was a trainee. That is something that we focus on anyway, and if it were to be strengthened in the Bill we would, of course, look at the duties that were expected of HEE in terms of working across the four nations to solve this issue. We would be building on what we are already doing to address that.

[Dr Whitford]

Q Thank you. Danny Mortimer, we have talked about the change that is coming, and a lot of it is to enable the innovation that has come through the pandemic. I was back in the NHS in Scotland in the first wave, and I saw that creativity. How do you think it can be done without consuming a lot of the bandwidth of frontline staff? You talked to the shadow Minister about management, but it often takes up frontline staff. Would you see a gradual change? Are you concerned that the footprints of some of the ICSs that have already evolved are apparently going to change? Is that not going to add new upheaval in certain geographical areas?

Danny Mortimer: Thank you, Dr Whitford; there are a couple of things there. On the geographical changes, what ICS leaders wanted was clarity. They have now been given that by the Department and NHS England, and they will move forward and can adapt accordingly.

On the impact on the frontline, throughout the pandemic, and increasingly before it, we saw a much greater sense of teamwork across some of the boundaries that we can create between parts of the health service, and between the health service and other public services. There is an opportunity to accelerate that in lots of our settings. That will be a positive. It will help people care better for their patients. Most importantly, it will help patients and their families to have a much more seamless experience.

This is not a magic thing—you know yourself how complicated the hand-offs and transitions between different teams can sometimes be—but this Bill formalises the recognition that we have had over recent years in England that to start to properly and truly focus on what individuals need, we have to have better co-ordination between our teams. It is not about the institution first; it is about the team first, and obviously most importantly the patient first. The absolute opportunity for us is to do those things better for the patients in between our services.

[Dr Whitford]

Q Yes, I totally recognise that. In Scotland, we reintegrated primary and secondary health back in 2004, and in comparison with the last seven years of trying to integrate health and social care, that was a walk in the park. It is much more challenging, but equally it is where we are all trying to get to. If I can ask you, on a different subject—

[The Chair]

I think we are getting close to the last question.

[Dr Whitford]

This is the last question.

On the health services safety investigations body, I was on the pre-legislative Committee, where there was an aim of protecting the safe space disclosures quite thoroughly to ensure staff had the confidence to discuss very sensitive issues. In the version that is in this Bill, much more is covered by safe space protection, but then there are exemptions such as the coroner. Although staff can be summoned and made to give evidence, if they feel that that will end up being shared through a lot of disclosure exemptions, do you think they will really believe that that space is protected, in the way it is in the airline sector?

Danny Mortimer: There is a very difficult balance that health service leaders know they need to strike. The requirements around transparency to the public are much higher for the health services and for people such as you and Dr Evans, as health service practitioners. The coroner’s ability to review what happened is a really important step for families, and we are very respectful of that.

What the Bill does—this is how it describes the investigations branch—is to build on work that the NHS and the Government have been taking forward since Robert Francis’s inquiry into whistleblowing to ensure that we have cultures, practices and processes that enable people to be candid and open without fear of consequence, in terms of what has happened. We realise that that is how we learn and improve. We also realise that have a lot of work to do to help all parts of our workforce—clinical and non-clinical—feel much more comfortable and supported to raise concerns, give feedback and be honest about what happened. As you will know, there is an enormous amount of work going on across the four countries to create those kinds of cultures, but at the same time, we also recognise that we have that responsibility in terms of transparency to the public, and to patients and their families.

[Dr Whitford]

Thank you.

[The Chair]

Thank you. I call the Minister.

[The Minister for Health (Edward Argar)]

Q Thank you, Mrs Murray. I will try to be brief, with just two questions. Morning, Danny; morning, Navina. My first question is this: what do you see as the potential role of legislation in addressing future workforce needs— both the limitations of legislation in doing it and the opportunities?

Dr Navina Evans: I will start with the opportunities. We in HEE are really pleased to see that workforce is prioritised in the way that it has been. For us, that means that there is an expectation and an understanding of the need to tackle complex issues of future workforce planning, and that is hugely important. We can do it; it is a difficult task, but through collaboration and bringing people together, it is something that we simply must do, so that we can have more and different, and we can be really future-focused and progressive in the way that we deliver health and care. It is all down to our workforce. So that is the huge opportunity, as we see it.

There are risks. For us, one risk is that too much bureaucracy and added layers of hoops will get in the way, and the other risk is that we have to work hard to make sure that we address culture and collaboration to make this truly successful.

Danny Mortimer: The opportunity, we believe—along with colleagues across the health service—is in clause 33, going further and deeper there in terms of the assessment of need, as well as an assessment or a description of process. Clearly, what legislation cannot do is set out the kinds of behaviours that make that a well-informed and inclusive process. To reassure the Committee, though, what I do see is that the way of working we experienced during the development of this Bill, the way of working we are experiencing with Dr Evans in terms of the process she is leading at the moment—the long-term framework—is inclusive. It is trying to bring different voices in. Difficult decisions may well need to be made about prioritisation, and we understand that, but that is much easier to do and much easier to understand if it is based in that kind of process and behaviour. However, clearly, that is one of the risks.

As I have already said, we have had an increasingly centralised healthcare system over these last few years, and that is also one of the risks. If we stifle the local leadership and local innovation, and if we do not seek that local input in terms of how the development of local services needs to inform, in particular, the long-term planning for workforce, then that is a real risk for the legislation.

[Edward Argar]

Q Thank you. One final question from me, if I may, Mrs Murray. I think it was Dr Mortimer who touched on a couple of points in his comments. One was that the way it is envisaged that this will be implemented would minimise any impact or burden, as it were, on the system, and I think that both witnesses touched on the learnings from the pandemic—the opportunity to build on what was done during that. To what extent, or not, would the witnesses consider that this is the right time to be doing this?

Dr Navina Evans: We in HEE think this is absolutely the right time to be doing this. We are at a moment where we have a lot of learning from what we have been through this last year. We have a real opportunity where many different pieces around innovation and improvement are coming together, and we have learned a lot from our previous experience of delivering the Health and Care Bill. For us, we think that this is absolutely the right moment to be doing this work.

Danny Mortimer: We would agree. NHS Confederation members were clear about the need for this approach before the pandemic, and I think that is even more pressing because of the pandemic. Actually, given the announcements that the Prime Minister is expected to make later today, it reinforces that need to better integrate health and social care, so the timing is very good.

[Edward Argar]

Thank you both. Thank you, Mrs Murray.

[The Chair]

Thank you, Minister. As there are no further questions from Members, I thank the witnesses for their evidence. We will now move on to the next panel.

Examination of Witnesses

Amanda Pritchard and Mark Cubbon gave evidence.

10:30

[The Chair]

We will now hear from Amanda Pritchard, the chief executive of NHS England, and Mark Cubbon, the chief operating officer of NHS England and NHS Improvement. Both witnesses are appearing via Zoom, and we will run this session until 11.25 am. Could the witnesses please introduce themselves for the record?

Amanda Pritchard: Good morning. I am Amanda Pritchard, the chief executive of NHS England.

Mark Cubbon: Good morning. My name is Mark Cubbon, and I am the interim chief operating officer at NHS England and NHS Improvement.

[The Chair]

Thank you very much.

[Karin Smyth]

Q Welcome to our witnesses. Ms Pritchard, welcome to your new role.

We have just heard some interesting evidence, and I want us to be very specific about our terminology when we refer to integrated care systems, integrated care partnerships and the integrated care board. In your view, who is accountable for the spending in my local area under the new arrangements? Approximately £1.5 billion is spent in the local area. In the new system, who is accountable for that spend?

Amanda Pritchard: Thank you. If I start, Mark can come in and add. In the new proposals, the integrated care board carries the statutory responsibility, on behalf of the NHS, for the allocation of spending, performance management and the delivery of NHS services within the system. That, of course, has a delegated set of responsibilities, as per the current commissioning arrangements, down to individual organisations—be they groups of GPs, hospitals or community services— for the spend within those organisations, but the accountable part of the system is the integrated care board. As the proposals set out, it has a very important relationship with the integrated care partnership, but without the line accountability for the funding flowing through that part of the structure.

[Karin Smyth]

Q That is really helpful and very clear. The chief executive and the finance director of the integrated care board are clearly accountable. To whom are they accountable?

Amanda Pritchard: In the current structure, they are accountable through the NHS—sorry, not the current structure, because you are talking about the future structure. In the proposed future structure, they would be accountable to a combined NHS England and NHS Improvement structure. At the moment, we operate that through seven regions, and then through to the national NHSEI executive. We are, in turn, accountable to Parliament.

[Karin Smyth]

Q So when I have an issue that I want to bring to my local integrated care board’s finance director and chief executive, I will take it through to NHS England and then back to Parliament, of which I am obviously a Member. At what stage does the Secretary of State get involved with my issue?

Amanda Pritchard: We have a clear accountability to Parliament through the Secretary of State in the current structure, and the Bill is not proposing that that will change. The other thing that we should say is that CCGs have a clear accountability to involve the public and patients in their decision making. Again, in the current proposals, that responsibility would transfer through to the new integrated care system, and particularly the integrated care board. While we just talked about formal line accountability, that does not detract from the clear expectation that flows through, that the integrated care board would have accountability to involve the public and to consult with them. The transparency that is expected now of the CCGs and NHS organisations is written into the expectations and would flow through to the expectations of the new integrated care boards.

[Karin Smyth]

Q Can I ask about clause 20, which is about externally financed development agreements? In your view, is there a role in that clause to develop primary care and community estate? I am particularly interested in whether that provides the ability to continue the LIFT arrangements that were undertaken by primary care trusts but not by CCGs.

Amanda Pritchard: I do not believe, although I may ask Mark to come in on the detail, that there is any proposed change to those arrangements. Mark, would you like to pick this one up?

Mark Cubbon: Thank you, Amanda. I am not aware that there is any significant change proposed by the Bill to the arrangements in place at the moment.

[Karin Smyth]

Q So how do we, in the system, ensure the development of primary and community estate? Are we in the queue with the Treasury, behind the 40 or whatever hospitals? Is there any way in which we can develop primary and community estate within the scope of the Bill? If we cannot do that through the Bill, how do we do it?

Amanda Pritchard: I will give you a headline answer, because I think this is really important. Part of what we would welcome in the Bill is that, by working as a system, one of the things that all partners will want to do is to come round the table together to make some of those important decisions about where the investment goes. In particular, if we are thinking about capital, I know there are examples already of where organisations have chosen to invest in community estate, additional diagnostics facilities or other parts of primary care estate. In fact, Mark and I were on a visit a few weeks ago to an ICS where they were telling us about some of the work they have done on that.

Moving to looking at system funding envelopes, particularly around capital, allows much more flexibility about how some of that resource is used in the interests of the whole population and the whole health system, rather than, at the moment, where putting things into slightly more siloed funding arrangements can end up being detrimental to certain parts of the system.

That comes back to some of the guiding principles of why the NHS has welcomed, certainly, the thrust of these proposals where integrated care is concerned, because it is all about building on some of the direction of travel that has been in the NHS for some time about trying to work much more collaboratively together. This helps remove some of the barriers that currently exist, for local systems to do that.

[Karin Smyth]

Q Just to be clear, where would this capital come into the system? Presumably it would come to the ICB, as the accountable body. Where would the capital separately come from?

Amanda Pritchard: Through the existing capital allocation processes. Rather than just going to each individual organisation to then make their own decisions about how they spend it, it would now go through the ICB, so there is a process that allows consideration in the round of how the system spends that money most effectively on behalf of its entire population.

[The Chair]

Thank you. We now go to Jo Gideon.

[Jo Gideon (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con)]

Q Thank you, Chair. I would like to expand on the previous questions. It is my understanding that the integrated cared boards are the accountable bodies when the funds come in. But is the spending—the actual allocation funds—to be delegated down to integrated care partnerships, or is that at the discretion of individual integrated care boards?

Amanda Pritchard: Again, I will ask Mark to add to this if he would like to. At the moment, the proposal is that funding would go formally through the integrated care board. The expectation is that, in developing the constitution and the detailed ways of working for each integrated care board, they would describe how the decision making is done, at not just the ICB level, but the place level, with the expectation that part of the principle would be subsidiarity.

If you are looking at the most sensible place for making decisions, for big, strategic investment the oversight of the overall allocative decision making may well sit best at ICB level; if you are talking about something that might have more of a borough footprint—thinking about London—you would want a lot of the decisions about local services, community primary care services and capital decision making to support those local initiatives to be made there. There would be a number of layers within the ICB involved in that decision making, but ultimate accountability would sit with the ICB itself.

Mark Cubbon: The only thing I would add is that this is essentially why we are bringing leaders together to form the ICS body. The key thing will be how the resources allocated to that ICS can be deployed in such a way that strategic objectives can be delivered. The allocation down to place, as you have said, is important so that decision making can be as local as possible to where the service is, so clinicians and frontline staff can make the changes they want in order to deliver improved outcomes for their patients.

[Jo Gideon]

Q If I understand you correctly, place sits within the partnership rather than the board? I know the design has been about flexibility for each local board and partnership, to involve as many people as is relevant for local priorities. Do you think there is a tension about who sits on which, and what level of clinical representation do you think should be specified on boards?

Amanda Pritchard: I will start off, but Mark has led the work for NHS England and NHS Improvement on developing guidance to support local systems exactly in the area you ask about, on how to bring this to life and plan now for what we hope will be legislation coming into effect in April ’22. I do not want to steal his thunder on any of this.

One thing we warmly welcomed in the proposed legislation, and something we have heard about time and time again from our key stakeholders, is the flexibility. There is a minimum mandated legal set of requirements and structures, but, as you say, also an expectation that local systems will develop for themselves the structures and ways of working that make most sense for them. This is an obvious point, but what will work in Devon will by necessity look quite different from what you would want to put in place in somewhere such as Greater Manchester.

On behalf of our stakeholders, we have already welcomed the flexibility around that that has been described, but we have rightly said that, in addition to the suggested roles written into the legislation, there are some roles we would expect to see included on boards—we describe this as “mandatory guidance”. We have used that partly as an opportunity to pick up on exactly the point you make about clinical leadership and clinical representation. As a national health service, it is clearly right that we ensure that we have that strength of clinical voice.

At the moment, the mandatory guidance describes the need for a medical director and a director of nursing in addition to the expectation written into the legislation, which is that there would already be a representative from primary care as part of that ICB. Mark, you have done all the work thinking about how this is going to work in practice; do you want to pick up on that?

Mark Cubbon: Right at the core of the new working arrangements, we believe that clinical decision making and clinical input and engagement are an essential part of how the new arrangements will be put in place, so that frontline clinicians can shape how services should look and be involved in the planning and delivery of those services. In the guidance that we have put out, we are leaving a lot of flexibility for the ICB to bring in the appropriate number of clinical professionals to support those endeavours, and that is in the shaping of services, the planning and the execution of plans to deliver them.

While we talk a lot about doctors and nurses, there are 14 other allied health professions, and it is quite difficult to allow everyone to have a seat around the top table. We are strongly encouraging all ICBs to ensure that they have the right level of engagement and the right forum in place to ensure that the voices of all those professionals can be incorporated in the development of plans to deliver better services for patients and improve outcomes for members of the community. That is what we are asking all the organisations to do, and it has all been built on evidence that we have gathered from the clinical community over quite an extensive period of engagement. In fact, we published the guidance that Amanda referenced only last week, and it refers to the importance of clinical leadership at all levels: where the services are delivered at place; where services are planned for more local arrangements in the way that we have described; and then sitting more strategically at the ICS board as well.

[The Chair]

Thank you. I call Dr James Davies.

[Dr James Davies]

Q Thank you, Mrs Murray. To follow on from the discussion about special interest groups and particular clinicians on the ICS boards, are you saying, therefore, that you do not think the legislation should specify, for instance, that there is a representative for mental health in relation to children, or in relation to social care? How do we explain to the representatives of those very important subject areas that it is down to local flexibility? What happens if local flexibility results in a lack of attention to those issues?

Amanda Pritchard: On a positive, it is great that so many people want a seat on the boards, because I think that actually shows the level of engagement in ICSs. In practice, this is a very organic development from where the NHS has been since 2016, when we first started talking about STPs, as they were known then. This has been very pragmatic, bottom-up and testing as we go, and it now feels as though it is very much with the grain of where the NHS is.

I am not surprised, but I am really pleased, that so many different groups want to be involved. The balance that Mark has just described, which I think the legislation gets right at the moment, is in recognising that to be functional, we have to have the right number of people around the table. At one point we added up how many there would be if you allowed everybody who wanted one a formal seat at the table, and I think Cheshire and Merseyside ended up with 63 people who would be formal members of the board. That is completely unworkable.

It is about trying to find a balance that says, “Let’s be clear what you must have. Let’s use the opportunity that we have through NHSEI to introduce both mandatory guidance—things that people have to do—and guidance that sets out what we would consider to be best practice.” We have been very clear about, for example, the need to have arrangements in place to hear from all those terribly important stakeholders, and indeed for some of the duties, as I have mentioned already, that CCGs continue to carry around engagement with patients and the public, which is the other critical voice that we do not want to lose in any of this. That is the right balance, because it allows us to use some of those tools to keep some safeguards in place to give some clear direction, but it does not try to end up with either a one-size-fits-all solution for ICBs or something that is just unworkable because of the scale.

[Dr Davies]

Thank you.

[The Chair]

Thank you. I believe Mr Edward Timpson indicated that he wanted to ask a question.

[Edward Timpson]

Q I did; thank you, Mrs Murray. I want to ask a brief question, if I may, about the proposed merger of NHS England and NHS Improvement. I assume, although I do not know, that this is part of the long-term plan that was set out by NHS England, but I hope it is a direction of travel that you are both comfortable with. Could you explain what you see as the practical benefits of the merger, in terms of both the working behind the scenes to ensure that we keep quality high in the health service and the experience of patients, who will be on the receiving end of those services?

Amanda Pritchard: This absolutely, again, falls into the category of formalising, in large parts, the way NHSEI already works, but removing some of the slightly more bureaucratic and legal barriers that we have in place at the moment. I came in two years ago as the chief executive of NHS Improvement and into Mark’s role as the chief operating officer of NHS England at the same time. Certainly, my experience over the last two years has been that, in practice, NHSE and NHSI really do work, to all intents and purposes, as a single organisation—but, as I say, with some of the bureaucracy that is still around that—and that has been absolutely essential over the last 18 months, particularly through the pandemic.

NHS leadership absolutely has to speak with one voice and has to be able to have consistent decision making. We have to have a way of managing, where this comes up, the tensions that sometimes arise between different parts of the system, but also leading in practice that integrated working and joined-up approach, right from the top. It was really only, I think, the 2012 Act that brought in the separation formally, legally, so in a sense what we are doing is stepping back to something that was always the way the NHS worked prior to that. As I say, we are really now just formalising the way things currently work, and have needed to work over the last 18 months or two years.

[Edward Timpson]

Thank you.

[The Chair]

Thank you. Now we will hear from Mr Chris Skidmore.

[Chris Skidmore]

Q I know we have spoken about the need for flexibility in the composition of ICBs and also their related duties. I wanted to ask, though, whether it would be helpful if there were greater clarity in the Bill on the role of universities when it comes to training and education. I would think I am the only person in Parliament who has been both a Health Minister and Universities Minister, and it was very clear to me, when dealing with healthcare education, that there was not the integration around higher education and health in the way ideally we should have set it out. The Bill provides an opportunity to perhaps rectify this.

Also, I wanted to ask for your views on the duties for the ICBs, particularly around research and innovation. It may be a terminology issue, but the duty to promote innovation and to promote research, through the ICBs, is only

“on matters relevant to the health service”

or

“in the provision of health services”.

It does not cover the care system. I would have thought that when we look at the very definition of an integrated care board, it should actually be promoting research and also innovation when it comes to the care system, as well as health services. I would greatly appreciate your thoughts on that.

Amanda Pritchard: It is a very good reflection on the importance of education as one of the key partners that would absolutely come round the table. I think that is where the ICS structure really helps us as well, because it allows that broader partnership construct, including education and local authorities. I would say—again, from some of the visits I have done recently—that people are really clear about the importance of things such as housing as part of the partnership, as colleagues would expect. Lots of people with different perspectives and different important roles in the system absolutely need to come together around that broader ICS structure, I think, to really give us the maximum benefit from the legislation that is proposed.

To pick up specifically on education, you are right to say that there are two parts to it. Clearly, there is a role for education providers, whether that is schools, universities or other providers. Part of what we have written into the expectation of ICSs in this core role, which is about contributing to the broader economic and social inequalities agenda within their own area, speaks directly to that. That is as much about education, training and employment within health and care as it is, of course, about the wider economy. The NHS, as an anchor institution in many parts of the country, can be an important player in that as well; so it is very clearly our expectation that education will be a key partner in all those different ways.

On research and innovation, as you have rightly noted, there is again a carry-over from the CCG responsibilities, which carry over into integrated care. We have made it clear in guidance that we see this as a really critical opportunity. Certainly, that is not and should not be limited to health. However, again, we have seen during the pandemic in the last 18 months that the power of bench-to-bedside translational research could not have been clearer, as well as the opportunities now to write in, right from the start—certainly through what we have been doing on guidance—the expectation that that research would be strongly supported and encouraged by integrated care systems as they go forward. Again, that is absolutely with the grain of what the health service wants to do and intends to do. Mark, did you want to add to that?

Mark Cubbon: Just two key points. With universities, we would expect them to be heavily engaged at place level. We have recently published some guidance with the LGA, which considered how we get place-based activities and partnerships so that we have places thriving—the guidance is called “Thriving places”. We also talk about the benefits of the university sector being involved with place-based arrangements, to do all the things that Amanda just set out.

Therefore, we certainly expect that local arrangements and local dialogue, co-ordination and planning around education for local communities can help with recruitment and the workforce contribution that it can make, but also for the betterment of the local community itself.

We would also expect, probably at partnership level, some university input, whether from an academic health science network or indeed colleagues at NIHR. We have recently been doing sessions with NIHR to talk about how to ensure that our clear ambition for this translational research and this health and care research can really be brought to the fore. It is a key pillar of activity that has seen us through some really difficult times during the pandemic and one that will also be essential as part of our recovery.

[The Chair]

Thank you. We now move to the shadow Minister, Mr Justin Madders, and Mr Alex Norris.

[Justin Madders]

Q Good morning and congratulations on your appointment, Ms Pritchard. Obviously, the NHS has got lots of challenges. Covid is still very much in play, and there are the waiting lists and the workforce crisis. To your mind, which is the biggest challenge that the NHS faces and how will it be addressed by this Bill?

Amanda Pritchard: One of the really important things in all of this, of course, is that we do not over-claim for what the Bill will achieve. If I look at what has happened in the NHS over the last 18 months to two years, it is absolutely clear to me that the ability to work together has been critical to the ability of the country to respond to covid, and the opportunity now to strengthen those arrangements, write them into legislation and remove some of the barriers that exist will be an important factor in helping the health service now, in partnership with local government, education and others that we have talked about, absolutely to recover from the challenges of the last year and to continue to build on those really strong local arrangements that have been such a hallmark of the way that things have worked over the last couple of years.

But of course, that is only one part of what it will take for the NHS to respond to the challenges that we have at the moment. It is absolutely right that the NHS staff, who have worked so tirelessly over the past two years and of course beyond to look after what we now know are over 400,000 covid in-patients, get the backing and the funding they need, not just to deal with what is very much still with us, with covid in our hospitals and communities right now, but absolutely to make sure that we are as front-foot as possible in tackling the inevitable backlogs that have built up over the past couple of years.

There is a complex set of things. Workforce is critical: the support we give to the people who have already done so much for us—we continue to invest in them and support them, so that we have the right pipeline for new staff joining, the right skills and the right support. Then there is the funding that we need to do the work that we have, and the capital funding to invest in some of the transformation that has already begun and needs to continue. But also, I think the Bill provides us with the framework to continue to support that really powerful local joint working that we have seen over the last two years, and which we are already seeing really at the heart of the covid recovery within the NHS and more broadly.

[Justin Madders]

Q You touched on funding. You will obviously be aware of what NHS Providers and the NHS Confederation said last week about what might be required to address the operation backlog. Do you think that figure is about right?

Amanda Pritchard: It is worth saying that there are some big unknowns in the position at the moment. We just do not know, really, how covid is going to play out over the next few months and years. One of the things that colleagues have talked about, and are very aware of, is that a lot of people did not come forward for care over the past two years. One of the messages that I would like to give again is that, for anyone who is concerned about symptoms, the NHS is absolutely open for business. Please do come forward and seek diagnosis, treatment and support.

We do not know, as we sit here today with two big variables, quite how things are going to play out. What we can say for certain is that today we have over 6,000 people with covid in hospitals. It is costing the NHS more both to care for those patients safely, with all of the infection control arrangements that need to be in place—

[The Chair]

Thank you for that, but I just remind the shadow Minister to keep within the scope of the Bill.

[Justin Madders]

Q Of course. I was merely responding to the answer that was given. In terms of how the Bill is implemented, what would you say success will look like in five years’ time?

Amanda Pritchard: Actually, in some ways that does link to what I was just saying, because—you would expect me to say this—just to reflect the reality of where we are now, covid is still with us, but we also have a real commitment and opportunity to lean in now to that recovery of routine services. I think success looks clearly like we now have the platform right to be able to continue to evidence that local partnership working is really making a difference. What does that mean? It means partnership in practice, both to deal with the current challenges that the NHS is facing and will continue to face, and to start to show that we can really eat into the backlog of routine care that we know is with us and make the commitment, which I know is felt so deeply across the NHS, to tackling inequalities and really trying to think about some of those long-term planning commitments that talked about prevention and outcomes.

We want to see progress against all those things, but we also want to continue to support local systems, as they have been all the way through, to partner together to continue to deliver things such as the vaccine programme in really innovative ways. For me, this is all about putting the NHS on a firmer statutory footing, whereby partnership becomes the way that we do things, building on what has happened over the last few years and removing any remaining barriers that we know exist and which stop us progressing with the really important job now of improving care for the population and for our patients.

[Justin Madders]

Q Could you just turn that around to the patient’s experience? I know that there are so many different variables in this, but from a patient’s perspective, how will the Bill improve their experience?

Amanda Pritchard: Thank you for that, because from the NHS perspective, the reason we have been supportive, particularly of the integration parts of the Bill, is that it is all about what it enables us to do for patients. Mark and I have done a lot over the last few weeks and months. We have seen so many examples in practice of where it is about the ability to work in partnership, whether that is about mental health crisis lines that are partly delivered through the voluntary sector, with a bit of funding from the NHS, but with support from specialists and mental health trusts as well as primary care. It is about coming together to create those sorts of innovative services, whether it is children’s and young people’s services, such as in south-east London, or whether it is in schools, picking up where children and families have medical and health problems. It is about linking them to the right support within local government, housing and so forth.

That is the sort of thing that we have seen develop over the last few years. As I say, it has been turbocharged through covid, but what we now want to do—this is the critical part of the legislation—is to make that easier. We want to make it the norm and allow people the right opportunities to come together and think about what their population needs and what will make services. It is back to the triple aim of improving the health of the population, the quality of care for patients and the sustainability of services. But ultimately, it is about being able to work together to set up those sorts of innovative arrangements, to see them embedded in practice and to see the NHS working in an integrated way around individuals as the norm. Let me bring in Mark, because this is absolutely his operational space.

Mark Cubbon: Thank you, Amanda. Going back to what patients can expect to see, I think they can expect our local integrated care systems to continue all the efforts to engage with our communities and talk about how we are planning to provide more joined-up care for our communities, because that is one of the key benefits that we will get from the new arrangements. There will be fewer hand-offs in care and fewer organisational boundaries for patients to bump into occasionally, so that we can have joined-up conversations and talk about how things are going to be better. Our local systems, leaders and clinicians will be better placed, so that we really face into and talk about how we will reduce the inequalities and deliver better outcomes. That engagement will be really important, and I think we will build on what works well at the moment and continue to make sure that the patient point is front and centre of all that we are trying to do. We have clinicians leading the charge, in terms of the delivery of those services.

[Justin Madders]

Is there time for a quick question?

[The Chair]

Absolutely.

[Justin Madders]

Q In terms of the reorganisation, we know that they always come with a price tag. Do you have a figure for how much the reorganisation that will follow, which is being undertaken as a result of the Bill, will cost the NHS?

Amanda Pritchard: Mark, do you want to pick this one up? I know you have been leading on this issue for us.

Mark Cubbon: I will indeed. This is definitely a different change from 2012, and probably different from any other changes that have been put in place in previous times as well. We are very much approaching this in the way that we have done. From the outset, we have given a clear message and reassurance to staff who are working in CCGs on job security, so that they know that almost all posts, and the individuals holding those posts, will transfer over to the new organisations. There are not big redundancy bills attached to these changes. We very much want to make sure that the job security is there and that the roles are transferred—

[Justin Madders]

Q Sorry to cut across you, Mark, but I am running up against time and do not want to upset the Chair. I was just looking for a figure. Do you have a figure for how much this is all costing?

Mark Cubbon: We do not have a figure for all the changes, but we know that the CCG cost envelope, which is attributed to every CCG as it stands at the moment, is the cost envelope that will be allocated to each of the ICSs as well. We are not expecting the running costs to be significantly different from those that we have for CCGs.

[Justin Madders]

Thank you.

[Dr Whitford]

Q Following on from Dr Davies’s comments about the structure of the ICS board and the representation of some of the sectors, such as mental health, we have not talked much about the partnerships this morning, so could you explain what you think their role is? I know there are concerns about who will be represented on them, potential conflicts of interest—obviously, particularly around the lack of financial transparency if private providers are used—and some of the sectors, such as dentistry, community pharmacy, end of life and palliative care. People on the ground, at the frontline, are not sure who will represent them in either of those structures to ensure that that service is available for every community and that we do not end up with postcode prescribing. Will there be some guidance? How do you think that will work? I will start with Mark and then go to Amanda, because this is nuts and bolts.

Mark Cubbon: The ICB is essentially how the NHS leaders come together specifically to oversee how resources are allocated and how the NHS delivers its side of the bargain, in terms of how the rest of the ICS works and is able to support integration. The ICP—the partnership—is where we bring together other partners who will have a view, an input and a role to play in that integration agenda. That is essentially, at a very high level, the separation of the partnership and the ICB itself.

On how we get representative views from the whole breadth of the clinical community, again this was published in our guidance—we have further guidance that was published last week—which talks about the clinical community, based on all the engagement that has been done so far. The kind of arrangements that we are very likely to see are where we have clinical reference groups and clinical boards that start to shape all the representative views that give a holistic perspective on how services should be planned and how we should be delivering services for our patients and communities.

Although not every individual will have a seat around the board or partnership table, we are advising the boards and clinicians across the whole footprint to ensure there is deep-rooted engagement. We are trying to galvanise the clinical community and get consensus on the direction of travel in terms of how services should be delivered for patients to deliver better outcomes. That is what we are encouraging our local ICSs to do. We are giving as much guidance as possible, but it will be down to this local flexibility so that our clinicians locally can start to work out how they best come together to do all the things I just set out.

[Dr Whitford]

Q Obviously, there is quite a different balance, in both power and accountability, between the two organisations. Do you think there is an advantage in there being a split, or had you expected there to be a single body for each area making the decisions? That surprised some people when the Bill was published. Could you give just a brief answer on what you think about whether having one board or these two boards is an advantage or disadvantage? Amanda, you look like you want to come in on that.

Amanda Pritchard: I am happy to, and Mark may well want to add. You are absolutely right that when the NHS went out to consult as part of the exercise that we undertook back in February, we were describing a single board structure at that moment. It is a change that we proposed to Government on the back of the stakeholder feedback that we had, particularly from the LGA, which suggested the dual board structure, partly because it gives the real clarity, as we talked about earlier, about where the money flows and where the accountability for NHS service delivery sits. It therefore allows a wider partnership to play in, with a particular view to all the other aspects of population health and the wider agenda. That is not where we started, but it is where we now feel very comfortable, in response to the strong stakeholder feedback.

[Dr Whitford]

Q The ICS board is very NHS, so how do we ensure that attention is paid to the strategy or the findings of the partnership, so that we do not end up with a very health model, when you are trying to get to a wellbeing model?

Amanda Pritchard: Again, you are absolutely right, and that is a risk, which is why we started where we did. What is now described—the requirement to have regard to and respond to that overarching strategy—is the safeguard that means you cannot have the NHS in any way separated from that broader ICS structure, and from that wider strategy for which the partnership will be responsible. As we have discussed, I am not expecting that that will necessarily be the only way in which wider partners are brought into the ICB, but the fact that there will be a local government seat on the ICB is another important way that stops the NHS just working on its own.

[Dr Whitford]

Q And you think “with regard to” is sufficiently strong to ensure that that happens?

Amanda Pritchard: It has quite a specific, technical meaning, so from our point of view we would understand that to be a very clear direction.

[Dr Whitford]

Q Okay. That’s fine. In one of your earlier answers, you talked about improving clinical quality, which obviously goes along with patient safety, both of which were my background when I was in the NHS. But that is still going to involve procurement and a degree of financial competition. Something that has disappeared in England over the past decade is peer-reviewed audit of clinical quality outcomes, which is the outcome for patients. With the title NHS Improvement—and it did surprise me when I came to this place that that is not what it is about—how do you think that will come back, because it should not just be about money; it has to be about achieving better clinical outcomes? I understand that the report on breast cancer, “Getting it Right First Time”, has still not been published, even though it was ready in December 2019. Having led on this kind of thing in Scotland, how are you going to drive clinical quality for patients? I will start with you, Amanda, and then go to Mark quickly.

Amanda Pritchard: I might let Mark come in on this, because it is something that we have thought a lot about. You are absolutely right that the purpose of all of this is to make sure that we are improving care and services to patients, but with regard to that triple A, it is also of course about the sustainability of services and the broader population health challenge. Part of the structure that the Bill will allow us to put in place on things such as the provider collaboratives absolutely begins to put back firmly at the core of how we do our business procedures such as the clinical peer review.

We have now got the data through things such as GIRFT, which means that we can incorporate it formally in a structure that brings together the providers and also crosses pathways, so that we are not dealing with acute on its own, or with mental health or primary care on its own. We can then look at each against best practice and see how different parts of the system are performing, assess some of the challenges and collectively think about how to come together to secure improvement. That is already happening, but the Bill will allow us to make that much more at the core of how the systems approach local improvement. Mark, would you like to add to that?

[Dr Whitford]

Q Just before we go to Mark, would you see a re-emergence of national quality audits such as for certain cancers, which have been largely lost in England over the past 10 years? Would you hope that they would return?

Amanda Pritchard: Yes. There is still a huge amount of national audit work that does take place. Thank you for mentioning GIRFT, because we do have some other really important improvement programmes that are very data driven, which have an important place in this conversation. We certainly see the proposed legislative changes as a real opportunity to bake that way of working in, not just nationally but through systems coming together to do it as part of their local activity as well.

[Dr Whitford]

Mark, do you have anything to add very briefly?

Mark Cubbon: One of the major changes is a move away from competition to much more collaboration, and that is one of the things that the Bill sets out. That is what we believe in and what people are looking for, from what we hear from the service. With that collaboration what we start to see is much more accessible input from people and organisations, so that we can share and learn from each other and start to instil the best practice that we see in one part of an ICS, and have the opportunity to discuss that and see how it can benefit other parts of the ICS, and so reduce variation and deliver much more consistent care to patients.

Before I started my job at NHSEI, I was chief executive of an acute hospital on the south coast. While there have always been opportunities for colleagues to come together and discuss how best to approach a challenge, and to ensure opportunities for sharing good practice and learning from each other, the Bill starts to take down barriers and is much more enabling than what came before. Yes, of course clinicians have informal ways of coming together to look at how changes can benefit patients, but these structures are intended to allow a much greater exchange of ideas, which will be of great benefit to patients; hopefully we can start to implement those ideas at greater speed.

[The Chair]

Before I call the Minister, I remind Members that there will be a hard stop at 11.25 am. If witnesses could keep their answers as brief as possible, it would be much appreciated.

[Edward Argar]

Q Thank you, Mrs Murray. I will try to rattle through three quick questions. I think this is my first public opportunity to put on record, as the shadow Minister did, my congratulations to you, Amanda, on your appointment.

If I recall correctly, your predecessor, now Lord Stevens, says that about 85% of provisions in the Bill were things that the NHS asked for in its 2019 consultation. Do you recognise that figure, and how would you characterise the approach that has been adopted to the development of the Bill?

Amanda Pritchard: Thank you. I would struggle to give an exact percentage, but the Bill certainly contains widely supported proposals for integrated care. We have been working very closely with our stakeholders, colleagues across the system, you and others to ensure, as far as possible, the same approach to consultation, listening and hearing. You cannot please everybody all the time, but we want to reflect what feels genuinely like a consensus view about what will best help the NHS deliver on all the challenges we have discussed. That is reflected in the Bill, so thank you for that. As it goes through Parliament, we very much want to continue to see that spirit of joint working, consensus building and engagement, so that when it hopefully becomes legislation in April ’22, it lands with all the support that I think it currently has.

[Edward Argar]

Q I will confine myself to one more question, Mrs Murray, to make sure that we do not run up against the time limit. This question has been asked of other witnesses, and I suspect it will be asked of others. To what extent is this the right time to make these changes?

Amanda Pritchard: As I said, I genuinely think that our experience across covid has strengthened the argument for moving to legislation now, because our way of working in the past two years has been characterised by integration and partnership, and that is how the NHS and partners need and want to work—now and as we head into next year, facing that set of challenges that people are so very committed to continuing to tackle together. Yes, Minister, I think this is an important Bill. The integration agenda is not the whole answer, but it is an important component of it, and the sooner it comes, the better.

[Edward Argar]

Q Mark, in the minute or so before Mrs Murray closes the proceedings, is there anything you want to add on those two questions?

Mark Cubbon: All I would say is that collaboration and partnership work is a key feature of our response to covid. It is ever more critical, in the light of the question of how we will approach our recovery. Fantastic working has been enabled locally through necessity; now, we hear from the whole service that we want to build on that. We look forward to the future with that in mind; the Bill allows us to do that.

[The Chair]

As there are no further questions, I thank the witnesses for their evidence. That brings us to the end of our morning sitting. The Committee will meet again at 2 pm in this room to take further evidence.

Ordered,

That further consideration be now adjourned.—(Maggie Throup.)

11:25

Adjourned till this day at Two o’clock.

Health and Care Bill (Second sitting)

Committee stage
Tuesday 7th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

The Committee consisted of the following Members:

Chairs: † Steve McCabe, Mrs Sheryll Murray

† Argar, Edward (Minister for Health)

† Churchill, Jo (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care)

† Crosbie, Virginia (Ynys Môn) (Con)

† Davies, Gareth (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)

† Davies, Dr James (Vale of Clwyd) (Con)

† Foy, Mary Kelly (City of Durham) (Lab)

† Gideon, Jo (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con)

† Madders, Justin (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)

† Norris, Alex (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)

† Owen, Sarah (Luton North) (Lab)

† Robinson, Mary (Cheadle) (Con)

† Skidmore, Chris (Kingswood) (Con)

† Smyth, Karin (Bristol South) (Lab)

† Throup, Maggie (Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty's Treasury)

† Timpson, Edward (Eddisbury) (Con)

† Whitford, Dr Philippa (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)

Williams, Hywel (Arfon) (PC)

Huw Yardley, Sarah Ioannou, Committee Clerks

† attended the Committee

Witnesses

Simon Madden, Director for Data Policy, NHSX

Saffron Cordery, Deputy Chief Executive, NHS Providers

Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive, NHS Confederation

Ian Trenholm, Chief Executive, Care Quality Commission

Keith Conradi, Chief Investigator, Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch

Cllr James Jamieson, Chair, Local Government Association

Professor Maggie Rae, President, Faculty of Public Health

Eluned Morgan, Minister for Health and Social Services, Welsh Government

Lyn Summers, Head of Health and Social Services Central Legislation Team, Welsh Government

Mari Williams, Senior Lawyer (Health), Welsh Government

Public Bill Committee

Tuesday 7 September 2021

(Afternoon)

[Steve McCabe in the Chair]

Health and Care Bill

14:00

The Committee deliberated in private.

Examination of Witness

Simon Madden gave evidence.

14:01

[The Chair]

This is the third panel. We will now hear from Simon Madden, the director of data policy at NHSX, who is appearing in person. We have until 2.30 pm for this session. Good afternoon, Mr Madden. Could I ask you to introduce yourself for the record?

Simon Madden: Good afternoon. I am Simon Madden, director of data policy, NHSX.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q46 Thank you, Simon Madden, for your attendance this afternoon. I think it would be safe to say that the roll-out of the general practice data for planning and research scheme did not go as planned earlier this year. It was remarkable that despite the limited engagement, well over 1 million people opted out. What learning do you think we can take from that exercise for the data provisions contained in part 2 of the Bill?

Simon Madden: We have obviously set out the position. The Government have set out the position in respect of GP data for planning and research, in terms of taking a pause and having a conditions-based approach, rather than a clear timeline for the commencement of that. Above all else, I think that the overriding need for trust and transparency—to build public trust in the use of health data—is vitally important, and the ways in which this is governed need to be transparent in such a way that the general public can see quite easily how their data will be used.

Indeed, I think it is a responsibility on Government and those of us in the health and care system more broadly to really promote the benefits of sharing data. It is a public good and, while putting in place sufficient safeguards and then giving the public the opportunity to opt out of that process if they are not convinced by those safeguards, it remains a public good and contributes to the broader health, if I can put it that way, of the health and care system.

[Alex Norris]

Q Do you see the process enabled by the Bill running alongside a future resumption of the GPDPR process—or a conditions-based continuation, as you put it—or would they remain two separate things that overlap?

Simon Madden: Essentially, they are separate in terms of process. The general public will not make a distinction between any things to do with their health data. Whether it is the draft data strategy that we published earlier in the year or the GP data for planning and research programme, to the general public it is about their health data.

It is incumbent on us to make sure that we have a strong narrative that reflects all aspects of health data. We need to reset the relationship between the patient—the citizen—and their health data, so that a perception does not arise that we are taking their trust for granted, because that is certainly not the case. The provisions in the Bill around data are meant, to some degree, to provide clarification where there is some confusion in the current framework about how and when data could be shared.

[Alex Norris]

Building on that point—

[The Chair]

Hang on a second. I had better give somebody from another party a chance.

[Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)]

Chair, I have another question.

[The Chair]

I will come to you in a second, Karin. I am just trying to balance it between the respective parties.

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)]

Q Obviously, a lot of the detail will only be there when the regulations are laid, but there has been a lot of concern in England about the talk of data being provided in a pseudonymised form to commercial companies. Is this not a repeat of the care.data issue, which lost public trust? A lot in these clauses could apply to Scotland. We have real issues in Scotland, where we have a lot of data sharing and analysis, and suddenly this gives NHS Digital to demand data, whether for a registry or for something else. It is about the commercial side; I do not think patients have an issue with Public Health England, universities or whoever learning from their data. The public concern is about the idea of pseudonymised data ending up with commercial companies.

Simon Madden: I completely understand that. We have to be very clear about what we mean by “commercial companies”, because pharmaceutical companies that develop treatments and vaccines are also commercial companies.

[Dr Whitford]

Q But the public are not comfortable with that.

Simon Madden: I get that, but there is no doubt that, in order to improve treatments, we need to contribute to research in some way.

You are absolutely right. It goes back to my trust and transparency point. One of the things that we signalled in the data strategy particularly was a movement towards trusted research environments. That is crucial. In some ways, what we have announced on GP data for planning and research is an acceleration of that work. We have said that data will not be shipped around or disseminated; it will be accessed only within the confines of a secure, trusted research environment, with full transparency about who has access, who runs what queries, and so on. It will be held and will not be shared. That is the general direction of travel that we want to see, and that is why we set that out in the data strategy.

We do not have to make a choice now between enabling access to data, or sharing data, and protecting privacy. Technology has allowed us to create environments where it is perfectly possible for data to be accessed safely and securely, with strict safeguards, without privacy being compromised.

[Dr Whitford]

Q That is the public concern. My concern is that the data in Scotland lives within NHS Scotland. It is not under this Parliament or anything else, and yet there is no mention of Scottish Ministers being able to say, “We will share it in an anonymous form. We will be able to break that code if there is a safety issue on a medicines registry or if a piece of research needs to be traced back to a patient.” You can set filters within your trusted environment without handing over pseudonymised data to a commercial pharmaceutical company.

Simon Madden: Data will not be handed over in a trusted research environment; it is only accessed in one place.

[Dr Whitford]

Q But by whom? That is the public concern. They have no issue with a public body. They are anxious and it goes right back to care.data. The danger is that it will set back your whole digital agenda if you get hundreds of thousands of the public all opting to not take part.

Simon Madden: I completely understand. That is why I mentioned that it is incumbent on us to have not only the right safeguards in place but the right narrative and to engage with the public so that they understand what those safeguards are, how they operate and how they can opt out of the system. One of the things we have been looking at in developing the final version of the data strategy following the engagement is how we can do much more on public trust and transparency. It is not just about a one-off marketing campaign; it is about an ongoing public dialogue and involvement of the public in future policy considerations. Again, it goes back to that resetting point; I think this is a reset moment. Technology now allows us to go that bit further than we have ever been able to go before in terms of protecting privacy, but we have to be in a stronger position to explain that to the public and how it all works.

[Karin Smyth]

Q I hope that this is in scope, Mr McCabe. I have just come from the Chamber, where the Prime Minister is still on his feet. He talked about integrated care records, but I am not quite sure if we are discussing the same thing. This may not be news to you, Mr Madden, but could you clarify whether we are all talking about the same thing? I appreciate that you were not there to hear the Prime Minister, but is it your understanding that what we are hearing today about social care is the same as the conversation we have been having about integrated care records, personal care records and so on?

Simon Madden: Forgive me, but I will take full advantage of the fact that I was not there and have not seen the statement that the Prime Minister made. A feature of our plans set out in the data strategy—not so much in terms of the Bill itself—is for each integrated care system to have a basic shared care record, so that throughout their whole health and care journey a patient or citizen does not have to do simple things like repeat test results or repeat their prescriptions, and so that their care journey between health and social care, with provisions for safeguarding and safeguarding information, is seamless.

[The Minister for Health (Edward Argar)]

I will ask a couple of questions, if I may, Mr McCabe, and then perhaps the hon. Member for Nottingham North can come back in if we have time. Moving away from what has been explored by colleagues so far on the extremely important protections around data sharing and data use, can you set out how the changes set out in the Bill relate to and will help you deliver the data strategy that you have in place?

Simon Madden: It is important to set out that these provisions alone, while they do much within the Bill, must be seen in the context of that wider data strategy. They support our ambitions, and the integration and collaboration that is described in the Bill will be a huge enabler for the ambitions set out in the strategy itself.

The provisions themselves focus to some extent on tidying things up and providing a degree of clarification. I mentioned the provisions for clarifying NHS Digital powers: currently, there is sometimes confusion around what data NHS Digital can share and in what circumstances it can share it. Sometimes, that leads to problems when data may need to be shared for very good reasons—for justifiable reasons—but NHS Digital is sometimes not convinced that it has the legal power to be able to share the data. This puts beyond doubt its ability to share data appropriately.

Another provision is on information standards. We are making a provision in the Bill to mandate standards for the storage and collection of data. That is important to ensure that data can flow between different IT systems and organisational boundaries in the health and care system. That will then help individual patients and improve health outcomes. We want to ensure that providers of health and care services purchase only technology that adheres to that set of standards, so that we have that interoperability, and those improved outcomes for patients, through that mandation of information standards.

We have also put in clauses around sharing anonymous health and care information, which help to essentially set a duty to share anonymous information when it is legally permitted to do so. One of the lessons that we have learned over the pandemic has been that, although it is perfectly permissible for data to be shared—it is legally permissible to do so—the shift from “can” to “should” has a great impact within the system.

Our invoking of the control of patient information regulations under existing legislation, to enable that sharing of data and to say, “You should share data in these circumstances,” has significantly helped the free flow of data safely and securely within the health system. That has had an impact on patient care. I think that the duty to share anonymous data will help to put on a more permanent footing some of those provisions that we have seen during the pandemic.

[Edward Argar]

Q To what extent would you consider it a fair characterisation that this is, in a sense, evolutionary, and that, actually, to a large extent, the provisions related to data—to go back to what you said—add greater transparency and legal clarity around some things that may have had to happen during the pandemic, and give them a longer-term basis in statute, as debated by this place? Do feel entirely free to disagree with that characterisation, I hasten to add. I am not leading you in any way, but to what extent would you consider that to be a fair reflection of these provisions?

Simon Madden: I think it is a fair reflection, to a certain degree. I think that the thing that we must always be conscious of, particularly in the field of data and technology, is that we see advances but legislation often does not keep up with those advances. It is about ensuring that everyone understands their responsibilities—not just that the public understands the responsibilities of organisations that are safeguarding data, but that those organisations themselves have the right powers to be able to share data safely and securely. I think it is evolutionary in that sense, but it is also about making sure that the provisions in the Bill are keeping pace with the development of technology and how data is used in the real, modern world.

[Alex Norris]

Q I will ask two questions in finishing, if I may, Mr McCabe. The first is a final one on the GPDPR promise. Mr Madden, you said that that is a separate process to the one in part 2 of the Bill—which I completely agree with—but that in the public’s mind, the two are likely to be conflated, and that now would be a good moment to reset the relationship between people and their data. Again, I completely agree with that. Is there any technical reason why we could not run those two processes not as two but as one?

Simon Madden: I should perhaps caveat my previous comments by saying that they very much are, in our mind; it is all about health data. The focal point for us at the moment, which we are working through with Ministers, is the formulation of the final version of the data strategy. Of course, the legislative provisions are within the data strategy. It is very much the case that the publication of that document, I think, is the right moment for that reset where we have more intensified engagement with the public and we really step up the narrative around how health data is used. As one of your colleagues said, the real detail comes in regulations, if there are any regulations around that; and of course there would need to be consultation before the regulations were put in place.

[Alex Norris]

Q Finally, I remember from my time in local government that we would talk about the desire in social care to share data with the health service. We talked about, obviously, regulatory barriers that stopped us and we would welcome provisions that removed that, but a very practical obstacle on our list of things in the way was that the systems did not necessarily speak to each other. Do you think that health service systems and social care systems are ready to speak to each other now, or will there need to be, across all integrated care systems, a whole new provider brought in?

Simon Madden: Obviously, interoperability is absolutely key. The information standards piece that I spoke about is part of that, but also, outside the legislative piece, work is going on to create a unified data architecture. This is not about driving or having everything from the centre, so that everybody uses the same things, but about making sure that the architecture enables that interoperability so that the systems can speak to each other. There is certainly a degree of levelling up to do in terms of digital maturity, which is another area in which NHSX is involved, supporting the Department and NHS England. But yes, interoperability is key. We are not there yet; we have some way to go to make sure that everything will flow as it should and the systems speak to each other.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Jo Churchill)]

Q Mr Madden, I would like to know specifically how the strategy will help us to deliver integrated care within the confines of the Bill, so that we can give better patient outcomes, because ultimately that is what I have assumed the Bill is striving for. You did allude to how that interoperability gives us greater vision into the system. I wonder whether you could help us by bringing that to life. Thank you.

Simon Madden: The best example is something that I have already cited to a certain degree, which is the shared care record. To some degree, that would happen irrespective of whether ICSs and the Bill were in place, because health and social care need to come together; that is something that needs to happen in any event. But what the Bill does is create the proper framework of integration and collaboration. There are other powers in the Bill, for instance the duty to co-operate and collaborate, that I think are going to be absolutely crucial. From a public perspective, they see the NHS and see one organisation, whereas we all know that it is a confederation of organisations, each sometimes with different aims, pulling together. The ICS structure set out in the Bill, plus the data provisions that support that broader approach, will help provide that free flow of information so that clinicians and care professionals have access to the information they need to be able to treat patients in the most effective way.

[The Chair]

Anyone else? I will assume there are no more questions. Mr Madden, I thank you very much for your evidence.

Examination of Witnesses

Saffron Cordery and Matthew Taylor gave evidence.

14:25

[The Chair]

This panel is mixed. We have Saffron Cordery, the deputy chief executive of NHS Providers, who is joining us remotely via a video link, and Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation, who is appearing in person. Can you hear us okay, Saffron?

Saffron Cordery indicated assent.

[The Chair]

In that case, Saffron first, then Mr Taylor, can you introduce yourselves for the record, please?

Saffron Cordery: Yes. I am Saffron Cordery and I am deputy chief executive at NHS Providers.

Matthew Taylor: I am Matthew Taylor and I am chief executive of the NHS Confederation.

[Karin Smyth]

Good to see you both. Thank you for coming. I want to talk about accountability. I asked NHS England this morning about how accountability works in the new system and it was clear that local accountability lies with the integrated care board—the chief executive and the finance director, in the first instance. We were then taken through the system up to NHS England and Ms Pritchard then said “through Parliament”, which she corrected to “through the Secretary of State through Parliament”. I asked at what stage the Secretary of State becomes involved in the accountability, a question that she did not answer and which I would like you both to answer for me.

We have also heard that the Bill is something the NHS asked for. I have not met a single person working at any level in the NHS who says that the powers given to the Secretary of State directly, added to the Bill after conversations with the NHS, are a good thing and are clearly workable. That is my pretext.

Perhaps I can give the example of a constituent who came to me about ear wax removal, which was a subject that concerned him greatly. Will I write to the Secretary of State as a Member of Parliament to ask him about the lack of ear wax removal services in my integrated care board area, or will the chief executive be the final arbiter of such decisions? Mr Taylor, do you want to go first on behalf of the confederation?

Matthew Taylor: Yes. There are two points here. The first is around the structure of accountability at the centre and while that is important, ultimately, it is a less important consideration for health service leaders than the relationship between central accountability and local accountability. That is the focus of the major concern we have about the Bill: the extension of the Secretary of State’s powers in relation to reconfiguration, which we think is a mistake. We think the system, as it is, is not perfect but works pretty well. For the Secretary of State potentially to be embroiled in making decisions not just about major reconfigurations, but really relatively minor reconfigurations runs the risk not only of delaying necessary changes in the system, but of putting less emphasis on the views of local people and of clinical advice.

Representing my members, while the question of the relationship between the Secretary of State, Parliament and NHS England is one that we take an interest in, the issue of the relationship between the centre and local accountability is stronger. Where constituents write to their MPs, the Secretary of State or wherever when they have a problem, they will continue to do so, but I hope in such a system that the first thing to happen to such a letter is that it would be sent back to people locally who could address that issue in a local way. It would be ill-advised for a Secretary of State to try to involve themselves in a question like that.

Saffron Cordery: I agree with Matthew’s point. It is this central-local relationship that is absolutely critical to those who are working on the frontline—trust leaders from my perspective, and from NHS Providers’ perspective. Coming back to some of your points about the NHS supporting the legislation, I think that is absolutely right. The NHS has come together to support the direction of travel of this legislation, but I think it is worth saying that that agreement was based around an August 2019 set of proposals, when the whole NHS came together on the basis of some recommendations from the Health Committee. It is important to remember that the legislation has changed somewhat since then. We have had a number of elements added to the Bill that sit around the central bit that the NHS agreed with, which probably changed the context somewhat. It is worth remembering that the local reconfigurations issue that Matthew Taylor raised is a very important one.

There are elements as well in the nature of the relationship between the Secretary of State and NHS England in terms of the operating context and its ability to intervene in what goes on nationally, and the knock-on effect locally on trusts. There are some really big issues there, which come together.

The other thing to say is that, often, Secretary of State powers may seem like small elements, but taken together, the cumulative impact can be seen to erode that local accountability. We would hope, whatever happens, that if someone has an issue with ear wax removal, they speak to someone at the most appropriate level to get something done. That is what subsidiarity is about: the delegation of powers to the most appropriate level, and it is really important. It is also important for accountability, because you cannot have a Secretary of State saddled with taking a thousand tiny decisions in an organisation and a system as complex as the NHS. That is one of the challenges of this local reconfiguration issue that is arising.

[Karin Smyth]

Chair, can I come back?

[The Chair]

I will come to you if there is time, but I want to move on. Dr Davies.

[Dr James Davies (Vale of Clwyd) (Con)]

Q Thank you. I have a general question about the key feature of the Bill: integration of services. What is the experience of your members with regard to that and have those views changed thanks to the pandemic? Perhaps we can hear from Saffron first.

Saffron Cordery: The experience of the pandemic, which is a seismic and far-reaching event, really put the frontline of the NHS and other local public services in the frame for delivering for their local communities, and for supporting each other and helping each other out with mutual aid. What we saw there was one very good and important example of how local partnership working, local collaboration and local integration was working in very different ways up and down the country.

We had some common features of all integration, something you would expect at a time of crisis, where there is a lot of command and control and procedures that go on in a state of civil crisis such as this one. We also saw different communities responding in different ways. That is one of the most important points that I want to make about this legislation. In terms of collaboration, we have to see a piece of legislation that is as enabling and permissive as possible. Obviously, legislation has choices. You go down different routes. Really prescriptive legislation will not help in this situation, though. We have to reflect the progress made in some areas and the need for encouragement and support in other areas to get where we want all ICSs to be: that is, really effective and delivering what local populations need. A permissive framework is critical. Going back to your question, it is right that the pandemic has shone a light on both the potential of ICSs and collaboration in particular and the challenges we face right now in implementing any new proposals due to the operational pressures facing the NHS, local government and other public services.

Matthew Taylor: I agree with Saffron. There have been some very good examples of local collaboration, such as the vaccination programme and reaching out to communities where initial take-up may not have been what we had hoped. There is some really impressive work there. That work presages the wider commitment within the health service to a strategy of population health, which addresses not only those people who express demand but those who do not. We wish that they would, because that is one of the things driving health inequality.

I have been at the confederation only three months, so I look at the legislation from the perspective of a wider interest in public policy over 30 years in government and outside it. This is a very interesting and innovative example of policy making. We have these integrated care systems in large parts of the country, so the policy has already been enacted ahead of the legislation. Though that may raise democratic issues, it enables us to see in practice how people are taking the principles of service integration and focusing them on population health. Despite the challenges of covid, a challenging funding context, and the issues around social care—which are hopefully being addressed in one way or another—we see across the country that there has been a whole array of interesting bits of innovative, collaborative work around issues of population health, prevention and addressing health inequalities.

I want to emphasise a point Saffron made. If you look around the country, you see some systems that are well advanced in their collaboration and other systems that are not. This is for a variety of reasons; in some cases there are issues to do with boundaries and such. Like Saffron, I think it is really important we have a permissive regime that allows these systems to evolve at a pace that is right for them and the places in which they operate. Over time, the systems will move forward, but it is actually a really effective way of working. It would be a mistake to try to impose exactly the same way of working on every part of the country. It would mean those who were ahead will be pulled back and those who are not quite ready to make integration work will be compelled to tick boxes, as it were, rather than work on the development of the relationships that we need.

[Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con)]

Q I want to build on that point about permissiveness and take it a step further in terms of the specification in the Bill around ICBs and ICPs—the boards and partnerships. A lot of us on the Committee have been requested to look carefully at individual parts of the healthcare system. That does have a generality to it, covering mental health, children, palliative care and so on, and their representation is very clear within partnerships and boards. Based on your views around permissiveness and flexibility and the different paces ICSs are currently at, how do you see this? How do we reassure people that their views and the particular parts of the health system they represent will get a fair hearing and that the accountability structures will be in place to make sure they are able to come back if they feel they are not being addressed properly?

Matthew Taylor: That is an important point. Let me be completely open about the conversation within the confederation about this issue, for example. We have a mental health network representing mental health providers. Their preference would be to specify the need to have a mental health leader on the board. We as a confederation recognise that view and represented it, but that is not our view overall. Our view is that, partly because configurations differ from place to place—in some places, mental healthcare and community are together, for example—but for a variety of reasons, we would not want to specify further the membership of those boards. Again, that is to maximise local flexibility.

If people feel their voice is not being heard, then that is something they are going to say. We will have to see how this system evolves, but let us start with—going back to a word used earlier—the permissive regime and see how that goes, because after all it is in the interests of everybody in the local health system that they hear the voices they need to hear.

Saffron Cordery: I agree. This is a thorny issue but I suppose it is one of either, depending on how you look at it, the opportunities or the casualties of creating another level of governance in a local system. When you are thinking about putting collaboration on a statutory footing, you have to surround it with some kind of governance to ensure the effective operation of that body.

It is a tricky issue. You cannot have an integrated care board—the board that will govern how funding flows through and how priorities are agreed, decided and implemented—that is so enormous that it becomes unworkable, but there has to be a clear balance between making sure it is not only the big and the powerful who are represented there, but also all the rights and appropriate interests. There are a number of positions specified in the ICB board arrangements, and it will be interesting and important to see how different ICSs use those roles, particularly the non-executive or wider partnership roles that are specified, in order to have a broad range of voices around the table.

It is worth remembering that many other organisations and structures will be taking part in the ICS arrangements. You will have things like provider collaboratives, which are not in the Bill but feature heavily in the guidance that comes from NHS England and NHS Improvement, which are precisely about organisations working together to deliver on local priorities. Many of those are led by mental health organisations focusing on what they need to deliver.

There are other structures within these arrangements, but no one would say it is ideal. It is not the most ideal solution, but it is very difficult to get to a final configuration that is both workable in terms of numbers and reflects the multiplicity of voices in a locality. It is important to have the right engagement at every single level and the right channels feeding up information and priorities, and to understand what is really important in a system.

Matthew Taylor: Today the Government have been talking about the importance of integration in the context of its announcement on health and social care. One of the big questions is going to be about the powers that are devolved within systems to places, and I think it will be at the place level that we will see service integration. The evolution of place level forms of accountability is an important part of that, and again a reason why it is really important to allow these structures to evolve locally. I suspect that in some areas more power will be held at the system level and less at the place level. In other places, it will be the reverse, with most of the action taking place at place level. That reflects the nature of places, the legacy of those places and the relationships that have built up.

[Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)]

Q I wanted to turn to workforce planning and your views on clause 33. The NHS Confederation, in its written evidence, has suggested that the five-year period for a strategic review on workforce planning is too long. That mirrors my amendment, which has a crack at this. I have suggested an annual review. It was suggested this morning that two years might be the right time length. I see that the NHS Confederation has suggested three years. I want to get your organisations’ views on what a strategic review should look like, but also on the format and how a strategic review should be undertaken so that it actually works as an act of co-creation, rather than being directed centrally by the Secretary of State on to Health Education England.

Matthew Taylor: My area of expertise before coming to the NHS Confederation was work and the future of work, on which I advised the Government, and one of the things I know from that work is how quickly the world of work is changing. It is impacted by a whole variety of things—not least, of course, substantial technological change. In a world where work is evolving very quickly and population needs are evolving, five years is simply far too long. If it were one year, we would be happy. We have fastened on to two years. That would be the minimum that we would want as a gap between assessments of workforce need.

It is also—to emphasise the point that I think you are making—important that this review gathers evidence from a whole variety of bodies, because an enormous amount of extremely good work is taking place around work. Predictions of workforce need are imprecise, so hearing from a variety of voices is important. This should be an independent process, in which independent expertise is brought to bear; there should be wide consultation with those who think about these issues; and a two-year plan would, I think, be an improvement on what is in the Bill.

Saffron Cordery: We also support this amendment and the work that has been done by the confederation and others on this. There is one other element that I would add to this that supports this perspective. It has been really hard, across NHS workforce planning, to light upon one version of the truth, in terms of workforce numbers. Anything that starts to move towards a collective perspective on workforce needs and workforce planning will be absolutely critical.

Getting an agreed perspective on how we create that figure will be fundamental. In my time working across the health service, there have been many different perspectives on workforce—on the gaps, the numbers who are in roles, and what those roles need to be. It is important to have lots of views, but I think this is also important. Although, as Matthew says, it is not a precise science, we need to light upon a version that is independently agreed, but that we all sign up to as the numbers we are working to.

[Karin Smyth]

Q If I may, I will return to the permissiveness and place conversation. I agree with the Bill’s direction of travel around place. I do not like the word “permissiveness”, because we have essentially a local cartel of healthcare providers deciding on resources and their allocation, and that locks out local communities. I am a bit suspicious of the NHS being given permission to do as it sees fit. That is why I put forward the example about ear wax removal—because that matters to local people, as we all know; that is what some of these things come down to.

The Bill falls apart because of the governance arrangements and the accountability, which does not follow the logic of place-based commissioning. My solution for the Government, should they wish to take it, is something around a good governance commission, based on the previous appointments commission-type process. It would bring in skilled people, with clear role descriptions, clear skills and a degree of independence. It would have the trust of local people, and would bring these very powerful chief executives together with local leaders to explain why, in Bristol, you cannot have ear wax removal, or why you are closing certain provision and opening it in Derbyshire or wherever. Have you had an opportunity to look at my proposal for a good governance commission and locally accountable chairs—perhaps elected, or appointed? What do you think of that as a solution that would bring power and accountability closer to local people?

Saffron Cordery: The issue of accountability is absolutely fundamental. One of the things we have not talked about much in this sitting, and which is not talked about that much, is the presence of two bodies in the system. We have the ICB, but also this partnership body that brings together a number of wider partners—particularly local government—with democratic accountability, which I think is really important.

I am wary of adding too much into the structures in the Bill. I understand your perspective on permissiveness, and we need to make sure that there are checks and balances across the whole system, but I would be wary of adding in another structure alongside everything we have. One of the features of this legislation, as I have said throughout the process—we have met the Department of Health and Social Care and talked to their Bill team, who have been very open and helpful—is that it does not really streamline in the way that it thinks it might. It adds to existing structures and processes, rather than starting from a clean sheet of paper and building something that might be deemed to be a good enough model; we will never get to the perfect model.

Right now, what we do not need is a root-and-branch dismantling of NHS structures and something wholly new put in their place, but I think there has been a missed opportunity to look at where we could streamline more. On that basis, I think it is important not to add more in, and it is fundamentally important that we look at the different roles and structures that already exist. From a trust provider perspective, working both at place and within provider collaboratives, and looking at the governance of unitary boards with non-executives and in some places also with governors and members, we see that there is that element of engagement with the community that you perhaps do not see in other places. I do not think it speaks entirely to your cartel point, but it is a step along the way that is well established and well used in many places.

This is a thorny and tricky issue. Using existing structures of accountability will be really important, as well as using the new ones, but I would not want to see anything new added in there.

Matthew Taylor: I largely agree with that, but another point is that if there is a broad policy thrust in this legislation, it is away from a medical model of health towards one that focuses more on social determinants. In the best partnerships—we talk often about West Yorkshire and Harrogate, for example—there is an incredibly strong relationship between health service leaders and local authority leaders. That will be a critical factor in the success of the system. When I look at the best practice emerging in the integrated care systems on issues such as prevention and population health, I see leaders starting to talk about issues such as housing, employment and public space, recognising their importance to health. In one way, that is a progressive move, and one that will probably lead to a louder voice for a variety of local interests, if we understand health much more in these socially determined terms, rather than simply through the medical model.

We had a big announcement today about social care reform, and there is a set of issues that are not in this Bill—issues around health and social care integration, how it will work and how accountability will work. It remains to be seen how the Government address that question.

[Dr Whitford]

Q Matthew, you mentioned that the degree of local integration varies, and that it is impacted by things such as boundaries—particularly the relationship between NHS and local government boundaries in the shift to a wider view of wellbeing. How much of a problem is it that the number and the footprints of the ICSs are different from those of the proposed sustainability and transformation plans? Are people who were growing together suddenly finding that they are no longer working together, and that they will have to start working with someone else? Do you not see that as something that will hold things back?

Matthew Taylor: It is a challenge.

[Dr Whitford]

Q Is it a necessary challenge?

Matthew Taylor: Whenever Government are faced with issues of boundaries, there is no solution that will not upset a lot of people, and this of course has been a vexed issue. I go back to the need for local flexibility. I will not name particular systems, because I do not want to speak for them, but I am thinking of two systems. In one, there have been many years of integration and collaboration, and an enormous amount of collaborative work. There, boundaries are probably much less important than they were in the past. In the other, an ICS is being established that will oversee two places—a city and a county that do not have an enormous amount in common. There, the ICS will have to develop its own proposition about the value that it will add. It would be a mistake for that system to want to draw up an enormous amount of power from two places that are working pretty effectively and would not benefit a great deal from deep integration.

The pattern is different from place to place. That is why we need to allow things to evolve in the light of local circumstances. It is always difficult when boundaries are not coterminous or shift. All I can say is that health services are used to these kinds of challenges, and most who have reached the top have probably worked through at least one of these challenges in the past, and know how to go about it as best they can.

[Dr Whitford]

Q Obviously, the delivery will be different, but the aim will be the same. What mechanism do you see evolving to allow the sharing of good practice? The integration of health and social care has been going ahead for seven years in Scotland, and we know how difficult it is. It is exactly as you say: some areas have made amazing innovations, and others are struggling. In what forum do you see one place being able to learn from another’s experience?

Matthew Taylor: That is a fascinating question. My view, which goes back many years, is that you need the right combination of strategy from the centre and identification of the right thing to do, where there is clearly one best thing to do, although Whitehall has a slight tendency to exaggerate the number of areas in which there is one best thing to do. Then you need peer-to-peer, or horizontal, learning. Providers and the confederation do a lot of work with our members to share best practice. A week will not pass without one of us publishing something around good practice, and bringing our members together to share that. This is another reason why it is important to have local difference. It is in a system of local difference that you will get more innovation. As long as you have innovation coming through, really strong organisations spreading good practice and a centre that focuses on where it can add value, you have the capacity for a self-improving system.

[Dr Whitford]

But how do you—

[The Chair]

I am wondering if we should hear from our other witness.

[Dr Whitford]

I was going to ask Matthew all my questions, and then go to Saffron with them all.

[The Chair]

Well, you only have about two minutes.

Matthew Taylor: By the way, I think it is important for us to learn from Scotland. We have been having a conversation in the confederation about the importance of recognising that we have different health systems now across the UK, and that there is an opportunity here for good learning.

[Dr Whitford]

Saffron?

Saffron Cordery: In the interests of time, I will say that I do not have a huge amount to add. Peer learning, peer challenge and peer support are absolutely critical. Variation, in its broadest sense, is important, and you can call that innovation or whatever you want. How you respond to local circumstances is critical. That is why cookie-cutter mode does not really work. Going back to your point on boundaries, they are, of course, a vexed issue. I know from my time in local government how vexed an issue it is there. Any kind of local government reorganisation can tie you up for years and years. It is worth remembering that boundaries were challenging at the start of this process. A number of STPs, which were the forerunners to ICSs, had boundaries imposed on them, rather than choosing those boundaries.

There have been a few policy developments that perhaps have not been as widely discussed as they might have been, including the fact that coterminosity with local government, although not necessarily the wrong step, was brought in relatively late in the day and did lead to some of the later boundary changes, as we have seen. I am not saying that that is wrong, but it demonstrates the need for wider discussion, consultation and engagement with the NHS and local government system as a whole before the decisions are made to help understand how best to do it. Sometimes just saying that it must happen and decreeing that is not the best way of making something a smooth operation that gets the best out of local systems. On occasions, there is something in the process of policy-making that could be looked at.

[The Chair]

We had better move on.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

Q Good afternoon. Obviously, you have the ICB and the ICP both within an ICS. If there is a disagreement between them about the direction of travel on a particular policy issue, who arbitrates? In your opinion, who is likely to be sided with in such a dispute?

Matthew Taylor: I defer to Saffron on that one.

Saffron Cordery: I think this is one of those elements that we have seen quite a lot of throughout the legislation in terms of where is the recourse—that is not the right word, but I cannot think of another one right now—if things go wrong. Collaboration by its very nature is a positive process where willing parties come together to reach agreement. Everyone’s hope and aspiration is that that is how ICSs will work overall, and that is how the ICB and ICP will work together. It is not currently clear how there will be recourse to arbitration or dispute resolution, if you like, in the process of this legislation. We have seen an optimistic approach to how this legislation has been brought together—rightly in some senses—and of course we do not want a situation where we are anticipating that the evolution of a new way of working will not be functional. At the same time, the role of legislation is to anticipate what can go wrong, as well as to support what needs to be done. It is not yet clear how some of this will shake out in terms of where ICBs and ICPs need to turn to should there be challenges, issues and disagreements. We have to remember that those bodies, once they have their independent chairs and accountable officers and chief executives, sit within the NHS system, so they sit within the regional NHS England system and within the overall NHS system. Routes will be pursued, but at the moment it is not clear to me how disputes, for want of a better word, will be resolved.

Matthew Taylor: The only thing I would want to add is that during covid, we have understood the scale of health inequalities. The evidence has been that those inequalities are growing. That has demonstrated that we need a conversation between the health service in relation to how it deals with the demand that is presented to it and the wider question about how we address population health. In some cases, that might mean that you have some creative tension between those two levels. As Saffron said, it will come down to the quality of relationships, and if those relationships break down, I am sure that the centre will need to intervene to address that because the system cannot work if it breaks down. But the fact that those two bodies might have a slightly different emphasis and focus is probably a good thing because this debate about how we best use our health resources to address population health and health inequalities is an important debate for us to be having nationally and locally. Let us face it, we have not got this right up till now.

[Justin Madders]

Q On the Secretary of State’s powers of intervention on reconfigurations, is it your understanding that a local system could agree across the board that particular changes were necessary and actually that it was important for reasons of patient safety that those changes were made but that the Secretary of State could intervene at any time to stop them?

Matthew Taylor: Yes, unfortunately that is our understanding, and we think that it would be a retrograde step. It is not a power that I would want if I were a Secretary of State and I wanted to focus on strategic policy questions. I would not have advised the Secretary of State to want those powers.

Our view would be that we should remove the extension of the Secretary of State’s power entirely, but, failing that, we should put some guard rails on in relation to hearing the views of local health overview and scrutiny committees, getting local clinical advice on what is best and having a public interest test that should be passed. If those guard rails were in place, we could cope with this.

What we do not want is a chilling effect on the capacity of local leaders to make the decisions that they need to make to use their resources effectively. The third element of the triple mandate is the effective use of resources, and that involves making decisions at a whole variety of levels around how you configure services. If you feel you are going to go through that process and potentially engage local populations in difficult conversations, and then at the end of the day a local MP, for whatever reason, is going to kibosh that by appealing to the Secretary of State, why would you embark on the process in the first place? That is why, while we are very supportive of the Bill, as you have heard from both Saffron and me, we do think that the powers of reconfiguration are the Achilles heel. I appeal to you to recognise that that is unnecessary and goes against the spirit of the Bill.

Saffron Cordery: I wholeheartedly support what Matthew says, and it speaks to a point I made earlier about adding to existing structures in a way that really is not necessary. I notice that you have representatives from the Local Government Association as witnesses later on. I am pretty sure that they will have some strong views about what these measures do for the powers of local health overview and scrutiny committees, because they already have the power to refer to the Secretary of State should they need that to happen. The powers that are currently in place are a really effective way of doing it. People getting something past a local health overview and scrutiny committee is a really important hurdle for any service change. It is already well respected, well used and very effective. This is one of those elements that at best is redundant and at worst is going to create a lot of work and a lot of unnecessary tension and friction where we already have challenge.

[Edward Argar]

Q I have just a couple of questions, because a lot of the issues have been explored. My first one is something that we have not touched on yet in our questioning of witnesses. I welcome both your thoughts on the proposals in the Bill to delete and replace section 75 of the 2012 legislation, around procurement, and your reflections on the opportunities or challenges that that presents.

Saffron Cordery: As we see a change in the system, obviously the nature of how we have procured services in the past does have to change. It is obviously a complex area, but one of the things that we really need to look at is the effectiveness of the current contracting regime, which for certain parts of the provider sector in particular is incredibly burdensome. If you sit in a mental health or a community trust, you are subject to a whole host of retendering, which can have a potentially far-reaching impact on your trust’s sustainability or the future operation of key services. For many bits of the system, that will be very important.

The procurement regime is fundamental. It underpins how this will operate. We need to make sure that the elements of fairness are upheld and that it does not disproportionately put a burden on any one part of the system in particular.

[Edward Argar]

Matthew?

Matthew Taylor: I agree with that. It is important to remember that one of the goals of the Bill is to reduce the weight of bureaucracy in the system. If we can reduce the weight of bureaucracy as it applies to procurement, that is only a good thing.

[Edward Argar]

Q My second question—I think this has come through in what both of you have said, but feel free to challenge it when you answer if I have misrepresented what you have said—involves one of the key things I have detected, which is that we must be careful not to forget that no one size fits all in this context. Back in the dim and distant past when I was a councillor, I sat on a primary care trust board as a local authority representative, and I found that joint working could be highly effective, so what is the right balance? You have touched on this in some of your previous answers. Recognising that it is sometimes as much about relationships as about formal structures, what do you think is the right balance between permissive and prescriptive in what we are trying to do here? How do we strike that balance appropriately, and have we struck it appropriately?

Matthew Taylor: Of course, one of the most challenging questions in all parts of central Government is to get that balance right. The one point that I want to make is about the nature of system leadership. If you lead an organisation—I lead an organisation—the parameters of what you do are reasonably well defined and you lead that organisation as best you can, and you can be regulated as an organisation in relation to its objectives. The thing about system leadership is that it involves developing a concrete and specific account of how you want to add value in a particular local circumstance—how is it that, working as a system, you will make a difference?

By looking towards population health and engaging local people, that proposition will vary from place to place. It is important that, when we look at how systems work, we allow them to develop a value proposition that is specific to their local circumstances and their local needs. That is why, for example, we would be very resistant to any kind of Ofsted inspection regime for systems, because systems are not the same as hospitals or as schools; they are very different and their aspirations will be very different.

When you look at the Bill, the reality of central-local relations is that rules are set out in legislation, but then there is the custom and practice of how Departments and other bodies actually work. Sadly and inevitably, the drift of custom and practice tends to be towards centralisation. That is why it is important to avoid things in the Bill that create an opening—this is why we can have our concerns about reconfiguration—which can get ever wider and thus undermine the key principles that lie at the heart of the Bill. So we are happy with the intentions of the Bill, but we are worried that there are certain elements of it and certain elements that might be involved in the operationalising of it that could undermine its intentions.

[Edward Argar]

Thank you. Saffron?

Saffron Cordery: I go back to a point that I made earlier in this session, which is that this balance between permissiveness and prescriptiveness is critical. The August 2019 agreement, when all the stakeholders came together to look at how we might legislate for an integrated care system that got that balance right, I think is there. You have to remember that what sits around a set of proposals will have a massive impact on it, so the Secretary of State’s powers as we have seen them, and the operating environment overall, will have an impact on how these proposals will be implemented, and how effectively they will be implemented.

We cannot forget covid in this. We cannot forget the extreme financial pressures that we are seeing. We cannot forget demand. We cannot forget an incredibly tired workforce. That is not going to change any time soon; that is going to be for the next few years, so we are implementing something against that backdrop. But if we go back to the slightly lighter touch of the August 2019 proposals, we will probably get to a place that would hit the spot, as it were. I reiterate that we support collaboration in systems and the direction of travel.

[The Chair]

Given the time, we will leave it there. I thank our witnesses, Saffron Cordery and Matthew Taylor.

Examination of Witnesses

Ian Trenholm and Keith Conradi gave evidence.

15:15

[The Chair]

We will now hear from Ian Trenholm, the chief executive of the Care Quality Commission, and Keith Conradi, the chief investigator at the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch, both of whom are appearing in person. We have until 4 o’clock for this session. May I ask you both to introduce yourselves for the record?

Ian Trenholm: Good afternoon. My name is Ian Trenholm and I am the chief executive of the Care Quality Commission.

Keith Conradi: I am Keith Conradi, the chief investigator for the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch.

[Jo Gideon (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con)]

Q Thank you for attending. Can you characterise the contribution this Bill will make, in your opinion, to patient safety and quality of care?

Ian Trenholm: The Bill will add value to patients in a number of different ways. There are four areas that we have particular interest in. The first is around the work we expect the Government to ask us to do on oversight of the individual ICSs. Building on the comments that have just been made, our contributing to the assurance around ICSs will be an important part of how we can add value. We will do that by drawing to the attention of local communities both the good work that is going on in a particular place, and areas where there are some challenges. We will also be able to look across the country, demonstrate where things are going well and help with improvement, as we do with the regulation of individual providers.

The Bill also contains a provision for us to provide assurance regarding the way local authorities discharge their Care Act 2014 duties. Again, that gives local people the certainty that local authorities are discharging their responsibilities. If you bring those two things together and connect local authority duties around the Care Act and social care with what is going on in healthcare, you get a whole-system view, and we are able to give an independent overview of that, which we report to Parliament and the public.

There is also a provision in the Bill relating to food standards in hospital. It is well known that people’s recovery is aided by good-quality hydration and nutrition that is appropriate for the social and cultural needs of that particular place. As part of our work, we will be asked to look at that.

Finally, building on the comments Mr Madden made a couple of witnesses ago, the miscellaneous provisions within the Bill on data sharing and the requirement to co-operate are also powerful and enable us to do our job as an intelligence-driven regulator. From the point of view of reducing bureaucracy, they mean that we collect data once and then we can share it among the many partners involved in regulating different parts of the health and care system. Those are four particular points where I think the public would see value in the work we do.

Keith Conradi: From our perspective at the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch, we welcome the introduction of this part of the legislation. We have been working in shadow form for the past five years, without any real powers, and the things we have missed there are likely to be introduced in the Bill, such as power of entry, so that we can access people quickly in an investigation. Any investigator will tell you that the quality of the investigation evidence, particularly interviews, degrades quickly over time, so the ability to go in quickly is hugely important. Also, not being able to access data that we know people hold has been quite frustrating in our current guise. We have sometimes had to wait for months and months for data in order to be able to complete an investigation.

The other thing that we are particularly keen on is being able to properly protect information that people give us in a protected environment, so that we can ask them to be as candid as possible with their experiences. We want to be able to protect that information from being released more publicly.

[Jo Gideon]

Can I ask just one more question, Chair?

[The Chair]

I am not being flooded with a whole array of hands, so why not? On you go. I will come to you in a second, Edward.

[Jo Gideon]

Q I just want to come back on the hospital food standards. I know that malnutrition is an issue that has been raised within the hospital setting. Would you be able to set parameters for what the reporting requirement is in order to measure standards in that regard, for instance?

Ian Trenholm: We will be inspecting against the hospital food standards—is that what you mean? We are not going to be setting individual nutritional standards; we will be inspecting against the NHS’s food standards. We are going to deliberately make sure that our work does not overlap with organisations such as the Food Standards Agency, for example. To be very specific about it, we are not going to be inspecting vending machines or taste-testing food in canteens. What we are going to be doing is looking at the hydration and nutrition strategies that, say, a board in a hospital has set for its particular area. As we go around the hospital, we will be looking at whether that strategy is being enacted for the cultural and social needs, in particular, of the people in that hospital. Does that answer the question?

[Jo Gideon]

Yes. Well, it was more from a medical point of view than from a vending machine point of view. That is absolutely helpful. Thank you.

[The Chair]

Do you have anything to add to that, Mr Conradi?

Keith Conradi: I think that is outside the HSIB’s experience.

[Edward Timpson]

Q Just to follow up on the answers that we had about the healthcare safety investigations branch and putting it on a statutory footing, I am speaking as someone who chaired the first national child safeguarding panel, which was looking at investigating what were then called serious case reviews and trying to understand how you get to the bottom of the why question, as opposed to simply what happened. In fact, we used the air accident investigation branch as an exemplar of that. It would be helpful to understand how you think these new powers, and the statutory footing that you will have, will help enhance your ability to answer those all-important why questions within the health system, and get away from the potential for it to become a finger-pointing exercise that does not necessarily improve the outcome for patients.

Keith Conradi: Having come from the air accident investigation branch as my background, the whole idea of these investigations is that we do not apportion any blame or liability, and that we are really looking at why an event took place when somebody came into work planning to do a good job, and what the circumstances around the environment were that allowed a tragedy to occur. We use a lot of investigation science methodology to ask those why questions, really looking at systems-type thinking, so we do not mention anybody’s names in the reports. We do not, at the moment, mention where the actual occurrence took place, because in our view that is almost irrelevant. It is the system that we are trying to change, and the safety recommendations that we make are, by and large, to the national bodies—often the regulators—because we think they are best placed to make the changes that we think are necessary.

[The Chair]

Do you want to add anything to that, Mr Trenholm?

Ian Trenholm: No, thank you.

[Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)]

Q I declare an interest as chair of the all-party parliamentary group for whistleblowing. I am interested in the powers that you are going to be taking on—how those will enhance your work—and also in what you said about properly protecting information. Of course, part of this is about properly protecting the person or individual who provides that information in very many cases. I am wondering whether this is going to enhance the ability to whistleblow and to highlight these issues, and whether there is more to be done legislatively and whether you see this as being a forerunner to it.

Could I also ask about the regulatory role? With regard to whistleblowers who raise these issues—we are talking about safety and the best interests of patients here—will this enhance the powers and abilities that you have, or is more needed still.

Keith Conradi: One of the clauses actually will require people to speak to us, so there is a compulsion on people to provide evidence. In a way, that might help some people who are undecided about what they should be doing. But to balance that, it is very important to be able to protect the evidence that is given, and there are protections within the clauses. I think they could be improved. But the whole idea is that we create this space, where really the only safety valve is the High Court, and I believe that is appropriate as the only place where that information can actually be released.

I think it is worth saying, however, that when people talk to us and use this sort of safe space, the whole idea is that it is not a place where they are going to unload stuff that will never see the light of day again; we use that information, either in our final reports or to help us further the investigation. It is just that it is non-attributable, so we do not mention people’s names. The idea is that we use it to further patient safety.

My concern about the way the Bill is currently written is that there is a provision for coroners—some coroners—to be able to see this information. I think that will inhibit some people from speaking to us—and the whole point is that people are uninhibited from doing so. Having that potential release of information into that sphere will, I think, degrade the ability of the investigation to do its job.

Ian Trenholm: Building on what Keith has just said, I think we would see the Bill as giving an opportunity to create a safe space. It creates an opportunity for people to talk about things that they may not otherwise have wished to talk about. What Keith’s team can then do is look at that information. We need to make sure that we have the right data-sharing protocols in place. Keith’s team can then talk to my team about what is happening on the ground. They can do whatever anonymisation is necessary. So we might get to hear about things that we perhaps would not otherwise get to hear about.

That is a real positive at provider level, but if you click up a level, you quite often find that, from a safety and quality point of view, people’s poor experiences are driven as much by their experience of it as a system and the way they transit between different providers as it is about the experience in an individual provider. So if you have a person who perhaps is working between providers or in some kind of community provision, they will see multiple providers and they will become, if you like, better whistleblowers. Our work on systems and our assurance on systems will help as well, I think. Of course, Keith’s team make recommendations to us as a regulator, in the way they do to other people. So I think this is generally a move in the right direction.

[Karin Smyth]

Q Mr Conradi, could you talk a little about what the branch will be doing in relation to maternity cases and how that is seen to be investigated? You have talked about systems, but will there be a look at all maternity cases in a system? Could you elaborate a little on that? If I may have a second bite, you could also talk a little about discussions now as to where we think the relationship lies with the health service ombudsman and being clear on the roles within this Bill and how that might look in the future.

Keith Conradi: We currently have a maternity programme that investigates about 1,000 cases a year, based on quite specific criteria. At the moment, the Department is deciding what it wants to do with that programme—where its future lies. As far as we know, it will stay with us, certainly until the HSSIB—the health service safety investigations body—starts, but I think a decision has yet to be made on whether it will actually just fall into the work that the HSSIB does, or whether it will do something separately with it, so I am not aware of that at the moment.

On the second point, I am aware that the ombudsman would like the same power to access the statements that we take under safe space. I think that is a major concern. Over the last five years, the ombudsman has been able to investigate any complaint brought against us in our current guise. It has not seen fit to do so, so I would suggest that on the rare occasion that might be necessary, the provision for the High Court to carry out the balancing test and decide whether to disclose information or not is the appropriate way ahead.

[Dr Davies]

Q Mr Trenholm, you referred to the fact that the CQC will be assessing ICSs in future, which was a recommendation of the Health and Social Care Committee. You also referred to oversight of social care provision. Can you clarify whether that is by virtue of your assessment of the ICSs as a whole, or is it through a local authority-targeted assessment that the Health and Social Care Committee has also called for in an Ofsted-style rating?

Ian Trenholm: Can we not call it a CQC-style rating? There are two separate things. The Bill currently contains an explicit provision about providing assurance on how a local authority is discharging its responsibilities in relation to the Care Act. That is important because the way in which care is commissioned is as important for outcomes as the way in which it is delivered. That is one part and that is a discrete piece of work. There is a broader piece of work that we are expecting Government to ask us to bring forward on assurance on ICSs. It will look at the ICS partnership board, how that works, the ICS strategy and so forth. They are two complementary pieces of work, but they are separate, as you describe.

[Dr Whitford]

Q Mr Conradi, you have talked about this coming from Air Accidents Investigation Branch, where the safe space is very tightly protected. That is very much as has been put forward. The key concern is the fact that coroners are listed in the Bill. The ombudsman is already lobbying and many of us are being lobbied to get access to safe space testimony. The Campaign for Freedom of Information is also lobbying for that. Will that not just kill it dead, in that you can compel people to come and give you testimony, but you cannot compel them to talk about all the soft weaknesses within a system that contributed to that tragedy or failure? Should it not be that maybe we need to define more tightly what is protected? All these bodies should be able to investigate as they do now. They are not losing anything because you would have safe space.

Keith Conradi: I totally agree with you. I think it will have a major impact on people’s wish to speak to us. It is not just me that thinks that; the medical unions have said that their members are concerned. The whole idea is that you want people to talk about, as you say, the “soft” things. They tend to be things like the culture of an organisation and the pressures that are brought upon them to do various pieces of work. In the past that has been a bit of an Achilles heel in terms of safety in the NHS. People have often been blamed for these things. They have been disciplined for speaking out—we talked about whistleblowers earlier.

Anything that we can do to bring that information up to an investigation body, which is not about blame and liability, is going to help patient safety in the long run. They will find their way into our final reports—that is the whole idea of getting this information. We want to encourage that as much as possible. I do not think this helps. I think a previous Joint Committee looked at a similar piece of legislation, and that came to exactly the same conclusion. As you say, what is the problem with other bodies such as coroners conducting their own interviews to get the same piece of information or any information they require?

[Dr Whitford]

Q I was on the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee and we spent a lot of our time debating this. It can be very easy as MPs to say, “Everything should be available to everyone.” In actual fact, we need to learn rather than blame. Obviously you do not want it to be with coroners, but do you think there needs to be redefinition within the Bill to make it clear that it is only the testimony and documents that you are holding? You are not stopping anyone else getting medical records, calling witnesses and doing what they should be doing now. The Bill almost gives the impression that you will squash other investigations.

Keith Conradi: Yes. In a way, the powers are so sweeping that they go well beyond what we think we would need, and well beyond what is used in other sectors—the transport sectors. We know that parallel investigations will take place into many of the things that we look at, and that is fine. The problem is that if we have these sweeping powers, which pretty much say that anything we touch or come across we then have to protect, and that we can then unwind and release some of them with a fairly bureaucratic process, that will be difficult in terms of transparency and our ability to share the information with others who have a legitimate need. The key things that we absolutely want to protect are statements given to us by witnesses and any draft notes, opinions and reports that we generate from doing the investigation. It is the final report that is our piece of work that we want to produce at the end of the day, and that is it.

[Dr Whitford]

Thank you. In the interests of time, I am happy with that.

Ian Trenholm: If I could make just one point, I think you are absolutely right: the broader responsibilities of an individual provider, particularly around such things as duty of candour, would still stand. Therefore, at an institutional level, people will still need to do the things that they always needed to do, but there is a very specific set of circumstances that Keith was describing where safe space may apply.

[Justin Madders]

Q I have a couple of questions for Mr Trenholm. You mentioned the importance of co-operation with other agencies. At the moment, are there barriers that the Bill could help with in terms of identifying people who may provide inadequate care under the guise of a company and then dissolve it, move on and create another? Is there anything in the Bill that will help you to track those people?

Ian Trenholm: I do not think that there is at an individual provider level. What you have just described is our normal registration regulation process at an individual provider level. As we start to look across individual places and ICSs, we might be able to talk to individual partnership boards about people who are operating locally, but I do not think the Bill explicitly gives us more powers to look at individual providers in any more detail than we already would as part of our normal registration process.

[Justin Madders]

Q In terms of what you are required to do under the Bill, have you made an assessment of what additional resources you will need to deliver that?

Ian Trenholm: Not yet. Obviously, as the Bill goes through Parliament the breadth and size of what we will be asked to do will become clear. We are talking to a range of different stakeholders at the moment. The NHS Confederation and NHS Providers are on our list, as are the Local Government Association, the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services and, of course, various representative groups that represent people who use services, so we are having those conversations now around what they would expect from good-quality assurance at a system level—but no, we have not really got to the point of assessing this in any detail.

[Justin Madders]

Q Mr Conradi, in your submission to the Committee you mentioned a concern about the powers of the Secretary of State to order investigations. You used the term “undue political influence”. I wonder whether you could expand on what you mean by that exactly, and what your concerns are.

Keith Conradi: We see ourselves as very much an independent and impartial investigation body that can sit outside the system and look into it. We would not want to have any barriers really on where we might look to see where patient safety could be improved. As I mentioned earlier, we tend not to dwell on the incident at the trust level, but try to work our way up through the system. Ultimately, we end up making recommendations to the Department of Health and Social Care, and in the future I would like to ensure that we have that complete freedom to be able to make recommendations wherever we think that they most fit. That independence of the system is crucial for the success and the credibility of the organisation.

[Justin Madders]

Q In terms of recommendations, how are they monitored to ensure that they are actually implemented?

Keith Conradi: At the moment, they are monitored fairly informally. There is a part of NHSEI—a patient safety team—that looks at whether the actions that were promised in the response to the safety recommendation have actually been carried out. We believe that that might sit more appropriately with this body in the future—NHSEI receive a rather large number of our safety recommendations, so I do not know whether they are the right body to monitor the actions that are taking place, whereas I think that could sit with us. It is important that that is just monitoring the actions, not judging the outcome, and I think that there needs to be a separate, probably pan-regulation-type body that looks at whether the outcome at the end of the day mitigated the patient safety risk that we first went out to investigate.

[Justin Madders]

Q So in terms of what NHSI do at the moment, presumably you are interested in their investigations and ongoing work, but there is no formal method by which they can report back to you so that you can be satisfied that things are progressing?

Keith Conradi: Informally, we have a good working relationship, so we are interested. We get the response to the safety recommendation and we internally look at that and consider whether we are happy with it. If we are not, we would send out letters to say that we would like further information. We want to put this on a more formal footing to see that in the future.

[The Chair]

Do have anything further you want to add? No. Minister.

[Edward Argar]

Q Thank you both for your evidence. I have one question for Mr Trenholm, two for Mr Conradi and then one for both of you, if I may, time permitting, Mr McCabe.

You will have heard in the evidence just before, Mr Trenholm, the comments by Matthew Taylor about the difference between assessing a system versus a provision. How do you see how the CQC would square that circle, because he highlighted the very different approaches and his reservations about some of that? How do you see that issue being resolved, or what would you like to see in that space?

Ian Trenholm: If I compare one large hospital with another large hospital as a comparison in terms of what we do now, one would argue that they are quite different enterprises, differently run and serving different communities. There are some common themes, but equally there are some differences. We built a methodology that was able to be applied to both of those very separate entities and to provide a common rating at the end of it.

I would see a version of that at a system level: there would be things that we would want to see that would be common and necessary— decent quality governance, for example—as well as a lot of things that many of you were raising as questions and concerns. But equally we want to see some evidence that the partnership board was cognisant of its local community and it was genuinely delivering a suite of services that its local community genuinely wanted and that was consistent with the needs of that community.

Over the next 18 months or so, we will be building our methodology in collaboration with the people who are also building the ICS boards and frameworks. I am hopeful that we can get to a point where we have a methodology that gives you, as parliamentarians, and local people the assurance that things are working well locally. However, it is not just about what is not working, but about looking for really good practice and looking to accelerate that. Previous people have made the point that doing things differently often leads to good practice and innovation, so how can we help accelerate that innovation through the work that we do. That is broadly how I see it working.

[Edward Argar]

Q Thank you. Mr Conradi, the first question is probably a relatively quick and simple one, but I will not prejudge your response. Given that the HSSIB aspects have been in preparation for quite some time—I am alluding to the work that Dr Whitford and other colleagues did some time ago—what would your view be on the appropriateness of getting this done and the timeliness of bringing these measures forward? I am asking a number of witnesses whether this is the right time to be doing what we are proposing. In the case of HSSIB, is it the right time?

Keith Conradi: Absolutely.

[Edward Argar]

Q I suspected that might be the answer, but I did not want to prejudge. My second question goes to a slightly knottier area, and one that you have already alluded to. I think you have said—by all means correct me if at any point I misinterpret what you have said—that ideally you would prefer the safe space to be as absolute as possible, given the nature of what you are seeking to do. There is, as we recognise in the Bill, a challenge about the specific statutory rights of coroners as members of the judiciary; I note what you have said about that. Would it be fair to say, first, that notwithstanding that, you would not want that safe space to be eroded further for other groups? I think you have been clear that you would prefer it not to be eroded at all, but you would not want its erosion to go further. The second element is this. Although you would prefer it to be preserved intact, do you think that if there is going to be that exception in the case of coroners, for example, the High Court is the right level of arbitration in something like that? I know you suggested that it might be.

Keith Conradi: I certainly think so. My previous experience in aviation is that we had a similar space, and only the High Court could overturn or order disclosure. It was used on a handful of occasions, and it produced very interesting debate. The balancing test—testing whether the benefits of the disclosure outweighed the adverse reaction that there might be to future investigations—was well argued in each of the cases. I think that is the appropriate place to do it.

[Edward Argar]

Q Thank you. My final question is to both of you. Your organisations are separate but key elements focused on patient safety and the safety of outcomes for individual patients. How do you see the work of your two organisations fitting together and complementing each other, while recognising that they are both very distinct?

Ian Trenholm: We do work at the moment in terms of registering and regulating individual providers, and we do that right across the country, so we have a picture of health and social care right across England. Part of the Bill will give us enhanced powers looking at the way in which individual systems and individual ICSs work. Our view is, if you like, a broad and moderately shallow view, whereas I think Keith’s team do more in the way of specific investigations. I am sure Keith can talk to that.

Keith Conradi: I would characterise the relationship as a healthy tension. We make very few recommendations to the CQC, but the vast majority of recommendations we make will, we hope, have an impact on the work that is going on across the system. The ideal people to have a look and see whether that is having an effect will be the CQC, from time to time, as it comes across things that have changed as a result of what we have done. I think the relationship works very well, in that respect.

[Edward Argar]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair]

Mary, did I see you trying to come in with another point?

[Mary Robinson]

Q Thank you so much, Mr McCabe; that is very kind of you. I have just a very short question. How does any of this relate to the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 and the way you are required to protect the disclosures given by individuals, in terms of the issues that you have already raised?

Keith Conradi: I would probably need a lawyer to give you the proper answer, but I do not think any of this would trump anything else. We would still need to acquiesce and accept those disclosures as they happened, so I do not think that would be an issue for us.

[The Chair]

Anyone else? It does not look like it. I thank both our witnesses for their evidence.

Examination of Witnesses

Councillor James Jamieson and Professor Maggie Rae gave evidence.

15:49

[The Chair]

We now move on to our sixth panel of witnesses. We will hear from Councillor James Jamieson, chair of the Local Government Association and Professor Maggie Rae, president of the Faculty of Public Health, both of whom are joining us remotely. Could both witnesses introduce themselves for the record, please?

Professor Maggie Rae: Good afternoon. It is a great pleasure to be able to join you today. My name is Maggie Rae and I am currently president of the Faculty of Public Health.

Cllr James Jamieson: It is a great pleasure to be with you today. Thank you very much for inviting me. I am James Jamieson and I am chairman of the Local Government Association. Until January, I was leader of Central Bedfordshire for nearly 10 years.

[The Chair]

Thank you.

[Dr James Davies]

Q First to Councillor Jamieson on the changed procedures during the pandemic for the discharge of patients into social care, do you welcome the embedding of those changes into legislation for the future?

Cllr James Jamieson: Certainly, we are very pleased that we have repealed some of the legislation, which basically made people focus on targets rather than what is best for the patient. Focusing on discharge to assess at hospital led to some at times frankly perverse incentives just to get people out, often into care homes, when the right solution was to assess after they had left hospital, in their normal setting, not in the setting where they were in maximum need. That change has given much better solutions and outcomes for our residents, which is what we want.

[Dr Davies]

Q Very good. Thank you. As a follow-up question to both panellists, could you comment on the benefits arising from the preventive measures in the Bill on the fluoridation of tap water and obesity?

Professor Maggie Rae: Obviously, from my position as president of faculty, I want more emphasis on prevention, so I am very pleased to see that focus on it, but I do not think it is quite enough yet. I think we would all recognise that part of the reason why we seemed to take the biggest hit on covid in terms of deaths and the effects of the virus was the ill health of our population. We are recognised as having one of the most unhealthy populations in Europe now, and that was not always the case. Yes, it is very pleasing to see the measures on obesity, but we need to recognise that most of the influence could come from the very local level.

I am sorry to say to colleagues and this eminent Committee that we could probably spend the whole meeting talking about fluoridation. I recognise the attempt to tackle the problems of oral health. Children’s teeth being extracted under general anaesthetic is a national disgrace; that money is so wasted in the NHS when we desperately need it to be spent on other health matters, and the time it takes for that operation is so dangerous for children. It is good to have this recognised, but I think it will be quite a slow burn, even with the legislation.

Some areas have tried to implement fluoridation. It has taken them years and they still have not succeeded. Could we perhaps persuade people? As well as focusing on fluoridation, could we have just a small investment in other methods to tackle oral health? One that is really effective, which I used myself as DPH, is simple toothbrushes and toothpaste. Sometimes we think public health measures take a long time, but I can guarantee that if that measure were implemented effectively you could see the changes within 12 months and would also end up saving the NHS a lot of money. I work closely with Councillor Jamieson in his role at the LGA and I hope that he would agree with me.

Cllr James Jamieson: I am going to agree with Maggie. I think that that is a general point we would make. Better healthcare does not start in a hospital; it starts in the community and it starts before you are born. It is about prevention, early intervention, public health, good food and all those things. We welcome measures to support that.

On the point about obesity, I would particularly say that although, yes, it is nice to be able to produce advertising, there is so much more we would like to do. This is not necessarily within the scope of the Bill, so I am not suggesting that, but, for instance, in licensing legislation, being able to take account of public health, which at the moment is specifically excluded, as well as being able to do so in planning legislation as regards where fast food places are and so forth, would be immensely helpful. This is a start; it is a small but positive step.

[Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)]

Q One of our earlier witnesses touched on the social determinants of health—housing, green spaces, good jobs—being the greatest factor in a person’s healthy life and life expectancy. I am disappointed that there is nothing in the Bill that addresses those fundamental issues. Do you think that there is scope for them to be touched on, as well as in working with local authorities?

Even more remarkable as regards reducing health inequalities is the absence of any detail, duty or provision to tackle alcohol harm and tobacco control, which of course are the greatest factor in determining a person’s life expectancy—and further down the line they have the greatest impact on local authorities’ social care bills. Do you think they should be included in more detail in the Bill, with a duty to reduce health inequalities rather than just having “regard” to reducing them?

Cllr James Jamieson: I think we need to be cognisant of the fact that this is a Bill providing a framework. I completely agree with the comments made about health inequalities, good housing, green space and all those things—absolutely. I am a full advocate of the idea that health is three quarters determined by somebody’s environment and choices, and probably only a quarter by what the NHS does. That is really important. My slight concern is that if we get very prescriptive in legislation, it limits the ability to do the right thing.

The really important thing about this legislation is all the guidance and so forth that will come out of it, and where the funding goes. Our preference is to say, “Try not be too prescriptive in the legislation, but really engage with local government and public health on the guidance that comes out of this legislation.” A real priority has to be better places, better communities, better jobs, less pollution and all those things, but I do not think that that is something for legislation; I think it is very much about getting the guidelines right, and they will be different in different parts of the country. The issues that might be faced in a rural area are very different from those faced in an urban area. I do worry that if legislation is too prescriptive, it hampers rather than helps.

Professor Maggie Rae: Would you mind if I added some comments please, Chair?

[The Chair]

Please do.

Professor Maggie Rae: Just building on those comments from Councillor Jamieson on what I think is a very important question, there is a line in the Bill saying that the ICSs have to take note of advice from directors of public health. If we want ICSs to be population health organisations, we have to make sure that the legislation is strong enough to ensure that the advice is acted on. Our directors of public health have been highly trained and are able professionally to identify the needs of the population, identify where the health inequalities are and make sure that they can provide the ICSs, in terms of both the NHS-side board and the partnership board, with all the evidence they need about what will make a difference. It is the action that will make a difference and improve those outcomes that we all want. It would be very helpful to ensure that the Bill, if possible, is more explicit about that advice and which source it is coming from. We have worked very closely with the legislative team and the Bill team. I do not think anyone could fault the amount of hours they have spent discussing with stakeholders the details of the Bill, and Councillor Jamieson is also right that we cannot have everything in the Bill, but we want a true population-focused organisation.

That has to be the change that this legislation brings; it has to be an enabling legislative framework. We then need to ensure that the guidance, and, most importantly, the assurance process, allow some of the public health expertise to determine whether it is fit for purpose. It is possible that these organisations, and the excitement of the changes, could result in our having a more place-based population focus, but that will only be the case if we get it right and take account of those wider determinants such as education and housing—all the things that contribute to good health.

[Edward Timpson]

Q This is principally for Councillor Jamieson, if I may, in relation to the role of local government in the new integrated care structure. As you will be aware, there was initially a one-part structure, and partly through the input of the LGA, I think, we have ended up in the Bill with a two-part structure, with both the board and the partnership. For the first time, in many respects, that puts local government very much at the heart of NHS decision making. How do you think that that will assist in addressing both health inequalities within the local area and—I note your point about the flexibility of the board and the partnership—what barriers do you think it will help remove, so that we get a truly integrated system and service that the local government level will have a positive influence on?

Cllr James Jamieson: Looking at the current situation with health and wellbeing boards and so forth, that has worked well in some places and not so well in others. That is largely down to local factors, relationships and the willingness of the NHS to participate in a place-based approach. Our hope and expectation is that this formalises it, not in absolute terms, but in emphasising the role of local government and other partners that the NHS has to take account of. In essence, it is strengthening our ability to influence the NHS.

Why is that so important? I come back to the comment that I made earlier about how much health outcomes for an individual are based on non-NHS factors. I have forgotten who raised the question of health inequalities, environment and so forth, but those are all place-based factors. Getting more investment in public health, less pollution, better community health care, a better GP service and better occupational therapists will make huge differences to people.

At the end of the day, nobody wants to go to a hospital; they would far rather be healthy and not need to. Therefore, empowering local councils and partners to have a greater say in how we improve the health outcomes of our whole population has to be a good thing.

Professor Maggie Rae: To add to what Councillor Jamieson has said—he is making some excellent points on that agenda—it is important to get the balance right. In England, we had the legislation on health and wellbeing boards. One of the principles should be not to ride roughshod over legislation we already have just because we like the new bright and shiny legislation. On the commitment to stakeholder engagement, we managed to get the Bill team to understand that we have legislation already.

Some of that legislation is still there—we still have directors of public health and the powers in local government—and those things are important, but we also know that if we do not get this legislation right, we will not be able to get right the ambitions on health inequalities and on improving health either. The detail of this is really important. As I think was indicated in what Councillor Jamieson was saying, we know that legislation alone does not always fix problems. I do not know how we can get good relationships just through legislation. We can enable things to happen, but we need to ensure that the legislation is enabling and that there is some holding to account for the standards that the legislation is trying to set.

We cannot afford for the health of our populations to be affected by unhelpful variations. I am very supportive of place-based—action happens at the local level and it can be effective at the local level. We need good national legislation, but if we want to do justice to the population in this country, we cannot have unhelpful variation, because that is what will undermine this legislation. We have to make sure that everyone is working for the same aims and that at the heart of everything is the commitment to reducing health inequalities and improving health outcomes, regardless of where you are. Whatever your own organisation, whether a hospital, a local authority or a mental health trust, we have to have something that overrides loyalty to the organisation—to put the population first.

[Karin Smyth]

Q Following up on that point, I do not know whether our witnesses heard our earlier session, but I asked them about this very issue of decision making, governance and accountability. Professor, I hear what you are saying and I understand that you had lots of discussions with the Bill team, but I am not entirely clear what your ask is for the legislation. It would be very helpful if you could spell out what could be added into the Bill to achieve the outcome that you are seeking and the assurance that the drive and logic of the Bill around place-based commissioning, which I support, are made reality somehow.

My point to Councillor Jamieson, which I made to earlier witnesses, is about the integrated care boards, which are the decision-making and accountability bodies locally—the ICPs are essentially a committee of these boards. The accountability, responsibility and decision making lie very clearly with the integrated care boards, which are essentially, as I have called them, a cartel of local healthcare providers—largely the acute sector trusts, which are responsible for vast sums of money. Councillor Jamieson, you have gone to the effort of putting your name on a ballot paper and persuading local people to put their cross by your name. Should you fall foul of them, or make decisions that they do not agree with, you will soon no longer be Councillor Jamieson. That is very clear accountability. With that hat on, can you talk us through your understanding of the role of local government status wise—beyond “Let’s all work together in partnership”—when we reach that real decision-making, push-comes-to-shove crunch about where accountability to local people could lie for decisions if we improve this Bill?

Cllr James Jamieson: In the ideal world, one would probably like one board. However, that would mean that all members of that board had equal status and so forth. Obviously, the NHS partnership would have budgetary responsibility for hospitals, and there is a technical issue with, “Can you have a bunch of non-NHS people having budgetary responsibilities for the NHS?” We understood the difficulty, and that is why there is the need for two boards. The clear point here is that this legislation provides us with a framework that enables that to have real traction.

But I come back to my earlier point, which is that this is a framework; this is not a solution in itself. Legislation does not solve all the problems. This is about how budgets are managed; it is about all the guidelines and regulations that come out. One of the big requests that we have as local government—I am sure Maggie will have it as well—is that we are deeply involved in those guidelines to make sure that they work. I have to say that, so far, we have been, but many more bits of guidelines will come out. That is the crucial bit.

There are some changes we would like to the legislation, but they are not that great—I will come to them later, because they do not refer to this point. We want statutory and non-statutory guidance around things such as the implementation of the Bill, a comprehensive list of guidance that will be issued and clarity about the flexibility. We want some statutory guidance on health and wellbeing boards to ensure that they are at the heart of this. So there is a lot going on, and I am pleased to say that we have been involved in some of the guidance that has already been issued, such as “Thriving places”. As Professor Rae said earlier, engagement has been very good so far, and we would like that to continue, because this is our chance to get this right. We will do that through getting the statutory and non-statutory guidance correct and making some changes, no doubt, to the Bill. But I do not think that this Bill can accomplish everything, so the LGA would certainly not be in favour of significant change to the Bill.

[Karin Smyth]

Can I just clarify—

[The Chair]

Actually, in view of the time, I am going to ask you not to, Karin. I am sorry, but if we are going to hear from Professor Rae and give Chris Skidmore a chance, we had better just move on.

Professor Maggie Rae: Again, it is good that you have asked for some specifics and related this to governance, because it is very important that we understand how the legislation will be implemented and that the governance is right.

The concerns that members of the faculty would have are quite broad based. While people might be genuinely pleased that we are moving away from a market economy on health, some are very concerned about opening the door to further privatisation. I want to give you some detail on specific public issues on which you said you would like more information. The legislation includes some public health hooks that will make it easier for us to ensure that we have good public health, but I question whether they are explicit enough.

The issue of taking advice on the needs of your population is a fundamental skill of public health. Whether nationally, regionally or locally, the professional job of directors of public health is to assess the needs of the population and provide organisations with the evidence about what will make the biggest difference—cost-effectively, of course. The idea of “taking advice” is a little vague, but strengthening the need for that advice to come from the statutorily appointed directors of public health—the regional directors of public health have been trained to do that and put the needs of population first—might give some strength to the Bill.

In my day job I do a lot of ICS development for the organisation I work for so I have experience of working with ICSs, and many current ICS leaders—I know there has to be an appointment process—are passionate about health inequalities and public health. We have to make sure, as we said earlier, that we have something substantive that guarantees that public health is not down to individuals and personalities, and that we have a framework. We cannot expect Cornwall to be the same as Newcastle, but we cannot have the population suffering from unwarranted variation. If I had a bit more confidence that the role of directors of public health—and the regional directors of public health—would be instrumental in the legislation, the guidance and the assurance process, I would be able to give you more guarantees that things will be better in the future. At the moment, it is a little vague.

[Chris Skidmore]

Q This is a question to Professor Rae about research. I am sure you will agree that research is vital when it comes to demonstrating the changing nature of health care inequalities and potential solutions. Clause 19 places a duty on ICBs to promote research. Is that enough, or would you agree with new clause 9, which I have tabled, which would place a duty on the Secretary of State to promote research? You can promote research, but there is still a need to protect the budget, especially of the National Institute for Health Research. Should that be ring-fenced, so that integrated care boards have the opportunity to finance research, let alone promote it?

Professor Maggie Rae: Again, that is an excellent question. I strive for excellence in our country in relation to all matters covered by the Bill. It is with great sadness that I see that health outcomes have plummeted since the start of my career. Early in my career we had the best health outcomes for cancer in the whole of Europe. I am sorry to say that that is not the case now, and ensuring that the scientific underpinning of this is seen as essential will make us more leading edge.

There are many examples in the covid pandemic in which we have been leading the world, and that is certainly true of the vaccination programme. I heard in a meeting this morning about some amazing research that is just about to start.

There are lots of areas of cancer where we have not progressed in the last five years. I could name the different cancers; we do not have time to go into them. If this research was going to test people’s blood early to get earlier diagnosis, as Councillor Jamieson said, it does not all have to be high-tech, high-cost NHS services. Lots of interventions are low cost. You will not find anything more cost-effective than getting people to give up smoking. That is a classic low-cost intervention. We want our country to be leading, and we want to put everything behind these new organisations and ensure that there is that scientific underpinning and that we do not fall behind other countries. I tend to side with your view that we may need to strengthen that.

The problem with this sort of legislation is that you want to be very enabling, but then you are very dependent on what the biggest problem is in the NHS today. Many of these organisations are trying to balance the books. We have tried to say that it is not all about targets. We can hit the targets and miss the point. The thing is, we are not hitting the targets at the moment either. Thank you for speaking up about the scientific underpinning. I would like us to remain where we are, and do better on science.

[Dr Whitford]

Q Obviously the pandemic has highlighted the impact of health inequalities and social and economic inequalities across the UK. Tackling them would be critical to improving population health, but how do you think the local systems will manage to balance need versus demand? Often we have the loudest voices expressing demand and the people with the greatest need are either silent or simply not listened to, so how will these changes help to get their voices listened to?

Professor Maggie Rae: That is right at the heart of health inequalities. If we did not know that before covid, we certainly know it now. An area where we could strengthen the legislation is in having that responsibility for all the people in your population. I led on health inequalities in the only time we have narrowed the gap, so health inequalities are not something that are just there and that we cannot do anything about except talk and say how sympathetic we are to them. We can deliver these changes. If we get the legislation and the organisational functionality, we will not change this unless we engage with communities. That is absolutely right, and we must engage with the local authorities.

Unless we target every intervention that we apply to the most disadvantaged and ensure that they have a good opportunity for uptake, we are widening health inequalities. I could take you to any health intervention, whether it is the covid vaccine, the flu vaccine, any uptake on health programmes or cancer screenings. They are all skewed to the most affluent population. In our country we want general population services, because we need everyone to be healthier, but we have to try to ensure that these organisations understand population need and know where the deprived populations are.

I have never met an MP or councillor who did not know where their deprived populations were, so we need those organisations to know that, but just knowing it is not enough. You have to then see the pattern of services and service delivery change to give a better chance to the people who need to take up these services. We have all understood that it is not that those people are hard to reach; it is just that we do not run the services to suit them and get a better uptake. I would like to see us concentrate on that. We probably cannot mention every single intervention, but for me it would not be enough to concentrate on obesity and fluoridation and think that the job is done on health. We have higher drug deaths than the rest of Europe—Scotland, as you know, is probably one of the worst in the world, if not the worst—and alcohol and all the other issues there, but I believe we can make a difference, and it will not take us 25 years if we focus on the right things, having the right interventions and making them readily available for people, and have a nice balance with what the NHS can do.

The NHS is the greatest service in the world and it can really help with health inequalities, but it cannot do it all. I am not an either/or person; we need the wider determinants and everything we can do that is place based through the local authorities, but we need the NHS to do that too.

[Dr Whitford]

Q Councillor Jamieson, this talks about a shift, which we have seen some of the devolved nations also following, from treating illness to trying to promote wellbeing in a holistic sense. A lot of that, as we have already touched on in this session, falls under local government. There is no budgetary discussion in this, but how much will that be impacted by the ability of local government to tackle the poverty and deprivation that are among the biggest drivers of ill health? As you say, housing, active travel, pollution and so on are your brief, but we know that local governments have been on a very tight financial leash for quite a long time.

Cllr James Jamieson: This is where the legislation is helpful, because it is enabling. The more we can move away from the NHS pound, the local government pound, the health pound or the DEFRA pound, and towards, “This is the pound for Newcastle or Cornwall; how can we achieve the best outcome for it?”, the better. I know that is difficult and, as you say, things such as housing, getting someone into a job or promoting active travel can make a massive difference to people’s health. They can make big differences, and having that forum and the opportunity to have those discussions is very helpful. A forum where we can start moving from investment in, as you rightly say, curing someone to preventing them from getting ill or, as Maggie said earlier, getting early cancer diagnoses is critical.

This Bill does provide a framework, but the important stuff will be the statutory and non-statutory guidelines and where the money is spent. That is very important, and we hope to see more spending on preventing and less on fixing a problem that need not happen.

[Dr Whitford]

You mentioned there—

[The Chair]

I am really sorry, but we had better move on to Alex Norris.

[Alex Norris]

Q Thank you, Chair, and good afternoon to the panellists. Councillor Jamieson, I will start with you, if I may. You have mentioned on a number of occasions that you see this as enabling legislation and that, rather than prescribing to your community or the community of your members what model they should pursue, it leaves you the space to do that. I have some enthusiasm for that, but one area where that is not the case is schedule 2 to the Bill, which sets out, in schedule 1B to the National Health Service Act 2006, that the chair of the integrated care board must be

“appointed by NHS England, with the approval of the Secretary of State”.

Under paragraph 5, only NHS England can remove a chair if they are unpopular and not doing the job, and there is nothing that you can write into your local decision making to get around that. Are you comfortable with not having any say over your chair when they are appointed or whether they carry on in the job?

Cllr James Jamieson: Clearly, there are two chairs in this scenario, and one of them, as you say, is NHS appointed in effect and the other one could be anybody—it could be a councillor, a local government representative, or a local director of public health. There is a role. I think this is a difficult area, but that is the reality, because ultimately that chairman will be the person who is financially responsible for the NHS trusts in his or her area. I have some sympathy with it; if I could find a better solution, I would seek to find one.

[Alex Norris]

Q Thank you. Professor Rae, you have talked a lot about the challenges to the nation’s health at the moment and the negative direction of travel in recent years. The King’s Fund estimates that, entering the pandemic, the value of the public health grant was 15% less than in 2013. Is that a characterisation that you recognise? What does that mean we do less of than we did seven or eight years ago?

Professor Maggie Rae: I am still a fan of the fact that you need public health and local government. I started my career there and moved to the NHS; I moved back to local government; and now I am moving back to the NHS. What we need is flexibility, so professional groups can work there. I would highly recommend all my public health colleagues and public health registrars to get experience nationally, regionally and locally. That makes you a much better, capable public health practitioner. However, you cannot deny that you can do the same for half the money.

I know that when the announcement was made about public health moving into local government, I did do the rounds saying that it would be a really good thing. I have to say that some very experienced people from councils were saying to me, “Well, I know what will happen. We will get the responsibility, and then they will take the money from us.” I said, “No, no, that won’t happen because public health has always been ring-fenced.” When we were in the NHS, the public health funding was ring-fenced. I have to confess that I was naive, wasn’t I, because actually the grant was cut. I do believe that every pound you spend at the local level in that local government setting you will get back tenfold because of all the social capital you can get from it. That is the reality. If your plans are ambitious, you do not need a lot of money. Lots of the interventions on obesity, smoking and all the other things do not take a huge cost in comparison with some of the high-tech NHS ones. If you have the ambition, you need to follow it through with the necessary resources to do it.

I have been public in saying—I am probably with Councillor Jamieson—that in the ideal world, and I have been a director of adult social care, as well as a director of public health, we are not in camps with our bags of cash. We actually put all of our money together for the resources of the population. I would like to see the ICSs mandated to spend so much on prevention and health inequalities wherever the money comes from, because if we continue with what we are doing at the moment—waiting too long to intervene—none of us will be able to afford the mountain of the problem that you will build up. There is no money available in the world to do that.

There have been some early positive signs that we mean business this time with prevention and health inequalities, but we have to deliver. Having just looked at the social care paper today, I struggle to find prevention. I know from being a director of adult social care that if we do not intervene early and get people to be ageing well and healthy, we will not have the carers in the world who can look after them. Again, I make the plea for the resources. It does not take a lot—I am not asking for billions—but a small amount of resource could make a huge difference. If we continue to cut the public health grant, well, we will continue to have poor health, I think.

[Alex Norris]

Q I have a question on fluoridation. At the moment, there is broad agreement that the system does not work: local communities, through their local authorities, can try to lead the process and take it through. I know from my time on my local authority, where I was very keen to do that, that it was very, very hard to do, although not impossible. We are taking away that grassroots, ground-level approach and replacing it with a top-down, Secretary of State-led approach. That has many attractions, in the sense that it takes away from some of the parochial concerns and planning concerns about where you have pour the stuff in to make it work. At the moment, we are going from one to the other. Would you have any anxieties if, rather than moving from one to the other, we kept what we currently had and added the new model to it, so that rather than either/or, it is both?

Professor Maggie Rae: My experience is that there are some things you can legislate for—seatbelts would be the classic example, or smoke-free places—that work really well, but for most things, if you really want to get action, you need to take the public with you. Certainly, if you fluoridate the water, you will have some very direct oral health benefits. Dental decay, for example, is a classic. However, you probably will not fix every little problem you have got, because it takes more than just fluoridation. Most people’s teeth fall out because of gum disease, so you have to have a wider educational programme with the public.

I also know from my work as the director of public health at the local level and my early days work in Scotland that I could take you to lots of families where they do not drink water, so it is not that obvious to me that that is just going to fix the problem as easily as we think it will. I think you need an all-encompassing programme. While we wait for any implementation of the fluoridation, today children will be having their teeth taken out—children of four or five. That is unacceptable because, alongside that, we should be ensuring that there are the educational programmes and the supply if people cannot afford toothbrushes and toothpaste. That would be a nice easy fix for something to do.

We obviously have a huge population who have already lost their teeth, and one of the biggest problems of the elderly is pure nutrition because they simply cannot eat. It is a problem that sometimes you think legislation will fix it top-down, but I think in everything you do it is much better to see public health people as being responsible to the population. In my experience, you really have to take the population with you to have any chance of implementation, whether you have legislation from the Secretary of State or not.

[The Chair]

I am going to go to the Minister now because of time.

[Edward Argar]

Q Good afternoon, Councillor and Professor. I have two or three questions; we will see how we do on time. I will get through as many as I can, and if I do not get through them all, I do not get through them all.

Back in the day, I served as a councillor and cabinet member for public health, adult social care and health, and worked very closely with my then local PCT, which probably shows you my vintage. One of the things that I found was that the structures were important, but the relationships and how it worked on the ground, and the ability to be flexible and build up the trust between the two organisations was more effective in getting better outcomes. We have heard from previous witnesses about the importance of local flexibility to adapt to local work arrangements and conditions. Do you think we are striking the right balance between being permissive in allowing that flexibility and not being too prescriptive, or do we need to go a little more in a different direction?

Professor Maggie Rae: In my experience, with the way that the ICS has been set up, we very much hope that we will not start from scratch again, because those organisations have been working on this agenda for quite some time. I think there would be cries of horror if we said, “We are going to throw out the work you’ve already done.” Many of them have been on this journey for a while, and the leaders in those systems have indeed made some good progress. I think it is a delicate balance.

I will not repeat the points I have already made about strengthening the links to public health and making sure that is not forgotten. We will have 600 public health people going back into the NHS, but we very specifically have not changed the legislation that put directors of public health in England into local government. Of course, directors of public health in the three devolved nations are currently in the NHS. If you do not give people flexibility, you run the risk of your system not working. If we ensure that the framework and assurance process are right, the legislation takes us part of the way, but we want some checks and balances in relation to those freedoms, to make sure that there is a basic minimum standard across the country. If you have an ICS that is not working with its local authority, that is not a level where the ICS should be signed off. The ICS should be asked to go and demonstrate the commitment that the flexibility has allowed them. There is a statement in the framework that was released a couple of months ago, which said that the directors of public health will have an official role on both boards. I found that a pretty good statement to have, but it is only a statement that is effective if there is some assurance that that can be delivered on, and there need to be some checks and balances in order to make sure that those kinds of things are not ignored. Because of the variety—some ICSs cater for 2 million or 3 million people, and some for 1 million—you need the flexibility. If you want them to own and deal with the problems of their population, having a little bit of flexibility is the right approach, provided that the minimum standards are met across the whole country.

[Edward Argar]

Q Thank you. Councillor Jamieson, I have seen that councils can often be at the forefront of leading innovation and driving change in a dynamic way. From the LGA’s perspective, do you think that we are striking the right balance between permissive and prescriptive, and is the approach to the ICP board and ICB an appropriate balance?

Cllr James Jamieson: From a legislative perspective, largely yes. I reiterate the point that I have made a couple of times already: the statutory and non-statutory guidelines will be critical in this area. We need to get them right and ensure that there is real embedded consultation. There are a couple of things that we are concerned about. I have not mentioned them yet, so I will use this opportunity to do so. One is the increase in the powers of the Secretary of State to call in NHS reconfiguration proposals and so forth, and the risk that that would undermine the existing local government influence, overview and scrutiny, so we would ask for a change to schedule 6 of the Bill in order to ensure that there is consultation at a local level before those powers are enacted.

The second area—it is probably not what you are asking about, but it is important that we raise it—is assurance around social care. It is good to have assurance around social care, but we need to make sure that that assurance is proportionate and is in context. Bearing in mind how stretched social care is from a financial perspective, it would be unreasonable to expect social care to do more than its budget allows it to do. In the same way, social care is also very dependent on the performance of the NHS, community care and so forth. We have some concerns around that assurance framework, which needs some work.

[Edward Argar]

Thank you, both. Mr McCabe, I am conscious of time and our programme motion, so I will pause there.

[The Chair]

Thank you, Minister. I thank both our witnesses for their evidence.

Examination of Witnesses

Eluned Morgan, Lyn Summers and Mari Williams gave evidence.

16:44

[The Chair]

We will now hear from Eluned Morgan, who is the Minister for Health and Social Services in the Welsh Government. I hope that I have pronounced your name properly. We will also hear from Lyn Summers, head of health and social services central legislation team, and Mari Williams, senior lawyer (health)—both from the Welsh Government. All witnesses are remote, and we have until 5.15 pm for the session.

[Dr James Davies]

Q Minister, would you outline your understanding of how the Bill will impact the people of Wales? I believe the areas to be the UK-wide medicines information system and social care discharge to assess measures, which may well be relevant in border areas, but there may be other points.

Eluned Morgan: Thank you very much for inviting me to give evidence this afternoon. Obviously the Bill mainly relates to England, but I want to say that I understand what the Bill is trying to do and achieve and I am pleased that it represents some moves towards removing market competition from health and care. I am very pleased to say that we have never had that in Wales because we have our system of unitary health authorities.

There are a number of areas of the Bill that impact Wales. I have set out the significant concerns I have in a letter to Minister Argar. I would be very pleased to present the letter if that is helpful to the Committee. To summarise that letter, there are nine areas of the Bill that I think require the legislative consent of the Senedd. I have set out these areas in a legislative consent memorandum, which has been laid before the Senedd. We are currently in a disagreement with the Department of Health and Social Care UK regarding some of the clauses that the Welsh Government consider to fall into the areas that require the legislative consent of the Senedd. There are a few where we both agree that legislative consent is needed.

In response to your question, Dr Davies, the aspects of the Bill will impact Wales are special health authorities; accounts and auditing; clause 78 on hospital patients with care and support needs—that is the one you referred to, I think, with the border issue; clause 85 on a UK-wide medicine information system; clauses 86 to 92 on transfer of functions between arm’s length bodies; clause 120 on international healthcare agreements; clause 123 on regulation of healthcare and associated professions; and clause 127 on food information for consumers. We consider clause 125 on advertising of less healthy food and drink an important point for us. Clause 130 is also really important to us. The power to make consequential provision also falls within the legislative competence of the Senedd. I think that is something that is worth looking at. I am happy to go through some of the detail on those if that would be helpful to you. Should I continue with that, Dr Davies?

[Dr Davies]

Q Is it a fundamental objection to the content of those elements of the Bill or is it a procedural matter?

Eluned Morgan: Interesting. We do not necessarily have an issue with the policy of some of them, but we are very concerned with some aspects of the constitutional shift and power grab that is happening here from the UK Government’s point of view. For example, the provision on arm’s length bodies is going to impact Wales in several ways. The UK Government are suggesting a requirement to consult the devolved Administrations before those powers are exercised. Frankly, that is just not good enough, because that memorandum of understanding, which the UK Government offered to present to alleviate some of our concerns, is a passing thing. It cannot be enforced by law and it does not bind future Governments, so we are very keen to see all the areas that impinge on our powers move from a duty to consult to a duty to get the support of the Senedd. There is a fundamental shift that we would like to see because we feel that our powers are impinged on.

The other point, which is quite interesting in the context of what is happening with Brexit, is that a number of clauses contain powers that enable the UK Secretary of State to make consequential amendments to provisions in a Senedd law. That is absolutely constitutionally unacceptable. It is fascinating when you think that part of the reason for the UK leaving the EU was to remove an outside institution’s ability to legislate in relation to the UK, yet the irony seems to be completely lost on the UK Government when the same consideration is not applied to legislation in the devolved Administrations in areas where it is absolutely clear where the power should lie. Those are the two fundamental issues that I am concerned about.

[Dr Davies]

Can I have one further question?

[The Chair]

Why not?

[Dr Davies]

Q Thank you very much. Minister, we met recently about the NHS in north Wales and you very kindly sent a detailed response. I am very appreciative of that. One of the things we discussed was interoperability —the fact that the health service in a lot of Wales interacts with that in neighbouring parts of England. We have talked today about data sharing in general, and I wonder what your thoughts are about the importance of comparable and interoperable data between England and Wales.

Eluned Morgan: There is clearly merit in having a system where data can be shared. We do not have a fundamental objection in principle to that and we would be very keen to set up systems that can speak to each other. I guess our objection would be where we are forced to share information that we do not necessarily feel should be shared. Why is that information needed and for what purposes? We would have to be very clear on that. It is not an objection in principle. In our discussion, I was very clear that I think it makes perfect sense for us to get those systems to be able to speak to each other. Again, it is more about the constitutional issues that have been thrown up and the UK Government’s ability to work in our NHS system and to gain information that is not theirs to have. If we want to give it, we are more than willing to do that.

[Dr Davies]

Thank you.

[The Chair]

Before I move on, do Ms Williams or Ms Summers want to add anything to the questions that have been asked so far?

Eluned Morgan: I do not think they have got anything to add.

[The Chair]

I thought Lyn Summers was indicating that she had. Okay—anyone else?

[Karin Smyth]

Q The bulk of the Bill is about us in England looking at integrated care systems. Obviously, you operate according to a unitary provision already. I am not sure who is best placed to answer this question, but could you share with us any evidence, which might help inform our deliberations as we move to a different system, that the unitary integrated system provides better patient outcomes?

Eluned Morgan: We are all very aware that the care system is under incredible pressure at the moment. In Wales, we have been able to introduce new systems through legislation that give our health services the power to co-operate and work, within a legal framework, with the care services and local authorities. That has made a significant difference already. We have a long way to go, and this is only the beginning of the process, but that is an example of where a close working relationship, and providing the framework that allows that to happen, is working well. It needs to go a lot further, though.

[The Chair]

Thank you. Do either of you wish to add anything to that?

Eluned Morgan: Lyn or Mari, do you have anything to add?

Mari Williams: No, thank you.

[Dr Whitford]

Q Obviously, as a Scottish MP, I echo the same concerns from the Scottish Government about these areas. Although it is largely billed as legislation for England, quite a lot of clauses extend further, yet there is often no mention even of consultation, let alone of consent. Certainly, one matter than concerns me is medical information, so what consultation did the Welsh Government have? Unlike Scotland, Wales is mentioned in the extent of the Bill, so how early were the Welsh Government consulted when it was being put together before its launch at the end of July, which is pretty much when the Scottish Government got to see it?

Eluned Morgan: To be fair, my officials have had regular meetings with the Bill and policy teams, and I have met once with Minister Argar to discuss the Bill. However, I am afraid that that did not lead to our key concerns being addressed before the Bill’s introduction.

I concur with you that we were really disappointed at the lateness of the notification of this Bill, and the absence of engagement with the Welsh Government in terms of the practicalities of the outcomes of discussions. For example, we received sight of the White Paper statement on the Bill only on the afternoon before it was published. We had sight of all the Bill’s clauses only the day before introduction. With the best will in the world, we have some brilliant officials in the Welsh Government, but even they cannot work at that supersonic speed. We did not have the opportunity to look at all the final clauses and to respond to them before the Bill was introduced.

The point is that if the UK Government are serious about saying that we will be consulted, this is not a good model for them to show us that we have been consulted. Their stated aim was, “In your areas, where the power is rightly yours, you will be consulted.” If this is the model that they are going to use, we are in for a really tough time. That is why I would concur with you that the real issue is that we want consent on areas that are rightfully and constitutionally ours.

[Dr Whitford]

Q We obviously heard in the Prime Minister’s statement today talk about spending directly in health and social care despite its being devolved.

May I ask you a short, specific question? The healthcare services safety investigation body is England-only at the moment, but it is described that investigations could be requested in Welsh cases due to people coming over the border. Is that something that the Welsh Government are considering? At what level would such a decision be made? Would that be a local request, or would it go up through your central structures?

Eluned Morgan: Lyn or Mari may want to come in here. The key thing to remember—Dr James Davies will be aware of this—is that a huge amount of cross-border working happens between Wales and England, so it is important that we understand each system. I do not think that we would have an objection in principle to working in the way that you suggest, but where, for example, there is a body that is “England and Wales”, it is rightly written in our legislation that we cannot be told what to do. It is not about the policy itself. For example, if there is an auditing issue, we will not go to war or have a fight about how something is audited; it is the process that we are concerned with. It is not that we would object, but it is rightfully in our power to determine whether we want to do something.

[Dr Whitford]

Q And that would apply also to things like sharing patient information of a certain type, and whether it was anonymised or pseudo-anonymised and so on? That would be a concern for you?

Eluned Morgan: Absolutely, and we are developing our own systems in relation to those things, of course. It is our patient information, and we should be deciding who has access to it and when.

[Alex Norris]

Q I thank you, Minister, and your officials for your time this afternoon. You mentioned correspondence with Ministers in the UK Government. Is that correspondence publicly available, or is it something you are willing to make publicly available?

Eluned Morgan: I am more than happy to send the correspondence that I have sent to Minister Argar to the Committee, so you can see it. It sets out all the issues that we are concerned with in relation to the Bill.

[Alex Norris]

Q In your conversations, have Ministers shared with you an impact assessment for the Health and Care Bill?

Eluned Morgan: I am not aware that we have seen an impact assessment. Lyn and Mari may have more to add.

Lyn Summers: No, we have not.

[Alex Norris]

Q That is helpful, thanks. To change tack slightly, in 2016 the Welsh Government brought in legislation around safe staffing levels. Are you able to talk us through that and say, five years on, what impact that has had?

Eluned Morgan: This is in relation to nursing. We have a law on safe staffing levels in nursing. Not only has it been implemented, but it has been extended since we brought in that Bill. It is something that the Royal College of Nursing is hugely appreciative of, and something that we are keeping an eye on. It has made a difference to patient safety, and we in the Welsh Government take it very seriously.

[Edward Argar]

Q Good afternoon, Minister and colleagues. Thank you for your evidence and answers so far. By my reckoning, of the nine issues on which we had a discussion, we reached an agreement on seven. I think there are two outstanding, which are the ones you have highlighted in your evidence. I owe you an answer to your letter, but I think we are meeting shortly to further discuss that.

I want to pick up on something that colleagues have touched on and which you have highlighted around the model of integration in Wales—the unitary model, for want of a better way of putting it. I acknowledge that you said it was early days, but I would like to get a sense of how you feel that model is delivering a national system but allowing local flexibility, and of the extent to which it is delivering, even in its early days, improved health outcomes for patients in Wales. As we look at ICSs and closer working between local authorities and the NHS in England, it may be instructive for us to learn from your experience, even if it is not a direct parallel, and from what you are seeing, even in these early days.

Eluned Morgan: We had a parliamentary review that looked at our NHS and care system, and went into a lot of detail about what we could change. A lot of it was about the need to integrate—[Inaudible.] What we have done as a result is take an interim step towards better integration. We not only set up the legislative framework for that, but put significant funding into driving these health and care systems to work together. We had an integrated care fund and a transformation fund. We found that both the health service and the care service really liked the new approach. They really have engaged. We have kind of allowed a thousand flowers to bloom here, and there have been some really innovative ideas and work. How do we get people out of hospital quicker? How do we drive that change? There have been some great examples.

What we are still struggling with, if I am honest, is that we are still finding difficulty getting both the health service and the care service to understand that what they have changed and what works well now needs to be mainstreamed. There cannot be additional funding forever. The purpose of that additional funding was to give the confidence to do it in the mainstream. We are finding that they have pocketed that money, saying, “This is great. Can we have more, please?” We have tried to make it clear to them that that was never the idea. The idea was for them to have that transformation funding to drive change.

That is our next challenge, and that is what we are working on now, but there are ways of doing that. Clearly, this is a difficult time to be doing it, but some health boards are frankly being driven into closer working relationships, because there are so many examples of delayed transfer of care given the infrastructure at the local government level. Do not forget that in Wales we have not seen anything like the cuts that have happened in England, but even we are feeling the pressure in quite a significant way, and we are having some real issues in relation to recruitment to the care workforce in particular. That is the biggest challenge for us at the moment.

[Edward Argar]

Q That is really helpful, thank you. As ever, I am grateful for your candour, because that will help us to learn from your experience. I am always frank with colleagues about the fact that we will look around to see whether we can learn from Cardiff, Edinburgh or Belfast. That is what we should be in the business of doing. You mentioned using transformation funding to allow local flowers to bloom. That goes to the heart of something we have discussed in a number of sessions today. To what extent, in how you are approaching this greater integration or joint working, have you adopted either a permissive or a prescriptive approach? How have you sought to balance those two ways of doing things to get the best outcome?

Eluned Morgan: It has been quite interesting. With care, for example, we have found that a lot of competition was going, such as between the independent care providers and the local authority—they were poaching from each other. All of that was damaging to the public purse and to the provision that we could give. Now we are in the process of developing an all-Wales framework within which people who want to provide care in Wales will work. That is what we are working on—a new legislative framework that will provide the infrastructure and give the minimal standards that they will have to meet. It is also making sure that we are driving quality through the system.

[Edward Argar]

Q I am conscious of time, but I have a final question that refers back to my first one. Do you have any evidence, whether anecdotal or that you will not share with the Committee, on how the approach is improving or changing health outcomes for NHS patients in Wales, quantitatively or qualitatively? What benefits are you seeing? Is there any evidence behind that? That is something we have explored with other witnesses—how ICSs will seek to do that—but given that you have started down this road already, is there anything you can share?

Eluned Morgan: What is difficult is that we started this process pre-pandemic but, clearly, with the pandemic we are in a very different situation. It is difficult to say what the model would look like in normal times, because we have had 18 months of something very different. It is hard for us to assess that evidence in the light of our circumstances at the moment, if I am honest.

[Edward Argar]

That is fair. Thank you, Minister.

[The Chair]

No one else? As there are no further questions, I thank you, Minister Morgan, and your officials for the evidence that you have provided today.

Eluned Morgan: Diolch yn fawr.

Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Maggie Throup.)

17:10

Adjourned till Thursday 9 September at half-past Eleven o’clock.

Written evidence reported to the House

HCB01 Michael Vidal

HCB02 Marie Curie

HCB03 Health Care Professionals Council

HCB04 Health Devolution Commission

HCB05 Health Devolution Commission

HCB06 Health Devolution Commission

HCB07 Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health

HCB08 Healthcare Audit Consultants Ltd

HCB09 Gwyneth Clapham

HCB10 Fluoride Action Network

HCB11 Centre For Mental Health

HCB12 British Specialist Nutrition Association

HCB13 Marcus Chown

HCB14 Royal College of Midwives

HCB15 Age UK

HCB16 The King’s Fund

HCB17 Susan Ghany

HCB18 Liz Hallworth

HCB19 Association of Dental Groups (ADG)

HCB20 Diabetes UK

HCB21 Healthwatch

HCB22 British Red Cross

HCB23 British Dental Association

HCB24 Royal British Legion

HCB25 Sabine Hirst

HCB26 John Puntis, co-chair of Keep Our NHS Public

HCB27 Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID)

HCB28 NHS Confederation

HCB29 Royal Pharmaceutical Society

HCB30 Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care

HCB31 Carers UK

HCB32 Company Chemists’ Association

HCB33 Mental Health Foundation

HCB34 Paula Riseborough

HCB35 Association of Anaesthetists

HCB36 Virgin Care

HCB37 Family Hubs Network

HCB38 Coloplast

HCB39 Professor Allyson Pollock and Peter Roderick, Population Health Sciences Institute, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Newcastle University

HCB39a Professor Allyson Pollock and Peter Roderick: Attachment of Powerpoint slides containing screenshots of section 3(1) of the NHS Acts since 1946, and Clause 15 of the Bill

HCB40 Continuing Healthcare Alliance

HCB41 The Academy of Medical Sciences, Alzheimer’s Research UK, The Association of Medical Research Charities, The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, British Heart Foundation, British Pharmacological Society, Cancer Research UK, Medical Schools Council, Northern Health Science Alliance, Royal College of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists, Royal College of Physicians, University of Liverpool, and Versus Arthritis (joint submission)

HCB42 UNISON

HCB43 Healthcare Financial Management Association

HCB44 Royal College of Psychiatrists

HCB45 Macmillan Cancer Support

HCB46 National Pharmacy Association

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill (First sitting)

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

The Committee consisted of the following Members:

Chairs: † Sir Christopher Chope, Judith Cummins

† Bacon, Gareth (Orpington) (Con)

† Britcliffe, Sara (Hyndburn) (Con)

† Bruce, Fiona (Congleton) (Con)

† Buchan, Felicity (Kensington) (Con)

† Donelan, Michelle (Minister for Universities)

† Glindon, Mary (North Tyneside) (Lab)

† Hardy, Emma (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)

† Hayes, Sir John (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)

† Holden, Mr Richard (North West Durham) (Con)

† Jones, Mr Kevan (North Durham) (Lab)

† McDonnell, John (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)

† Nichols, Charlotte (Warrington North) (Lab)

† Russell-Moyle, Lloyd (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)

† Simmonds, David (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)

† Tomlinson, Michael (Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty's Treasury)

† Webb, Suzanne (Stourbridge) (Con)

† Western, Matt (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)

Kevin Maddison, Seb Newman, Committee Clerks

† attended the Committee

Witnesses

Professor Kathleen Stock OBE, Professor of Philosophy at University of Sussex

Dr Arif Ahmed MBE, Reader in Philosophy (also Fellow of Gonville and Caius College) at Cambridge University

Trevor Phillips OBE

Professor Nigel Biggar CBE, Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford University

Public Bill Committee

Tuesday 7 September 2021

(Morning)

[Sir Christopher Chope in the Chair]

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

09:25

[The Chair]

We are now sitting in public and proceedings are being broadcast. I have a few preliminary announcements. The first is that obviously there is not room for all the members of the Committee to sit around the horseshoe. Therefore, some are already sitting in what we used to call the Public Gallery. For those who are sitting in those places, it will not be possible to speak from that position, so if you wish to speak you will need to go to the microphone, which is situated over to the right. I am very sorry, but that is the disadvantage to those who have arrived and found themselves without a seat around the horseshoe.

We are asking people with speaking notes to send them to [e-mail], but I hope that this morning’s proceedings will be rather brief and we that will concentrate on questions rather than statements. We will obviously try to keep mobile phones off and ensure that we do not breach the rules in relation to refreshments: tea and coffee are not allowed during sittings. Today, we will first consider the programme motion, then the motion to enable the reporting of written evidence, and then a formal motion to sit in private while we discuss among ourselves who will do what in relation to asking questions of our witnesses.

I call the Minister to move the programme motion standing in her name, which was discussed yesterday by the Bill’s programming sub-committee. I think that the Committee will probably be in agreement.

[The Minister for Universities (Michelle Donelan)]

Thank you, Sir Christopher. I beg to move,

That—

1. the Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at 9.25 am on Tuesday 7 September) meet—

(a) at 2.00 pm on Tuesday 7 September;

(b) at 3.30 pm and 5.30pm on Monday 13 September;

(c) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Wednesday 15 September;

(d) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 16 September;

(e) at 3.30 pm and 5.30pm on Monday 20 September;

(f) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Wednesday 22 September;

2. the Committee shall hear oral evidence in accordance with the following Table:

TABLE

[The Chair]

We will therefore proceed to line-by-line consideration on Wednesday 15 September. That means that the deadline for tabling amendments to be considered on the first day is the rise of the House on this coming Friday, 10 September.

Resolved,

That, subject to the discretion of the Chair, any written evidence received by the Committee shall be reported to the House for publication.—(Michelle Donelan.)

[The Chair]

Copies of written evidence that the Committee receives will be made available in the Committee Room, and will be circulated to Members by email.

Resolved,

That, at this and any subsequent meeting at which oral evidence is to be heard, the Committee shall sit in private until the witnesses are admitted.—(Michelle Donelan.)

[The Chair]

We now move into private session to discuss lines of questioning. Members of the public who are present, and officials, will need to absent themselves —hopefully not for very long.

09:28

The Committee deliberated in private.

Examination of Witnesses

Professor Kathleen Stock and Dr Arif Ahmed gave evidence.

09:37

[The Chair]

We have our first panel of witnesses, so a very warm welcome to Professor Kathleen Stock and Dr Arif Ahmed. We will go straight into the questions. As always, time is of the essence and it would be much appreciated if you keep your remarks directly related to the questions and keep them as brief as possible.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

Q Thank you for joining us this morning, Professor Stock and Dr Ahmed. I have a couple of questions I wish to raise with you, Professor Stock. You suggested in a recent Guardian article that university management groups and vice-chancellors have been unable to

“manage the modern problems around suppression of academic freedom.”

Yet, every university I have spoken to already has a code of practice on the freedom of speech and academic freedom. Many, including King’s College London, have based their code of practice on the renowned Chicago principles. If universities are already under a duty to protect academic freedom and freedom of speech under the Education (No. 2) Act 1986, how can it be said that university management groups are failing in their duty to uphold academic freedoms?

Professor Stock: I think that the traditional problem of academic freedom has expanded. Several relevant factors are now in play that were not before, including the internet, which is the most obvious one, social media, academics being encouraged to engage online, student fees, encouraging us to think of students as customers, competition with student recruitment and encouraging universities to present their most PR-friendly face towards students, which might involve playing up certain political views that students have to attract them and being rather embarrassed about certain political views that they think will not attract those students.

It might also involve—it certainly does involve—bringing activist groups in to do equality, diversity and inclusion. It appears to me there is no oversight on how these new factors, which are significant, are impacting on individual academic freedoms within institutions. It is not really institutional autonomy; it is about individual freedom or unorthodox, non-conformist thinkers being able to say, write or think what they want. I think there is plenty of evidence that that is being chilled.

[Matt Western]

Q Is that something you have witnessed yourself?

Professor Stock: Yes, I have experienced it myself. I have submitted some written evidence, which I am sure you will see. Various things have happened to me. There is evidence of students, colleagues and various other bodies, but the important point is the message it sends to others. What I get is private correspondence from lots of academics saying that they are genuinely frightened, whether rightly or wrongly, but they are frightened to say what they think about matters of controversy.

Even if universities think that in reality these people would not be censured, the fact that they believe they would be censured is enough to chill academic freedom, and that is a problem for what university is for, which is producing knowledge and understanding.

[Matt Western]

Q You will have read the Bill. How do you envisage that the provisions in the Bill are going to protect the likes of yourself and others from these supposed threats to academic freedom?

Professor Stock: The Bill is quite vague, so it is going to need a lot of guidance, concrete examples and accompanying notes. The main point of it, which is to impose a duty on universities to act and promote a culture of academic freedom, should be, if it is done right, a countervailing weight against the irrationality that can be found among some academics and some students, and universities’ apparent inability to deal with it.

As for just having academic freedom in people’s minds, I think most students are not even aware of what that means. Quite a lot faculties do not really know what it means. Being aware of the law as it stands would be good, as would having discussions about the value of academic freedom, and thinking all the time of how this new equality, diversity and inclusion directive relates to academic freedom. There are a lot of moving parts in a university. It is complicated and legislation is always changing. To have a focus on that constantly would be great.

[Matt Western]

Q You are at the University of Sussex.

Professor Stock: Yes.

[Matt Western]

Q Are you suggesting that the University of Sussex does not promote academic freedom of speech?

Professor Stock: I am suggesting it could do better. It says it does, but that is not my experience. For instance, it hardly ever advertises a thing I do, and I do fairly high-profile things. Normally, a university would be very keen to advertise the high-profile things that its academics do, so why is that? It could be concluded that it finds me embarrassing because it has to sell Sussex to students, particularly left-wing students, particularly north London students. That is a difficult demographic to manage when dealing with the issues that I deal with.

Sussex is not out of line with the sector. I talk to lots of colleagues at other universities and they say the same thing. There is the problem of basically selling yourself to students, which is obviously going to interact with matters of pressing social importance that do not quite square with what students think.

[Matt Western]

Q To pick up on your point that universities could improve, or the University of Sussex—

Professor Stock: I would rather not talk just about Sussex. It is a general problem.

[Matt Western]

No, but we all tend to speak from personal experience because it is more direct and authentic. Do you not find, when institutions could improve, it is actually about some changes within, and that perhaps you do not need legislation to force it through? It is thought very widely that this is a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

Professor Stock: The problem is that unfortunately we do need legislation, because universities have not got on top of this. With the people I am talking to, and the stuff that I refer to in my written evidence, we are not talking just about deplatforming. I know there is a focus on public events and public speaking. There is a range of areas where speech is being suppressed or controlled, where junior academics are being put on vexatious complaints for expressing their perfectly legitimate academic views, and where people are being very cautious about what they teach because they want to avoid controversy.

If universities had been able to get on top of all of that, they would have done, I assume, but they have not. In some cases, they just deny the problem. This legislation says that there should be a positive duty to promote academic culture. That could be a very positive, forward-looking initiative; it does not have to be heavy-handed, although obviously it has the capacity to be punitive. But there is also the dimension of encouraging universities to examine what the value is of academic freedom, which is not a discussion that I see happening.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

Q There is legislation already, in the Education Act. What you are saying is that that is not working. If I follow your argument, universities are not following that because what they want to do is to ensure that they have not got individuals like you or perhaps other academics who are going to put off students from being attracted to those universities, because of their views. To follow it to a logical conclusion, is not the ultimate thing that is going to happen this? If the only motivation behind it is that somehow they feel that if they allow you and others to express your different views—which I fully support, personally—that will put off students from going there, are they not going to just not employ people like you?

Professor Stock: I am not a lawyer, but I assume that there should be some discussion of how recruitment happens and—

[Mr Jones]

Q That is not covered by the Bill. If the logic of your argument is that the reasons why universities are not—

Professor Stock: I think that is already happening, for what it is worth, so I am not sure you are going to be able to change that in any way. I think that people are coming to interview on the basis of their views.

[Mr Jones]

Q Is not the logical conclusion to what you are saying, your argument, this? You are saying that institutions are not using the existing law, which is there to protect academic freedoms; you have said, in the evidence that you have just given, that it is because they are afraid of not attracting students because of people like you or others having views that might be hostile to them. Is that not linked to the fact that what universities will do is just not employ people like you?

Professor Stock: I understand the question; I just do not really see how this—you have not pointed to a particular aspect of the Bill that would encourage that situation. I think that situation may already be in place. Arguably, if we change the culture of universities so that people—administrators as well as academics and students—come to understand why it is a good thing to have viewpoint diversity and a good thing to have civil disagreement, that might be less likely to happen. This should not just be a bureaucratic, box-ticking exercise. Done right, it should change the culture of the university sector, and that will have ramifications for far more than the university sector, I think; it will have good, positive implications for civil discourse generally. However, I do not see how this is going to somehow increase the chances of people being excluded on the basis of their views at the recruitment stage. We are still at HR—

[Mr Jones]

Q But your main argument was the fact that somehow this legislation was needed because universities were not going to employ, not wanting to get, people like you, because it was turning off students from going to those universities. There is a system in legislation, in the Education Act, to protect those academic freedoms. All I am saying is that if you do this, if you are saying that your main argument is that they are doing it—

Professor Stock: It is one of my arguments.

[Mr Jones]

Q Well, your main argument is that their argument is that they are doing this because they are afraid of putting off potential recruits to their universities. The ultimate conclusion to that is that they will just not employ people like you, which I do not agree with, but—

Professor Stock: I have answered that to the best of my ability. I have understood the question each time you have asked it and I have answered to the best of my ability.

Dr Ahmed: My understanding—maybe I have got it wrong—is that new provision A1(9) does mention the case where someone is applying to be an employee of one of these institutions, and they will not be adversely affected by virtue of their free speech expression in those circumstances. It is my understanding that the Bill does say something about that.

The second thing that I would say is that independent of the issue about universities employing or not employing people in order to attract students, the Bill would have the effect, I believe, of discouraging students from thinking that they could put pressure on universities to fire or discipline people by virtue of their views, so it would prevent mobs from forming, mobs that have formed against people I know at Cambridge and other people in the country, because they would know that it would not have an effect.

[Mr Jones]

Q In a previous life, I was a trade union official, and can I just say to you that employers will find very clear ways of not employing people, to get round any type of legislation? It will not be on the basis of your views; it will be for some other reason, so this does not give a great deal of protection for those individuals anyway.

Dr Ahmed: I do not think that the employer—that is, the management of the university—gets up in the morning and thinks, “How am I going to stop free speech? How am I going to fire these people?” They are responding to pressure from what I think is quite a small group of activists within universities. If this legislation has the effect of creating some kind of countervailing pressure, then you are right. Of course it is not going to solve the problem; I have been a trade union official myself and I know something about what these issues are. Of course it is not going to solve the problem, but it will help, because I think it will create pressure in the opposite direction.

[The Minister for Universities (Michelle Donelan)]

Q Dr Ahmed, you have previously discussed a soft censorship approach. Can you explain what that is and the impact that you think it will have or that it is having on universities?

Dr Ahmed: You can distinguish between hard censorship and soft censorship. Hard censorship, in my understanding —the distinction is evident in the written evidence that I submitted—means universities actively suppressing certain kinds of speech by enacting certain kinds of regulation. I think we have seen different examples of that, which I am happy to discuss.

Soft censorship is where there is not any regulation, but people know—people sense it themselves, because they know that if they say this, or they say that, or if they present these views, they will be regarded adversely. If they are a student, they might be ostracised

. It might make difficulties for their academic career. That is the result. Because, as it happens, we have an academy, which, at least in some parts, is predominantly in one part of the political spectrum, the result is that certain kinds of research do not get done and certain kinds of views do not get defended by people who, in their hearts, perhaps, believe in them.

[Michelle Donelan]

Q I have a question to both of you, following up on the earlier questions. The existing legislation ensures that there is a duty to protect free speech and this legislation goes further in terms of promoting free speech. Do you think that is vital to changing the culture on campus?

Dr Ahmed: Yes, I do. Obviously the Bill itself does not go into great detail as to what it means by the word “promote”, and I think that is sensible, because it may mean different things in different institutional contexts, but it could mean, for instance, things like events at induction for students, so that people are made aware in ways that they are not now made aware, certainly at my university, just how essential freedom of speech and freedom of thought is to the very functioning of the university, and indeed to being able to function as an adult in a healthy democracy.

It could mean things like making it central to decision-making processes at all levels of the university, so that when we make decisions, we do not just think about the equality and diversity implications of this planned decision, which we do as a matter of course, but that it becomes just as reflexive that we think about the free speech implications of a measure. That is something that certainly Cambridge and I expect most other universities and other academic bodies are not doing.

[Michelle Donelan]

Q Professor Stock, do you want to come in?

Professor Stock: I echo that. I think it was implicit in my earlier answer, that one of the attractive things about this Bill is the promotion aspect—that it is not just a defensive crouch and it is not just punitive; there is an opportunity. I believe in academic freedom, so I think I could explain to people why it is an important thing and we could discuss that—argue about it, even. It would be encouraging that sort of aspect of university life, which would have knock-on effects all over the place—on Google in particular.

[Michelle Donelan]

Q I have one final question to Dr Ahmed. At Cambridge, you successfully put forward the amendment, which I am sure everybody around the table is aware of, altering the requirement of “respecting” to “tolerating”. Why do you think that amendment was needed?

Dr Ahmed: That was one of three amendments that went through on a large majority. The reason for the concern was that the use of the word “respect” and the requirement for respect in that context meant respect for all kinds of ideas and identities as well. That would preclude, for instance, mockery. It would preclude views that give offence to people who hold religious views. My own particular interest is religion. For instance, I teach the work of David Hume. David Hume was about as offensive in his mocking of religion as anyone was in the 18th century. Would I be able to teach that, because his views were certainly disrespectful towards religion?

Another point, of course, is that whether something counts as respectful depends on how willing the person you are disrespecting is to take offence. So, more sensitive people will end up with a kind of veto. We all have our own examples of people who are especially sensitive taking offence. Those people will end up having power over what we can say and what we cannot. The effect would be absolutely to strangle any form of rigorous academic discussion over the most important things in life. That was why I thought the word “tolerate”, which has no connotations of admiration and is completely compatible with mockery—it simply rules out stopping people from practising or having those beliefs—was more useful, and, evidently, many of the dons at Cambridge agreed.

[Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

Q Good morning to you both and thank you for being here. On the issue of academic freedom, I want to turn to what the Bill does and does not say. I am looking at the evidence submitted by your friend, I think, Professor Ross Anderson. His concern is around changing the wording in the Bill from

“freedom within the law to question and test received wisdom”

to

“freedom within the law and within their field of expertise”.

I have concerns that a Bill that is allegedly intended to promote academic freedom could in fact limit academic freedom if you are limited to defining what is your field of expertise. I welcome your comments on that.

The other point in the Bill which concerns me around the alleged promotion of academic freedom versus the reality of the Bill is that it talks about academics and not academic staff or those working within the university. They seem to be exempt from coverage under the Bill, as are visiting academics. What are your thoughts on what the Bill does to promote academic freedom? Where can it be strengthened or changed to actually promote the academic freedom that I believe we all support? Maybe Kathleen first.

Professor Stock: I suspect that we differ on this answer, but I think the difference between academic freedom and freedom of expression, assuming there is one, can only be in principle grounded in expertise. That is what makes the difference between the person who has freedom of expression generally and the person who has special protections as an academic. To put it briefly, that is because academics are perceived to have a certain authority, so their authority should be rigorously tested. They should not be able to get away with just saying, “It is just like this, and you have to accept my word for it.” At the same time, there will be people who want to shut them up or buy them off, so we have to keep them protected.

However, I do see that in practice in a university it might be quite difficult to distinguish between these. For instance, there are a lot of professional services that have PhDs who are looking to get into academia. There are students studying and also working for the university in various capacities, so the blurring is quite present. In practice, it might be that that clause does cause problems and may need to be rethought. In principle, though, that is the rationale for this whole conversation on expertise. There is a further discussion about how to differentiate different fields of expertise.

[Emma Hardy]

Q Yes. We had evidence on this issue around a field of expertise and the overlapping between the different academic areas and who would define whether you have a field of expertise in one area versus another. Sorry, I am talking instead of you.

Dr Ahmed: I agree with Professor Anderson’s point with regard to the clause about a field of expertise for a few reasons. One is that, as Kathleen says, there are difficulties around defining a field of expertise. To use an example reasonably close to my own heart, if you take Professor Richard Dawkins, one could argue that theology is not his area of expertise. Many theologians would argue that it is not even his area of competence. I would dispute that myself, but it could be argued. Nevertheless, we would certainly want a Bill that protects his freedom to muse about religion as he likes. That is one issue.

The second issue, which is one Professor Anderson showed very well, is that much innovation in science—and I use the word “science” very broadly—comes from cross-fertilisation between fields. Biologists might have insights into economics, let us say, even though it is not their field of expertise or perhaps even their field of competence. That is often where the really interesting and innovative insights come from. A Bill that restricts academic freedom to one’s area of expertise might well have a chilling effect on those kinds of interactions. For both those reasons I agree with Professor Anderson’s suggestion that the restrictions of expertise should be dropped.

With regard to your important point about whom the Bill covers, the way I think of it is that universities are institutions that have public money. They serve a public purpose and it is essential that that involves free speech, freedom of inquiry and freedom to exchange ideas. Therefore, the simplest way to achieve that would be to have a Bill that covers all staff at universities and all students, rather than making what are possibly invidious and certainly difficult-to-draw distinctions between all academic members of staff.

[Emma Hardy]

Q Do you therefore include visiting academics as well? Further to that, in the evidence from James Murray, he talks about the Bill as it is currently written almost giving primacy to student freedom of speech over academic freedom. What are your thoughts on that? For example, from the evidence that he has given, the Bill says that institutions must have regard to freedom of speech, but, many times in the Bill, it does not add “and academic freedom”. Do you share those concerns that the Bill, as it is written, could give primacy to students’ freedom of speech at the expense of academic freedom?

Dr Ahmed: Well, I certainly do. You say there is a concern that it takes a heavy emphasis on students’ freedom of speech and things like that, but it is one of the things that has been under threat.

[Emma Hardy]

Q But for institutions and those working in institutions, surely we should be promoting academic freedom?

Professor Stock: I took it as implicit. I did think it was slightly confusing because those two things are usually theoretically distinguished—“What is the difference between freedom of speech and academic freedom?”—so it is a bit confusing that “freedom of speech” is the phrase. However, given the context of “Higher Education (Freedom of Speech)”, I thought “Well, this just must be about academic freedom” but, in terms of drafting, that could be clarified.

I would just add, on who it applies to, I think the more temporary and precarious the person’s position, the heavier the duty we have to protect their speech. It is well understood in classical discussions about academic freedom that being in fear of losing your job, of not getting a promotion, or of not pleasing your supervisor, would give you extra reasons to be quiet, to self-censor and so on, so I think it is important that it applies to temporary and part-time positions.

[Emma Hardy]

Q And we have that sort of counterbalance that, if academic freedom is to be genuinely protected, I think it does need to be more explicit in the Bill. Would you like to comment on that?

Dr Ahmed: I do agree with that, but, of course, there are plenty of examples, as we know, of students who have also suffered adverse consequences. As I understand it, the term “adverse consequences” is defined in the Bill for academics, but is not defined for students. However, under any natural understanding of the term, students have suffered adverse consequences by virtue of disciplinary investigations, which have often gone on for months—even if no finding was issued against them—for things that were not illegal and were, at worst, slightly shocking. I think, in some ways, it is worse for people who are 18 or 19 than for someone like me to have to go under a discrim investigation; it could ruin their entire career.

[The Chair]

I will bring in another one. You can come back later, if there is time. We are pressed for time, because this panel must finish by 27 minutes past 10.

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

Q Dr Ahmed, in your evidence you say that there are several threats to free speech in higher education. You talk about two: self-censorship and regulation. Could you unpack those a little more, and tell us how widespread those problems are and what evidence you have of them?

Dr Ahmed: With regards to self-censorship, I mean something similar to what I said to the Minister when I mentioned self-censorship: people simply not saying things that they think on matters that are important, or not pursuing lines of research that they think might be fruitful, because they fear the consequences, whether that is full disciplinary action or some other form of ostracism, such as being overlooked for a promotion or various other things. That is what I mean by self-censorship.

The principle bulk evidence that I have is from the University and College Union survey of 2017, which was included in the report for the UN in 2019. It says that 35.5% of UCU members who answered the survey said that they self-censored, compared with something like half that percentage for the rest of what was then the EU.

That is roughly what I mean by self-censorship. I have come across plenty of examples of that. When I was campaigning for the liberalised free speech policy at Cambridge, many people said to me that there are a whole range of issues—from issues to do with race, with transgender, and with Israel and Palestine—on which they were simply unwilling to say what they thought because they feared the consequences. Those are obviously matters of huge importance. That was the first thing—self-censorship.

The other thing that I mentioned was regulation; perhaps I should say micro-regulation, because what I mean is universities placing formal obstacles in the way of people saying things that are perfectly legal.

To give one example, my own university recently put forward a policy, which has now been withdrawn, on discrimination and harassment, which included a variety of things regarded as micro-aggressions. These are things we should avoid. None of them is illegal, as far as I can tell. In fact, on some of them, particularly the one in my case to do with religion, if I had actually heeded that policy it would have impeded my own teaching and professional activity.

[Fiona Bruce]

Q You say that the Bill, although plainly not enough in itself, could be a first step

“towards recreating a culture of robust and completely open debate without which a university education loses much of its point.”

How effective will the Bill be in achieving that, and what more do you think needs to be done?

Dr Ahmed: With regards to how effective I think it will be, I would look at the Equality Act 2010 and the way in which that has created over the last 10 years a change in the culture of higher education institutions. It was not immediate; it was gradual and it occurred through the institutionalisation of certain values. More generally, the most important thing in human life, the most important determinant of human behaviour, is habit. If we get into the habit of speaking freely and of thinking about these things at all times, eventually it will feed into our values and into our ways of thinking about what a university should be, so I am reasonably optimistic. Obviously, it is an empirical question and there is a paucity of data, but in some way the 2010 Act gives me some hope.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

Q Professor Stock, on a point that you raised, you are right that we need to ensure that freedom of speech in the academic field is regularly debated. We need to remind ourselves of the critical importance of it as well. My concern is that sometimes in Parliament we see an issue and we rush to legislate, which is not always well thought out as a result of the lack of preparation and consultation. The famous Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 is an example.

You expressed concern about some elements of the Bill. The Bill itself lays a huge range of conditions on student unions and university and academic institutions, and then it brings in potentially draconian sanctions, but we do not know what the sanctions are yet. They all reside at the moment with the Secretary of State. Do you share my view that if the Bill is to proceed, we have to be careful about unforeseen consequences? If we place a duty on a body, there should be a mechanism to ensure that the duty is exercised effectively and under advice as well. There are no advisory structures set out.

For example, you cited in your evidence various incidents that have taken place. There is no mechanism by which you can advise on how things can go forward. In addition, with regard to the sanctions, my worry is that although others might have confidence in the Secretary of State, I have never had confidence in any Secretary of State without direct accountability to Parliament that is open and transparent. At the moment we do not even have a schedule of what sanctions could be levied against institutions and individuals as well as student union bodies. In addition, we have introduced another opportunity for claiming a tort instead of going for a breach of duty as well, which is broadly framed in the Bill but is not specific.

When you raised this question, it struck home with me. Do you believe that there should be elements in the Bill that give us more guarantees about its implementation so that it is effective, accountable and transparent? That means building in mechanisms for future advice. It means being more explicit about the nature of the sanctions and how they operate. To be frank, if I were an administrator at one of these bodies at the moment, I would be working in the dark about how the Bill will be implemented.

Professor Stock: I can see that it is a risk. In a sense, every time you legislate, I assume you are a hostage to fortune to some degree because there is always—

[John McDonnell]

We try to limit that risk.

Professor Stock: I am not saying that is a good aspect of any legislation. I agree that up to a point a lot is left unspoken. A lot depends on the interpretation of the Bill by whoever the free speech champion is. They are going to have to drive the project. It is going to be really important to get the right person and they are going to have staff, obviously, but I cannot reassure you on these points—I did not draft it.

I have read various critical responses to the Bill that talk about the possibility of vexatious complaints and lack of transparency, but it seems to me that, while I am not downplaying those as potential issues, we also need to remember that there are lots of vexatious complaints against individuals going on at the university level and there is a lack of transparency there. We are talking about institutions. There is more than one set of vexatious complaints to worry about and, arguably, only one of those ruins people’s lives, so that is to the forefront of my mind, but I accept that there is indeterminacy here, because I think there has to be legislation.

[John McDonnell]

Q I completely understand that, but by addressing one type of vexatious complaint, you could be causing others. With regard to the point that you made about the director for freedom of speech and academic freedom, again there are no structures linked to that in—

[The Chair]

John, I have to stop you there.

[John McDonnell]

But it is such an interesting dialogue.

[The Chair]

It is, but you are not the one giving the evidence. Dr Ahmed, do you want to say anything on this?

Dr Ahmed: I have relatively little to add to what Kathleen said on that point. The only thing I would add is that I would like to see a situation in which there was a possibility of extremely draconian measures against universities that are not fulfilling their basic function, and in an ideal world they would never be used.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

Q I am going to use this microphone as instructed, Sir Christopher—my apologies for speaking from the wings. I refer members of the Committee and others to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Dr Ahmed, you wrote in your evidence, and you have repeated it today, about self-censorship and how that had changed. Would it be fair to say that the culture in universities has changed quite radically? You mentioned the Equality Act, and you might just as well have mentioned the growth of the internet and the intimidation that is delivered through that. How far does that soft censorship, which you implied a moment ago, affect people’s prospects at universities—the acquisition of fellowships, promotions, funding and so on? What evidence do you have that that has changed in universities, in your academic experience and more widely?

Dr Ahmed: With regard to your point about the internet, I would echo some of the things that Kathleen said in her written evidence, to the effect that Twitter, for instance, allows the mobilisation of mobs, quite quickly, against individual academics. That has been one of the effects. As you said, in addition to the Equality Act, the internet has had an effect on that—by which I mean Twitter.

With regard to self-censorship, my own experience has been that it has changed drastically over the last 10 years. Now, for instance, one would regard it as a typical experience to be in meetings where things are being proposed where I certainly sometimes—rarely, in my own case—bite my tongue. I know that there are people who bite their tongues in the sense that they will not object to certain things that are pointless and stupid, simply because they are afraid of the consequences.

What are those consequences? It is different in different cases. In my own case, I have tenure, fortunately, and I am relatively secure, but for someone who is on a temporary contract, you do not even have to be fired or face disciplinary action. All that needs to happen is that you come to end of your temporary contract, which you would normally expect to be rolled over, which typically does happen in academia, and they will just decide for some reason—as one of your colleagues was saying, it can be quite easy to invent a pretext—“Well, actually, we won’t be needing you any more.”

People in short-term positions are, I think, especially vulnerable and are perhaps the ones who are most likely to self-censor. My own experience is that this is happening a lot more now than in the past. That is from my experience of meetings with decision makers at high and low levels within Cambridge University.

[Sir John Hayes]

Q The implication of what you are saying is that a lot of that will be invisible, because we do not know what people do not say. We do not know who would have been promoted had they said something else, believed something else or taken other stands. Actually, what we may be seeing is the tip of the iceberg. Is that fair? We cannot know how many people are constrained by the culture you have described and by the capacity of the mob to pursue them.

Dr Ahmed: Correct. Of course, you are quite right that it is the tip of the iceberg. The evidence that we have—I am referring again to the UCU survey, which is the largest evidence base that we have—says that 35% of academics self-censor. When you think that that includes people who work in totally uncontroversial fields, such as Diophantine equations, that is a very significant proportion. There is some evidence, but, as you say, it is probably the tip of a huge iceberg.

[The Chair]

Before you go, Sir John, may I ask you to expand on your interests?

[Sir John Hayes]

How long have you got?

[The Chair]

I ask because, obviously, people do not have access to the register.

[Sir John Hayes]

I am a professor at the University of Bolton.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q I have to declare an interest. I am a trustee at the University of Bradford union. I have received donations from the University and College Union. I was the UCU co-ordinator at the University of Sussex and I received money from that university to provide educational opportunities for their students. I would like to think that I work in the sector.

Professor Stock, thank you for your evidence. I must say, actually, that your vice-chancellor did sing your praises to me the last time that I met him and said how excited he was for you to be coming here to show the diversity of views at his university. He was very positive, actually, and I have the email to prove it. That might reassure you. He is leaving anyway, so we will see.

You have raised some really important points about making sure that there is diversity in views at a university. Is there a problem, however, if this is put in legislation, that that becomes too strictly defined as requiring balance? We have debates about the BBC and climate change denial, and the need to have equal airtime for people who disagree and for people who agree. Is there sometimes a necessity for a university to develop a course that is balanced not just numerically but also in terms of where the academic weight is?

Professor Stock: There is a useless way to balance and then there is a productive way to balance. The BBC is a completely different context, because often you have to present both points of view simultaneously, and they just start shouting at each other and nobody’s the wiser. However, on a course that extends through time, and possibly over years, it would be unacceptable not to balance. Balance just means going through lots of different points of view that disagree with each other and trying to work out what you think. It means telling the students that it is their job to work out what they think—that they are not necessarily supposed to agree with you just because you think something, but they are supposed to develop their own points of view.

What is happening at the moment, for me personally, is that—completely extraordinarily, relative to the norms of the sector—whenever I do manage to get an invitation to speak somewhere from some poor, hapless person who does not know my reputation in advance, complaints pile in, and they say, “We’ve got to find a trans person to be on stage with you for balance.” I have had the Francis Bacon keynote at the University of Hertfordshire completely changed in format—until covid meant that it did not happen anyway—just because this idea of balance was required. That is much more like the BBC kind of balance. I do not see why I should have had someone right there when no one else is required to have someone there.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q Will the Bill not promote that perverseness? Rather than allowing an academic to speak within their own frame, the university will feel obliged to make sure that there is someone to speaks against—in the case you mention, a trans activist—when actually that totally distorts the ability of an academic to explore ideas without having someone jump down their throat every moment.

Professor Stock: You may know the Bill more intimately than I do—I have read it a few times—but I have not seen anything specific about viewpoint diversity. [Interruption.]

[The Chair]

We can only have one person speaking at a time. Let the witness speak, please. [Interruption.] Lloyd, will you let the witness respond?

Professor Stock: I think I understand. I do not see anything in the Bill. I think that that is a danger. That is a particularly bureaucratic, shallow understanding of viewpoint diversity and balance. The guidance under the free speech tsar should absolutely avoid demanding that every strong articulation of position is immediately countered, chronologically, by its opposite. That would be facile. However, there are other ways of explaining what balance is, of conceptualising balance, that leave that out.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q The devil is in the detail. You mentioned at the beginning of your evidence, in response to some of the questions, about part of the problem being that people are unsure, particularly those on short-term contracts, and that academics might not be promoted. Is the problem that you identify the very problem that UCU and many of us went on strike over only a few years ago—the gradual move towards temporary contracts in institutions, the move towards lack of tenure and requiring students to do teaching? It is not a problem of freedom of speech; it is a problem of giving people security in their workplace.

Professor Stock: That is a false opposition. It is both. Just for the record, UCU had adopted an irrational view on exactly the issues that I am engaged with. I am no longer a member of the union because it would not support me in my academic freedom, so UCU is not blameless in this area.

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

Q I draw the Committee’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am an honorary fellow at Birkbeck College at the University of London.

The European convention on human rights is the main underpinning of most human rights rules in the UK, including freedom of speech. The UK, like most of the member states, goes well beyond what that says is the minimum. Given the international nature of academic research and the experiences that you have outlined, I am interested in your view on the adequacy of the minimum protections that that provides for freedom of speech and whether you foresee potential conflicts with other pieces of legislation—for example, inequalities that might result?

Dr Ahmed: With regard to tension with other legislation, I suspect there might well be tension with the Equality Act and difficult decisions to make about a breach of the duty to promote freedom of speech versus the duties imposed under the Equality Act, so I think there are issues that guidance should be able to sort out with regard to what counts. My understanding of the ECHR is that there is the strongest possible protection for academic speech, so almost nothing can count as harassment in a pedagogical context.

[Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)]

Q I am interested in two of the points that we have come back to a few times today. The first is around the distinction between academic freedom and freedom of speech. You referred to your view that in that context there is no such thing as harassment. I wonder, in relation to remarks made by the Secretary of State when the Bill was first announced, whether you think there is a limit to academic freedom versus freedom of speech and where that limit should be drawn. Holocaust denial was given as an example. To declare an interest, I am Jewish, so that is something that I am interested in.

Professor Stock: To clarify, do you mean the tension between academic freedom, freedom of speech and the rules against harassment?

[Charlotte Nichols]

Q And if you think there should be a limit in the Bill, or are you saying that in an absolutist context there should be absolute freedom of speech?

Professor Stock: I am not saying that, and I do not think the Bill says that, as I understand it. I think this sits within wider sets of laws about speech. I am not a free speech absolutist. The vast majority of the instances that we are talking about are perfectly within the law but are still being censored and having adverse consequences. I acknowledge that there are some kinds of speech that are criminal and should not be allowed in universities. I think the law is quite well set up to deal with things like that. I understand there is already a legal precedent on holocaust denial. I understand your concern—I really do. There is a defensive tendency for universities to leap to the most extreme example. If we adopt entirely or orient our attitude towards those examples, and if we are extra cautious because of these possibilities, we really lose a lot in the middle ground. These things are always difficult. You could not possibly sort it out in 30 minutes.

Dr Ahmed: I agree with almost everything that Kathleen says. There is a distinction between what the Bill says and what I think needs to happen with regard to free speech. With regard to the first point, the Bill as I understand it says free speech within the law, and therefore makes reference explicitly to existing legislation. The Bill therefore does not protect anything that is already illegal.

With regard to my own view, I am close to being a free speech absolutist. Like many people, I think that the law in this country is overly restrictive. Obviously there are some things, for instance to do with court proceedings, confidentiality of applications and so on, where it is proper that there are restrictions. But short of such things, we could be a lot more liberal than in fact we are. That, however, is a separate question from the content of the Bill.

[Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)]

Q Something a lot of people, particularly the Opposition, were asking on Second Reading was whether this is just a total sledgehammer to crack a nut. How big a problem is this self-censorship, really? We have seen the evidence today: that 35% of academics in the UK are self-censoring versus 19% in the EU. Is this something that is actually stopping you doing your work as academics?

Dr Ahmed: Yes, I believe that it is. For instance, I genuinely think that there are things now that I would hesitate to say. Because I am in the position that I am, I am prepared to say them, but I know many people who are not. There are questions that many people would hesitate to explore, so it is now stopping academics from doing their jobs.

Professor Stock: It is not stopping me doing my job, but is unreasonable to expect the average academic to have to go through the things that I have gone through and overcome the obstacles that I have had to. I have to do so much in order to be able to teach a class on feminist philosophy where I can say, “Here is what I think, and I can say this because I have all this research that backs it up,” and even then I get complaints, and colleagues will call me a bigot. It is not reasonable to put that as the standard for the average academic saying what they think.

My concern, in talking about my experience, is not, “Oh, feel sorry for me.” It is that people see this, and it sends a message. I just want to point out that, of course, self-censorship is by its nature quite hidden. Universities will say, “Well, nobody’s told us this.” There is a real elision in our culture between saying that something is right and saying that someone should have the right to say that it is right. People confuse those all the time. If somebody says, “I think Kathleen Stock should have the right to say what she thinks,” that can be interpreted as, “She’s right,” and then that person is called a bigot too. It is infectious.

Dr Ahmed: I forgot to mention that, of course, the issue of self-censorship affects students as well as academics. Many students are simply not asking questions. If you have a class about religion, immigration or trans issues, there are students who might want to ask questions that they genuinely want the answers to, philosophical or otherwise, which they are afraid to ask in class because of what will happen if they ask them.

[Matt Western]

Q We are running out of time; I think we have one minute. Can I just ask a final question to you, Dr Ahmed? In point 12 of your written evidence, you say that the Bill would require

“a credible mechanism for holding to account those that do not”

promote free speech. Do you view the Office for Students, as it is currently organised, as a credible body that is capable of delivering a credible mechanism?

Dr Ahmed: Broadly, yes, I do.

[Matt Western]

Q Even though its chair is a Conservative peer, is party affiliated and has made a donation to the Conservative party since his appointment.

Dr Ahmed: There are always concerns with the regulator —that it has to be impartial—and there are also concerns in this particular case. The question is the general impartiality of the regulator. I do not know anything about Lord Wharton. I would not be the right person to ask about that. If it is to do with the issue of free speech, what we need in a regulator is someone who has guts and principles.

[Matt Western]

Q He would be responsible for the appointment of the director of free speech. Would you have absolute faith in that?

Dr Ahmed: There is no evidence that I am aware of that there would be any problems with the appointments process.

[Charlotte Nichols]

Q If the Bill goes through, what would the measure of success be? You have talked about academic freedom, the chilling effect and self-censorship; these are things that exist in a very abstract way. You have referred to the UCU research. What would success look like to you?

Dr Ahmed: One thing would be that we could do self-reported self-censorship. That would be something that one could measure and that has been credibly measured. One could work out whether that was declining. The second thing would be that since the Joint Committee on Human Rights report in 2018, which has been cited I believe by members of the Opposition, I could think of about 45 cases that have come up since then—documented cases—of disciplinary action against harassment of students, staff and so on for things that they have said that were legal and those are all public, so a second measure of success would be a decline in those cases.

[The Chair]

I am afraid that brings us to the end of this session. We have no option but to close now, but can I thank both our witnesses today? You have generated a very spirited discussion and stimulated this Committee. I think that is a really good precedent. Thank you very much for coming along.

Examination of Witnesses

Trevor Phillips and Professor Nigel Biggar gave evidence.

10:31

[The Chair]

We welcome our second panel: Trevor Phillips OBE, who is joining remotely via Zoom, and Professor Nigel Biggar CBE, who is the Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford University.

[Matt Western]

Q Welcome to you both. Thank you for joining us and for your written submissions. A question to both of you: English PEN, one of the world’s oldest human rights organisations, raised concerns about whether a director for freedom of speech and academic freedom will be a regulator, an adjudicator or an adviser on free speech issues? How do you envisage the role of the director? Do you have concerns over the independence of the role and whether the director could infringe academic freedom in and of itself?

Trevor Phillips: Good morning. Thank you very much for the invitation to join this conversation. I am, of course, a great respecter of English PEN and in my role—I guess I am principally appearing here as chair of Index on Censorship, which is the global freedom of expression advocate, 50 years old—we work rather closely with English PEN. Today we publish censored work in our quarterly magazine, build our “Banned by Beijing” campaign and fight for freedom of journalists, for example, in places such as Belarus.

The reason I make that point is that Index broadly supports the intention of the Bill, but coming to the specific question you asked me, from our point of view we look at this from the international perspective. Many of those who face censorship regard Britain as an exemplar and use us as a standard to aspire to. However, so do authoritarians of all political stripes. Any extension of the state’s power over speech at home can be used by those who want to as a means of, as an example, limiting freedom of expression. Your point about the regulator is an important one. To be honest, unless the regulator is actually a regulator of behaviour, there seems little point. Universities do not lack for advice of various kinds.

The important point about this post is that he or she should be a protector of the freedom of expression of students and academics—and indeed, by the way, those who are not academics. For example, there was a case in Cambridge where a porter essentially lost his job because of a view he expressed. In my view, if we are going to go down this road, that individual role has to be the role of a regulator and a protector of freedom of expression.

A very good example at the moment that is not much talked about is the position of international students. I welcome the presence of international students: I was one myself many moons ago. But we have concerns that certain countries—I am specifically thinking of China—covertly monitor and try to control the behaviour of their students. That has been exacerbated by the introduction of security laws in Hong Kong. It seems to me that a regulator should have the will, the power and the capability to ensure that those students and their right to express their opinions are protected.

[Matt Western]

Q Thank you. Can I ask Professor Biggar the same question?

Professor Biggar: One of your questions was whether the director would be simply an adviser or a regulator-adjudicator. Certainly the second, because he or she would be responsible for judging complaints. That is an adjudicator role. What is more, I imagine that one of the main jobs of the director would be to develop and publish guidance, which would carry authority, so it is more than just advisory.

I think your next question had to do with the impartiality of the director. Those who think there is no problem would prefer a director who agrees with them and changes nothing. Those who think there is a problem want a director who is going to effect a corrective bias. So, someone like me, who thinks there is a problem—and I guess the Government do, given the legislation—wants a director who has a certain partiality of that kind.

Beyond that, the director will occupy a public position. I take it that it will be made clear to the director that this is not to be used for private, partisan purposes. It is a public position. Whatever advice the director is to give will be within the law and it will have to take account of different bodies of law, the Equality Act on one hand and legislation dealing with free speech on the other. There are various constraints but I am not worried about that.

[Matt Western]

Q Can I come back to Sir Trevor? In November 2020, Sir Trevor, you wrote of a “dark edge of censoriousness” emerging. I think that was in an article that appeared in The Times. You will be aware of this creeping sense of Government interference in, say, the appointment of members to boards of trustees of museums and appointments to universities and elsewhere. Do you think that more oversight of the sector through the director will not be merely the inverse of the edge of censoriousness but will actually favour the Government?

Trevor Phillips: No more so than in any other Administration. By the way, there may be a sound problem, but I think you called me “Sir Trevor”. Her Majesty has not made that mistake; that would be a major error. The creeping edge of censoriousness is, to be honest, rather little to do with Government. There is often confusion about the word “independent”, particularly in higher education. People tend to use the word “independent” when they actually mean opposition to Government.

I do not think there is any danger of the higher education sector as a whole developing a culture of deference to the existing Government. My reference to the creeping edge of censoriousness was far more in relation to peer pressure and the emergence of self-censorship. We have noticed something at Index. Over the past couple of years we have run a campaign to try to increase the resilience of students in being able to express their opinions. We have run some training courses and so on. We do not think that the real big problem here is that everybody is looking over their shoulder and saying to themselves, “What does the Secretary of State for Education or Secretary of State for Culture think about what I am about to say in a seminar?” They are more concerned, if they are students, about whether an unfashionable or “unorthodox” view may get them marked down in exams. If they are junior academics, I think they are more concerned about whether their professors, who have no qualms about expressing their political views, may decide that the next time there is an opportunity for preferment, their views make them less likely to be favoured than someone else. My view about the issue of censoriousness is that it is far more a question of self-censorship. What we are concerned about, I guess, in relation to the legislation is that you can do quite a lot with law, but you need to support it with a clear cultural programme that supports, advocates and promotes diversity of opinion within the institutions.

[Michelle Donelan]

Q My first question is to Trevor. You have spoken in the past about the erosion of free speech. How exactly do you think that the Bill will tackle that?

Trevor Phillips: It is a short Bill, which perhaps begins to close some gaps. Simply, the process of debating it will help to highlight some of the issues about which we are concerned, but the central proposition, which is that there should be some regulatory apparatus and guidance, is valuable. We think that it is important that there is not a wild west here. To be completely honest, my own view is that if the university authorities had been doing their jobs properly, behaved like grown-ups and taken responsibility for what is happening on campuses, this would not be necessary.

However, what in the last three to five years we have seen example after example of where university authorities have essentially abdicated their responsibility to protect their own academics and students. That is why the Bill appears to have value. Because the university authorities are not doing their jobs, the Government have felt it necessary to step in. That does not mean that I think that everything that is being proposed is absolutely on the money, but I can see why it is felt necessary to do something of this kind.

[Michelle Donelan]

Q You have spoken before about people losing their livelihood for saying what they think is perfectly lawful. Are there any examples that you would be willing to share with the Committee?

Trevor Phillips: Some of these are public. There is the case of the Cambridge porter who said something that was regarded as disobliging on the issue of gender and trans. Eventually, he had to step down from his role. There is the case, again, of Noah Carl at Cambridge. I suspect that Professor Biggar will probably have more examples to offer you, but if you would like I can certainly follow up with a note on that.

If I may respond honestly, my view is that the bigger risk is not that there are a few celebrated, or notorious, I should say, cases of people who have lost their livelihood; the bigger issue for me is that what is happening now is that people can see that they could lose their livelihood and therefore do not engage in what universities are for, which is free and open debate and, even more importantly, unbiased, courageous inquiry. One of things that we know—this I cannot give you examples of, because I do not have permission—is that there are some lines of inquiry, not just in the humanities but in science, that are not pursued because people who would pursue them think that it would be too controversial.

Perhaps I can give you a very simple example. Twelve years ago, when I was in public office as chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, I tried very hard to get a university or some other research body to do some work on the academic success of children of Chinese heritage. For two years we offered money. No institution would take up that research project because they said—I had this from three or four of them—that it would stigmatise other ethnic groups. I thought that was an important thing to understand, not least because other minority groups and, we now know, the majority community in this country, could learn from the success of that group. Up until now—right to today—we have no knowledge of why that group is so consistently successful academically. That surely is one of the losses we are seeing because of what I may have called creeping censoriousness.

[Michelle Donelan]

Q I have one last question to both panellists. The Bill is designed to protect lawful free speech, but some Opposition commentators have argued that it would protect unlawful free speech. Could you both clarify whether you share that view or whether you believe that the Bill would protect only lawful free speech?

Professor Biggar: My view is that the Bill would protect lawful free speech. The law as it stands prohibits speech that would incite violence or racial hatred or hatred against people for their religion and so on, and the Bill would not change that. We have already heard concerns about holocaust denial. Under the law as it stands, in the light of European Court of Human Rights case law, holocaust denial is not unlawful; it is just that if you give expression to such a view and you are denied a platform or suffer some detriment, you cannot claim the protection of the law. It is a delicate position. I do not think this Bill is going to protect unlawful speech.

[Michelle Donelan]

Q Do you share that view, Trevor?

Trevor Phillips: Yes. I do not really see what in the text of the Bill would produce that result. I think you would have to construct a very outlandish scenario for that to happen.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q Trevor, you mentioned the porter. That would not be covered under the Bill. Do you think the Bill therefore needs to be expanded?

Trevor Phillips: Forgive me—you say I mentioned the what?

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

The porter is not an academic member of staff. A porter is a non-academic member of staff, without academic privileges. My understanding is that they would not be covered under the Bill. Are you suggesting that the Bill would need to be expanded to all contractors? Most porters in most universities now are not even necessarily employed directly by the university; the services are subcontracted out. Are you saying that it should be expanded to all contractors—to everybody that the university has a relationship with?

Trevor Phillips: No. The individual was an employee, actually, in the same way as an academic.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q Not an academic employee.

Trevor Phillips: I am not a lawyer, but I do not think in terms of employment law there is any differentiation.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q I agree with you that it is very worrying when people are dismissed for expressing views that do not relate to their job—a porter expressing a political view one way or another should not make a difference. If it does extend to the porter, which I am not sure it does, why should they get different protections from a porter at a hospital or a supermarket? Should we not be talking about extending protections, if they are needed, to all peoples in all workplaces?

Trevor Phillips: I think I understand the premise of your question, but I do not really agree with it. The expression of an opinion, one way or another, should be protected, whatever your job. The reason that this particular individual ran into difficulty was not because he was not being asked to lecture students. He was a Labour councillor, and I think it was in that context that he uttered the views that were thought to be disobliging. The point here is that the censorship that is taking place is not just to do with what academics may be saying to their students in tutorials or lectures; the censorship here is being exercised against any individual who happens to be associated with the institution who may or may not take a view or write something in any guise.

We can take the case, for example, of Noah Carl. I do not agree with anything Noah Carl has written, by the way. However, the criticism of him was that he wrote an article in a journal that also published views that were disobliging; it was not actually about his views. The point here is that I do not think there is anything in this Bill, or indeed the harm that it is designed to remedy, that separates the questions of what might be said as part of a job and what might be said as a human being.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q The Bill gives protection for people to express things within their field of expertise. That means academic staff, not people who profess views outside of their expertise; they could still suffer consequences according to the Bill. That is where we are.

To both of you, I am interested in who does the judging of where the limits of free speech are. You could say something controversial, something that somebody thinks is Islamophobic or antisemitic. In your view it might not be and you have the right to express that view, but surely there is a right to a backlash and for people to express their distaste for distasteful views. There is a right to offend, but there is also the right to be offended. How do you stop a chilling effect when stopping people’s right to express their distaste?

Professor Biggar: Of course people have a right to express distaste of any views they wish. My own view is that universities ought to be in the business of teaching future citizens to express their passionately held views civilly, rationally and robustly, without abuse. If universities do not train citizens to be civil in that fashion, we can expect violence on the streets way down the line, to be melodramatic. Within the law, it seems to me that universities should impose norms of civility on either side. But it is not just a matter of people expressing their distaste at gender-critical feminists or critics of Black Lives Matter or people who think the British empire was not entirely wicked. It is not just that; it is the use of political means to apply political pressure—not rational but political—and it is the use of aggressive abuse.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q How do you limit people applying political pressure? What you are saying is that the regulator needs to come in and say that the university has not limited other people’s ability to apply political pressure. I get that universities should have guidelines about balance and civility, but if it breaks down and the regulator steps in, what is the regulator actually checking? That the university has not restricted other people’s political expression?

Trevor Phillips: There is no right to a backlash. In common law there is a right to protest in this country. I would have gladly seen something in this legislation that referred to that, but the truth is that we do have that right. The issue here is of culture and resilience. For far too long—10 years—I was chair of two regulators: the Commission for Racial Equality and the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Most of our work was not prohibitive; most of it was either permissive or educational. The EHRC publishes books and books of guidance, some statutory, most non-statutory. The aim of that kind of guidance is not to impose threats and hammers, but to give some idea of what the right norms are. That is why this is so important. There is a variety of informal ways in which freedom of expression can be suppressed without breaking any law that you could possibly draft.

Alongside the legislation, there has to be a programme of action to protect diversity of opinion within the higher education sector. That is part of the role of the regulator. The regulator is not a censor; it is there to moderate behaviour, and there are different ways in which that regulator might moderate behaviour. Some of it will be by prohibition and law, but most of it, for every regulator, is through guidance, encouragement, comparison, publication of best practice, and so on.

We ought not to get into a conversation where we simply think of this regulator as a revived Lord Chancellor, with his or her blue pencil, swooping on every campus, looking out for bad guys. The big part of this regulator’s work will be publishing work that demonstrates best practice and the code by which university authorities, and those who are under their aegis, can best guarantee and promote diversity of opinion and freedom of expression.

[Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)]

Q One of my concerns is self-censorship and the degree to which it already exists, not only among the academic body but also among the student body. By definition, it is quite difficult to measure self-censorship and the extent to which it exists. Could you outline how large a problem you believe it to be?

Professor Biggar: You are right that, by its nature, it is hard to detect and measure, but there is plenty of anecdotal evidence, and I can tell you from my own experience. The clearest evidence of fear and self-censorship among academics was mentioned by Arif Ahmed earlier: his experience in Cambridge of spending a month trying to get 24 academics to put their heads above the parapet to sign a bit of a paper backing a motion against university policy. It took him a month to get 24 people to do that, but when the vote was held by secret ballot, it went overwhelmingly against the university, by several hundred academics. When those academics were liberated to express their views in secret, they did it, but they would not do it in public. That is one instance, but I think it is a signal instance. I urge you not to underestimate the degree of fear, even among senior academics.

Trevor Phillips: Yes, I agree with Professor Biggar. It is pretty difficult—like proving a negative. People who are too frightened to express their opinions will not tell you that they are too frightened to express their opinions. However, we do know that there are many examples.

Personally, I am a bit less concerned about the issue of meetings not being held and so on, and far more concerned about the extent to which academic and intellectual inquiry is being curbed by a culture that says “This thing will be controversial and too much hassle. I’m going to put my effort into something that nobody’s going to argue very much about.” That, I think, is a real, huge danger for the higher education sector in this country. We have lost what the Americans would call the “speak up culture”—the pleasure in disputation and the belief that testing arguments will always improve the state of knowledge. If there is a job for the regulator, it is to restore the confidence of all the members of university communities that it is okay to take a view; that, essentially, it is okay to say things that you know might offend other people, if you believe them to be correct. I do not think we want to encourage gratuitous insult or unnecessary offence, but above all, our institutions are there to encourage intellectual inquiry.

One practical step that might be embodied in the guidance, if not in the legislation itself, is that the default position in universities when it comes to meetings in particular is that they should always be open to all members of that community, so that every point of view is open to challenge. That is at the heart of this: there should be a culture of challenge. Secondly, what we have tried to do at Index is to help students to learn the habits of resilience that allow them to participate in those robust debates.

[Felicity Buchan]

Q How big an issue do you think self-censorship is among the student body, as opposed to the academic body?

Professor Biggar: Common sense would say that if grown-up academics are scared, then much more vulnerable students will be even more scared. I mentioned anecdotes. You may know that I got myself into trouble four years ago about my project on colonialism in Oxford, as a consequence of which the Oxford Centre for Global History mounted an official boycott of my project. I then had an approach from a junior research fellow—not a student, but a very junior, insecure academic, without a full-time career ahead of him—who said he agreed with my views and he would like to attend my conference, in May 2018, but would do so with two conditions. Those were that his name appeared nowhere and his photograph appeared nowhere, because he shared an office with two people who had signed one of the three online denunciations of my project. He worried about the future of this career and that he would be punished if they knew that he was associating with me.

That is one instance, but there are others. If that is the case with a junior academic, who is less vulnerable than a graduate student or an undergraduate but still very vulnerable, you can be sure that there are students who are biting their tongues lest they get marked down by their professor. Observe how some professors behave in public in terms of abusing those who disagree with them. If I were a student of some of those professors, I would be very careful. If they can behave that way to other academics, you can be sure that they can behave that way to those beneath them.

Trevor Phillips: Very briefly, most members of the Committee will not know this, but many moons ago— 40 years-plus—I was president of the National Union of Students. On the executive that I led, there was a broad range of opinion, including Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and people who were, believe it or not, way to the left of me. Never a day went by without some ideological dispute or argument breaking out in public. One of the things that strikes me very forcibly is that when I go to campuses and when I read about student politics, there does not seem to be that range of opinion and argument going on on campuses and in student politics. It is not my business any more, but I find that disappointing. I can only read it as the sense, not so much that people are intimidated, but that they just do not think it is worth having the argument. That is very disappointing, because that is where some of our cleverest and smartest people, some of whom are sitting in this room, and some of whom share the Benches on both sides of the Commons, have come from—from that culture of disputation and argument, with a lot of robustness, but a level of respect. That does not seem quite to be the case today.

[Emma Hardy]

Q I would like to return the focus to what is written in the Bill, rather than to re-argue the Second Reading arguments on the merits of whether we should have a Bill or not. Professor Nigel, you wrote in the evidence you gave us, that as the Bill is written,

“it fails to protect expressly the freedom of students and academics to voice critical opinions about their own universities”.

You highlight the concern around the narrowing of academics to their field of expertise. Could you expand on why, as the Bill is written, what we could have is a narrowing of that freedom of academic speech?

Professor Biggar: Yes. That qualification—within their field of expertise—is a hostage to fortune and could have the reverse effect of what is intended. For example, if my academic freedom were confined to my expertise, strictly understood, I am a theologian, so if I wanted to protest about policies of decolonising curricula being rolled out in a rather authoritarian fashion by my university, it could be said that as a theologian, I have no standing—what do I know about colonialism? It is not my field; I am not a historian—or if I wanted to criticise some aspect of the general policy of my university, it is not within my expertise. It seems to me that that phrase needs to be removed, so that academics are free to make their views known on any matter that bears on their institution.

[Emma Hardy]

Q Further to that—I highlight this for Government Members, because they seem to be a little confused about who is covered by the Bill, so I refer to the Taylor Vinters submission from James Murray; it might be worth your reading it. That evidence says that

“one would not want the situation where the free speech of a large group of vociferous protestors is weighed as having more importance than the freedom of an academic”.

It talks about how the Bill is written, giving primacy to freedom of speech over academic freedom. I wondered if you had any concerns about that, or any points about that: how, as the Bill is currently written, we could see a limitation of that academic freedom because of the primacy of the freedom of speech.

Professor Biggar: I cannot help you much with that in detail, except that I think academic freedom needs to have equal standing, because free speech and academic freedom are not the same things. Did you understand that?

[Emma Hardy]

Q Yes. Just to quote from the submission,

“it is arguable that freedom of speech would take primacy over academic freedom when the duty is balanced in practice (i.e. you can read the duty as follows: take particular regard to the importance of freedom of speech when taking reasonably practicable steps to achieve the objective of securing academic freedom).”

Would you be recommending, therefore, that the Bill as it is written is addressed to deal with this imbalance?

Professor Biggar: Yes, I would.

[Emma Hardy]

Q Thank you. Trevor Phillips, you have referred a number of times to something being “within the law”. In the evidence given by the University of Cambridge—can I say that when we have an Oxford professor sat here with us?—they mention that the Secretary of State for Education said on Second Reading that

“the right to lawful free speech will remain balanced by the important safeguards against harassment, abuse and threats of violence as set out in the Equality Act 2010, the Prevent duty and other legislation, none of which we are changing.”—[Official Report, 12 July 2021; Vol. 699, c. 49.]

The University of Cambridge is recommending that that statement, or words similar to it, are included—that clarification is included—on the face of the Bill, and that a steer is provided on how the different duties are to be balanced in practice. Would you support something like that going into the Bill?

Trevor Phillips: No. This is premised on the idea that there is a quantum of freedom of speech that can be shared out between different parties. I fundamentally disagree with that: I think that freedom of expression, rather like love, is infinite, and that you do not balance one lot of freedom of expression against another lot of freedom of expression.

[Emma Hardy]

Q Just to clarify, I was quoting the Secretary of State, who said that

“the right to lawful free speech will remain balanced by the important safeguards”.

Are you disagreeing with the Secretary of State that we should have this?

Trevor Phillips: I have not read the speech by the Secretary of State, but if he put it in the way you have just put it, yes, I am.

Professor Biggar: Could I respond to that briefly? Certainly, there will be a balance, but the crucial question is, “What kind of balance?” It seems to me that that needs to be a matter for negotiation between the Office for Students, via its director, and universities, because this law will change the legal environment. There needs to be a shift in the dialogue.

[Emma Hardy]

Q On that point, would you want to put some kind of balance, or evidence about the balance, within the Bill itself as written, as also recommended by the Free Speech Union?

Professor Biggar: I am not sure what that would achieve. I would not object to it, but it does not tell you what the balance is going to be, which is the really important question. A statutory requirement of balance would not do any harm.

[The Chair]

Fiona Bruce is next.

[Fiona Bruce]

Q Thank you very much, Sir Christopher. It might be very helpful if we could continue this discussion, because I wanted to draw out from you, Professor Biggar, two points where you say that the Bill could be improved. Could you perhaps give us a little more information about your thoughts on this comment:

“In its current form, the Bill would still allow discussion in an academic context to attract allegations of having the effect of harassment under section 26 of the Equality Act 2010.”

Could you elaborate on your thoughts, please?

Professor Biggar: First, the Bill is not proposing to amend the Equality Act. That is quite clear; however, there is tension between the requirements of the Equality Act and the duties to secure and promote free speech and academic freedom that the Bill would establish. The tension arises around the definition of harassment. It is quite right that those with protected characteristics should be protected from harassment. The problem is that harassment is often interpreted by universities—not so much by courts—in such a fashion that dissent from, disagreement with and criticism of becomes harassment. That is obviously a dampener on free speech. The Bill will not resolve that, but I am sure that the OfS, through the director for freedom of speech, will have to discuss with the university how the Act is interpreted in the light of this legislation. The effect of this legislation would be to underscore the free speech and academic freedom elements, and might result in a more conservative interpretation of the Equality Act.

[Fiona Bruce]

Q I wonder whether you could consider whether the words “within the law” at the very start of the Bill, which is such an important clause, could perhaps be replaced by the words “without unlawful interference”. Would that help to address the problem of the, very often, broad interpretation of harassment, which effectively appears to bring speech that is within the law outside it?

Professor Biggar: That is a very fine distinction, the significance of which escapes me for the moment.

[Fiona Bruce]

Q The problem that you are raising is that there is quite a broad range of statements that could be not protected by the Bill because they are considered harassing. That is an issue that perhaps needs to be looked at.

Professor Biggar: If that is a tighter definition, then yes.

[Fiona Bruce]

Q Thank you. The second point that I want to draw out is that you say that the Bill does not give academic staff access to affordable justice via an employment tribunal in the case of failure to be appointed. Do you think that the legal remedies proposed in the Bill are sufficient? Perhaps you could again talk about where the right to go to an employment tribunal might help in certain situations.

Professor Biggar: As I understand it, at the moment the Bill allows civil proceedings, but appeal to the courts is expensive and risky. It seems to me that academics who have lost their job ought to have readier access to lodge a complaint than through the courts. I am not a lawyer, but that seems to me to be the case.

[Fiona Bruce]

Q Very briefly, in your experience, you believe that there is a real issue to be addressed in terms of freedom of speech and loss of employment or tenure.

Professor Biggar: Yes. The case of Noah Carl, as I mentioned earlier, is an egregious case. I cannot talk about the details of the case, but from what I have read a request has been made about it, and he did not have ready recourse to remedy.

[John McDonnell]

Q David Simmonds registered an interest as an honorary fellow of Birkbeck—so am I. I did not realise that it was a registered interest, or that anyone would be interested, but anyway. Trevor, this is for you really. You have raised the issue of Chinese students, which I think is important. I want to explore it. One of the issues around legislation is ensuring that you do not build into it contradictions that will come back at a later stage and cause problems. I am a campaigner for exposing what is happening to the Uyghur people, which some are describing as a genocide.

My concern is this: I think you are right about the influence on Chinese students at the moment. The National Union of Students has a list of organisations that reflects Government views about terrorist organisations, and so on, that you would not wish to use any form of premises to promote their ideas. For example, in the Uyghur case, if the students through the National Union of Students or their local student body consult or even ballot and come to a view that they do not wish organisations associated with the Chinese Communist party to use their premises to promote or defend what is happening to the Uyghur people, which many now believe to be genocidal, surely there must be a mechanism in the Bill to enable that expression of view to have effect. Those sorts of meetings could intimidate Chinese students on university campuses and elsewhere.

Could the Bill could be improved by having some form of mechanism to enable that element of flexibility? The Office for Students—the director for freedom of speech—could ensure that there is a proper and effectively exercised mechanism to ensure that such consultation takes place. Therefore, we could have a range of limited exemptions where we do not wish in any way to use resources—whether student union or university resources—to enable the promotion of something that might be speculative to some, but is certainly not to some of us, which is the genocidal attack on the Uyghur people. I put the question to Trevor, as he raised it—it is a real-world issue for many of us.

Trevor Phillips: It is a really important point. I have an immense amount of sympathy with what you have just said. Were I a student today, I would without any question whatever be campaigning to have a student union decision that any facilities under the control of or paid for by—although I know they do not have union subs any more—my student union were not used in any way, however indirectly, to support the actions of the Chinese Communist party in Xinjiang. In so far as that is concerned, I am completely with you. I do not think that you need legislation for that. Every student union has a general meeting or a council that can decide that that is what it wants—

[John McDonnell]

Q Trevor, my point is about the contradiction in this legislation. We could have legislation that forces the student union to give a platform to the Chinese Communist party to advocate the genocide of the Uyghurs.

Trevor Phillips: I do not think that there is anything in the legislation that will force a student union to do that. What I would agree with is that it is entirely possible that a group of three students might decide that they want to do something like this on campus. I get that. I am afraid that I have to say that if that is what happens, that is what happens. The student union can say, “Well, you can’t do it on our premises”—I think that is fine.

[John McDonnell]

Q It cannot under this legislation. Under this legislation, that would be challengeable.

Trevor Phillips: I do not think that the legislation will compel any part of a university to agree to let anybody speak on its premises. I do not think that that is the case here.

[John McDonnell]

Q But it is open to challenge.

Trevor Phillips: I am not going to dodge your question, John. I am quite straightforward about this. The student union can say, “No, we’re not having it”, but, ultimately, if a group of individuals—academics and so on—say, “We want to have this person from the Chinese embassy speaking to explain what they are doing in Xinjiang”, I cannot in all conscience agree that it is a university’s duty somehow to prevent that happening. What I will say, coming back to my earlier point, is that, unless there was some compelling reason otherwise, such a meeting should always be open to all members of the university community so that that point of view is under challenge. In the end, that will be a more valuable pathway than simply saying, “We’re going to ban you.”

[John McDonnell]

Q The point you made earlier, which I agree with, is that some element of the right to protest should be put into the Bill then.

Trevor Phillips: If one could find the right formulation, I think that is worthwhile.

[Charlotte Nichols]

Q My question is to Mr Phillips, and is particularly around some of what we discussed about the porter you mentioned. Fundamentally, this is a very thin Bill. As Professor Biggar mentioned, there are clear implications for its interaction with other existing legislation, not least the Equality Act. Where it talks about being within the limits of lawful free speech, that does not extend the existing rights particularly. We have heard about all sorts of potential unintended negative consequences, but do you believe that the Bill, as it is written as a thin piece of legislation, is actually just about moral panic about the Equality Act and young people being too woke for the Government, as opposed to a genuine issue that needs tackling in this way?

Trevor Phillips: Point one is that I do not think one ought to value legislation by the weight of pages. I was partly responsible for the Equality Act and, before that, the Greater London Authority Act, which are two gigantic pieces of legislation. I would not say that either carried the same weight as some rather slimmer pieces of legislation.

Secondly, I think your point is, why are we bothering? The answer is that, to go back to what I said earlier, if we could depend on the university authorities to do their jobs to protect the rights of their staff and students, I would say that, on balance, you guys have better things to do. However, it has been demonstrated again and again in the last four or five years that, by and large, university authorities are abdicating that responsibility. To give you an example, Cambridge has been mentioned several times. A couple of years ago, I appeared on television. I will not bore you with what it was, but afterwards, a member of the Cambridge faculty tweeted that I was a racist. I wrote to the pro-vice-chancellor, who is responsible for discipline, and said, “Is it okay for people from Cambridge to say this kind of thing about people they do not know and have never met, and to put it all over social media?” In summary, the response I got was that the university could not really do anything to control or deal with such behaviour. I said to them that I have a relative who is a senior person in one of the Cambridge colleges; Cambridge University said that if someone were to call her a rude name in Trumpington Street in Cambridge, they could do something about that because she is a member of the university, but if they were to call my wife, who is a Cambridge graduate but not a member of the community, the same filthy word, they could not do anything about that.

My point is very simple: if the university authorities were doing their job, you would not be having this session. But they are not, and the truth is that people are losing their jobs. I come back to my point—I am sorry to reiterate it— that the spirit of intellectual inquiry, which is what makes our higher education sector attractive and successful, is essentially being trashed. That has to be stopped.

[Charlotte Nichols]

Q To go back to your point about a Cambridge academic accusing you of being a racist on Twitter and universities not doing their job, a lot of the evidence we have heard seems to suggest that universities should have some sort of control over what random people on the internet say. Professor Stock mentioned the idea that she was not being sufficiently promoted, in her view, by the university. This legislation does not actually do that.

[The Chair]

I am going to interrupt because we are running out of time—we have half a minute. I am going to ask Professor Biggar to say something.

Professor Biggar: Just in response to your claim that the Bill really does not make much difference: at the moment, there is no unequivocal duty on universities to secure and promote the academic freedom of their staff. The Higher Education Research Act 2017 does impose a duty to secure academic freedom, but imposes it on the Office of Students vis-à-vis universities, whereas it is about institutional autonomy. At the moment, there is no unequivocal duty on universities to secure and promote the academic freedom of staff, and that would be one single improvement over the current situation that the Bill would achieve.

[The Chair]

The time is 25 past and we have to close this session. Once again, it has been a really good session and we are indebted to our witnesses. I am grateful to Mr Phillips for reminding me of my student politics days, when back in 1969 I had the lead letter in The Daily Telegraph, headed “Free speech in universities”, when I criticised our university vice-chancellor for trying to prevent me from inviting a particularly prominent Conservative politician to the university. It has brought all that back to me vividly. Thank you very much.

11:25

The Chair adjourned the Committee without Question put (Standing Order No. 88).

Adjourned till this day at Two o’clock.

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill (Second sitting)

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

The Committee consisted of the following Members:

Chairs: Sir Christopher Chope, † Judith Cummins

† Bacon, Gareth (Orpington) (Con)

† Britcliffe, Sara (Hyndburn) (Con)

† Bruce, Fiona (Congleton) (Con)

† Buchan, Felicity (Kensington) (Con)

† Donelan, Michelle (Minister for Universities)

† Glindon, Mary (North Tyneside) (Lab)

† Hardy, Emma (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)

† Hayes, Sir John (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)

† Holden, Mr Richard (North West Durham) (Con)

† Jones, Mr Kevan (North Durham) (Lab)

† McDonnell, John (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)

Nichols, Charlotte (Warrington North) (Lab)

† Russell-Moyle, Lloyd (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)

† Simmonds, David (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)

† Tomlinson, Michael (Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty's Treasury)

Webb, Suzanne (Stourbridge) (Con)

† Western, Matt (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)

Kevin Maddison, Seb Newman, Committee Clerks

† attended the Committee

Witnesses

Professor Stephen Whittle OBE, Professor of Equalities Law at Manchester Metropolitan University

Smita Jamdar, Partner and Head of Education at Shakespeare Martineau

Thomas Simpson, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Public Policy, University of Oxford, and Associate Fellow at Policy Exchange

Dr Bryn Harris, Chief Legal Counsel at Free Speech Union

Public Bill Committee

Tuesday 7 September 2021

[Judith Cummins in the Chair]

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

14:00

The Committee deliberated in private.

14:01

Examination of Witness

Professor Stephen Whittle gave evidence.

[The Chair]

We are now sitting in public, and the proceedings are being broadcast. We will hear oral evidence from Professor Stephen Whittle, Professor of Equalities Law at Manchester Metropolitan University, who is joining us remotely via Zoom. We have until 2.45 pm for this session.

Professor Whittle, welcome. I am Judith Cummins, and I am chairing this session. Would you please introduce yourself for the record?

Professor Whittle: My name is Stephen Whittle, Professor of Equalities Law at Manchester Metropolitan University. I have worked at Manchester Metropolitan University since 1993, and I have taken an extensive interest in transgender equality issues all my academic career.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

Q71 Thank you very much for joining us, Professor Whittle, and for your written submission. I want to start by making a few points. Looking through your submission, I was interested in what you said about trans rights and the trans rights group Press for Change. You said:

“Trans academics have mostly tried really hard not to accuse, and certainly not to ‘no platform’ anybody. Yet these voices are making trans people look like the extremists. Sadly, it will have the effect of shutting down the debate.”

You have spoken about the challenges of living as an openly trans man. If the Bill gets passed into law, allowing anti-trans campaigners the right to speak on campus, what effect do you think that will have on anti-trans campaigners’ speech on campus?

Professor Whittle: It is important to state from the beginning that I am totally for people having the opportunity to speak and voice their opinions on campus— particularly academics, as long as they base their presentations on their research, work, experience and knowledge. I have absolutely no hesitation about acknowledging that right. My main concern about the legislation is not so much the lack of ability for people who do not believe in trans rights in the same way that I do to have the opportunity to speak. On the whole, people who present a valued and evaluated opinion have had many opportunities to speak on campuses, as well as in the media. The problem is that the way it is presented at the moment is that protesters, or people who disagree with their point of view, are putting what is often termed a chilling effect on academics and their freedom of speech.

I have been speaking about trans rights for a very long time—nearly 30 years—and, as an activist for nearly 50 years, I have spoken in many different forums, run many events and had many challenges to that right to speak and to express those opinions, not just in the UK but worldwide. I have run conferences that have been threatened by Christian activists and so on and so forth.

I have even been in my own lecture theatre and had students stand up and heckle me and accuse me of being the worst parent on earth who ought to have my children removed from me etc. To respond by saying that those people do not have a right to say that is not the correct way forward. We have to have the conversations. I absolutely believe in having the conversations. Being persistent and willing to have the conversations over the years has ultimately led to many legal changes that have been positive for the trans community.

What has happened has been a hypersensitivity. Politicians, academics and external speakers have always faced hecklers, barracking and external protesters. I think about Leon Brittan coming to Manchester University. He would never have spoken at a university ever again if he had felt that that was the only experience of academia. Those protests were a long time ago. He carried on speaking, and that is exactly what we do. I always take the view that you engage. If there have been serious threats to a conference or event that I have been organising, I have made it ticket only. I find that charging £5 to £10 focuses people’s minds on whether they really want to spend the money to get in and barrack at something.

I have organised protests outside events myself but that has never been to close down the conversation. It has been to express an alternative point of view—to say, “Here are many voices who disagree with the voice inside.” The very first time I ever took part in action was probably 1974 at Bradford University, invading a British Medical Association conference, where a doctor was going to speak who definitely thought trans people should not have treatment. He chose to leave the platform. What we asked for was to have a speaker who presented an alternative point of view.

My main concern about the Bill is that it will provide an additional chilling effect overall, not to speakers but to potential protesters. It will result in people who want to express an alternative viewpoint, who are not speakers and do not have that opportunity to participate in the event, to have a voice on the platform, having no way of expressing that without appearing to challenge somebody’s right to free speech. As I say, I absolutely believe in freedom of speech, in expressing opinions and having conversations, but the conversation has to be inclusive of everybody. If we exclude any one group by making them a potential wrongdoer, we are going to close down those conversations.

[Matt Western]

Q If I understand correctly, you are saying that it is possible within the institutions of universities to resolve this; that we need open debate; that this should be allowed; that academics welcome this. Perhaps the actions of certain activists are making things difficult and that should be dealt with through separate legislation. Do I understand that you believe the Bill is not necessary?

Professor Whittle: Absolutely. I have never ever felt so unsafe that I was not able to speak. I have never felt that I could not run an event because it was so unsafe. I have never felt that my speakers are threatened. I recognise student protest for what it is—student protest. It is a right to express a viewpoint, and I have often provided capacity for that protest to take place so that we are not shutting it down but listening.

[Matt Western]

Q Moving on, I understand you faced many challenges over a long period of time, as you just articulated. How do you define academic freedom, and how do you perceive the relationship between academic freedom and freedom of speech?

Professor Whittle: Academic freedom is always problematic, because we are always in a situation where some opinions are considered so off the wall and out of the water that we really do not feel that this thing should be voiced within academia. We can think of far right movements and extreme left movements. They connect extremist Christian views and extremist Islamic views, and we have to sit and make a reasonable judgment about what is acceptable. Is it acceptable to have somebody who espouses views that I might consider extremely fascist or Nazi views within a university setting? I would say probably not, but we have to have the conversation and assess what that speaker is saying. If, for example, somebody who clearly denies the holocaust wishes to speak at a university, I would think that was not acceptable. There are certain historical facts that are sacrosanct and you cannot say that they do not exist, unless you have extremely good evidence to the alternative. It is always a balance—looking at what we consider as a society to be acceptable speech within the notion of freedom of speech and academic freedom.

Within academic freedom, I have a curriculum that I teach and that I speak to, but I have a certain freedom within that to reflect the research of myself and my peers through the classes that I give. However, if I sat in a classroom and was talking about black civil rights movements of the 1950s and then started giving parts of the speeches of anti-civil rights campaigners at that time, I would have to think very carefully about how I did that. For example, I remember reading from a speech by Enoch Powell many years ago and a student complained. Basically she had not been awake properly and listened to the fact that I said, “These are not views I agree with. These are the views of a politician at the time, and these were the views that were publicised in the paper and these were the views that caused X consequence.” Fortunately, somebody had tape-recorded the lecture and it was all there. I have to be able to decide when and when not to say those things.

I have never felt that I have to be so careful of student views. There are some issues, for example—sexual assault, rape, female genital mutilation—where I thought very, very carefully about what I would show, what I would say and what I would present, but I have always taught those subject areas because that is part of my academic freedom, and no amount of students saying, “I feel offended by that” or “I am upset by that” will stop that being taught. I have had colleagues say, “Do you think that is the right thing to teach?” and I have had to defend it and say, “Absolutely. My job is to educate the whole student body in this area of law and this is what I will do, but I will not be doing this and I will not be doing that. I will be doing the other.” So it is about judgment and what we feel. One of the sad things that I have really found upsetting about this debate is the number of academics who have felt personally unsafe where I think they probably do not need to, because what they have to say—if they have the evidence and they have done the work—will be listened to. It may not be agreed with—there may be students outside shouting at the door, disagreeing with them—but that is part of the process of academia.

[Matt Western]

Q To make one final point in terms of what you were just describing: we heard from a couple of academics this morning, I do not know if you listened in—

Professor Whittle: I have been in hospital for the last couple of days so I have been a bit out of it.

[Matt Western]

Well, thank you for joining us in those circumstances. Professor Stock from Sussex University said she felt that perhaps the university did not promote her enough in terms of her freedom of speech. Do you feel like you do get promoted by Manchester Metropolitan University? The second point she made was that there could be some improvements to current processes on campus; can you suggest any that would obviate the need for this Bill?

Professor Whittle: I have never personally felt that Manchester Metropolitan has not supported me in what I have done, what I have organised or the events that we have had, some of which have been potentially quite contentious. For example, we have had gender critical feminists and trans activists speaking at the same event. The university has always been supportive.

I do not think that universities do enough to promote what we do, to either our student body or to the external world. I often think it is a great shame that we do not get the message out about what our academics are talking about to a wider group than just my department, for example. There must be a better way than sending out a bland email to everybody saying X event is taking place—which most people will then delete. It is thinking about how we want to promote the events that take place; about how we could do that through calendars, through doing more public events, where we invite the public in to listen to what we do and the conversations that we have. That is really important because, the fact is that we have very serious discussions. We often have multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary groups having extremely important conversations about the way we consider the world that we want and how we might live in it. However, in order to do that we have to have the support of the university, in the sense that it believes that we are public-facing and student-facing—we are not little isolated islands within little isolated faculties. There is not a sense, for example, even within the university budget that there is money to promote anything. You have always got to dip into your own budgets. Things like that—the idea that universities really think about looking outwards—would be a really positive change.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

Q I am interested to hear your view that, essentially, this is a Bill that is not addressing a problem, because the evidence we have received, both in writing and verbally earlier today, suggests the opposite; academics were saying that it is indeed a problem. They claimed that criticism of the Bill by saying what you have said today is, and I quote, “not true.” There is empirical evidence that the freedom to speak and research of a significant minority of university students and teachers is being inhibited. Specifically, in the summer of 2017, at Bath Spa university, research into transgender detransitioning was prohibited on the grounds that it was politically incorrect. There is in other universities, and in the minds of other academics, a problem. How do you explain that?

Professor Whittle: At that time there was clearly a media scare about the power of transgender activists and about the rights of transgender people. I read the research proposal of that particular piece and I looked at why it was not approved. I do not think that I would have approved it for my university, because it was not sufficiently sound. It was not sufficiently based on preliminary research. I think it had a political motivation, which I would not expect from any of my students; I would expect a certain level of objectivity from them.

I looked at that quite closely, thinking, “Have Bath made a big mistake here?” but I think what happened was that their decision to refuse to go ahead with that research at that time became a media story that they had refused because the transgender world would attack them for accepting it. Good research has been done on the question of young people and whether they would continue to transition or would detransition—a lot, in fact—and I have never known anyone else have their research stopped, but that was not sound. When you read it, it did not feel as if it was a good piece of research. Maybe had Bath addressed it properly, they could have done more to say, “This needs sorting and this does before we will consider it.”

[Sir John Hayes]

Q I want to follow that up. In the light of your advice, Mrs Cummins, I declare my interest as a part-time professor at Bolton University, as recorded in the register. Professor, you talked earlier about ideas that are “so off the wall and out of the water”—your words, not mine—but is that not the nature of all academic inquiry, its cutting edge? To disturb, to alarm and perhaps even to shock, is that not the character of that kind of inquiry?

Professor Whittle: Not all research, of course. Not all research is out there to alarm, to shock and to tear down the wall, but a body of research is. We have to have an opportunity to do what I would call blue-sky thinking in the humanities as much as in the sciences. My own research would have got nowhere if it had been left to the people who thought they knew how the system worked—it was completely off the wall, but it brought new ideas and presented the evidence for those changes.

There will, however, always be concerns that some students and some researchers will always want to do work that is very problematic. For example, I am thinking of a student who applied to do a PhD but never actually got his research proposal approved before he presented his dissertation. The dissertation, which looked into the far right in Europe, was basically a presentation of why we should all move to far-right politics. It was not going to go anywhere. I could not ever have signed it off, because he had not gone through the proper processes. If he had, I think he would have come up with different answers, but we will never know.

I do not say to the students who are researchers, “You shouldn’t do this,” or, “You shouldn’t do that,” but I do say, “You need to think about what it is that you are trying to achieve. Are you just trying to make a statement, or are you trying to contribute to the academic debate and to improve the world in which we live?” Some just want to make a statement. I think the research that we referred to this morning on detransitioning was exactly that—a piece of research that was preset to provide an answer that the academic wanted—whereas other research is out there to explore the issues properly.

We have academics who are reviewing research all the time. One of my primary functions is to read research papers of various forms, to make those judgments as to whether the research is sound or could be sound, and to decide whether it will receive support from me, or whatever else.

[Michelle Donelan]

Q Thank you very much for sharing your experiences, Professor Whittle. I am interested to hear whether you have spoken to any academics or students whose experiences have differed from your own. We heard from Professor Stock this morning about, in effect, a threshold that academics should be expected to experience. Some of them, such as you and her, may have pushed past that and almost ignored the pressures on them and the challenges that they faced, but not everyone is prepared to do that, hence the chilling effect. I would be interested to hear whether you think there is room for manoeuvre there and whether we need to open up some of these academic forums.

Professor Whittle: Absolutely. I absolutely believe we need to really think, particularly in terms of recruitment and promotion, how we do it. There is an insularity, particularly in promotion, within universities and between universities that prevents people who speak out, or seem to be doing something that is not common enough, getting those opportunities for promotion.

Manchester Met has been incredibly supportive of me and my work over the years, but in 27 years I have never been shortlisted for a job, which means I have never even got to the point of sitting in the chair and being interviewed. It is those things. I know I am facing the concrete ceiling in that because I am doing research that is considered to be a minority interest. I actually do not think I am. I think I am talking about core human rights and about how identity fits within that legal framework of core human rights, but the universities and university departments are incredibly cautious about taking somebody on who might be considered too challenging to a sort of mantra of “we are a safe space.”

[Michelle Donelan]

Q How can you be 100% confident that legislation is not the right answer to tackle the problem that you have just identified?

Professor Whittle: There is different legislation. This legislation focuses specifically on how universities promote free speech, but most specifically on what they do to make sure that speakers, academics etc. speak, which means what they do to stop other people disturbing that space.

In terms of promotion, opportunities and things like that, I think it is not legislation. We need a real sea change in how universities think about the academics who work for them and what they are trying to achieve. I certainly think that the promotional system that we have, which consists of small circles of people supporting certain other small circles of people, is too narrow. We need external experts in areas, to be prepared to call people out from other disciplines to look at professorial applications, say, and to bring a range of voices to that.

I like the fact that my own university is thinking in terms of readerships not just for pure researchers, but also for people who look at the pedagogy of teaching within universities and who are interested in improving teaching quality and how we get ideas over to students. That is a start, by not just saying, “There are these ones who research and these ones who teach,” but thinking that we cross over constantly.

This piece of legislation seems to me to be unnecessary because it is about controlling the external to the university. Can a university do that? How can a university stop people protesting, although they could bring on security and bar people from campus? The whole nature of student life is to protest, or it should be, anyway. I sometimes think they don’t do it enough nowadays.

Universities already have an obligation in relation to freedom of speech. This creates an obligation on them to stop other people’s freedom of speech, and that is the problem. It will narrow freedom of speech overall. It is a fine balance, but I don’t think stopping student protests or external anger about what academics do is going to make, a, academics feel any safer or, b, improve our freedom of speech.

[Michelle Donelan]

Q Do you think it would be useful at this moment in time to clarify that the Bill does not prevent protest of free speech? I would be happy to have conversations offline or further written evidence on that.

Professor Whittle: It does not appear to, but combined with other legislation that has come in and the whole idea of what universities can do? What can a university do to stop people saying, “We don’t want this speaker.”? Can they stop it on Twitter? No. Can they stop it on Facebook? No. But they can stop it on the ground within the space of the university. I actually think that that is a much more valid place to hear student protests than on Twitter.

[Emma Hardy]

Q Professor Whittle, I want to turn again to the evidence submitted by the University of Cambridge, which highlights the tension that the Bill presents in balancing free speech with the existing legislation in the Equality Act 2010 against harassment, abuse and threats of violence. As I mentioned to Trevor Phillips in the last evidence session, the Secretary of State verbally promised that the right to lawful free speech will remained balanced by important safeguards, but the University of Cambridge is suggesting that that should be in the Bill, and the Bill should present greater clarity on where the line is drawn between existing legislation around harassment and what the Bill proposes. I wondered, with your experience in equalities, what your thoughts were on that.

Professor Whittle: The Equality Act provides little protection for anybody who feels that their rights are being disturbed by somebody else’s freedom of speech. For example, if somebody is speaking and they are antisemitic, unless it directly relates to that person, unless they have some sort of standing, the Equality Act cannot protect them as such. The Bill is interesting in that you do not have to have any standing to use the potential new provisions within it. I think that that is equally problematic, because it means that literally the butcher down the road could decide that they do not want the speaker, or could make a complaint that a speaker had had their freedom of speech challenged.

I think that that is very problematic, but I accept that it should be absolutely clear in the Bill that this is not about stopping legitimate student protest. There is a difference between legitimate and illegitimate protest, and illegitimate protest is always illegitimate in my view and should never be perpetrated, except in the direst circumstances. Legitimate protest, which includes shouting, making a noise and being an irritating bloody nuisance is just part and parcel of academic life. As I say, I have faced it in my own lecture theatre and I have not felt comfortable, but I did not feel so challenged.

[Emma Hardy]

Q That is really interesting. So you would want to see amendments to the Bill that gave students the right to continue to protest, and not therefore fall under the guidance of the Bill.

Professor Whittle: Absolutely. Legitimate protest within universities is an absolute must. If we make it different from the rights externally, does that somehow create a different space for universities? Universities are, on the whole, still part and parcel of the public sphere—not all of them, but most of them. They do not have the same rights, for example, as a pub landlord to say, “You can’t come in here,” but they have certain levels of control on their sites. To just bar student protest, or to make it impossible, would drive protest into those online spheres, and I think it would be much worse there.

[Emma Hardy]

Q Finally and quickly, I think I have almost achieved the impossible in that so far every academic has agreed. Do you share the concern around the change in wording from the original wording to insist that academics speak only about what the Government define as their field of expertise, in terms of academic freedom?

Professor Whittle: Absolutely. What do we count as our field of expertise? As a lawyer, as an activist, as an individual, as a parent, my expertise is widespread, and I bring all of those things into my academic life. If you told me that I could only speak on equalities law, I would say I have just done a big presentation in relation to the European Union and rights across the European Union. Does that not include me? Can I not speak on that? When the economists have a panel on free trade, can I not come and talk about how it impacts on different people’s rights across the world? Of course I can—that is part of our conversation, and I think that most academics would say that we do not sit in little boxes. We read widely; we bring all these ideas together. If we are very lucky, one day we will become Noam Chomsky and produce a great book, but most of us will just retire.

[Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)]

Q Thanks, Professor. It has been really interesting to hear what you have to say. I was particularly struck that you said you had never felt that you had been unable to speak on a topic. Do you understand that 35% of academics in the UK, roughly twice the average of that in the European Union, according to a recent study, feel that they have had to self-censor their remarks? I understand you personally might feel that you can push ahead, but do you understand that other academics might feel that they cannot?

Professor Whittle: Yes, I accept that. If we go back 15 years to people complaining about the noise in the library, I stood up and said, “Why don’t you just ask them to stop? That is what I do.” They said, “It is all very well for you. You feel brave enough to do that.” I do not feel any braver than anybody else, but I am going in the library to work and I can ask the students to be considerate and quiet and, on the whole, I get a certain amount of listening to and respect out of that. If academics do not feel that they are able to speak out, I am very sorry they feel like that, but part of me wants to say, “Pull your socks up and get on and do it, because nothing is that frightening.”

I have spoken across the world, in different places, from Moscow to China and India, in circumstances where many people would go, “Oh my God—what are you doing?” but I have always received, on the whole, respect. There has been some heckling, but I handled it and never felt that my life was in danger in any way, shape or form. I sometimes have felt that my career has ridden a little bit close to the edge, but, as I say, I accepted a long time ago that other universities were not going to interview me, so I might as well make my mark here and I think I have been able to.

[Mr Holden]

Q You are sort of saying, Professor Whittle, that you have essentially accepted a curtailment of your career in some aspects because you have been prepared to be outspoken and not self-censored on some of the topics you talk about, which have been quite out there. Would you say that is fair?

Professor Whittle: I do not think people have not considered me for my appointments because I am outspoken. I think they have not considered me for appointments just simply because I am trans. I have no doubts that it is just because I am a transgender person and I do transgender politics and they do not want to be pigeonholed like that.

[Mr Holden]

Q Do you accept that other academics might feel that they cannot speak up about topics of interest to them academically—topics that they want to talk about in that broader academic freedom—because of their careers being curtailed, due to unorthodoxy, say, within an academic establishment?

Professor Whittle: I have accepted that some academics feel like that. I think they are wrong to feel like that.

[Mr Holden]

Q Okay. We all have our own individual lived experience, as you do.

Professor Whittle: Yes, and all I can do is encourage people to feel that they can speak up.

[Mr Holden]

Q Of course. One of the interesting things that I thought that we might agree on was where you talked about wanting to promote what the university is doing in terms of freedom of speech. I thought that was an interesting and important point. That promotion of freedom of speech is a big part of the Bill—not just protecting it, but advocating for its promotion. Would you support that one aspect of the Bill?

Professor Whittle: Completely. I do not think it has to be legislated; it should be in university charters almost from the beginning. As universities, we promote freedom of speech. We participate in our local and national communities and we talk about what we are doing. We are completely open and frank about the research, information and teaching that we do, and we make it widely available to the public.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q As in the last session, I declare my interests. I am a trustee at the University of Bradford Union. I work with the University of Sussex and UCU, the lecturers’, professors’ and academics’ union.

I want to ask about employment practices. We know that there is an ongoing problem. We heard earlier on today that there is a problem with academics often not being given tenure, and too many people being on short-term contracts. That means they constantly think about promotion and saying the right thing rather than producing the right academic work. Is that an area that you feel could be addressed? Would that help solve some of the issues around confidence in people speaking out, rather than trying to put legal duties here and there?

Professor Whittle: Absolutely. I think there is a great deal of insecurity for younger academics, and even some older ones who have been on the short-term contract system forever and a day. We see those academics constantly losing teaching, gaining teaching, and being asked at the last minute to do stuff without any security of tenure. I think that is really problematic because people try to second-guess what they might need to do to get that security.

Within that system, there is a lot of pressure for people to do often what we might call the teaching, marking and examining duties; not enough emphasis is given to their personal development through an academic career, so they miss out on the opportunities, the time and the support—often financially, say—to go to conferences or to do research because they have not got a tenured position of some sort. That is really problematic, and it has a knock-on effect. Academics often feel disempowered. Again, they try to think, “What do I need to do that will satisfy the system, give me a chance to get some research done and make sure I provide good quality teaching?”

I work in a post-’92 university, so I am not at a university that ever gives sabbatical time, for example. I have done most of my research at weekends, holidays and things like that, so I fully understand the problem that exists within that.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q Might a duty on universities to provide security in terms of contracts for academics to express different views help you so that you had security and you knew you would be offered interviews and promotion opportunities, but so would people of alternative views? At the moment the Bill takes it by the tort and courts under contract law, but would employment law be a better basis for defining some of these rights for everyone?

Professor Whittle: Yes. I believe that there should absolutely be an obligation on academic employers not to misuse academics, and to properly consider them for permanent posts when they are available. They should not sidestep them and get external applicants always, but they should consider them. The right to apply and be seriously considered is a really important right that academics do not have. I would really like to see some way of embodying within people’s contractual rights or legal rights a right to be considered for the post if they have done the job.

One of the things I have really found distressing across the years is to watch academics do the work, for years sometimes, apparently satisfactorily, but not get the job at the end of the day. Often they do not get the job because they do not have the research background, but they have not had the opportunity to get the research background. Nobody has even asked them what they are doing in their own time, never mind consider it. Instead, they bring in somebody from outside with a research background and a year later I discover they will not teach that subject anyhow, so we are back to ground one. It is a bit despairing. I have said for years that we really must provide more security for young academics in developing their careers, whatever their views.

[The Chair]

If there are no further questions from Members, I thank Professor Whittle for his evidence and we will move on to the next panel. Thank you very much, Professor Whittle, and we wish you well.

We will now hear oral evidence from Smita Jamdar, partner and head of education at Shakespeare Martineau, who is also joining us via Zoom. We have until 3.30 pm for this session.

Examination of witness

Smita Jamdar gave evidence.

14:45

Smita Jamdar: Hello. My name is Smita Jamdar and I am a partner and head of education at Shakespeare Martineau. I am here in my capacity as an adviser to a number of universities, over many years.

[Matt Western]

Under the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, I declare that my wife works at a university. I am not sure if it is necessary to declare that, but I want to put it on the record for this session.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

Chair, this morning it was said that hon. Members have to declare their interests every time they speak. My understanding, and that of the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), was that as long as the interest is declared at the beginning of the session that should be enough. Have the rules changed or are the right hon. Member and I just being old fuddy-duddies?

[The Chair]

I thank you for that plea for clarification. I am happy for any Member to make a declaration at the beginning of each session, as making a declaration every time they speak seems excessive.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

The old fuddy-duddies win, then.

[The Chair]

It takes one to know one.

[Matt Western]

Q Thank you for joining us today, Ms Jamdar. One of the areas I want to explore with you is around the tort. There seem to be widespread concerns about what this will mean and the implications it will have for universities and student unions. In an article published in Times Higher Education in May 2021, you wrote that the

“introduction of the statutory tort will almost certainly involve universities in more legal action”.

Could you briefly expand on the consequences, both intended and unintended?

Smita Jamdar: As I understand it, the tort is designed to enable people who feel that their right to freedom of speech, as defined in the legislation, has been infringed to go to court and argue their cases. The reason why I fear that could have a number of consequences, not all of them intended, is that in order to issue a case before court you simply have to pay an issue fee, in most cases, write the particulars of claim and set it out, so you set out your case. It then locks both parties into a set of proceedings. Ultimately, you can cut those proceedings short, so you can apply to the court to have a case struck out, but that nevertheless involves a certain amount of time, expense and resource in dealing with the litigation.

In relation to the statutory tort, there is not any threshold level of harm that anyone has to show. Ultimately, for a remedy, any tort requires some form of damages, but that would not necessarily stop people from bringing claims simply to make the point. Especially where the threshold of harm is very small, it could be brought in the small claims court, where no costs are recoverable by either party. On one analysis, you would say that is at least a level playing field, but again it could mean that a few thousand pounds in every case could be spent getting rid of claims that are either very trivial or unmeritorious generally. That is the concern.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Q You cover the issues of frivolous and vexatious, and even they will cost some money, but if you get individuals who are well financed this could lead to a lot of expense for the universities.

This morning, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) raised the issue of Chinese students. We all—or I do and at least one other person in Committee does—know about the United Front activities of the Communist party on campuses throughout the UK. Sometimes they are intimidating students, and they are pushing an agenda—for example, on the Uyghurs in China—that is pro the Chinese regime. Under the Bill, I fear that that could be opened up, as my right hon. Friend raised this morning.

A group of students could on the face of it just be students, but they might have financing behind them that we and other people do not know about so that they could pursue a freedom of speech claim to push an agenda that might, for example, be in the interests of the Chinese Government. That would not only involve a lot of cost, but would clearly be financed by some very deep pockets, so it could lead not only to that agenda being pushed but to a lot of expense for the universities. Do you agree with that?

Smita Jamdar: The legislation obviously covers freedom of speech within the law, so as long as what these people were purporting to want to speak about was within the law—or at least arguably within the law, because obviously one of the things that you might wish to have the court adjudicate on is whether the speech was within the law—I cannot see anything that would stop that kind of funded litigation. Ultimately, you can try to seek clarification about where money has come from to fund litigation, but there are always ways of passing money through so that it comes from the pockets of the claimants in the first instance. So, yes, we would not necessarily know who was funding the litigation, or to what end. Ultimately, the question for the court to decide would be: was it an infringement of freedom of speech within the law?

[Matt Western]

Q To pursue this a little further, you and others have been talking about getting into a compensation culture—we might have the equivalent of ambulance chasers going around chasing, whether through social media or on campus. You are obviously very familiar with the legislation and I think you are the first lawyer we have had so far as a witness. Is it clear to you how this would work with the tort and how, when a complainant wishes to pursue some damages, that will work through the complex relationships between the three bodies involved? We will have the Office for Students, the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education and the Charity Commission. That looks like a minefield and super-complex—a lawyer’s goldmine. What do you think?

Smita Jamdar: There is definitely a lot of complexity here about the different roles that these bodies will play and the different routes that somebody could go through to get compensation. The Charity Commission, for example, would not normally be involved in making decisions about compensation for individual complainants; it would be looking more at whether the body in question had complied with the charity law obligations. But the other three, under the model that we have seen in the Bill, could all be involved.

Without a great deal of clarity about the relative responsibilities or indeed the pecking order—there is a rule that you cannot go to the OIA, and I think under the Bill you could not use the OfS free speech complaints process without first exhausting the internal processes of the university to challenge the decision that you are unhappy about. However, there is no such restriction when you go to court. You are free to go to court when you feel that your rights have been infringed, rather than having to go through another internal process. That said, the courts tend to encourage people to utilise internal processes first, because it is a good way of managing court resources. Does that answer the question?

[Matt Western]

It does.

[Emma Hardy]

Q On that direct point—thank you for letting me come in—the Secretary of State said on Second Reading that this “legal route”, the “new statutory tort”, is “an important backstop”—

“we do not want all cases going to court where they could otherwise be resolved by other means.”—[Official Report, 12 July 2021; Vol. 699, c. 50.]

However, as you have just outlined, there is no requirement in the Bill to go through the internal processes before going to the freedom of speech tsar—or whatever title they are given. Is that of concern to you?

Smita Jamdar: I think there is a restriction on going to the freedom of speech tsar; I think they are proposing that you have to go through the internal complaints procedure before you go through the OfS’s complaint process. However, I do not think there is any such restriction on going to court.

[Emma Hardy]

Yes—sorry.

Smita Jamdar: I may have misunderstood; I do apologise. Yes, that is a concern. Built into certain types of court proceedings—judicial review, for example—is the expectation that you will first exhaust all alternative remedies, and that would include any internal remedies available under the complaints process. However, that is not the case in statutory torts; you could bring a claim outside the processes and the only thing that would then stand in your way is this—sometimes very vigorously encouraged—preference not to proceed with the court process but to go through the internal complaints process. However, you would still have issued and there would still need to be some reaction to that claim.

[Emma Hardy]

Q Would you therefore recommend an amendment to the Bill to make it explicit that local complaints processes should first be exhausted?

Smita Jamdar: Absolutely.

[Michelle Donelan]

Q I would be interested to know whether you think there are currently clear routes for individuals to seek redress where they do have their freedom of speech infringed on and restricted.

Smita Jamdar: The main route that you would see a student, for example, going through would be by way of judicial review. Judicial review has the advantage of allowing the court to make a declaration or requirement that the university should reconsider the case and, if necessary, readmit the student—they are entitled to go as far as that, but very often they will keep it to requiring that the case be reconsidered. They can also concurrently award damages, if you can prove that there is a loss associated with whatever has happened to you.

Our view, as a firm, is that if you had a situation where a student was excluded on the basis of exercising their right to freedom of speech, and it was a rightful exercise of the freedom and a wrongful interference with the freedom, then the clause permitting you to do that might also be regarded as a unfair term under the consumer contracts legislation, because you are losing a right that you have as a matter of general law. So routes are available. It is fair to say that the vast majority of these cases are probably dealt with at the internal appeals stage; I am not aware of a huge amount of case law that relates to students pursuing their claim. I think for academics it would be via employment tribunals.

[Michelle Donelan]

Q Do you acknowledge that judicial review is an expensive process, so it will exclude a number of people? You reference the internal process, but we have heard from various students and academics outside this Committee who have felt that the internal process has let them down. That is why we are bringing forward legislation: to assist and to acknowledge that the current process is not capturing all of those people.

Smita Jamdar: There are two answers to that, Minister: the first is that when we talk about the range of complaints that people are bringing under the overarching ambit of freedom of speech, they do reflect quite different circumstances. They might be people who feel that they have not been allowed to speak at an event; they might be people who feel that they have expressed views on social media and have then been disciplined for that; they might be people who feel that they have not had a promotion, or have been subject to a detriment, in their employment context. Judicial review would not necessarily be the right route for all those.

Is judicial review expensive? In comparison with the kind of litigation you could get into if you are dealing with a statutory tort—where there are days of witnesses giving evidence, assuming it goes all the way to trial—judicial review is not expensive. Civil proceedings of this nature can be far more expensive because they are so oral evidence and fact driven. That said, currently, if a student was unhappy with an internal process of a university they could also go to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator—they have got that route. The OIA would look at that because they can look at any act or omission on the part of a university. I do not know who you have spoken to about this, but I have not seen via the OIA’s own case studies many examples of people raising issues around free speech through them. That does make me wonder why that is not happening because that is a free and perfectly acceptable route through which to bring the kind of issues that people might wish to complain about.

[Michelle Donelan]

Q But it would not be the route available for academics and visiting speakers.

One last question. I was interested to know your views on the new duty to promote the importance of free speech and whether you feel that would shift culture on campus.

Smita Jamdar: That is probably the best part of the Bill as far as I am concerned. Ultimately, the way we will address the concerns around freedom of speech is very unlikely to be through litigation or regulatory intervention because it is a cultural point. Many universities that we have worked with are already keen to promote freedom of speech. If they have a statutory duty to do so, I am sure it will help to some extent. For me, the central question will be the definitional problem of what is the mischief that we are trying to address because it is very wide-ranging.

A duty to promote free speech would not necessarily in my view get over things like people feeling nervous about expressing views that they think are unpopular, because you are not necessarily worried there about somebody taking formal action against you; you are worried about how your peers might react to you. In reality, we cannot legislate out the fact that people will naturally react to views. It is part of how we all communicate with each other.

I think the duty is a good thing. It is the best part of the Bill as far as I am concerned because it is the one most likely to achieve what everybody wants to achieve. But we do have that definitional problem—some of this stuff is just human nature, and I am not sure that you can legislate or promote that out of existence.

[Matt Western]

Q To come back to my opening question about unintended consequences, what we have heard a lot from various people and prior to these sessions is about the uncertainty and the real fear out there that employment contracts may get shortened and the insecurity of tenure in employment at universities will become greater. In your professional view, Ms Jamdar, is there any risk that the tort could be used to circumvent employment law?

Smita Jamdar: I am not sure I follow in what way the statutory tort would circumvent employment law remedies. What I can see is that if you present any institution that has a duty to safeguard its resources, to manage them effectively, to deliver them in most cases for a charitable objective—education and research—with a risk that they could be sued at any time, they are going to look for ways of minimising that risk before it happens. It is too late once you are already in court. There are all sorts of challenges to getting yourself out of court very quickly.

The concern would be that governing bodies, who are rightly there to try to make sure that the assets are used for the proper purpose and not diverted to unnecessary litigation, take steps to introduce preventative measures. I hesitate to use this phrase because I know it has been used a lot already in this discussion, but it creates another sort of chilling effect, which is risk aversion on the part of institutions, who say, “Actually, I need to manage this risk and therefore I am going to take whatever steps I need upfront to reduce the likelihood of someone challenging me.”

I am talking on behalf of universities because they are my client base, but if you looked at student unions and particularly the fact that they may not have as many resources to start with, they too may start to feel that they need to find ways of reducing the opportunity for problems to arise, rather than doing what I think we would all prefer them to do—create an environment where lots of conversations are happening and lots of debate and discussion is taking place.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

Q I want to seek your advice about another piece of the Bill: subsection 12 of clause 7 about the review that will take place. It states:

“This paragraph applies if the Secretary of State requests the OfS to—

(a) conduct a review of the scheme or its operation (or any aspect of either of those matters), and

(b) report the results of the review to the Secretary of State.”

We are not sure about what the contents of that review will be and we have not seen any guidance on that yet, but I would expect it to start looking at cases—potentially individual cases. We could get into a situation where individuals are named as a part of that review, because we are talking about the operation of the scheme.

Clause 7(13) states:

“For the purposes of the law of defamation, absolute privilege attaches to the publication of—

(a) any decision…and

(b) any report”.

I raise this point about this particular legislation because, although I can understand why privilege is awarded to Ministers, Secretaries of State and others in certain instances, we could be in a situation where individuals could be named, and in a way that could affect their whole careers and lives, without having any ability to take action with regard to anything defamatory that is said about them. It seems to narrow down the ability to secure redress and, for me, that cannot be right in any piece of legislation, particularly when we are talking about individual rights. What is your view on that?

Smita Jamdar: That raises a problem that permeates the Bill. We are often talking about essentially legal judgments, because we have to judge whether speech is within the law or outside the law. You can see a situation where somebody wants to say something that somebody else regards as defamatory, and therefore says, “You can’t say this about me.” It goes off to the Office for Students, who, on some basis—I have to say it is not clear to me—is supposed to form a view on whether or not the statement was or was not defamatory, and then it will publish a report on that.

The OfS is protected under this legislation, because it has that absolute privilege, and the Ministers are protected, but in some ways what you will have done is taken the original defamatory statement and published it more widely, as far as the individual is concerned.

To my mind, if you want to resolve these matters through a legal lens, you should go to court and court will decide. I am not sure how the OfS would have the expertise to do it and therefore there is a risk that what it then publishes does not necessarily protect the rights of the individuals who are either named or identifiable through the reporting.

[John McDonnell]

Q I use this example. For a number of years I was in local government, as both an elected member and a civil servant. There have been cases within local government, such as inquiries with regard to the involvement of directors of social service in individual cases. Even though there have been inquiries and published reports, those reports have never had absolute privilege. There has always been the right of that individual to go to court to resolve any matters, including any elements where they thought they had been identified or any comments about their actions were seen as defamatory. I have not seen this before in legislation. Is it common?

Smita Jamdar: I do not know if I can answer whether it is common or not; I am not a defamation expert. From memory, there is something similar in relation to the OIA under the Higher Education Act 2004. If it is okay, I will check that after this and let you know in writing. If it exists, that would be the only place that I have seen it before.

[John McDonnell]

Q How will people have redress under this? If they were defamed, is there any right of redress? Is there any method of redress where there is absolute privilege like this?

Smita Jamdar: Again, that is something I would have to try and work through in my mind. If it is okay with you, I will give a written response to that.

[John McDonnell]

That would be really helpful.

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

Q Good afternoon. Can I take you to the very first clause and the wording “reasonably practicable”? Do you think the duty to take “reasonably practicable” steps to secure freedom of speech is adequate? That phrase is used both for the governing bodies of an institution and for student unions, particularly bearing in mind that it is the same phrase that was used over three decades ago in the Education (No. 2) Act 1986. How do you think this Bill will change what, as we heard in this morning’s evidence session, is really an inadequate situation for many academics and students?

Smita Jamdar: The phrase “reasonable practicability” is quite a common one used in legislation—another example of it would be in health and safety legislation—and what it recognises is that it is very difficult for somebody to ensure that something happens without any caveat, because clearly there will be things that you have no control over that are preventing freedom of speech happening. In this case, if we go back to the self-censorship point, you may not know that people are self-censoring, so how do you address that?

Reasonable practicability is actually quite a high legal threshold. It is beyond what is reasonable, for example: it is saying, “If this is something that is practically possible, then subject to a general sense of, say, cost-benefit analysis, you would be expected to do it.” It starts from that quite high threshold; it sounds like a low threshold, but actually it is not necessarily a low threshold and in this case it is enhanced by the fact that what is reasonably practicable will have to be determined by reference to the particular importance of freedom of speech. It is highlighting freedom of speech as something that is of itself important—so, having particular regard to the importance of free speech, steps that are reasonably practicable to take. I think it is strengthening the current position.

In relation to the evidence you heard this morning—I did not hear all of it, but I heard some—I would go back to the point that I made earlier, which is that I am not convinced that even this duty would necessarily address some of the things that people are talking about, because I am not convinced those things are best addressed by legislation, or capable of being adequately addressed by legislation. That would be my view.

[Fiona Bruce]

Q Thank you. Can I just probe you a little further? What is the distinction between “reasonably practicable” and “reasonably necessary”?

Smita Jamdar: Again, the question of why you would use that formulation is not something I know the answer to. My instinctive reaction to that is that something can be practicable but not necessary, as in not solely necessary—so, there are things that you could do that go beyond strictly what is necessary. They could enhance, for example, rather than just achieve the bare minimum. My instinctive reaction is that “reasonably necessary” is a lower threshold than practicability.

[Fiona Bruce]

That is very interesting.

Smita Jamdar: I know. I may not be right about that, so I would have to look at the legislation.

[Fiona Bruce]

I think the Committee would be very interested—I certainly would be—in any further thoughts you have on that, because I do have a concern that we are not raising the bar sufficiently high, bearing in mind that we have had 30 years of the same bar and we have some major problems that appear to have been escalating over that period. Your thoughts on that would be much appreciated.

Smita Jamdar: I will definitely do that, because it is not something I have thought about before, so that was very much a “reacting on my feet”-type response.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q I wanted to bring it to student unions. This Bill puts a liability on student unions, and I have just set the budget for the University of Bradford’s student union in the lunch break. They are, of course, very often financially perilous bodies, relying on money from their parent institution.

Is there a danger that this provides a chilling effect for trustees, such as myself and others across the country, to allow students to exercise their full autonomy? For example, what I mean is that we have the Conservative society, the Labour society and so on, which are all autonomous in their organisation within the student union, affiliating to the student union. Is there a danger that if one of them suddenly decided that they did not want a speaker to come along, we would then have liability for those students’ autonomous actions?

Smita Jamdar: The answer to that has to be potentially, yes. It would very much depend on what the relationship between the group in question and the student union was: whether it was a formal society of the student union, or a more informal gathering. This morning I heard a suggestion that student unions could make a decision at an institutional level about certain events, but then the individuals would still be free to go to the university and say, “We want to hold this event even though the student union has not allowed us to.”

On the face of it, because the duty is to secure freedom of speech within the law for students, rather than societies as a whole, you could find that you were caught between what was essentially an internal dispute on the part of a society about whether a particular speaker was or was not welcome to speak at that society. I know that purists would say, “If one person wants this person to speak, we should allow it.” But there are resource issues for student societies and rules about their own internal operation about how decisions are made. I do not think the legislation recognises that nuance. All that would happen would be that, yes, the complaint would potentially land at the feet of the trustees, who would then have to adjudicate on it.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q You could have a Conservative society that had invited a Conservative Member who then defected to the Labour party. The society would want to disinvite them but would be compelled to listen to the defector, in that fantasy scenario.

The University of Sussex, which I am involved with, and the University of Brighton have a joint medical school, so many of our student societies are joint ones at both institutions and their respective student unions—they are one body, but they affiliate to both. Where is the liability in those complex situations, which would also come about with federated universities in London and elsewhere? Would everyone be liable? Would they have to follow each institution’s rules, which might be slightly different?

Smita Jamdar: I am going to give a slightly lawyerly answer. If it got to court, the starting point would be to understand the matrix of relationships and to try to identify who was ultimately the decision maker in the case. But in practice if you are in a claimant situation, unless there are really obvious reasons not to bring a complaint against a particular student union or organisation, you will include everybody to begin with. You want to have your net cast as wide as possible; then it gets filtered down either because you have received your own legal advice that some of those are not tenable or ultimately you go to court and the court concludes that some are just not relevant parties.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q That could be very expensive.

Smita Jamdar: We should all take it for granted that any of this is going to be quite expensive. There is not a way round that. These cases are likely to require legal advice; it is going to be hard for individuals to just pursue the claims themselves. The bodies resisting will undoubtedly want legal advice and, as I said earlier, once you start a process of litigation it is sometimes hard to extricate yourself from it very easily.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q Sometimes some of the public debate has been about debating societies—the Oxford Union, Cambridge Union, Durham and so on—but also other informal societies. Am I right in thinking that because they have no funding relationship with the university they would not be covered by this legislation. Does that not defeat part of the point?

Smita Jamdar: Absolutely. It only applies to universities and student unions as defined, so it would not apply to the Oxford Union or the Cambridge equivalent.

As for informal societies, again, you would have to look at exactly what the grouping was and whether it was even an entity you could define in any way, shape or form—it might just be the individuals within it. What might happen in those situations is that the dispute among the group about what they wanted to do would become escalated up to the university and again resource would have to be spent on trying to resolve what was essentially a dispute between a small group of students over a single event.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q Universities often lease out their venues and spaces for external conferences and meetings. Those meetings might well include their students and academics, but they are effectively external activities. Those conferences might invite and disinvite whoever they wanted, depending on whether they were political or academic conference. Would the university then start having to have regard to every single external organisation that was using their buildings?

Smita Jamdar: Only if the speaker fell within the definition of “visiting speakers”—the problem here is that there is an absence of a definition. If you read “visiting speakers” in the context of the preceding subsections, you would clearly read it to mean people invited by staff of the provider, a member of the provider or students of the provider, rather than an external organisation that is using the premises.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q But the external organisation might include staff, so the staff might have done the inviting but not in their staff role. Does this become very complex?

Smita Jamdar: It does become very complex. The more you move away from the big obvious case of somebody being denied the right to do the research they want to do or somebody not being able to speak or teach about something they want to, all those complexities really do become quite challenging from a legal perspective, but we can see that they may well materialise.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q On a slightly different topic—I would really appreciate your input here—you touched on employment law earlier. In the current employment law protections for academics, are there weaknesses that could be strengthened but are not being strengthened in the Bill?

Smita Jamdar: Again, people have highlighted the fact that in some ways, what the Bill is doing is narrowing what limited existing protection there is for academic freedoms—that is being narrowed. Currently, academic freedom is protected largely through the constitutional documents of universities. Chartered universities—those with royal charters—have to have a provision in their charters, and the post-92s have a provision in their instruments and articles of government. Those do not currently restrict academic freedom to matters within the expertise of the academic, and I know from speaking to employment law colleagues—one of the other things I am not an expert in is employment law—that there are often cases where there is a very vigorous disagreement about whether something was an exercise of academic freedom or not when it relates to criticism of the institution.

I think that the Bill makes it clearer, but probably, from the point of view of those who feel that academic freedom is inadequately protected, it is clearer by narrowing it rather than by addressing any of those wider concerns.

[Emma Hardy]

Q I am interested in hearing your opinions on a couple of things. Earlier, when you were answering questions from John, you were talking about tort and how the process works. I wonder whether you are supportive of the idea of the right to appeal decisions made by the freedom of speech director, as submitted from Universities UK.

Smita Jamdar: Absolutely. As I alluded to earlier, my concern about having a stop at the OfS is that that individual may be required to interpret law, so they may well be required to decide if something is defamatory, harassment, contrary to the Equality Act or potentially a public order offence. I find the idea that those legal judgments cannot then be appealed to the people who are actually able to make legal judgments really quite worrying.

Certainly, if that were to be the case, the process for appointing that individual, and the statutory requirements that must be observed for that individual in their role, need to be much tighter, because you could end up with somebody who is effectively an appointment of whatever Government is in place at the time, and who does not necessarily have any skills or expertise to make those judgments but is the last word on them. Again, in terms of freedom, that does not feel terribly free.

[Emma Hardy]

Q Absolutely. You could have someone who has lost an election and is put in a position of power by the Government of the day making the final decision on what is or is not freedom of speech, with no redress to court to change it. That is a little less free than the Government had perhaps intended.

On the OfS director, earlier we heard evidence that they would be giving guidance to universities and that their role would be in providing that guidance. Can you foresee a situation where a university follows the guidance by the OfS director of the day, the OfS director is changed, and the university is then told that the guidance it followed under the previous administration is no longer correct and it is liable for breaking the law under the Freedom of Speech Act? Do you see that there could be a difficulty with the OfS director being both the judge and the person giving the guidance?

Smita Jamdar: That is always a situation with potential for conflict, because how can you then judge impartially the complaint that comes in, even if it is another part of the organisation that is submitting it? Under the Bill, it would be within the oversight of the director, so there is definitely a problem there. Until quite recently I would have been confident that, as a matter of rule of law, you could not retrospectively apply conditions in that way. However, I am less confident about that than I have been in the past.

I think there are regulatory trends that say that people do sometimes try and retrospectively shift the goalposts. Normally, you would then potentially be able to go for judicial review, and say that this is a decision that is in breach of public law principles, either because it is irrational or in some way procedurally flawed. However, under the Bill you would not have that right because you cannot challenge the decisions of the free speech champions. Bearing in mind that we have to look at the worst-case scenarios, it is possible that, through change of policy, a piece of guidance that was given and followed is now no longer considered to be adequate.

[Emma Hardy]

Q I wonder what you would suggest as a solution to the OfS director—as is stated at the moment—giving both the guidance and being the judge. Do you think there should be a recommended separation?

Smita Jamdar: I would have thought that one of the most useful things the OfS could do is give the guidance, and look at this through its regulatory lens. Having seen how regulation has started to change behaviour at universities in other cases, that might be where we see most of the cultural change we all feel is at the root of this.

The two obvious things that would change the position would be to build in additional safeguards, so that the freedom of speech complaints process is dealt with separately to the guidance. However, that then calls into question the role of the director—it is quite a fundamental shift. Another thing you could think about is saying that if the challenge is about the lawfulness of the speech, rather than some other breach of process, then that has to first go to court before the OfS can adjudicate on it. Then, at least, legal issues are dealt with by someone else—they are not dealt with by the OfS. The final thing would be to introduce a level of judicial oversight into what is happening, so that any particularly difficult and egregious cases could go to court and say that the OfS has not done its job in the way that Parliament intended.

[Emma Hardy]

Q I promise that this is the final question—although I did say that last time. Would you therefore recommend that the OfS director should be someone with a legal background, if not an in-depth knowledge of higher education?

Smita Jamdar: I would definitely say that the OfS director should have a legal background because there is so much law in here to get your head around. My preference would be to say that that person is not allowed to make legal decisions—even if they have a legal background. It just strikes me as conceptually a very difficult idea; somebody who is not a court and not a tribunal making legal decisions. That should not happen. I would go one step further and say take that out of the role.

In terms of understanding the higher education sector, I know that there is always a concern that if you bring in people who are too familiar with the sector then they will not be impartial about these issues. However, everybody in the sector recognises the importance of free speech. The problem is that there are a small number of areas that are highly contested, where different people have different views about what free speech should be. I do not think knowledge of the sector would prevent someone from being able to judge those things impartially. In fact, it might help, because it would speed up understanding the context where this is all taking place.

[The Chair]

If there are no further questions from Members, I thank Ms Jamdar for her evidence, and we will move on to the next panel.

Examination of Witness

Thomas Simpson gave evidence.

15:29

[The Chair]

Q We will now hear from Tom Simpson, who is an associate fellow at Policy Exchange. We have until 4.15 pm for this session. Mr Simpson, welcome. Could you please introduce yourself?

Thomas Simpson: Thank you very much for having me at the Committee. It is a real pleasure to be here this afternoon. I am Tom Simpson, and I am associate professor of philosophy and public policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, and a senior research fellow at Wadham College, Oxford. I was one of the co-authors of two Policy Exchange papers on this topic recently.

[Matt Western]

Q Thank you, Mr Simpson, for joining us today. I understand that you are also a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan. Thank you for your service. I just want to pick up on a few points. I want to start with a general question about how you envisage the provisions of this Bill changing the culture of freedom of speech on our campuses.

Thomas Simpson: My disciplinary contribution here is as a philosopher—that is my academic discipline—and from working in the context of a school of government and public policy. I have spent quite a lot of time trying to think through what conceptual issues are at stake and what institutional means might try to address them.

Many of the reasons that media controversy around this issue arises is that there are these high-profile instances of dismissal or no-platforming. The really deep question is to what degree are they representative of a wider, underlying chilling effect across the sector. In my view, the real significance of this Bill is the long-term impact it will have over 10 years. One way to think about the Bill for those who are cautious about it is that it is really a form of anti-discrimination legislation. In the same way as the Equality Act 2010 has had, over a 10-year period, a really fundamental foundational shift in our public culture in the UK, my vision for this Bill is that, over a 10-year period, it will have a foundational, fundamental shift in culture within the university sector.

One of the complicated questions is really a sociological question. What seems at stake is that these high-profile controversies create a sociological order where a certain viewpoint is considered toxic, or is off the table or not up for discussion, which sends out a chilling message across the sector that you should not engage in that. The legal remedies that plug the gaps of previous legislation will start to stop that happening so that people will start to claim their free speech rights because they know that they are no longer subject to the risks they were previously subject to. As people claim their free speech rights, and as the courts uphold that, that should spread an opening effect across the sector.

[Matt Western]

Q We have heard from various contributors, and there are obviously differing points of view, but it strikes me that in any organisation you have different points of view. I presume that you are able and confident enough to speak out. Why do you think others are not? As we heard from Stephen Whittle, you should just make your points loud and clear.

Thomas Simpson: I decided not to speak out. The first issue I spoke out on was Brexit in 2016. This was a really catalytic issue for me. I was a year away from what is called reappointment to retirement age at that stage. Once I went through that process, which I did successfully, it becomes very difficult to sack me within the University of Oxford’s governing statutes, but I would not have spoken on academic freedom as an issue before I went through the reappointment to retirement age process because the public discourse around academic freedom as an issue is sufficiently controversial, even within academia, to mean that I risked jeopardising these formal processes of appointment. That was a personal judgment that I made. Now, the question is: is that a rational judgment?

In the summer of 2019, as I was beginning to think more formally about this, a research paper came out looking at an international sample of philosophers. It asked people to identify their ideological affiliation. What you get in that is that approximately 75% of philosophers identified as left leaning, about 11% as moderate centrists and about 14% as conservative. It then asked people, “To what extent are you willing to discriminate in job appointments, refereeing of journal articles and grant applications, against people of a different ideological persuasion?”

[Matt Western]

Q This was an international study?

Thomas Simpson: It was a study of academics based internationally, so it bears on, but not directly, the UK situation. The finding there is that the willingness to discriminate is bipartisan, so people identifying as both left and right are willing to discriminate against those on the opposite side. In this particular study, it was 55% left against right and 45% right against left.

The consequence of that is that my expectation that, were I to express publicly that, as it happened, I voted leave in 2016 with half the country—half the country went the other way; there were reasonable people on both sides—the likelihood is, given that there is a right-left orientation to that now, that were I to sit on an appointments panel, approximately half of those who identified as on the left, the majority, would be willing to discriminate against me for that position. That is beginning to give evidence that there are rational grounds for that concern.

[Matt Western]

Q You mentioned the figure of 75% being left leaning and you said that it was an international study. I think that in the report you talk about 75% of UK academics being left leaning, so it sounds like the UK is very much in correlation with the international picture, from what you have just said.

Thomas Simpson: Our study really bore out figures that were consistent with the international picture.

[Matt Western]

Q All organisations have different mixes. I would be very interested to know what the poll would be for officers within the UK armed forces—the political balance between them. Is it not just the case that that is the way it is? Academics who work in UK universities—you were also talking about the international picture—come into this work because they have an interest in those subject areas and they want to explore them. That is just the nature of it. I do not believe that heads of department hire people—perhaps you have a different point of view—or heads of department have a different point of view about whom they hire, based on their political allegiance or what their leaning may be. It is perhaps more about an interest in the topics that they have and what that will bring to the university. I think that in this report you talk about balance. This has been discussed during today’s sessions: how is it that you imagine balance gets achieved on our campuses through this piece of legislation?

Thomas Simpson: What I agree with absolutely is that most institutions will have some kind of prevailing culture—it may have a political orientation or it may emerge in different respects, so on non-political issues. What is at stake then is whether those who have the majority viewpoint see themselves as entitled to take action against those who have the minority viewpoint, or differ from the culture in some important respect. And that tipping point is what I began to get the sense had changed. Clearly, the public sphere has been under real pressure—in turmoil—over the last five years, but there has been an emergence of a kind of animus associated with political viewpoint, which has made it very difficult to engage on these topics.

Part of the complexity of academic life is that so many of the really substantial decisions—for instance, on research grants, publications and appointments—take place in the privacy of your office. So you are reading documents; you just make a judgment. You are making a judgment of quality; that should be the primary consideration. But your judgment of quality is very difficult to disentangle, as we move into a more polarised environment, from a judgment of, “Is this the kind of person that I would like to have around? Is this the kind of person who is on my side?” And the moment we shift into that thinking, that is absolutely lethal for academia.

My view is that the great proportion of academics are committed to academic freedom, do their work with real integrity and do not fall into these traps. We saw that with the Cambridge University vote. But a relatively small proportion can then exert a chilling effect across a wider set of issues, which then make you, the individual, very reluctant to speak out publicly on that.

[Matt Western]

Q But I sense that you are quite hung up about the figure that 75% of staff or academics in our universities are left-leaning and that somehow this is really a distortion, when clearly it is not, as you said, across the international academic landscape. I mentioned the alternative example of officers within our military. It is just that people of a certain persuasion gravitate to that line of work because that is what motivates and interests them. Surely that is simply the case at our universities.

Thomas Simpson: The question is whether those who do not conform to the majority viewpoint feel a freedom and a permission to speak publicly, and whether they are welcomed in doing that, and my experience has been that that cannot be freely assumed in all the situations that it should be.

Just moving on to the work of the Bill, one of the lines that felt like it was becoming taking for granted in the last session, and that I might want to push back on, was the idea that the OfS would have the last word and that this director of academic freedom would be, in some sense, judge and jury. What the Bill really sets out is a series of persuasive measures by which that director can influence the culture within the sector. Indeed, any particular judgments that they make are not judgments on a particular individual case; they are recommendations, which both parties are free to ignore.

I think that is a very powerful scheme, because what it sets out is that it is a persuasive recommendation; whether or not a particular university would feel subject to it would depend on how well argued it is. The university will be free to take its own legal advice and say, “We think this is not persuasive and would not hold up in a court of law. We will therefore ignore the recommendation.” That would then set off a series of events, where the other party felt like the recommendation had not been enacted. It would be up to them to make the decision: “Am I sufficiently confident about the OfS’s recommendation and my view on this case that I want to take it to court?” So it would remain the case that the courts would be able to adjudicate on recommendations by the OfS.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q Can I come in on this effect whereby you are saying that right-leaning academics are more likely to feel that they need to self-censor, which is kind of what you are suggesting, in an institution? Your report says of academics that are

“‘fairly right’ or ‘right’, 32%... have refrained from airing views”

in front of colleagues. However, the report of general academics showed that 35% had refrained from sharing their views in front of colleagues. Now, that may be too high on all sides, but actually it shows that more left-wing academics than right-wing academics feel that they cannot share their views in front of colleagues. Surely this is not a right or left thing. I just wanted to move it away from this right or left thing. This is about making sure that colleagues feel safe to talk in the workplace, and surely a workplace-based or employment-based law would be better than a law that seems to address some other kind of issues.

Thomas Simpson: I am very grateful for that intervention. I should really be clear again that I start off by saying I am a philosopher. My co-author, Eric Kaufmann, who I believe may be coming tomorrow, is far better placed to answer these questions. So questions of how the study relates to others are absolutely for him.

I think one of the real tragedies of the current situation is that this is seen in the general media discussion of academic freedom as a right-left thing. The history of the issue is a very different situation. So this has been a concern for the political left at very important points—the 1950s in America, most obviously, and the early 1900s in America—

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q And academics in economics departments?

Thomas Simpson: Right. So my view is that there is a really obvious coalition here of those who are concerned with the long-term health of the sector, to make it a place where tolerance of different viewpoints exists. I think that is very helpful.

There was the final point, on the role of the employment tribunal. One of the important issues here is that this is a multi-strand approach, so I do not think it is necessarily “not this, but that”. However, I think there is a very serious question, which lawyers would be better placed to comment on than me, about whether employment tribunals should be a first port of call in cases of dismissal, for instance.

[Michelle Donelan]

Q What do you think is the main threat to academic freedom as things currently stand?

Thomas Simpson: The main threat is the chilling effect.

[Michelle Donelan]

Q And will this legislation address that, in your opinion?

Thomas Simpson: It provides the best means that we have got of addressing it. Whether it will succeed or not, I do not know. We have evidence—I gave you the example earlier of the Equalities Act. The test for the success of this Bill is not what happens in the six months afterwards—whether there are controversies, what happens afterwards. The test for success is in 10 years’ time, when it is more embedded.

[Michelle Donelan]

Q Some commentators have said that legislation is not the answer. What is your response to that point?

Thomas Simpson: I think they underestimate the power of law to shape culture. This is a cultural issue within the sector, but I think the law will influence how that culture evolves over time.

[Michelle Donelan]

Q What importance do you place on the role of the director, which this legislation will create?

Thomas Simpson: As I read the Bill, and certainly I suppose in my vision, the director plays a co-ordinating role for the OfS’s functions, but the director’s decisions should not be decisions that the director makes individually; they are decisions that the board would sign off on. As I have discussed earlier, I think there is a legal recourse for testing what the director’s decision should be. But the director should be someone who is active, who is energetic and who wants to drive this.

One of the other questions here at stake—it is one of the missing pieces from prior evidence—is that we have a very valuable document from 2019, the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s guidance on free expression. That really carefully walks through very practical details of how the section 43 freedom of speech duty should be implemented in particular situations. Ten key public bodies were brought in to agree to that guidance. There is both a process and an end point that is similar to that for the wider question of academic freedom that the Bill sets out provision for.

There is an outstanding question, which people are right to ask: what is the relationship between this and the Equality Act? In practice, the EHRC guidance threads the needle on most of those issues, and there will be a comparable process for academic freedom more widely.

[Emma Hardy]

Q Welcome. I have a few different questions. Picking up on your point about the Equality Act and how they interplay, would you recommend greater clarification of that in the Bill? I know that we have been promised guidance to follow, but it is very interesting, looking at the evidence that has come out. There seems to be a bit of a coalition between the Free Speech Union and various universities that that clarification is needed. I wondered what your thoughts were.

Thomas Simpson: In the ideal world, that would be great. I do not know what the appetite is within the House of Commons for pressing on that, but I think it would be valuable, were it possible. The EHRC guidance generated considerable consent on how that relationship should be managed in practice. As an advocate of academic freedom and free speech, I think it does so in a way that is respectful of both the demands of the Equality Act, right and proper, and those of academic freedom.

[Emma Hardy]

Q The concern that I have read in the evidence is that it could be left to individual universities to try to manage what is freedom of speech versus somebody’s rights under the Equality Act.

Thomas Simpson: In my view, the greatest challenge is awareness within the sector of what the Equality Act requires and, particularly, what it does not require. That is something that the EHRC guidance does a really good job on. I would leave it to the legal people to say whether that should be in the Bill, but it seems to me that the question of how to adjudicate that has already been quite carefully thought through.

One of the areas of extension that has not had the same consideration, and one of the shortfalls of the guidance—this is not a criticism of it, because it fulfils its purpose—is its scope. It focuses only on the section 43 duty as was. There is a wider set of questions about academic freedom, and freedom of teaching in particular, that it does not address.

[Emma Hardy]

Q To press further on that, at the moment the universities have this question of fulfilling freedom of speech “within the law”, but they of course have to adhere to non-statutory guidance as well. Do you think that needs greater clarification? What guidance exactly are universities meant to follow on protecting free speech “within the law”?

Thomas Simpson: That is not an issue that I have considered previously.

[Emma Hardy]

Q Okay. Finally, I dare not provoke the wrath of Sir John by using the words “unconscious bias training”, but you seem to suggest in your role that people unconsciously choose people who are like them and have similar thoughts to them for roles. Do you think that legislation can address the unconscious bias that people have?

Thomas Simpson: Pass—that is a very wide question. I certainly envisage that part of what will be involved in fulfilling the duty to promote academic freedom would be something like holding and convening events for freshers to think about how a university functions, and what it looks like to promote a place of free debate. My understanding is that it has proven very difficult through direct unconscious bias training to unpick that, but someone who is better versed in the evidence could speak to that.

[Emma Hardy]

Q Do you think the Bill as it stands addresses the unconscious bias that people have? We will not mention training, Sir John.

Thomas Simpson: Whereas 30 years ago you might have had a situation where in a small business people said, “We don’t want to employ X because maybe she’ll be pregnant in six months’ time”, people now would rightly be very cautious about saying that, and ought to be, and they ought not to believe it. The fact that we have come to that position is in part due to anti-discrimination legislation, which has helped bring to people’s minds the dangers of thinking in that way.

One of the challenges that we need to think through in the sector is avoiding the risk of partisan thinking, because such thinking, whatever partisan tribe you are sucked into, generates the possibility of seeing people as indicative of a particular tribe that you might not like. Over time, that norm should embed itself. That is the view and the vision.

[Emma Hardy]

Q So there is nothing explicitly within the Bill other than your hoping that in 10 years we might see an impact.

Thomas Simpson: No, it provides for the means by which that would happen. The functions of the director of free speech are to identify good practice and give advice on how that will take place. I think the vision is that the advice on what that good practice is would be what is required to fulfil the A3 statutory duty to promote academic freedom. Universities that are taking that advice would then start to implement that form of training, whatever it is.

[Emma Hardy]

Q So you see the bonus as being the advice that is given. Is it not possible for the OfS to give advice on something without having to legislate?

Thomas Simpson: I think the crucial thing is that the legislation puts it within the OfS’s remit. It mandates that this should be within its remit. I think it was already within its remit beforehand; it just was not being carried out.

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

Q Good afternoon, and thank you for coming to speak to us, Mr Simpson. You have written extensively on this issue, including a substantial paper you co-wrote in 2020 entitled “Academic freedom in the UK”. You wrote that you were focusing largely on improving oversight of academic freedom to ensure compliance with existing laws. I would be interested to know whether you feel that the Bill will satisfactorily improve oversight by governing bodies of higher level educational institutions, and whether it will also provide satisfactory extra university appeal mechanisms.

Thomas Simpson: One of the really urgent amendments to the Bill, in my view, relates to the opening duty, what you might call the source duty, in clause 1. The point has already been made, and I think that there is some truth to it, that the Bill changes the emphasis of the statutory duty—I do not think intentionally. If we look at the detail, it states:

“The governing body of a registered higher education provider must take the steps that, having particular regard to the importance of freedom speech, are reasonably practicable for it to take”.

I just want to focus on the governing body issue. It focuses the statutory tort from which everything else follows— the statutory duties—on the steps that the governing body must take rather than on the way that constituent parts of the university conduct themselves.

Let me just put that in concrete terms. Suppose there is a case in which someone is not appointed because they are judged to have the wrong view on whatever issue, and they wish to test this and they have evidence that makes them think that is the case. What that person wants to do is test in the courts, “Did I not get the job because of my view?” That is what they want to test. What the statutory duty implies is that the courts will ask, “Did the governing body take the steps that were required to stop that happening?” Okay. That is a very, very different thing. Testing that is asking, “Have they had a discussion on the governing body of which there are minutes to record this happened? Did they put the right training in place? Did they appoint the right people? Is there some error that they have made?” What wants to be tested is whether the individual was treated unfairly in some sort of way.

Sending in the report, we advocated for a direct duty to be placed on higher education providers and not on the governing body of it to take steps. That is a really vital measure.

[Fiona Bruce]

Q May I look at the subsection after the one you have quoted from. Subsection (2) states that the

“objective is securing freedom of speech within the law”.

Is there some merit in considering an amendment so that it reads, “the objective is securing freedom of speech without unlawful interference”? That would focus the minds of those who are assessing the situation on whether the interference has been unlawful, as opposed to whether the speech is within the law or not, which brings into play all the complexities about the interpretation of what is within the law and is not, in terms of harassment and so forth.

Thomas Simpson: I would need to think more carefully about the specific wording that is at stake there. Perhaps I can come back on that, because another really important question is raised by clause 2: the coverage of the duty. The coverage of the duty is currently specified as the staff of the provider, members, students and visiting speakers. In academic life, there is a really important category of what you might call affiliated academics—people with visiting fellowships or emeritus professorships, guest scholars or life fellows. The wording does not make it plain that such people would be included. Many of the specific controversies are about people not losing their jobs, because part of the charter of the university prevents that from happening or makes it very difficult for it to happen. But honorific positions lead to people being dropped like a hot potato.

[Fiona Bruce]

Q Thank you. That is a very relevant point. In fact, I will turn to proposed new part A3 of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017, which is the

“Duty to promote the importance of freedom of speech and academic freedom.”

It talks about promoting academic freedom for academic staff, and what you call affiliated academics could probably be included. What about academic freedom for students?

Thomas Simpson: That is a very good question. One of the possibilities that exist, and that I would commend for revision of the Bill, is to think about a wider definition of academic freedom. In the English law context, we talk about the duty to protect freedom of speech in section 43 of the Education (No. 2) Act 1986, and the Education Reform Act 1988, which prevents dismissal. The much longer discussion of academic freedom tends to associate a number of other activities with it. Freedom as to how you teach would be a classic component of academic freedom—your freedom not to have your curriculum dictated to you as a teacher—as would your freedom to criticise your own institutions. The case law of the European Court of Human Rights has established that, and it goes back to UNESCO’s 1997 definition and prior cases.

The ability to publish and disseminate the results as you see fit is another activity that would classically be viewed as part of academic freedom. Currently, the Bill does not provide any specific protection for that, so a valuable addition to the Bill would be to expand the definition of academic freedom to include those kinds of activities. The wording for that needs to be carefully thought through, because this would be an innovation in terms of the recent history of legislation in the UK, but I think that would be a really valuable function for it.

[Fiona Bruce]

That was my next question, so thank you for answering it in advance.

[The Chair]

Four more Members have indicated that they want to ask a question. I call Kevan Jones.

[Mr Jones]

Q I am very clear that where we need legislation to protect people, I will support it. That is the way we should operate. I struggle with the Bill and understanding what the problem is. You used the phrase “chilling effect”. We heard this morning about people self-censoring, which is a very difficult concept to understand. You seem to be saying that the legislation will be a bit like equal rights legislation, but may I respectfully say that it will not? With equal rights legislation, at least you can define things—for example, you can define whether a woman is pregnant and whether she has been discriminated against. Defining notions of free speech will be very difficult.

Perhaps I am old-fashioned, because I do not believe that the state should intervene where it is not necessary. That is why I find the Bill, which comes from the Conservative party, very interesting. I am someone who believes that, with guidance—I am not suggesting that the existing guidance should not be used—academic institutions should be allowed to police themselves. Apart from Policy Exchange wanting to do a paper, and the examples that you have picked up, what is the extent of the problem? No one has been able to explain it to me. The Minister did not explain it on Second Reading, and you have not done so either. What is it?

Thomas Simpson: One of the things that really strikes me is often overlooked in this debate is the structural similarity between discussions around free speech and discussions around other forms of discrimination. We have rightly been thinking very seriously about racial discrimination in the past year and a half in particular, and one of the features of that debate is that people who may not themselves be subject to discrimination on those grounds are often cautious or outright sceptical that there is a problem here, whereas those who are subject to it, or at risk of being subject to it, are often very clear that there is a problem here. There is an asymmetry of perspectives.

[Mr Jones]

Q With respect, Mr Simpson, that is nonsense. If someone is black and they are discriminated against, whether in delivering a service or in a job, you can define that. What we have here—what I am trying to get to—is that you have used this phrase, “chilling effects”, which might get nice headlines, but does not actually define what the issue is. In terms of existing legislation, given that most universities have charters that protect freedom of speech, what is it that is not there at the moment? I have to say, I do not agree at all with the analogy with equality legislation, because it is not the same at all.

Thomas Simpson: There are two problems. One is that existing statutory duties have very weak means of enforcement, so my view is that those gaps should be plugged. Two of the controversies in Cambridge in 2019 were around the dismissal of Noah Carl and its rescinding of the visiting fellowship invitation to Professor Jordan Peterson. Regardless of the merits of either case—I do not know the details of them—the astonishing thing about that was the lack of due process. The university in one case, and the college in the other case, made the decision, and there was nothing that the people involved could do, or very little that they could do: there were not ready legal means. There needs to be legal remedy.

Actually, one of the really surprising things about this discussion is that it is not an argument against taking measures, specifically in the human rights case, to guard against human rights being breached. You do not need to show that there are lots of patterns of human rights being breached.

[Mr Jones]

Q But, with respect, those are covered already by the equality legislation and the Human Rights Act. You do not need another piece of legislation. You said earlier on that you would get a situation where, for example, somebody was not appointed because of their views, and you came up with this issue around right-left academics. My experience is that the reason people are appointed is usually old boys’ networks—and it is usually boys—within universities, not because of their political views, but this legislation is not going to stop someone not being appointed. You are not going to get someone at an interview saying, “I wouldn’t appoint you because I disagree with you on x, y and z and what you have said.” They will find some other reason, so can you explain where the Bill is going to actually do that? I cannot see it. It will not happen.

Thomas Simpson: Exactly the same charges were made against the original passage of anti-discrimination legislation.

[Mr Jones]

Q No, it is different. In those cases, you can actually define it: if, for example, a woman is pregnant and there is evidence that the individual did not get the job or was not promoted because of their sex, their gender or because they were pregnant, for example, you can define that. You can’t in here, and the problem with this Bill is the same problem that we had—with great respect to Policy Exchange—with the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill, which set out to solve a problem that was not there and ended up in a situation where we took rights away from veterans and made things worse.

The issue I have with this is that, with a Conservative Government, shouldn’t we be upholding the freedoms of universities to decide what they want to do within the legal framework that is there, rather than what this is? It is going to put the director in a position whereby they will be able to dictate terms. Now, that might be okay when you have a Conservative Government, but what happens if you have a radical Government of a different persuasion that then starts saying to universities, “You will do x, y and z”? That is why I find it very difficult to understand the reasons why Conservatives are backing this piece of legislation, because interventions on that level are not what it says on the tin of conservatism.

Thomas Simpson: The legislation does define it. It says that one of the objectives is

“securing that, where a person applies”

for a given job,

“the person is not adversely affected in relation to the application because they have exercised their freedom within the law”,

referring to an earlier clause.

[Mr Jones]

Q How do you prove that? You cannot. In future, let’s say you get a Government of a different persuasion who puts a director in there who says, “Right, the new guidance is X, Y and Z. You will not be able to teach certain right-wing views on economics or various things.” The state is intervening in an area that I find remarkable that the Conservatives should be supporting.

Thomas Simpson: The current situation is one in which universities mark their own homework about whether they have complied with the duty.

[Mr Jones]

They do not.

Thomas Simpson: There is no accountability mechanism.

[Mr Jones]

Q That is not true, because there are boards of universities. There is the advice put out in present legislation—I accept it might need updating, but you do not need legislation to do that. There is an idea that university boards just sit there and nod through things with academics—they do not. They challenge; that is their job. But it is not the job of the state to run universities. That is the thin end of the wedge with this legislation.

Thomas Simpson: What this creates is an ecosystem of accountability, both within the sector and external to it.

[Mr Jones]

I beg to differ with you on that.

[Sir John Hayes]

Q I am grateful to Emma for drawing attention to my views of the relationship between consciousness and unconsciousness. That is a philosophical debate we could have. I am interested to talk about your views on trust and truth, and whether you think trust is found through synthesis or, as Hegel said, truth was—but let us talk about that on another occasion and in a different place. Dealing with truth and trust, how far has the culture in universities changed? Has this concern about free speech and openness altered in recent years, in your view?

Thomas Simpson: I can give my personal experience. I am cautious about drawing too strong conclusions from that. My personal experience was that as an undergraduate from 1999 to 2002, I felt free to argue a position in my final year dissertation that I knew my markers would reject, but would recognise the quality of the work on its own merits. I had the confidence to do that. The topic was whether God existed, broadly speaking. Cambridge was a very secular faculty at that time; I was examining a recent contribution to that debate.

I had a moment about three years ago where an undergraduate student in a different department from where I work was talking to me about their political philosophy paper. They had written all the ethics of migration, which is a sensitive subject. The philosophical debate is whether countries have the right to control who crosses the borders into their country. The two positions are what is called open and closed borders. The philosophical debate is already right on the edge of the Overton window for public discourse on that topic. It became clear in the conversation that the student’s personal views were in favour of closed borders, so I said, “What did you argue for in the essay?” The student replied, “Oh, I argued for open borders. It would be silly not to do that, because that is where the lecturers were coming from.”

That to me had a sense of tragedy: here was an individual who believes something different and thought they had arguments for that, but felt that the grade they would receive on the exam would be different because of the content of what they argued for. That sense of danger about particular viewpoints is something I have sensed grow within the university over the last five or six years. I think it roughly tracks some of the turmoil we have had in the public space more generally in that time. It is mitigating somewhat now, but the patterns are in place and we need to take steps to counter that.

[Sir John Hayes]

Q The implication from earlier witnesses, Arif Ahmed, Nigel Biggar and others, is that there is what amounts to a culture of fear. You are setting out the very reason why the Bill is pertinent now there has been a change. Is it that what is acceptable has been redefined, and what is unacceptable is now no longer permissible? It will always be true that there will be differences of opinion, and some people would find certain views agreeable, but is the change that ideas have gone from being disagreeable to, in effect, prohibited?

Thomas Simpson: I have been really inspired by the observation that Scalia and RBG, the two SCOTUS justices, used to go to the opera together. They were ideological opposites and I am sure that they even viewed the other person’s views as reprehensible at times, but there was a collegiality about their ability to do their work together. That collegiality exists in very many places, but it is under pressure, and that is the challenge that we are facing.

[Mr Jones]

Q Where is the evidence?

Thomas Simpson: I have already given the evidence.

[Mr Jones]

We need figures, facts and this, that and the other, but we are not seeing any of that.

[Sir John Hayes]

Perhaps a way of resolving the difference of view between the right hon. Member for North Durham and the witness is for the witness to cite some of that evidence in writing as a follow up? I would like to know about courses that have been cancelled, stopped or never delivered, speakers who have not been invited or where invitations have been withdrawn, and funding that has not been granted on the basis of all of those things being “unacceptable”. It would be very useful if you could provide some kind of note with that as a follow up, which will hopefully allow us to move on.

[Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)]

Q Paraphrasing slightly, you talked about the chilling effect when you were answering the Minister earlier. Over what period of time do you think the chilling effect, as you put it, has developed?

Thomas Simpson: In my view, the past five years have been particularly difficult. I think it is a longer-running trend and probably stretches back to early 2010s. I was out of academia for a key period during the early 2000s. I do not know where the data is on that. If I may come back on the data question, Professor Eric Kaufmann is in a much better position on that, as that is his speciality, whereas I am the philosopher here, so he would be well placed to speak to about those challenges.

[Gareth Bacon]

Q You also said—again, I paraphrase, so if I get it wrong, correct me—that you did not know if the legislation would succeed, but it was the best chance of leading to a cultural change over, perhaps, a 10-year period. If I were to ask you to speculate, if the Bill were not taken through, what would we see happening over the next 10 years?

Thomas Simpson: At the moment, the crucial question is the position of those involved in university leadership and administration. At the moment, if someone says something controversial, even reprehensible, a group of people on social media organise a campaign against the person, but for a university administration making a decision on whether to allow the event to go ahead, whether to rescind availability of premises, whether to allow this person to stay in post or whatever it is, their incentives are, “I am concerned for the reputation of the institution and what I am seeing is a lot of outrage on social media; that is what I am seeing.” The incentives are to give way to that and that is what we have seen. That is the presenting issue in these high-profile controversies.

What we need is to change the incentive structure for individuals in that, and not just change the incentive structure but affirm through legislation and through, as it were, the public speech of Parliament that academic freedom matters. When this happens, it will allow people to hide behind the legal duty. The conversation is such now that even speaking in favour of academic freedom makes one liable to accusations of being a reprehensible person and what a horrid attitude it is that you are hiding. Even universities feel that pressure, I think. The danger is that we just carry on in the current trajectory, which is that events do not go ahead and people hold their tongue. Our research environment and the hurly-burly of debate on campus just becomes not a hurly-burly, but one in which there is a prevailing viewpoint.

[Gareth Bacon]

It seems to me that what you are describing the difference between mob rule and the rule of law.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Oh for God’s sake.

[Gareth Bacon]

You have had your say, thank you very much.

Thomas Simpson: I am very cautious about the language I would use to describe that situation, but I want the rule of law rather than the rule of politics. That is the frank truth.

[Matt Western]

Q You cited the examples of the two academics at Cambridge to illustrate your position. Surely those particular cases needed to be dealt with by changes to employment law—and that is the issue with this Bill. The Opposition understand that there are certain things that need to be updated in employment law, the online harms Bill legislation and maybe in equalities, but this seems to be the wrong way of going about it. In the two cases you quoted, surely employment law would have sorted that?

Thomas Simpson: As I said earlier in the evidence, I would seriously support considering introducing the employment tribunal as the first court to consider cases of dismissal in that situation, in addition to the existing measures in here.

[The Chair]

There are no further questions from Members, so I thank Mr Simpson for his evidence, and we will move on to the next panel.

Examination of Witness

Dr Bryn Harris gave evidence.

16:15

[The Chair]

We will now hear oral evidence from Bryn Harris, who is the chief legal counsel at the Free Speech Union. May I ask you to move forward, Mr Harris? I remind Members that we have very limited time for these sessions, and we have until 5 o’clock for this one. Welcome, Mr Harris; please introduce yourself for the record.

Dr Harris: Thank you very much. I am Bryn Harris, and I am chief legal counsel at the Free Speech Union.

[Matt Western]

Q Thank you for joining us today. I am not very familiar with the Free Speech Union—can you just explain to us where the FSU receives its funding?

Dr Harris: From our members and from donors. We are a member-based organisation, and people pay a subscription to be members of the FSU. That accounts for a large part of our funding.

[Matt Western]

Q Would you mind giving some examples of the range of membership you might have—being transparent about it?

Dr Harris: The prices, do you mean?

[Matt Western]

Q Not the prices—the bodies, the members. Who are they? At the moment, perhaps I am the only person here who does not know much about the FSU, but we are about to take experienced witness evidence from you, so I am trying to understand more about who is behind you and what the purpose of the FSU is.

Dr Harris: In terms of the range of members, certainly we have a good number of students, and we have had a good number of higher education cases. The last time we did the figures, it was about 30%. There is then a large number of employment cases—when I say cases, I mean when someone comes to us with a dispute relating to freedom of speech—I think another 30%, although I can check the figures later if you would like. They obviously vary very much in their background and the disputes they bring to us.

One thing I would say is that the people who come to us in trouble are very often not at all privileged. They are people who are in trouble with an employer or a university that, we believe, is abusing its power and essentially punishing that employee or student for saying something that it finds distasteful.

[Matt Western]

Q So you are funded from fees from those who can afford it, and from donations? Would that be right?

Dr Harris: That is correct, yes. We also have a discount fee for students and those on benefits.

[Matt Western]

Q I will bear that in mind.

Dr Harris: You already have free speech—you are an MP. You are protected.

[Matt Western]

Q Let me move on. You have described the statutory tort, which we discussed at great length earlier, as a real game changer. Is it not merely a game changer for vexatious complaints that might just happen to come your way, from the likes of vexatious litigants, climate change or genocide deniers, who can shelter behind this very wide tort?

Dr Harris: There are quite a few things there to pick up on. First, contrary to what you might believe, our ambition for this Bill is not to be racing to court every so often bringing cases. We want to see that universities are urged to comply with it and that they respond to avoid the new liabilities that it creates by protecting freedom of speech. I know the issue of vexatious litigants was an issue that concerned a lot of Members on Second Reading, but I see little chance that this will be particularly attractive for the vexatious litigant. There are a number of reasons for that. First, the new OfS complaints scheme has the power to filter out vexatious litigants. We do not know yet, but it is likely that anyone who wants subsequently to bring a claim in the courts will be required to go through the OfS first, as a form of alternative dispute resolution. That is one way in which I think we are likely to see the weeding out of vexatious litigants.

The other point to note is that any right potentially attracts vexatious litigants, including fundamental human rights such as freedom of speech. We have to be careful about backsliding on protecting fundamental rights on the basis that there is a potential risk of vexatious claims.

The other point I would make, which is very important, is that I think a lot of criticism of the Bill seems to portray the courts as supine—as passive. It completely misrepresents the fact that the courts have considerable case management powers—that they can strike out vexatious claims and that a claim with no real prospect of success can be disposed of at summary judgment. That is not to mention the practical difficulties of bringing a meritless claim. You are going to be open to adverse costs, because you are wasting the court’s time. All of those protections are in place and restrain the vexatious litigant, so there is no real reason to identify this particular new statutory duty and correlative right as enticing the vexatious.

[Matt Western]

Q I understand that you have commented elsewhere that you believe that the normative power of changes to the law can shift social values. Do you not recognise that the Bill could have the inverse effect and shift social values towards being less willing to hear a diversity of views, for fear of being sued?

Dr Harris: I am not sure I said that, but it is still a good question. It is hard to see in that situation where the danger of being sued arises. My understanding is that this is likely to make it much easier to secure diversity of opinion in the higher education section, because it will be difficult to punish students who say things that are distasteful to some and it will be difficult to rescind invitations to speaking events, and there will also be this enhanced freedom—the academic freedom—for members of staff. That creates a framework, but no more than a framework. I am trying to answer your question; if I have not, I am sure you will tell me.

Nothing in the Bill will make people value freedom of speech. The law cannot make anyone ethically say that freedom of speech is a good idea. It will not, of itself, create a culture of free speech, which is what we really need, and it will not, of itself, make academics start disagreeing with one another, but it will create the conditions by which that can happen. It will allow those who seek to restrain such diversity—those who believe there should be a degree of uniformity—to now be restrained. It creates the conditions by which those changes can happen, but I very much believe that it is for the autonomous institutions themselves to change those cultures. All the law can do is set the ball rolling and create the framework.

[Mr Jones]

Q Why do we need legislation to do that for those institutions? Most university charters have such points in them. The 1987 Act has it in there as well. Why do you need legislation to do that? Surely it is about upgrading the guidance and so on.

Dr Harris: You are right that—at least following the 1988 Act—many universities have in their statutes clauses protecting academic freedom, and that tends to be in the same wording. In terms of why we need law, again, I think we come back to the question of whether we regard and respect freedom of speech as a fundamental right. I think most people here—and, I hope, most lawmakers in a liberal democracy—would agree that it is a fundamental right and that it is fundamental to the flourishing of the individual and the running of civil society. Universities certainly pay lip service—if I can say that—and when challenged, they will always say, “Freedom of speech is our lifeblood.”

[Mr Jones]

Q It depends how you define it. What the Bill is doing is letting the state determine what freedom of speech is going to be. I accept that everyone agrees what its broad definition should be, but as I said to the last witness, there is a danger here that you will actually have the state, whatever its political persuasion, intervening in academic institutions. Surely that is bad?

Dr Harris: On the definition question, I heard your questions to Professor Simpson. All rights are difficult to define, but that does not mean therefore that we are at a loss. I think the court in Strasbourg, and certainly the US courts, would disagree that freedom of speech is something that is impossible to define. I do not think the idea that we will sort of give up or backslide because it is difficult to define a fundamental right is a serious position. Yes, it is much more difficult to define than pregnancy, which is famously binary—you are either pregnant or you are not—but nevertheless, courts and legislatures are able to define more closely what a right should be.

[Mr Jones]

Q And define it in their own image as well.

Dr Harris: I am not entirely sure. What do you mean by that? Those who are favoured by the powerful are allowed to speak?

[Mr Jones]

Q I am sure if we were sat in the Russian Duma, they would argue that they have freedom of speech there. I think we would take a very different view.

Dr Harris: To go back to the point about the intervention by the state, I think it is important that we are clear what we mean by “the state”. There is obviously a role for the OfS—an administrative form of adjudication—and perhaps we can come back to that, as I think it is a very relevant issue. It is entirely in keeping with any right that it is enforced by law and that there is a remedy when there is infringement of that right. That is simply what a right is. There are a number of people who are saying, “I believe in free speech as a right,” and then they baulk when we say that it must be enforced by the courts and there must be a remedy. That suggests to me that they do not take free speech seriously as a right, which as I say, is not a credible position in a liberal democracy.

[Mr Jones]

Q But its definition could be determined by who the Government appoint as director or by the advice that they are given at the time, so that is a highly political situation. It might be comfortable for the present Government who are in control at the moment, but if you had a Government at the other extreme who want to take a very different view, by being able to appoint an individual or make an intervention like that, they could define freedom of speech in a completely different way that you and I would completely disagree with.

Dr Harris: To a degree, I agree, but the director must enforce free speech within the law, and the director will have no power to say what the law is. If the director misdirects him or herself as to what the law says on free speech, it can be challenged in the courts—it would be an error of law.

On the question, I think that, ultimately, what will happen is that there will be definition and enforcement by the courts of those duties and rights created by the Bill. It is correct to say that there is a role for an administrative body, the OfS. That is a trade-off that it is often necessary to make. It is worth while to have a cheap, informal and quick form of adjudication. The idea that every dispute—especially for students—should be taken to court, is simply impractical. Even though there can be drawbacks with administrative adjudication, it is essentially a stopgap so not everything has to go to the courts. Ultimately, the free speech that we are talking about here is defined and enforced by the courts. It is free speech within the law. We should all be happy with the idea that free speech is a right enforced by the courts.

[Matt Western]

Q You say that this is a real game changer, this piece of legislation. According to the OfS, we have had fewer than five events cancelled in universities in the two years between 2018 and 2020. In your submission, something like less than one incident a month for the last five years has come to you. There is quite a mixture of cases and incidents that have been brought to your attention, including several WhatsApp messages from students on campus and so on. Are you not guilty of a bit of hyperbole to say that this is a real game changer? The universities need to work with the OfS to tighten up processes, adopt best practice and change individual legislation, as we discussed earlier today, as opposed to adopting the Bill.

Dr Harris: Every MP must decide for themselves how happy they are to turn a blind eye to infringement of a fundamental right and how happy you are to pay that political price.

[Matt Western]

indicated dissent.

Dr Harris: I see you shake your head, but I think that is an important question. At what point do we say we see here abuse of bureaucratic procedure, essentially to enforce a monoculture? We see abuse of disciplinary processes, and those who are affected are predominantly, as we see, our young and very often people who are in their first year at university—very young people—who do not know what to do. They feel bullied. We are talking about, in some cases, particularly with many gender critical female academics, lives and mental health ruined. We need to have a sense of what is our quantum here. How much of this are we prepared to tolerate before we decide that something needs to be done in order to change it?

The reason I think the Bill is necessary is that the mere existence of the legislation as it is on the statute book—there can be no doubt that it is there on the statute book, and you will find the Education (No. 2) Act 1986—is not enough. It needs to have practicable, reliable means of enforcement. That is why, in too many of these instances of people’s lives being ruined and of people being bullied, it has happened too much because it is too difficult for there to be a realistic threat of enforcement. That is because judicial review, which is the means of bringing a claim under section 43, is very expensive. You really have to lawyer up and it is not practical.

[Matt Western]

I think you are misrepresenting me there.

[The Chair]

In the interest of trying to get every Member in, can you keep your answers a bit more succinct? I recognise that they are very complicated and it is a complex issue.

[Michelle Donelan]

Q We have heard a great deal that is counter to your view about this notion that you can achieve this without legislation and that you can achieve that cultural change. What would you say in response to somebody who says that you can actually achieve it without the legislation?

Dr Harris: Again, the question is how much of a risk are we willing to take? I think there is some truth in that, and going back to the previous question, it seems to me likely that there has been a tail-off in speaker cancellations, and many people on Second Reading brought up that fact. It is very possible as well—I can only speculate—that it is probably the negative press attention that cancellations attract that has led to that downturn. So you may say that is an example of a good result without legislation.

I think the problem is that, given the importance of what is at stake here—not just protecting people who stand to be bullied and have their lives made miserable, but also looking at a value that is pretty much integral to universities as public bodies and to their function and their value—it seems to be rather remiss to say that we will entrust those things to, essentially, unreliable mechanisms—“As long as The Telegraph keeps on publishing these stories, we know the universities will keep on the straight and narrow.” I do not think that is an adequate safeguard. I think it is absolutely the job of Parliament to say that public bodies must protect fundamental rights and deliver the value that is central to their public function. That is not simply a good thing; I think it would be odd if Parliament did not.

[Michelle Donelan]

Q Do you think that breaches of the current duties are going under the radar? What impact do you think they are having on individuals? That is what Bill is intending to impact—it is intending to change the lives of academics and students.

Dr Harris: To give an example, one of our members is Dr Abhijit Sarkar, a scholar of Indian political history at the University of Oxford. He specialises in research into far-right Indian politics, or so-called Hindutva. He posted on Instagram about the president-elect of the students’ union. He alleged that she herself was a Hindutva, a far-right Hindu nationalist. He backed it up with the fruits of his research and pointed out the various signs and tell-tales of codes that British people like me would not pick up on. It is sort of like what Searchlight do in pointing out the signs of the far right.

There was an extreme campaign against Dr Sarkar, and I have some details of the threats made against him, which have gone to the university. They include: “You die with your spine broken”, “You and your subhuman kin need to be culled and wiped from the subcontinent” and, “I request to start a campaign to bring that bastard to India” In response, the university disciplined Dr Sarkar and called him in for investigation. I cannot, and Dr Sarkar cannot say, what the outcome of that was. What is telling for me is that this was a situation where an academic was really fulfilling a public watchdog role. He was telling people that these were the tell-tale signs of far-right nationalism. When his life was threatened, the university still could not bring itself to take his side. They could not stand behind him and say, “We are with you and we support your academic freedom.”

That, I suspect, is a major part of the trauma that is caused by this. It is this feeling of isolation—that there is no one who has got my back. We see that with the gender critical feminists. There is a member whose mental health has been destroyed—I cannot mention her name. There was a campaign of harassment against her and it was brought to the attention of the university. Nothing happened and she was managed out in a sham redundancy. This is the effect. What has come before us—the cases we have dealt with—are not exhaustive; I suspect they are representative of a wider phenomenon, and I think it is too much already.

[Fiona Bruce]

Q Good afternoon, Dr Harris. Do you think the duty to take reasonably practicable steps to secure free speech is adequate—the duty in clause 1 and elsewhere in the Bill?

Dr Harris: It is difficult to say, and that is the problem. The Government and their lawyers have perhaps missed some opportunities to bring greater clarity and perhaps have not been as ambitious as they could have. “Reasonably practicable” steps largely replicates the wording of the 1986 duty. The problem is that in that interim there have been very few cases where the courts have considered the meaning of that. One ambiguity is if a court were asked to consider what “reasonably practicable” steps means. There is a possibility that they would say it is pretty much for the university’s discretion to decide what is reasonably practicable, and the court will simply insist that it not be irrational—that it not be Wednesbury irrational. That is a very low standard of irrationality. It is: “Don’t be completely unreasonable.” In the light of that, it is disappointing that there has not been more to state what that means.

Another ambiguity is that obviously since 1986 the Human Rights Act has become law, which means that this duty now sits alongside the section 6 duty of the Human Rights Act that a university must not act incompatibly with the article 10 right to freedom of speech, so I think that there is a bit of a missed opportunity to say how the two duties sit alongside each other. Do they essentially mean the same thing or does the Bill superimpose a positive duty—the Human Rights Act says that you must refrain from incompatible acts, and then the Bill says further that you must positively take steps to secure freedom of speech?

That is one potential interpretation, so I think my answer is that there is too much pot luck in this. There is too much hoping that when the courts get around to asking what this means they will tell us. I think Parliament should decide what it wants to do and say it, rather than leave a gap to be filled by the courts. Saying “all necessary steps such as are reasonable to secure freedom of speech” would be a very clear way of at least achieving clarity. Some may disagree, but it has the benefit of being a clearly defined duty.

[Fiona Bruce]

Q The word “reasonable” qualifies it, so that for example if security costs were a quarter of a million pounds those steps probably would not come within the clause, but if security costs are modest to ensure that an event goes ahead then the university should take those steps.

[The Chair]

Dr Harris, may I remind you to keep your answers brief?

Dr Harris: Sorry. Yes, correct—that is possibly how it might be interpreted. This has been litigated in the case of Ben-Dor, where it is perhaps contestable whether the court was right to say that the amount that it would have cost was an unreasonable amount. Ideally, what we would see here is an elaboration of what “reasonably practicable steps” means. You could say it shall include a duty to cover such security costs as are necessary to enable an event to take place safely.

[Fiona Bruce]

Q In your evidence, you say that you

“believe Parliament should decide, in this Bill, how this conflict is to be resolved”—

the conflict being that between whether provocative speech is free within the law or conduct having the effect of harassment. Can you clarify that, because this is a really complex but very important issue in our deliberations on the Bill?

Dr Harris: I will be as succinct as I can. Opponents and supporters of the Bill can hopefully find agreement that it potentially puts VCs and universities in a very difficult position. It will create borderline cases where it is difficult for the university to know whether in allowing an event to go ahead they may open themselves up to liability for harassment. It may be harassment of employees, for instance. Alternatively, if they decide that it is not quite harassment, could they then be sued because they failed to secure freedom of speech?

This is the result of the duty being essentially parasitic. It says that you must secure free speech as the law defines it. The Bill does not amplify or further define the right to free speech. I think that there is a conflict there. I do not think that it is fair to just lumber it on universities. I think there is a danger of universities responding by being completely risk averse—becoming simply anodyne—and I think it is for MPs to show some thought leadership. We have these two incommensurate values: the prevention of offence related to protected characteristics and protection of free speech, and I think it is for MPs to decide how we reconcile those two values. I do not think we should outsource the decision to universities.

[Emma Hardy]

Q Interestingly enough, those were the points that I was going to cover. That is interesting indeed, with your comments about the competing obligations under the Bill and the Equality Act. I know you have suggested that MPs resolve this, but, looking at some of the other evidence that we have had, would one step towards that be to make it explicit on the face of the Bill that universities, in doing this, must also take equality legislation into account, along with some of the non-statutory guidance—Prevent, and all of those other things? My concern is that none of that is in this at all.

Dr Harris: I think that there are a number of options. In the Bill at the moment, the OfS has the power to issue advice. However, as you say, there is nothing equivalent to the Counter-terrorism and Security Act 2015, whereby the university will be under a statutory duty to give due regard to that advice.

There are a number of options. One would be that there be new guidance, perhaps from the OfS and the Equality and Human Rights Commission, setting out clearly the scope of the Equality Act, when it is not a justifiable grounds for infringing free speech, and the true extent of a university’s liability—for instance, like the fact that universities are not liable under the Equality Act for what their students do. That is quite important. That is a good, soft way of doing it, but the potential drawback of that is that the Equality Act is already fairly clear in its definition of harassment in section 26, in that it has this safeguard of

“whether it is reasonable for the conduct to have that effect.”.

What we are seeing in relation to reporting websites where students can report harassment—it was seen at the University of Essex, regarding Rosa Freedman and Jo Phoenix—

[Emma Hardy]

Q I am interested in the Bill, rather than having a Second Reading debate on whether we should or should not have this. As the Bill stands, it does not contain anything about universities having to take account of existing legislation. It just says “within the law”, which feels a little vague to me.

With your comments acknowledging these competing obligations, my question to you is more, as a lawyer, how can that be remedied in the Bill? Could there be a concern over primacy with new case law existing outside universities, and what an OfS decision is, in terms of interpretation of the Equality Act and interpretation of this?

Dr Harris: The Equality Act is already is there by virtue of “within the law”, so it does not need to be explicitly stated. A university will have no duty to secure the right to harass someone, and it will not be in breach of the Bill if it censures an academic for discrimination or harassment. That is already there, in the Act. I am saying that one way to resolve the potential conflict that we were talking about, between the Equality Act and this Bill, would be to have guidance to help universities navigate this very fine line.

That is one way of doing it. The other is for Parliament to re-clarify the definition of harassment with relation to universities. I accept that getting into the Equality Act is very controversial and tricky terrain, but the explanatory notes of the 2010 Act, as enacted, quite clearly say that in making findings of harassment, courts should take into account academic freedom. I think there is a lot that can be done that would not substantially change the Equality Act, but that would clarify how it applies in the academic context.

[Emma Hardy]

Q It is interesting, because in some of the evidence that we have had from the universities, they have asked for that clarity. They said that,

“absent further clarity in the Bill, this would be an untested assumption, and an HEI/SU relying upon this assumption may carry a greater risk of being exposed to a free speech challenge”.

They were requesting that clarity in the law, so your comment is interesting.

Dr Harris: Universities often go beyond what the Equality Act—

[Emma Hardy]

Because they have the Prevent legislation and much other non-statutory legislation that they are expected to follow.

Dr Harris: That is correct. I have not yet seen evidence of over-application of the Prevent duty—at least I have not seen it, and certainly one sees more of that in schools—but, first, universities need to agree on what the Equality Act actually requires of them. They need to—

[Emma Hardy]

Sorry, it is not just the Equality Act. Universities are expected to follow a number of statutory measures and non-statutory guidance. My concern with that—one shared by a number of people—is that it could have a chilling effect, with universities being risk averse.

Dr Harris: There will be a balance of competing obligations. That will always happen. One thing that I would certainly say is that, realistically, the risk in most cases will be quite low. Universities are not really dangerous places. It is not like serving in the infantry. There will be some instances where it is borderline, where it is very difficult to sort out a conflict between two competing obligations. One way to minimise the problem that you are talking about is for universities to start taking a more pragmatic approach to those liabilities. For example, if you look at a number of external speaker policies—they are essentially codes of practice under section 43—you would think that putting on an academic talk was a terribly dangerous event.

[Emma Hardy]

Q I am going to tie you down to talking about the Bill, because we are running out of time. Your recommendation, therefore, would be for guidance to clarify that possible tension between what the Bill is trying to do and existing legislation.

Dr Harris: That is one proposal. I think that universities would probably ignore it, just as they have ignored the Equality Act—

[Emma Hardy]

I was referring to guidance from the Bill, but okay.

Dr Harris: It is one option. You can create a duty to have due regard for guidance. That is one option. For universities, it would not be enough to get them—

[Emma Hardy]

Q You would want it in the Bill.

Dr Harris: One thing you could do is to amend the Equality Act in the Bill to state that, in the academic context, universities must have due regard—

[Emma Hardy]

Q As we said, it is not just the Equality Act but all the other pieces of legislation. Would you wish to amend them all through the Bill?

Dr Harris: No. Because I do not think that they pose the same difficulty and there is not as much systemic overreach.

[Emma Hardy]

Q Finally, the online safety Bill will be going through Parliament. What thought have you given to that Bill, how it will potentially limit freedom of expression and how it interacts with this Bill going through Parliament at the same time?

Dr Harris: I have not really thought about how it interacts with this Bill. Certainly I have considered it otherwise. There needs to be a joined-up approach between the various instances of reform. The danger is that we end up with an anomaly. For example, Twitter’s house rules under the online safety Bill will have to be consistent with Ofcom codes of practice. There is a danger that something might be perfectly allowable under Twitter’s house rules, but unlawful in some other way.

[Sir John Hayes]

Q Notwithstanding Kevan’s point about university charters, is the real issue not about policy making? While it is true that a university in its charter is committed to openness and free expression, in policy making the story is far from that. Is it not really the case that universities persistently misinterpret the legal definition of harassment and underestimate freedom of expression and openness in their policy documents? You talked earlier about balance. Isn’t the question about this Bill not the effect it will have on law, in the sense of legal cases, but more the effect it will have on universities looking again at their policies and policy-making process?

Dr Harris: Yes, I very much agree. I think that what the Bill needs to do—this fits with the previous question—is elevate freedom of speech to the policy decision-making process, or the matrix, so that it is one of those considerations that is always baked into decision making.

To give you an example, the University of Cambridge launched a really quite restrictive reporting website where it asked staff and students to report micro-aggressions, which could include raising your eyebrows and that sort of thing. Now, the FOI request that we did on that showed that there were something like 400 pages of planning, correspondence and decision making about this report and support website. How was there so much consideration of this policy, and at no point did anyone step in to say, “Is this compliant with our legal free speech duties?” It is this absence from decision making. I think all this Bill needs to do to be successful is to cause a momentary pause. It needs to cause a degree of reflection.

[Sir John Hayes]

Q And in that sense, it will change the balance of power between academics and university bosses, because there is a sense—and this is about governance as well, isn’t it—that in that kind of process that you have described, academics are often not involved, so they are asked to do things that they have not had a role in helping to shape. Is this not also good in the sense that it only protects academics, but really curbs the power of some of the university chiefs, who sometimes impose these policies top-down? As an addendum to that, every time Kevan speaks about this dystopian future of a militant Government, he waves his hands vaguely in John’s direction. I wanted to defend John.

[Mr Jones]

John and I disagree on quite a lot.

[Sir John Hayes]

It could be unconscious bias.

[Mr Jones]

No, it’s conscious bias—[Laughter.]

Dr Harris: Yes, absolutely. For instance, in the determination of curriculum content, that is something where there absolutely must not be imposition of bureaucratic standards. The example that I cited in the written submission was that of the University of Oxford’s music faculty, which decided to decolonise its curriculum. I should say that that is a legitimate exercise of academic freedom, but it then said, “Members of the faculty must not disparage the curriculum.” Obviously, curriculums are changed by disparaging them—that is how they came to be decolonised in the first place—so we cannot stop the process.

There needs to be, and I think the Bill could include, a right of consultation. It is academic good practice anyway, and it slightly demeans universities that they need to be told that, because it should be part of academic ethics. There is also the right to criticise one’s institution. That is part of the international law standard of academic freedom. It is embedded in a number of university statutes. Whatever happens, the standard adopted by the Bill should be at least what is already best practice in the sector. I do not think it should go beyond that.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q The Bill is about trying to change cultures in universities. Surely that requires universities to train people about biases that they might have against right-wing or controversial views. Would you not agree that universities would need to implement training sessions and education programmes for their students and staff on those issues of freedom of speech?

Dr Harris: Yes—

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q Yes—thank you. I am not going to have waffle from you. Therefore, why has your group taken three universities to trial over them trying to implement non-conscious bias training for their staff? Why is your institution trying to shut down the universities implementing the kind of thing that the Bill would do?

Dr Harris: We did not take them to trial, I should say.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q Well, you took them to either employment tribunals or to complaints procedures.

Dr Harris: We wrote letters to them, but to get to the central—

[The Chair]

Q Order. I am afraid that brings us to the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions, and indeed for today’s sitting. I thank Dr Harris, on behalf of the Committee, for his evidence.

Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Michael Tomlinson.)

17:00

Adjourned till Monday 13 September at half-past Three o’clock.

Written evidence reported to the House

HEFSB01 Benjamin Marler, Founder and Vice President of the Debate Society, Union of Students, University of Derby

HEFSB02 Jim Dickinson, Wonkhe

HEFSB03 Professor Nigel Biggar, CBE, Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology, University of Oxford

HEFSB04 Taylor Vinters LLP

HEFSB05 University of Cambridge

HEFSB06 Arif Ahmed MBE, Reader in Philosophy (and Fellow of Gonville and Caius College), University of Cambridge

HEFSB07 Universities UK

HEFSB08 Prof Ross Anderson FRS FREng, Professor of Security Engineering, Cambridge University and Edinburgh University

HEFSB09 Free Speech Union (Confidential)

Westminster Hall

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Westminster Hall

Tuesday 7 September 2021

[Sir David Amess in the Chair]

East Midlands Economy

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Westminster Hall

00:00

[Sir David Amess (in the Chair)]

Colleagues, I realise that we have not done things in person for a very long time, so everyone is rusty and not everyone will be aware of the procedures. This is not a pointed dig at the proposer of the debate, but please do ensure that you get here in good time. There are no longer any call lists; if you want to speak in a debate, drop the Chair a note beforehand. However, I will still call those who have not done so today. We are juggling with the time limits, but everyone will be called, so please do not be selfish and take other people’s time.

To return to my script, Members still have to wear masks when they are not speaking, I am afraid. That is still the rule. Members should send their speaking notes by email to Hansard at [e-mail].

00:00

[Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the future of the East Midlands economy. 

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David, to be just on time and to bring this important debate to the House about the economy of the east midlands, which follows on from the Adjournment debate I held in July about devolution for our area. It has been a busy summer and lots of progress has been made on the proposals and on wider developments and major projects that I hope to put across to the Minister this morning.

It is clear that the east midlands has huge untapped potential and must be at the heart of the Government’s levelling-up plans in the spending review and the levelling-up White Paper this autumn. I hope to take the Minister through some of those developments this morning. As Members might imagine, as a Notts MP and the Nottinghamshire County Council leader, I will have more to say on Nottinghamshire, but I trust and hope that colleagues will chip in about the proposals and opportunities across their constituencies.

For context, the east midlands is home to over 5 million people and over 175,000 businesses. We have a diverse mix of counties and cities, with market towns, countryside, and distinct cultures and communities. It contains world-class business, innovation and manufacturing excellence, and the region’s economy of £99 billion has untapped potential for growth. Despite that critical mass and potential, the east midlands has received some of the lowest levels of Government investment and private investment over many years compared with other parts of the country.

Back in July, I met the Prime Minister and laid out four huge opportunities for the east midlands that can create jobs, unlock housing and growth, and get the region up to a level of support and investment that is in line with other parts of the country. Those major interventions are all coming together this autumn, with a number of key decisions on which the Government need to come down on the side of investment and development in our region.

First, the East Midlands Development Corporation—the devco—represents a major opportunity to regenerate and to create jobs and homes on key sites. It gives us the opportunity to masterplan our area to ensure that we are bringing forward the very best employment opportunities; that we are leading the way on green growth and environmental policy; and that we are offering investors a very attractive opportunity to simplify the planning process to get things done at pace. It currently sits over three sites, but in the future, with the right democratic oversight, it could be used to bring forward further sites across our region.

This development vehicle could be a major weapon in our armoury, with the right Government backing. If we can utilise it effectively into the future rather than continuing to adopt a piecemeal approach, with all sorts of different vehicles and delivery mechanisms popping up all over the place, we can take a long-term strategic approach to our region’s growth. Therefore, key decision No. 1 is to back the development corporation in the planning legislation this autumn, and give it the powers and guarantees it needs.

Secondly, there is the east midlands freeport. Colleagues lobbied hard last year to secure the east midlands as one of the key sites for a freeport to take advantage of our post-Brexit trading opportunities and to boost business and jobs in our region with a unique proposition: the only inland freeport in the UK, built around an airport rather than on the coast. This has the potential to act as a hub and as the heart of the wider freeport network, as well as the logistical centre of the UK, with its key geographical location and proximity to major road, rail and air connections.

The outline business case will be submitted this week. Once again, I and MPs across the region call on the Government to back us to help deliver this freeport, along with the council and business partners; to support our vision to level up the east midlands; to create jobs and opportunities for people in our region; and to maximise the potential of this package of projects I am going through today. The whole will be bigger than the sum of the parts if these actions can be taken in unison.

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. He is making a powerful case about the need for investment, but that case is fundamentally undermined by the Government’s constant dithering on the eastern leg of HS2. I have never known a Government to spend so much money on a project so unenthusiastically. Over the summer, we have again seen the suggestion that the eastern leg will be cancelled. Does the fact that the Government will not once and for all commit to the eastern leg of HS2 not fundamentally undermine the case he is making?

[Ben Bradley]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention; he has neatly predicted my next paragraph, which is about the integrated rail plan and Toton. All sorts of rumours have gone around over the summer. As the chair of the east midlands HS2 delivery board, I have had a lot of conversations with Ministers and officials about this matter and have pushed for the certainty that he asks for. HS2 is a major opportunity for the east midlands. I recognise that it is not universally popular, so I am not going to go on about the benefits of the eastern leg in full or the wider project, but this is a debate on the east midlands, so I will focus on the local part.

The key, for us, is that Toton is a major centre for our future growth. It is a site where we have invested almost a decade of work and planning, and tens of millions in infrastructure and preparation, including direct tram connections to Nottingham city, where there is huge interest in investing in skills, research and innovation, as well as in commercial and residential development. Success for Toton could unlock plans to the north, around Chesterfield and Bolsover, for a major engineering centre built around HS2, which has the potential to create 2,500 jobs in an area of north Nottinghamshire and north Derbyshire that should be at the heart of the levelling-up agenda. Those are former coalfield, post-industrial towns—the epitome of the kind of red wall areas that need support and to which we made big promises of support at the last election.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

I have to confess that I am a little confused by the hon. Gentleman’s reaction to the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins). Is he suggesting that the connectivity that the HS2 eastern leg would provide—not just a station at Toton, but the fast connections to Leeds, York, the north-east and Scotland, as well as the connection to the west midlands—somehow does not matter and is not essential to the future success of our region?

[Ben Bradley]

I thank the hon. Lady for that. She knows that that is not what I am suggesting, and she will no doubt have seen over the summer that few have been as vocal as I have been in their public advocacy for HS2 and the eastern leg. The key thing for the region is that, whatever HS2 looks like, it involves that key investment at our Toton site, unlocking opportunities for jobs and growth in the north of the county, and tying together our local transport network and connectivity across the east midlands to boost our economy. There is huge potential: I believe that the eastern leg in full would create enough jobs, investment and economic opportunity up the length of the route to pay for itself and to be of huge benefit to the country. I am just focusing on the key priorities for us from the east midlands perspective. Whatever the IRP looks like, those are things that must be in it to benefit our region.

Whatever anyone’s view on HS2 as a whole, given that the PM has committed to delivering it in some shape or form, the key for our region is Toton, and the surrounding plans and projects form a big part of the IRP decision. Whatever the Government decide and whatever form it ultimately takes, the Department for Transport and other Departments must work with us, the region, Midlands Connect and other local stakeholders to include the Toton plans and make the most of that investment.

I know that decisions on the IRP are to be taken soon. As the chair of the HS2 strategy board, I would welcome a conversation with the Secretary of State for Transport ahead of that decision about what is possible and about ensuring that key local priorities are part of that decision. I know the headlines will be about how much track is going down and whether HS2 goes from place A to place B, so there is a risk that our local requirements will be lost. That cannot be allowed to happen. For us, whether it is a win for the area and whether we can support the decision as local stakeholders ultimately depends on the details. Does it deliver growth, and where? What is the impact on our regional connectivity? Will it help to deliver projects like the Robin Hood line, access to Toton and the midlands rail hub? Those are key questions that need to be answered in the IRP. I trust that the Minister will pass on my request for that conversation with the DFT.

It is worth saying that these sites—Toton and the related freeport—could all benefit from partnership with the devco, combining the existing opportunities and incentives with a master-planning element and simplified processes for the development corporation to deliver bigger, better and faster. It is important that it has the right oversight, and I will get on to that, but bringing key sites together under this delivery mechanism could supercharge the whole package. As I said, the whole can be greater than the sum of the parts. This is a package of interventions, with key decisions to be taken in the coming months.

Point No. 4 is about devolution. I held an Adjournment debate on this topic in the summer before we went into recess, in which I laid out the potential benefit of devolved powers for our region and the impact we could make on our communities if we could make bespoke local interventions. We could improve our skills offer, intervene where there are health inequalities, improve and join up our transport network, boost economic development, collaborate more effectively across different authorities, and plan for housing in a more strategic and joined-up way. There is a lot we could do with the right powers and budget devolved to a local level. The Government have asked for proposals, and in Nottinghamshire at least—clearly, I cannot speak for other areas—we are extremely interested in that conversation. We have spoken with Ministers and officials. We have a clear idea of what we want to achieve and we want to be out there, leading the way.

Following all those conversations with local and national stakeholders in Notts, we agree with the Government that the best way to deliver devolution in areas such as ours is through the mechanism of county deals. We want to bring forward deals for Nottinghamshire and Nottingham, using our existing legal framework for collaboration—our economic prosperity committee—to manage a joined-up approach to delivery, working with our districts and boroughs. In return, we are offering a package of local public service reform, bringing both tiers together under the EPC to deliver more efficient and effective local services. We have agreed to that across all the Nottinghamshire local authorities; we have done much of the work and planning in the background already; and my chief executive and I will camp on the lawn outside the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government until we get the thing done. The Minister just needs to say the word and set us up a pitch in an appropriate place.

Although I am not party to all the local discussions, I hope that colleagues across the region will be able to put forward similar deals for Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Lincolnshire in due course, giving us all access to the huge potential of those devolved powers and offering us the opportunity to work together across the region on delivery. That could also give us the ability to work together on the oversight of these projects—the development corporation, the freeport, HS2 and others—and allow us to steer the ship for future sites and projects. I recognise from the Prime Minister’s speech that he clearly sees devolution as a mechanism for delivering the levelling-up agenda. We want to be at the heart of that; I certainly want Nottinghamshire to lead the way, and to be among the early adopters of this project.

As you can see, Sir David, the four projects as a package are linked and interdependent, and if delivered together could be much more than the sum of their parts. As a region, the east midlands does come together already, so we have strong foundations on which to build. Under the leadership of Sir John Peace, chairman of the midlands engine, public and private sector partners from across the region have been working on HS2, the development corporation and our freeport ambitions. That has led to a strong sense of trust and confidence among senior stakeholders, and we know that we have the good will and the momentum to do more. Currently, we are working with Sir John on plans to capitalise on that good will by strengthening our regional partnership. We call that partnership the alchemy board, and I am confident that it can provide us with an effective east midlands partnership umbrella, so that local devolution efforts have a place to share and develop significant opportunities on a regional level. There is work to do to make changes to bring that together, but we have the building blocks in place, and I think it is an attractive proposition.

I hope it is clear that on a regional level, we have some key projects and a vision for the future that can create wealth across the east midlands. Those four things are already under way and are coming together this autumn for decisions. With Government support, they can create tens of thousands of jobs and thousands of homes, and change the life chances of people in the east midlands. If the Government deliver the powers for the devco in their planning legislation; if they back our freeport bid and support us through the full business case to reach delivery stage; if they ensure that whatever the bigger picture on HS2, Toton forms a big part of the IRP, and that our local connectivity and economic growth also form a big part of that plan; and if they agree to get us on track for early devolution packages, in line with their own policy goals to be announced in the White Paper this autumn, we will be well placed to level up the east midlands and to deliver on the Government’s own promises. All of this is already under way, and all of it fits with the Government’s own plans and priorities, so we should get on with it. I hope the Minister will be able to give us some positive soundings on that today.

We can add to that list a ton of other projects, including growth corridors, midlands engine rail, the midlands rail hub, Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production fusion energy, Space Park Leicester and Infinity Park Derby. My colleagues will no doubt add many more projects to that list, but it is an exciting time in the east midlands, and this autumn is a particularly exciting time, with key things coming together.

[Lilian Greenwood]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful argument for more powers and more funding for the region. I know that there is an appetite for people to have more control over those sorts of investments, but this happens in a context of national policy. In his own constituency, more than 10,000 families will lose £20 a week when the universal credit cut kicks in next year. What impact does he think that will have on the local economy in his constituency, and what is he planning to do about it?

[Ben Bradley]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. It is hugely important that we support people in my constituency and around the east midlands to meet their basic needs from day to day. Off the back of the covid recovery, we need to ensure that we put people in the best possible place. Vitally, we are helping people to get by and to get back into work. We are helping people to interact with our economy, to get out there and to overcome their fears. We are working with businesses to reopen and grow. At the county council, we are absolutely invested in supporting vulnerable people, as we have done successfully throughout the pandemic, and I pay tribute to the many thousands of staff who have been working incredibly hard to do that. Regardless of national decisions, we will work hard at the local level to support everyone across Mansfield and Nottinghamshire over the coming months and years.

The key point is that we need Government support on some key decisions this autumn in order to back the east midlands, which has consistently been bottom of the tables for public and private sector investment, and which should therefore be top of the levelling-up agenda. We have a package that already exists and that could boost our economy and improve the life chances of the local people whom the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) mentioned. I therefore call on the Minister and the Government to back the plans to make these four key decisions in favour of the east midlands this autumn.

[Sir David Amess (in the Chair)]

Colleagues, if you want to make a speech, keep bobbing up and down as we once did. If you came here only to make an intervention, that is fine, but you must stay until the end of the debate at 11 o’clock. There is no Scottish National party contribution today. The Minister and the shadow Minister will take about 10 minutes each. We have worked out that if everyone speaks for four or five minutes, you will all have a say.

09:46

[Margaret Beckett (Derby South) (Lab)]

I apologise for having been slightly late into the room. The security door worked all too effectively: it kept me out.

I am mindful of your remarks, Sir David, and I want to leave enough time for everybody else. I have slightly mixed feelings about taking part in the debate, because I agree with much of what the hon. Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) said, to a degree. For example, he talked about the freeport, which I think most of us support and hope will be successful. However, I must admit that I am a little sceptical. We have had freeports before, without their bringing about a massive transformation. As he rightly identified, it will all depend on whether the Government are enthusiastic and willing to come forward with investment. When looking at any of the statistics about the east midlands, one thing that is crystal clear is how frequently we are at the bottom of the heap for Government investment, particularly in transport.

I want to pick up on something that the hon. Member for Mansfield said about prosperity and the wellbeing of families. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) identified the number of people who are in financial difficulty and who will be affected worse if the Chancellor follows through and withdraws the universal credit uplift. I notice how often Conservative Members talk about the best way out of poverty. Whenever they talk about people who are in poverty or who are having difficulties—not necessarily those in dire poverty—they say that the way out of poverty is through work. That is true, but only if the work is sufficiently well paid to enable people to survive, to put food on the table and to support their families. Something like 76,000 people in the east midlands are in zero-hours contract jobs.

[Ben Bradley]

I actually agree with that. The projects that I have talked about today represent a huge opportunity, because the joy of master planning and things such as the development corporation and the freeport is that we as public stakeholders can interact with business and the market. We can lay out the kinds of jobs and sectors that we would like to see, and ensure that those jobs are better paid than those that already exist. Rather than having logistics sheds on the side of the M1, we can get jobs in clean tech and green energy and ensure that there are better opportunities for people in our communities.

[Margaret Beckett]

I am certainly in favour of all those things and very much hope to see them happen.

However, my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) put his finger on a very real difficulty. I have been involved with the business community in a variety of ways for many years, and one thing I know above anything else is that what the business community values above everything is stability and certainty. My hon. Friend referred to the uncertainty that continues to hang around the HS2 project. Whatever the degree of enthusiasm for it, I think most of us here today support it and feel that, if it is going to happen, we certainly do not want the east midlands to be left out, or the eastern leg not to be continued, or the Toton project to fall through, because of all the potential opportunities that would be created by those developments. I therefore accept the value of what the hon. Member for Mansfield says could happen; it is just that, as I have already said, I have a degree of scepticism about whether, under this Government, it actually will happen. It is delivery that matters, as he himself said in his closing remarks.

I am very conscious of the need to leave enough time for the many colleagues who are here to contribute; indeed, I am pleased to see how many are here to participate in this debate. I am extremely fortunate, in that some of the industrial jewels of the east midlands are not only in my city of Derby but in my constituency—Rolls-Royce and Alstom, to name but two, with Toyota just outside the city. We are blessed in having world-beating manufacturing success and world-beating opportunity. Nevertheless, like the rest of the east midlands, we are bedevilled by insufficient investment, training and skills. So often, what the business community complains about more than almost anything else is insufficient skills—well, it is a lack of certainty, usually followed by a lack of skills, that it complains about most. I am therefore mindful of the difficulties and the way in which the east midlands needs Government investment and support in order to prosper.

I will pick out—I suspect that the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham) will wish to do the same—the project that is potentially available. One of the many other ways in which the east midlands has lost out is in—I am not quite sure what to call it—this contest for Government Departments or agencies that are being dispersed from London or set up afresh. As you will know, Sir David, there is in the pipeline a new headquarters for the future of Great British rail, and all of us in Derby, across the parties and universally across the business community and other communities, absolutely believe that the best possible place for that investment—apologies to anybody who has a competing interest—would be Derby.

In Derby, there remains a tremendous concentration of rail companies and other companies associated with the rail supply chain and so on, which we believe is the greatest such concentration anywhere in the world. We believe that to be true, and as nobody has ever contradicted us or found another example of such concentration, we are fairly confident in that assertion.

I share the hopes and aspirations of the hon. Member for Mansfield for the east midlands and its future, and I passionately hope that some of the promises that the Government are making will indeed be delivered. However, I share the doubts expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield, which I suspect will be expressed by other Labour Members, about how much faith we can place in the prospect of the Government really delivering on their promises. I very much hope that the Minister will say enthusiastic things about such expensive and comprehensive projects that I will be satisfied, and I look forward to hearing his speech.

09:53

[Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David.

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this debate. It is great to be both back in the Chamber and able to speak about the east midlands, which is a region that we do not speak of enough in this place. I look forward to the Minister getting a clear message from all of us here about how important a focus on the east midlands will be in the coming months and years.

Although those of us here today will probably not agree on absolutely everything—I am sorry to say to the right hon. Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) that in a moment I may just pick up on one or two points she made—in general, the combined and aggregate view of the people in this room, and indeed in the east midlands, is that we of course want to see our area doing better, and we also want Government support for it in the right places and having the right, effective outcomes. Overall, that will help us all across the east midlands, from the very north, where I am, to the very south, where some of my colleagues in this debate are.

We have much to celebrate. It is important to understand the achievements that we have made, or are in the process of making, to recognise the importance of where we need to go forward. I was pleased to see the freeport, which I am sure colleagues will talk about in a moment. It will be transformational for the region, especially for particular parts of it, but even those of us who are a little further away from it are glad that it has come.

There are also the things that my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) talked about—the longer-term and more strategic issues that we need to tackle in the east midlands. They are also positive. I look forward to working with him and other colleagues on those in the years ahead.

Everyone in the next hour will make the case for individual areas, I am sure, and I want to make the case for my area. We have already achieved good progress on broadband, which is hugely important for rural areas in particular, in constituencies such as mine on the edge of the Peak, in places such as Barlow and Spinkhill.

We have successfully convinced the Government to spend a lot of money in Staveley and in Clay Cross through the town deals. We are one of only a handful of places to get two town deals in close proximity, and we are very grateful for that. It is now the responsibility of the local councils, which we are working well with, to ensure that the money is delivered effectively into projects that change our area for the long term.

Only a few months ago, we had the very good news that we were going to get a new free school in our area on the old Avenue regeneration site. That is another example of where, after a decade of aspirations but being unable to deliver them, we are now plugging the gaps in funding and finding ways to deliver the things we need for local communities.

We have great opportunities, some of which I share with the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins). I look forward to, and will continue to support, opportunities such as the long-awaited Staveley bypass, which is now moving to the next level, which is positive; the work on the A61, which is being led by Derbyshire County Council, to try to secure long-term improvements there; the possibility of reopening rail along the Barrow Hill line; regeneration for towns such as Dronfield, Killamarsh and Eckington in my patch; and the actual physicality of what the integrated rail plan—when we see it—does for my constituency. Everyone, whatever their view of High Speed 2 or other aspects of train policy, wants to see an outcome to the integrated rail plan and what it means for individual constituencies.

In the couple of seconds I have left, I want to say one thing. Infrastructure is vital to our area, just as it is to every other area around the country. However, infrastructure is not everything. That does not mean that the primary message from this debate to the Government and the Minister should not be that we want more infrastructure—we want the ability to build a more successful east midlands over the long term—but there are many other elements of Government policy where the state can help that we also need to consider.

We need to ensure that we are levelling up across education. One of the things that I completely agree with the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) about is the need to level up on skills. We also need to level up on aspiration, opportunities and ensuring that people in our areas know that they can achieve things in a way that, when I came out of school in Chesterfield 20 years ago, we did not used to be sure of. If we do that, combined with the infrastructure improvements that I am sure will be talked about for the next hour and have already been articulated, we will have a great case to make for our region in the coming decades.

09:58

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) on securing this debate. I am pleased to see that so many colleagues wish to take part. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris) was disappointed not to be available this morning, because he is serving on a Bill Committee.

Over the past 18 months, my constituents—all our constituents—have faced the most incredible challenges as a result of the pandemic. Far too many people have lost their lives, or lost loved ones, and many people have lost incomes, jobs and businesses. No one knew that we would face a pandemic, but some of the weaknesses in our economy, which covid has only made deeper, were known. I am afraid that the Government have consistently failed to address those and, more than that, have wilfully made them worse. They have failed to take the action that we all know is necessary to ensure that the east midlands can grow strongly in the future.

For many people in my constituency and our region, making ends meet, keeping a roof over their head and putting food on the table is a constant worry. That is not news; for far too many constituents, economic insecurity has become the norm. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) highlighted, 76,000 workers are on zero-hour contracts. If they get sick, they do not get paid. If they challenge their employer, they face losing their job. They cannot plan for the future, and they cannot imagine how they could ever own their own home.

Even those with regular employment feel uncertain about the future. That insecurity has taken its toll. Over the last decade, wages in the east midlands have fallen by more than £10 per week in real terms. Homelessness has increased by 55% since 2010. In 2019-20, before the pandemic hit, there were 101,534 food bank referrals in our region.

We can do better and be better—we all want that—but it requires Government action: not words about addressing regional imbalance, not promises about new investment, but action. We need promises to be kept and we need investment to be delivered.

I want to say more about the action needed, but first I will talk about what is not needed: next month’s proposed cut to universal credit. More than 9,500 households in my constituency face losing more than £1,000 a year as a result of the Government’s plan to make the biggest ever overnight cut to social security. Not only will it be devastating for the families who need that £20 per week; it will be very bad news for our local economy—the local shops and businesses where they spend that money. Taking £20 a week away from almost 40,000 families in Nottingham is taking millions of pounds away from Nottingham businesses and struggling high streets. It comes in the middle of a jobs crisis and threatens our economic recovery.

That is not just an issue in Nottingham; across the east midlands region, 389,680 families will be hit by the cut to universal credit. A quick bit of maths: that is £400 million a year out of the east midlands economy. As has been highlighted, 40% of those low-income families in receipt of universal credit are working families. Cutting the incomes of those who are unemployed or on low pay is shocking. Cutting their spending power is economic madness. I hope MPs on all sides will stand up to the Government and do the right thing for their constituents and the east midlands. There will be an opportunity to do that tomorrow, I believe.

Government do not just need to avoid doing the wrong things; they need to start doing the right things. The east midlands has consistently lost out on Government investment, which has had a huge impact on our success. GDP growth in the east midlands over 20 years has been below the UK average. Productivity has remained below the UK average over the same period; indeed, it has been in relative decline. Doing something to turn that around and make our region more productive is essential, yet the east midlands receives the lowest public expenditure on economic affairs, on services per head, and on transport in total and per head.

Transport spend in our region declined to just 58% of the UK average in 2019-20. If it was funded at the UK average, we would have £1 billion per year to invest in improving transport networks. That really matters, because it is about investing in the future and making us a more productive region. No single issue is more important in transport investment than building the HS2 eastern leg in full, as the Government have repeatedly promised. That will benefit millions of people in our communities—even those who never set foot on a high-speed train. It will create thousands of apprenticeships for young people and skilled jobs for talented employees, and will regenerate our area, particularly around Toton. It will act as the catalyst for private sector investment to turn our great ambitions for our regions into a reality.

Of course, there are transport benefits, too. It is absolutely essential that we get more people and freight travelling on our railways if we are to hit our zero carbon target. It is essential that we improve our connectivity east to west—east midlands to west midlands—and to the north: to Sheffield, Chesterfield Leeds and further north still. We must give people a real alternative to travelling by car.

The Government have repeatedly promised investment in the east midlands transport networks and have repeatedly broken those promises. I feel like a broken record on this issue, but I have been campaigning for the electrification of the midland main line for more than a decade. It was paused, then delayed, then scrapped, in direct contravention of promises made to my and all hon. Members’ constituents in 2015, 2017 and 2019. Now I fear that exactly the same thing will happen with HS2. Well, we cannot stand for that to happen, and I hope the Minister will take the message back to the Government that the east midlands deserves better than to be left at the bottom of the pile. He must listen, and the Government must change their view.

10:06

[Jane Hunt (Loughborough) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David.

Despite the east midlands once being one of the most prosperous areas in the UK thanks to its thriving manufacturing base, decades of underinvestment has curtailed productivity, stifled economic growth and held back social mobility. That, coupled with the Leicestershire County Council area receiving the least central Government funding, stifles our development. But that would be to look to our past, and this debate is about the future.

Recently, the region has seen a resurgence of its economic potential, which accounted for 5.9% of UK GDP in 2019, thanks to growth in a number of new and innovative sectors, such as life sciences and hydrogen technology. The latter is of particular national importance, given the push towards green technology.

Alongside the groundbreaking research from our fantastic universities such as Loughborough University, companies such as Intelligent Energy, which is looking to build a new state-of-the-art gigafactory in the region as a centre of hydrogen fuel cell manufacturing in the UK, are leading the way in this area. Such a factory would not only create hundreds of local jobs but would help establish the UK and the east midlands as a world leader in hydrogen fuel cell technology.

The Energy Research Accelerator is also bringing together local research-intensive organisations and a research community of nearly 1,500 researchers to undertake innovative research, develop the next generation of energy leaders and demonstrate low-carbon technologies that will help shape the future of the UK’s energy landscape, but if we are to harness the true potential of those sectors, we must invest further in skills, infrastructure and research and development. The Government have already committed to their levelling-up agenda by directing significant investment towards the region and stimulating business growth, following an incredibly challenging year for businesses.

The freeport at East Midlands airport will not only act as a customs hub, boosting international trade, but will create a highly skilled ecosystem, becoming a magnet for inward investment and business expansion and acting as a springboard for opportunity throughout the region, creating tens of thousands of new skilled jobs. The gravitational pull of the freeport will bring jobs and growth from across the world to the only freeport based at an airport. That is great news for the east midlands.

We already have some excellent forward-looking businesses in the Loughborough constituency, such as Morningside Pharmaceuticals, ERGO, Jayplas and JRE Precision Engineering. Each one is a global player, groundbreaking and integral to the future of our region and our country. That is not to mention the life science cluster based at Charnwood Campus—the first life science opportunity zone in the country, with superb businesses already based there and capacity for more; companies are looking to come to the region, with labs and offices ready to go.

The £16.9 million town deal funding for Loughborough will also ensure that local residents have the skills needed to support local businesses. It will fund projects such as the Loughborough College digital skills hub, and the already thriving careers and enterprise hub. With match funding, those town deal projects are worth more than £40 million.

Loughborough College in itself is a driving force for training and skills, adapted and shaped by the jobs market in which it thrives. Last week, we held a jobs market in the centre of Loughborough that offered literally hundreds of jobs. Thorn Baker, for example, had 75 jobs available. The place is really beginning to thrive. That is in addition to the huge £7.8 million investment in Loughborough from the getting building fund, which not only helped to play a role in creating a global sports hub in the town but has gone towards highways infrastructure to improve accessibility to Loughborough and Shepshed at junction 23 of the M1.

The east midlands is transforming and creating an identity for itself as a leader in innovation and cutting-edge technology. It is time to capitalise on not only our geography but our skills. Inward investors are looking for a place where their business can succeed, for the skilled workforce needed to drive their business forward, and for a great place to live, in which case the future is bright for the whole of the east midlands, but it shines like an Olympic gold medal here in Loughborough.

10:10

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) for securing the debate because it is an incredibly important one. I enjoyed the case he made for the need for investment and focusing that on Toton. However, there was an elephant in the room during his speech and that is HS2. I do not believe that the plans he outlined are credible without HS2. He seemed to be making the case that the infrastructure can happen with or without HS2, and I simply do not buy it. HS2 is fundamental to that investment in our region and to the interconnectivity that he and my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) spoke about.

I came into this place in 2010 and I have been through four elections in which the Conservative party has spoken about their commitment to HS2 and the midland main line infrastructure and electrification. Throughout those four elections, the consistency of the Government’s message on investment in the east midlands has been matched only by the consistency of their failure to deliver that spending. I have been an MP for 11 years and in every term of those four Tory Governments, we have had big promises, let-downs, dither and delay.

When the Minister gets to his feet, he has an opportunity to tell us finally that the promises made in 2010, 2015, 2017 and three months after the 2019 election that the eastern leg of HS2 would be delivered is not—as the Government are constantly briefing—about to be pulled from under our feet, but that there is actually that commitment. When people look back on this era of politics, they will find it incredible that for 11 years a Government had its biggest infrastructure project yet looked so unenthusiastic about it. I cannot think of any other Government policy in history that has been supported more by the Opposition than the Government themselves. That is the reality with HS2.

It is true that our region is taken for granted and ignored. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South referred to the difference in transport spending between the east and west midlands. In the east midlands, the average transport spending per head is £287.32. Just across in the west midlands, it is £489.70 per head. Almost twice as much is spent on transport in the west midlands as in the east midlands. Why is that?

The reality is that I am a very unusual Member of Parliament. I am a Labour MP in the east midlands who is not from a city. There are 37 MPs in the east midlands who are not in Nottingham, Derby or Leicester, and 36 of them are Tories. This Government absolutely take the east midlands for granted, and why should they not when right across the east midlands they see Tory MPs elected while they fail to invest in our region? Of course they will think the voters of the east midlands will comfortably vote for them.

My party has a big responsibility to face our electoral failure over the last 11 years. I look across the hall to lots of colleagues whose constituencies were Labour for many years. They are in those seats now, and the voters of the east midlands and my party need to consider if we are going to get investment in the east midlands, it needs to be a more competitive area because this Government believe that they can take it for granted.

The hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley) referred to the Staveley bypass. That is something that he and I are very committed to. I did a recent survey and know that there is huge support in my constituency for that bypass; it is something that has been spoken about over many years. Derbyshire county council needs to speed up the process of delivering the bypass, as many of the projects that were announced at the same time are now much further ahead. I would like the Minister to know that there is a real cross-party commitment to going ahead with the Staveley bypass, and I hope that we will soon have good news about it.

The east midlands region is crackling with innovation and with a desire to get on and deliver, but, as the hon. Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt) said, it is being held back by a failure of investment in our region. We really need to see that turned around now.

10:15

[Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) on securing this debate.

I think those of us here in this room are all incredibly lucky because we represent a vibrant, dynamic and creative region. As other Members have said, we are the heart of the UK’s logistics and manufacturing industries; the right hon. Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) talked about the industrial jaws of the United Kingdom. I was fortunate to be able to visit JCB in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Mrs Wheeler), and see the amazing innovation that has been taking place at its Foston plant, where it has invented the world’s first hydrogen-fuelled combustion engine.

We are leaders in food and drink; we have some fantastic companies in my constituency of Rushcliffe—perhaps too fantastic, as I do not think they did wonders for my figure over lockdown. We have fantastic stilton producers at Cropwell Bishop and Colston Bassett that, contrary to counter claims made by my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns), produce the best stilton in the world—whatever she may say. We also have wonderful wine producers such as Hanwell wine estate and Eglantine vineyard; we have a thriving farming sector across the region; and we are leaders in so many different types of green technology. I have mentioned hydrogen at JCB, but we also have the GeoPura headquarters in my constituency, whose hydrogen generators are powering everything from festivals to film sets. We are leaders in biodiversity restoration; we have BeadaMoss in East Leake, Rushcliffe, micro-propagating sphagnum moss to be used to restore peatlands and to create new growing mediums that will replace peat in several years. The statistics back up what I am saying. We have fantastic innovators across the region; 90% of manufacturers have innovated in the last two years; 96% plan to do so again in the next two years.

We do have our problems, and they have been set out very clearly by Members on both sides of the room today. Our productivity is below the national average; we have a polarised workforce with a lot of people in very highly skilled jobs—based around our universities and our tech companies—but we also have many people in much lower paid jobs. The average income in the east midlands is £70 a week below the national level. We also suffer from low public sector investment; we have the lowest levels of public expenditure and transport spending per head.

We have also suffered, perhaps, from a lower profile than other areas of the country. The west midlands, for example, has one focal point provided by the city of Birmingham and its Mayor. Its share of funding has reached parity with the average amongst English regions in the last few years; we in the east midlands still have only 75%. We hear a lot about levelling up and we see a lot of Government Ministers going to Teesside and the west midlands; we see their Departments following them there. If levelling up is going to spread opportunity over the whole country then it is going to have to involve more places than just Teesside and the west midlands—however wonderful they may be. One of the places that really needs that focus and support from Government is the east midlands.

[Mr Perkins]

I totally agree with what the hon. Lady is saying. Is not the point I just made the reality? Areas such as the west midlands and the north-east are politically competitive. Here, the Tory party is able to take for granted that it is going to get Tory MPs elected and that is why we have failed to get the investments of some of those other regions. Is not electing more Labour MPs the answer?

[Ruth Edwards]

No, I do not agree with that. We are in a debate today that has been called by a Conservative Member and is attended by lots more Conservative than Labour Members, so I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman.

[Mr Perkins]

We haven’t got many—that is the point.

[Ruth Edwards]

Maybe that says something about how voters in the east midlands feel the hon. Gentleman’s party has taken them for granted. As a result, they have returned Conservative colleagues, who are here today fighting for more investment in the east midlands.

If everybody in every community having a fair chance at life is what levelling up is about, if it is about people being able to benefit from strong public services such as a great education and having the opportunity for a great career, wherever they live in the country, we have to focus on areas such as the east midlands that have, historically, been underfunded and have not had the Government focus that they should.

We have some great tangible opportunities right now in the east midlands to reverse that. The one I have been most closely involved in is the east midlands freeport, which would cover three sites: one in Leicestershire, one in Derbyshire and one in Nottinghamshire in my constituency of Rushcliffe, based at the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station site, which is being decommissioned in a few years’ time. The east midlands freeport would create more than 58,000 jobs and would see investment in skills, research and development. It would see Ratcliffe-on-Soar transformed into a centre for new energy technologies and a zero carbon academy, creating those high-skilled jobs and fantastic careers that we have been discussing this morning. It will also enhance and build on existing partnerships between academia and business across the region, which we need to capitalise on. It will be the best connected freeport in the country: it will connect East Midlands airport to global markets and, in doing so, will connect the companies at the heart of our manufacturing and logistics industries to it too. It will also connect the east midlands via road and rail to the wider network of freeports across the country and, in that way, offer us a national as well as a regional opportunity.

The second opportunity is HS2. I appreciate that it is not the responsibility of the Minister’s Department, but I hope he takes away the message of frustration from colleagues on both sides of the House at the length of time it is taking to get a decision about the eastern leg. We have seen a vaccine created and rolled out across the United Kingdom in less time than it has taken to make a decision about the form in which HS2 is going to come to the east midlands, if it comes at all. I hope the rumours that it is going to be axed are not true.

HS2 has great potential. It would add £28 billion to the region’s economy every year. It would increase east-west—a well as north-south—connectivity, which is vital. Today, we talked about how connectivity and trains are important, but it is about more than trains. It is about massive redevelopment at Toton. It is about improving local transport connectivity across the region. It would send a clear signal from Government that we are investing in the east midlands, that the east midlands is not the poor cousin of the west midlands, that it will not be left behind and that we are committed to making sure that the east midlands shares in the levelling-up agenda. I hope the Minister can give us some assurance that that will be the case. I certainly hope that he will take the message back from the debate to his colleagues in the Department for Transport and I also hope that we can hear something about his support for the east midlands freeport, which is something that he knows Members on both sides have been working hard to support. We have an excellent bid now—one that capitalises on our net zero potential, our connectivity and creating highly skilled jobs and training across the region, which is much needed.

10:24

[Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I thank the hon. Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) for securing the debate.

As my right hon. and hon. Friends have already detailed, a decade of cuts has devastated our communities and people’s lives. People have been pushed into poverty, there is a homelessness epidemic, bus routes have closed and schools are falling apart. As my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) said earlier, in 2019, the east midlands had the lowest public spend on economic development and transport and the third lowest on public services.

On top of more than 10 years of austerity, the Government’s failure to protect lives and livelihoods during covid has caused further economic misery and injustice to our region. Businesses have folded and people have lost their jobs. Retail and hospitality sectors dominated by low-paid workers —often women—have been particularly hit hard. Many are trying to get by on furlough pay that is less than the minimum wage, or even without any financial help at all. In Nottingham East alone, more than 14,000 families are set to lose £1,000 a year when the universal credit cut comes into place. Most shameful of all is that the majority of people in poverty are in working families.

Coming out of the pandemic, we need well-paid, secure jobs that help produce the kind of society that we want to live in. It is not enough just to develop our economy; we need to decarbonise it as well. There are no jobs on a dead planet and we must invest with the future in mind, not just the present.

Booming manufacturing once dominated Nottingham’s economy and our city was renowned as the centre of textiles, but from the 1980s manufacturing declined. For my grandparents’ generation, half of Nottingham jobs were in manufacturing, compared to just 4% in 2021. There is a huge potential for a new generation of green manufacturing jobs in and around our city and region; good-quality, well-paid jobs in sectors such as recycling and reuse. Rather than exporting our recycling content abroad, where much of it ends up dumped in the ocean, when will the Government bring these jobs to Nottingham and Nottinghamshire?

Will the Government put the money where their mouth is when it comes to tackling climate change and levelling up? Can the Minister provide a figure on Government investment in green economic development in the east midlands over the last five years? Can he provide details of conversations he has had with representatives of renewable and green industries about economic investment in the east midlands? Will he agree to meet me and representatives from local green industries to discuss capital investment in our region and opportunities for support from the Government?

With the scale of the climate and ecological emergency, that demands nothing less than post-war scale investments and economic transformation—a green deal. All of us, regardless of party politics, would be letting down those we represent to demand anything less today.

The Local Government Association website provides a list of devolution deals over the last decade. As the hon. Member for Rushcliffe (Ruth Edwards) mentioned, they include deals for Cornwall, Tees Valley, the west midlands, London, south Yorkshire—the east midlands is nowhere to be seen. For how long can our region be overlooked when it comes to Government investments? We saw that the Chancellor’s constituency—among the fifth most prosperous in the country—has benefited from levelling-up money. In constituencies such as Nottingham East, more than one third of children are living in poverty. When are we going to get our fair share? Can the Minister tell us whether the east midlands will get at least the £8 billion that the west midlands received with the Conservative Mayor?

Finally, I would like to stress the importance of devolving and investing in a way that is truly transparent, democratic and empowering for our local communities, because devolution should not mean handing power and money from one man in Whitehall to one man in a region. Communities need a real say in how this money is spent, so that they can be part of building the kind of economy that works for them and creating stable, well-paid jobs in the here and now, investing in industries that will protect the environment, and ultimately giving their children the future that we all deserve.

10:30

[Darren Henry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) for securing the debate. I am pleased to be here today as a proud east midlands MP to discuss the future economy of our region. With the Prime Minister’s levelling-up agenda, we will ensure that long-forgotten communities across the east midlands finally get the investment they deserve.

Recent research by the Government has shown that there is a growing gap between the east and west midlands, which is likely to widen further over the next decade as a result of the delivery of phase 1 of HS2 and associated investment. We simply cannot allow the east midlands to be left behind. Does the Minister agree that a simple way of tackling the spending imbalance for the east midlands economy is to deliver HS2 in full, including Toton, as well as Chesterfield? Given his earlier comments, I know that the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) will agree.

There have, however, been many recent funding commitments from the Government for my constituency of Broxtowe, including £21.1 million from the towns fund deal for the town of Stapleford, as well as an opportunity to bid for £20 million for the town of Kimberley as part of the levelling-up fund. Both commitments will be hugely welcome in my constituency and will have a large impact on the lives of many of my constituents. The knock-on effect of that investment will be to create new businesses, jobs and other opportunities for my constituents for years to come. It will also ensure that the local economy will not just survive after covid, but will thrive.

Transport investment is a key driver of productivity and economic growth. The fact that the east midlands has consistently delivered GDP growth close to the UK average from very low levels of transport investment is testament to the commitment and ingenuity of the thousands of small to medium-sized enterprises that are the backbone of the region’s economy. Terminating HS2 at East Midlands Parkway, or somewhere that is not Toton, will not achieve the transformational benefits for the east midlands that the full eastern leg will deliver. Toton is also ideally located to serve the wider Nottingham area, particularly the major employment opportunities to the west of the city centre.

It is my belief that connectivity is key to truly levelling up the east midlands. That does not just mean transport; it also means digital connectivity. The east midlands region has some of the worst interconnectivity within the whole of the UK. I recently heard about an individual taking business calls from his shed, as that was where he got the best reception. We simply cannot expect growth and prosperity within the region when individuals do not have the digital connectivity they deserve. In November, the midlands engine all-party parliamentary group, which I co-chair, will be holding a meeting solely on broadband and connectivity within the region. I encourage all Members present to attend, if available. I also ask the Minister to outline plans to further address the disparity in digital infrastructure within the midlands.

The future of the east midlands economy looks bright, as long as the necessary investment and infrastructure that has been promised is delivered in full. It would be a misstep not to deliver HS2’s east midlands hub at Toton. I am also keen to see expansion into green industries. The east midlands already has some fantastic local businesses, developing groundbreaking technology and ways of making society greener. In my capacity as co-chair of the midlands engine all-party parliamentary group, alongside my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Ruth Edwards), I recently visited the businesses in her constituency that she mentioned earlier, GeoPura and BeadaMoss. Both are fantastic green businesses that are leading the way within the industry.

I would like to see the east midlands become the focal point for green energy and development in the UK. The Government have already gone some way towards doing that, by setting a clear ambition to support 2 million green jobs by 2030 through the green jobs taskforce. In order to ensure that the east midlands prospers post covid, the Government must break the long-term cycle of under-investment and provide a long-term commitment to invest in the east midlands economy.

I want to finish my remarks by making it clear that, in order for the Government to fully deliver on their promise to level up the east midlands, we must deliver the eastern leg of HS2, and it has to go through Toton.

10:35

[Brendan Clarke-Smith (Bassetlaw) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) for securing this incredibly important debate on our beloved east midlands.

My constituency of Bassetlaw, which is in the very north of the region, has had many connections, such as with Yorkshire. There has been debate over the years about whether we should have joined the Sheffield city region and so on, and perhaps we have taken our eye off the ball at times. I want to see Bassetlaw being a key player in the east midlands, which it can be, and making full use of the economic benefits.

On that subject, I would like to talk about the STEP project in Bassetlaw, which we are very keen on. It would be a major boost to the area. In the last couple of days we have seen the old West Burton A coal-fired power plant fired up again. That shows the importance of having flexible and varied supplies of energy, but we see a real opportunity to look at the next generation of energy production and green energy—for example, with fusion, as my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt) mentioned.

We have some excellent rail links already, but we would like to see more. We have the east coast main line and potential for more, such as the Robin Hood line, which has been mentioned. I have constituents in Retford who are very interested in being joined up to that. Of course, the A1 runs through there as well, and we would like to see some improvements to the exits. The east midlands freeport brings some great opportunities for East Midlands airport, and we have the benefit of having Doncaster Sheffield airport just over the border. The freeport is a really great benefit for local manufacturing and logistics companies, and I am a big supporter of it. I want to see it succeed.

I fully support the efforts of my colleagues to make the case for HS2 going through Toton. It would be a big boost for the region as well as Nottinghamshire. So many positive things are going on in our region, and colleagues have mentioned devolution. A strong east midlands can help to supercharge our local economy and give us all a lift.

If my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns) were present today, I know that she would mention her campaign to have the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs open an office in Melton Mowbray. Unfortunately, she could not be here, but I fully support her in that and wish her luck.

I will finish my remarks, as I know we are short of time. Once again, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield for highlighting this issue. We have a great region in the east midlands. Let us make the most of it, and let us supercharge our economy and go forward together.

10:38

[Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir David, and I thank you for the opportunity to reply to the debate on behalf of the Opposition. I congratulate the hon. Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) on securing the debate. I agree with him that the Government need to come down on the side of investment and innovation in the region.

I also thank the other speakers, who made important contributions. My right hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) gave us an important reality check on the Government’s actions and made the vital point that, in order for the economy to flourish, work needs to be properly paid. We need stability and skills, without which businesses and the economy cannot thrive. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) made an important point about the cut to universal credit, which is taking money out of local economies. She also exposed the lack of transport investment in the region over a long period of time.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) talked about the importance of HS2 and focused on the inequality of transport spending in the region—not just on rail, but on things such as the Staveley bypass. Road transport is important as well. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome) talked about the impact of Government policy and cuts, the vital importance for the future of green jobs, and transparent devolution deals.

We have heard lots of good words about the future of the east midlands economy. The east midlands does not operate as a single entity, with a regional centre, like my own in Greater Manchester, which is why so many Members from different parties have spoken about how vital transport links are, which I will return to shortly. It is instructive to compare the east midlands with other regions. Compared with the rest of the country, east midlands GVA growth figures are lower and there are lower levels of investment, especially Government investment. Productivity is lower, more people than average are in insecure work, a higher number on zero-hours contracts and median gross pay is lower. Of the 446,000 key workers across the east midlands, 40% are paid less than £10 an hour. There is work to do to fulfil the great potential of the region.

People in the east midlands are significantly more likely to be employed in manufacturing than in the rest of the UK. That is a distinctive, important and good feature of the region, although a number of those jobs are in lower-value manufacturing, which is more susceptible to economic shocks. With traditional manufacturing in decline, it is important to consider alternative options for the future. We have heard from several Members about good work already underway, seeking to boost jobs and prosperity in the east midlands, and release the potential of the region that we have heard about so often.

The importance of East Midlands airport, along with the rail freight terminal, is key. A number of Members talked about that and the work of the East Midlands Development Corporation in aiming to link the HS2 station at Toton with the airport. We also heard about the development at the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station site, which is another important growth opportunity for the region. There is good partnership work going on, driven by groups such as the midlands engine partnership and Midlands Connect. We also heard about the plans for the east midlands freeport. Many might question the overall strategy of freeports creating growth across the country, but it is undoubtedly a good opportunity with potential for the east midlands region.

We have not focused so much today on the hard work carried out by local authorities, which have been at the frontline fighting the covid pandemic, and will now play a crucial role in their communities’ recovery. They need to be funded properly, so that they can play their full role as place-makers, driving growth for the region. Having imposed £15 billion cuts on local authorities over the past 10 years, unfortunately the Government recently broke their promise to compensate local authorities fully for their costs in tackling covid-19, leaving some of them with very big funding gaps and putting local services at risk.

The piecemeal funding pots that we have heard about, such as the levelling-up fund, which pit regions and nations against each other for vital funding, do not make up for a decade of cuts to local communities. We need support for people who live in the region, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East. The universal credit change will hit almost 390,000 families in the east midlands, pushing many into hardship. Cutting the budgets of those families who need it most is not only wrong, but bad economics. That £1,000 a year is money that could be spent on local high streets in the east midlands. Instead, it will be taken out of the economy just as we are trying to recover.

It is clear that East Midlands airport is key for jobs in the region and future economic ambitions but, like other regional airports, it has suffered through the lack of an adequate sectoral support package from the Government. The Labour party has advocated a sectoral deal for aviation that protects jobs and the wider supply chain, safeguards the environment, and ensures that companies benefitting from the aviation sector rebase their tax affairs in the UK. If regional airports such as East Midlands airport are not given adequate help through the challenges of covid, the local economies that depend on them will be undermined.

We have heard a number of times that a key priority for the region should be improving connectivity. The eastern leg of HS2 is vital for economic growth in the east midlands. The potential indefinite postponement would be a massive blow to the economies of the cities and counties of the region. I look forward to assurances from the Minister that the leg will go ahead as promised, as requested by many Members this morning. If this is another broken promise from the Government, it will be a betrayal of the communities in the east midlands.

[Mr Perkins]

My hon. Friend is right about the uniformity of view that the east midlands has had a poor deal from this Government. We expect, during such debates, for Labour MPs to be critical of the Government; that is the role of the Opposition. However, were we to put together a Facebook video of the criticism of the Government in the debate, it would include excellent speeches from the hon. Members for Loughborough (Jane Hunt), for Rushcliffe (Ruth Edwards) and for Broxtowe (Darren Henry) about the east midlands being left behind under a Conservative Government. Those, too, would be compelling pieces of evidence.

[Jeff Smith]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. I hope that the Minister is listening to his own side, not just to Labour. We have been making this case for a long time, but it has been made strongly, as my hon. Friend says, on both sides of the Chamber.

There is a strong view that the biggest single thing that the Government could do for the east midlands economy would be to improve transport and connectivity, including the full electrification of the midland main line—a continuation through Leicester up to Sheffield. Apart from the environmental benefits, that would reduce journey times north and south. There is the Robin Hood line and the restoration of direct trains from Leicester to Coventry: the only significant cities anywhere in the UK that do not have a direct rail connection. A Government commitment to those kinds of transport investment would be real evidence of levelling up for the east midlands, which has, as we have heard a number of times, the lowest transport investment in the UK.

The final issue that I will mention, though certainly not the least of them, is the emergence of new green industries, which has, again, been mentioned by those on both sides of the Chamber. Labour believes that it should be a priority of the Government to bring forward a green new deal and an ambitious package. We are proposing £30 billion of capital investment to support the creation of up to 400,000 new low-carbon jobs. There is engineering and manufacturing expertise in the east midlands that should be well placed to make the most of those new opportunities, and the east midlands should get its share of the jobs of the future.

Labour wants to see the east midlands thrive, along with our regions up and down the country. We need to address regional imbalance. The UK economy was already highly regionally imbalanced—perhaps the most regionally imbalanced major economy in Europe—well before covid hit. The pandemic restrictions have made existing inequalities worse. The uneven impact of lockdown on different sectors means that some areas have been much more affected than others, and the Government’s ill-defined levelling-up concept needs to address those inequalities. It must mean good-quality, secure work and job creation that helps us meet our climate ambitions. It has to mean a fair social security system for anyone who cannot work, whether due to economic shocks or illness.

Future economic success must mean the Government giving local areas the investment that they need to recover from the covid pandemic and rebuild strongly, with opportunities on everybody’s doorstep. We cannot afford any more broken promises from this Government. That is our challenge to the Minister.

[Sir David Amess (in the Chair)]

The Minister will now respond to the debate, but please leave a couple of minutes for Mr Bradley to close proceedings.

09:50

[The Minister for Regional Growth and Local Government (Luke Hall)]

Thank you, Sir David. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, and indeed to be back in Westminster Hall. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) on securing this important debate, and thank all right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions. The thing that has been shared universally is a passion for securing the best possible future for the region, and securing investment and the maximum support possible for everybody’s constituents. That goal is absolutely shared by the Government.

I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield on all the progress that he has made in his role as the leader of Nottinghamshire County Council. We all recognise that such strong local leadership is essential for securing our economic recovery and for levelling up. I join the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith), in thanking all local authorities in the east midlands for the hard work and leadership that they have provided in leading the way through the recovery.

We are committed to unlocking economic prosperity across all regions of the country. We want to address long-standing geographical inequalities, deliver economic opportunity and improve lives right across the country. As the Prime Minister announced in May, our landmark levelling up White Paper will be published later this year, and will set up bold new substantive policies that will improve opportunities, support businesses and boost livelihoods across the country, including in the east midlands. Indeed, an east midlands MP, my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien), has been appointed the Prime Minister’s adviser on levelling up. Only last week, our officials were in the east midlands to hear first-hand some of the opportunities available in the region, and some of the challenges faced.

The levelling up White Paper will be a natural continuation of our commitment to support local places. We are already backing that up with our ambitious investment programme, including the £4.8 billion levelling-up fund that was announced at the last spending review. That will be available to all parts of the country and will help improve everyday life. It will include regenerating town centres and high streets, improving connectivity—we heard about that this morning—and investing in cultural and heritage aspects. Those are exactly the kind of projects that my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield said are so urgently needed in the region.

[Lilian Greenwood]

I was listening carefully to what the Minister said about levelling up. He has heard how the east midlands receives lower than average Government investment in a whole range of areas, including transport. Is it his Government’s intention to address that shortfall? When he talks about the levelling-up fund being available to the whole country, does he not envisage priority being given to an area such as the east midlands, which historically has missed out, to level us up? Is that his intention?

[Luke Hall]

We have been clear about the areas of the country that are in the highest categories of need. The levelling-up fund is based on the fund’s priority themes of economic recovery, transport connectivity and regeneration. We have recognised that need in three districts in Nottinghamshire: Bassetlaw, Mansfield and Newark and Sherwood, as well as the city of Nottingham, which has been identified as a category 1 priority. In Derbyshire, Derby and the districts of Chesterfield, Derbyshire Dales, Erewash and High Peak have been identified as category 1, as has the city of Leicester. Those bids are being assessed and an announcement will be made later this year.

[Nadia Whittome]

Will the Minister publish the metric by which those calculations are made? I do not understand why the Chancellor’s constituency, which is among the top five most prosperous in the country, has been considered a priority for levelling up, but not constituencies such as ours, where the Minister has heard that over a third of children live in poverty.

[Luke Hall]

I just outlined the numerous places in the east midlands that are in category 1. Significant information about the indexation is published on the Government’s website. I urge the hon. Lady to look at that.

There is an important role here for the Members of Parliament. We recognise that formally in the levelling-up fund and we encourage the hon. Lady to make a case through that. We recognise the significant number of category 1 places in the east midlands. We have heard significant pleas for extra investment in the east midlands. A number of Members have talked about making sure we deliver that on the ground. We have made significant investments in the region in recent years, including committing £212 million for nine town deals: two in north-east Derbyshire, one for Loughborough and one for Stapleford. We are investing £49 million in five high streets in the east midlands, over £370 million in the local growth fund and £64.5 million in getting building funding. That will help to drive local growth and economic recovery in the region. Some of those are already bearing fruit at a local level. The £2.6 million local growth funding we awarded for the Vision University Centre Mansfield is helping West Nottinghamshire College to address the skills gaps in the area. The £3.7 million of local growth funding has supported the opening of the Museum of Making in Derby in May 2021, as part of the redevelopment of the historic silk mill. There is £9.5 million of local growth funding supporting the opening of a technology institute—a new build that provides facilities for skills development, to meet the needs of the automotive industry in Leicestershire. The east midlands has received over £3 billion in covid recovery grants, including small business and retail, hospitality and leisure grants, local restriction grants, support payments and restart grants.

We think partnership working will be key to levelling up. On the proposed East Midlands Development Corporation, we are already engaged in some excellent joint working with local partners. My hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield highlighted the key intervention in the four opportunities that he spoke about. We are currently considering the draft business case with propositions at Ratcliffe-on-Soar, East Midlands airport and Toton. I commend the councils involved, including Nottinghamshire County Council, for maintaining that momentum by setting up a company as an interim vehicle in establishing a locally led urban development corporation. That really shows the intent and local leadership. As set out in the Queen’s Speech, we intend to reform the development corporation legislative framework through the Planning Bill to ensure local areas have access to the appropriate delivery vehicles to support growth and regeneration.

This partnership approach will be crucial in developing plans for another significant opportunity in the east midlands. I was of course pleased to see that the east midlands freeport was selected early this year as one of eight new prospective freeports, subject to business case approval. Of course, East Midlands airport—the largest dedicated cargo operation in the country—is based in the prospective freeport. It will be a key economic asset in the east midlands. The right hon. Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) said that will happen only if the Government share the enthusiasm to deliver those projects—we absolutely do.

I particularly want to put on the record my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Ruth Edwards) for all her work in driving the project forward, and my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (Brendan Clarke-Smith) for his support. We recognise the scale of the opportunity that the project presents for the east midlands. The region’s connectivity to other freeports and the combination of airport and rail port create a distinctive offer for the region. We are keen to see all partners working together to deliver this for the east midlands and build a strong outline business case, due for submission very shortly. We will continue to work with colleagues across the east midlands to develop robust plans to capitalise on the local growth agenda that can be delivered here.

We heard a lot about HS2. We absolutely recognise the good work done by local partners, including Sir John Peace, Midlands Engine and Midlands Connect to identify the potential impact of HS2 on Toton and the wider east midlands. The IRP will be published soon and will outline exactly how major rail projects, including future HS2 phases, will work together to deliver the reliable train services that passengers in the midlands need and deserve.

I certainly heard the passion and the unanimous voice from hon. Members about providing certainty on the project. Of course, we will take that back to colleagues at DFT and ensure that their voice is heard. I particularly want to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Darren Henry) and the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) for making the point clearly that certainty is required. Given the long-term significance of decisions within the IRP, it is of course right that we carefully consider those priorities and take on board evidence from a wide range of stakeholders before making the final decisions.

My hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt) talked about the importance of delivering fairer council funding. She is aware that we had to postpone the review of relative needs and resources due to the pressures on councils getting involved in that conversation during covid. We think that was the right path, but we made some changes this year, including extending the rural services delivery grant and providing £240 million of equalisation. I look forward to working with her as we continue to have a conversation about how to ensure councils are funded fairly. Of course, there was a 4.5% rise in core spending power for the east midlands this year, which she welcomed and supported at the time.

On devolution, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield for his contribution, and I listened carefully to the arguments that he made. I am very grateful for the comments from the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome) and for her support for securing a devolution deal. I recognise that it is a complicated picture across the region, but we certainly look forward to having the discussion.

There is so much more that could be said. I thank hon. Members for their contributions to the debate. I will certainly reflect on the points that have been made. I will take back to colleagues at the DFT and my Department the points about providing certainty, and we look forward to continuing to work with colleagues as we invest in this hugely important region and this important part of our agenda.

10:59

[Ben Bradley]

I thank all colleagues who contributed to this very important debate and, as well as raising their local concerns, backed these key regional economic projects that will create jobs and growth and support our residents in all our constituencies across the area. I welcome the positive words from the Minister on those key projects, and the point he made about the significant investment through the towns fund and the levelling-up fund. I look forward to seeing a longer-term proposal for levelling up and what it means for our communities in the White Paper this autumn. Perhaps we can have some long-term certainty about funding in the spending review. I am sure we will all continue to fight for these key projects for growth and the benefit of our constituents over the coming months and years.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).

Impact of Floods in North Westminster

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Westminster Hall

11:00

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the impact of floods in Westminster North.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David, in this short debate.

I am grateful to the Minister for being here today and for this opportunity to raise an issue that has been hugely important to my constituents this summer. I will ask for her help in holding Thames Water to account for its very poor performance in the aftermath of the floods in my constituency and in getting responses from it to a number of unanswered questions about how the floods occurred. In doing so, this debate will also have implications for water companies and flood preparation in other parts of the country.

Before I turn to the specific events that happened in Westminster North, I will briefly refer to the context in which they happened, because they clearly took place in the context of rising flood risks, arising in particular from climate change. We know that climate change is impacting harder and faster than even our worst fears a few years ago, and that devastating floods have wreaked havoc across the world, from New York to Germany and elsewhere. We have to accept the reality that extreme weather events are the new normal. Also, while poorer communities are always at greater risk of damage from such extreme events, floods or other kinds of extreme weather—such as the extremely dry weather that causes forest fires—are no respecters of postcodes.

So when Thames Water points to an exceptionally slow-moving weather system concentrating unusually high rainfall in a particular area, as was the case in my constituency in July, it may indeed be right. The question is whether such a powerful monopoly provider as Thames Water should have done more to anticipate and prepare for such events. Also, given the history, which I will refer to in a moment, why did the preparations that had been made fail and why was Thames Water’s immediate response to the flooding so inadequate?

Westminster City Council also has duties in this area. After the introduction of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, responsibility for local flood risk management, including surface water run-off, groundwater and flooding from ordinary water courses, was passed to lead local authorities, of which Westminster City Council is one.

Westminster City Council had already identified, via its floods policy, that:

“Due to the heavily urbanised nature of Westminster, and the predominantly Victorian drainage infrastructure, there is a widespread risk of surface water flooding…It is expected that sewer flooding may occur within Westminster and a consistent risk profile is therefore applicable. There is a risk of groundwater flooding within Westminster, and this risk is likely to be exacerbated by increased below ground development (basement extensions etc.).”

The issue of basement extensions has been a hugely controversial one for me in recent years.

The council’s floods policy continues:

“There is a residual risk of flooding due to the failure of either water mains or canals”.

The council recognised in the policy that:

“Further enhanced surface water flood risk modelling was undertaken…in 2015…The study considered the impact of climate change on surface water flood risk assuming a 20% and 40% increase in peak rainfall intensity.”

The council is currently undertaking its own review of the July floods and we expect a report imminently. However, it is already clear that the increased risk of flooding, due to climate change in particular, was understood.

So what happened on 12 July, the day of these particular floods? In the afternoon, intense rain impacted on an estimated 500 properties, mostly, although not entirely, in the Maida Vale area. The water rose incredibly quickly and in addition to the rain and the overflow, sewage pipes backed up, covering many homes—particularly basements—with raw sewage. Thousands of calls were made to Thames Water, with little or no response from it in the immediate aftermath of the flooding.

The London Fire Brigade was in attendance and many local residents spoke of there then being a specific intervention by the fire brigade, which led water to drain away “like a plug being pulled out of a bath”. Over that night and the next day or two, hundreds of residents and businesses were left in crisis, due not only to the damage but to the obvious health risk associated with the sewage overflows.

After a varyingly slow start, which was particularly slow by Thames Water, staff from the council, from housing providers and then from Thames Water got to the scene to support people and begin the clear-up. People helped their neighbours magnificently and many staff worked very hard in the aftermath to ease the distress. Even so, people fell through the net. One constituent, who is HIV positive and currently receiving cancer treatment, was put into a hotel and no payment was made. My office was dealing with him on the night after the floods when he was crying in the lobby because of the lack of support.

Many people had to be urgently rehoused after their home was flooded with sewage. That was not organised for a couple of days and, even now—as recently as last week—I heard from a woman who is still confined to a single room in her home as she is immune suppressed and the rest of her home is badly affected by the damp and mould, to which she cannot risk prolonged exposure.

Those affected and many others in the at-risk areas want to know why the water rose so fast and why the sewers backed up and then why the water disappeared so fast once the London Fire Brigade attended. They deserve to know whether anything could have been done sooner to avert disaster as the rain fell. A typical comment went, “As you might know, the water levels dropped very suddenly after the fire brigade attended on our street and seemingly opened a flood valve or removed some kind of obstruction. The rain was still falling as heavily as it had been, but the water went, in my case, from 70 cm deep to ground level within minutes. Thames Water are blaming heavy rainfall but that does not explain how the water just dissipated.”

Many, although not all those affected in Westminster—the problem was particularly concentrated in the Maida Vale area—have a wider question. After localised flooding some 10 years ago, ward councillors, residents and I pressed Thames Water to increase drainage capacity in the W9 and NW6 areas. This was strongly resisted for some time. Thames Water took the line that these were 100-year events. We counter-argued that there had now been two 100-year events in the course of just three years. It gave in, and in the middle of the last decade, new tanks were installed under Tamplin Gardens in W9 and additional capacity was increased, with major works around Warwick Avenue and Westbourne Green lasting two years.

In 2012, Thames Water told us it would complete the Maida Vale sewer flooding alleviation scheme over the next two years, saying that the alleviation project would cover four wards in the Maida Vale area and be good news for the 400 or so residents who have experienced sewer flooding over the past few years, some of whom have been flooded with sewage up to nine times.

The heart of the matter is this question, which Thames Water and, to some extent, Westminster, must answer. Why did a major alleviation scheme designed to cope with 100-year events fail so spectacularly within just half a decade? Was the additional capacity insufficient and should that have been foreseen six or seven years ago? Was the system properly operational? Were there any blockages in the system? Were the drains clear and properly maintained? If the rain that fell on 12 July was a 300-year event, as we have now been told, how long before it fails again?

If Thames Water now suggests that we cannot build our way out of the severe weather-related flood risk, how and when will a package of alternative measures be put in place across agencies to achieve a reasonable level of protection?

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate because several hundred of my constituents were equally affected by the floods she is describing. Thames Water candidly described its response to me as “bloody awful”. It said it was under new management with new shareholders, but it is always under new management and new shareholders. That is the problem. It was exactly the same 10 or 15 years ago, when the same properties were flooded for the same reasons and the schemes have either been cancelled or have not worked. Does she agree that, like the Thames tunnel and the Bazalgette sewers we rely on now, whoever ends up paying for and delivering this, it needs Government direction, because this is a serious matter that repeatedly affects our constituents?

[Ms Buck]

My hon. Friend is right. We are constantly told that Thames Water is under new management. That management always seems to enjoy a level of remuneration that would make my constituents blanch. It continues to charge costs to consumers and is seemingly impervious to the kind of challenges and questions that he and I are raising.

We were told by Thames Water at a public meeting at the end of July that this event was simultaneously unforeseeable and yet also likely to happen again. Legally, its position remains that it is not liable for the damage arising as a result of the flooding. It claims that London’s sewers were never designed to deal with rain on that scale, and yet relies on the fact that its systems meet the targets as evidence that it was not negligent. If that position holds and is reaffirmed by the inquiry set up by Thames Water, this question arises: how can targets be adjusted significantly to reflect the changing weather expected over the coming years before more homes are affected by similar events?

Almost everyone who was in touch with me and ward councillors over the days and weeks after the July floods has good grounds for feeling that Thames Water failed them with its response that night and in the aftermath. A significant minority of people whose homes were flooded are still suffering and feel that their housing providers, council and Thames Water have not acted as swiftly and caringly as they might have done, despite many of the employees stretching every sinew to help.

What assessment has been made of the capacity in local authorities and housing providers to resource their emergency responses? They have been cut back drastically in the past decade and, as we saw with Grenfell, an effective emergency response cannot be guaranteed without the staff available to deliver it. Increasingly, they also have to be able to manage more than one crisis at a time, or in close succession.

Has the Minister undertaken an assessment of the capacity of local councils and others to support residents who lose everything in disasters such as this? Local support payments are designed to patch the increasingly large holes in social security, not to help what might be hundreds of people on lower incomes who are uninsured and left without furniture, clothing and toys. Also, local support payments offer assistance only to those on qualifying benefits—excluding people on working tax credits, for example.

Locally, we have organised crowd funding and worked with the local voluntary sector to relieve hardship. I congratulate such volunteers and One Westminster for their assistance; they have been significantly more supportive of the community than has Thames Water, which I asked to contribute to the hardship funding quite separately from the issue of liability—a request that has been ignored. Why is it that volunteers and community organisations can raise more money for people who have been devastated by floods than the powerful monopoly water provider can?

I turn back to the flood itself. The threat of recurrence now haunts us locally. How are the Government working with local authorities in areas such as mine, where large numbers of basement properties are understood to be at particular risk? Westminster’s 2019 flood policy states:

“Self-contained basements or basement flats wholly or partially below ground without freely available access at all times to a habitable space above ground level within the same dwelling are ‘highly vulnerable’”,

and that

“applicants are encouraged to incorporate flood resistance and resilience measures as part of the design…to prevent water ingress and to reduce flood damage should flooding occur.”

Is encouragement enough, however? How will that be monitored? Where will the responsibility lie in privately owned properties, whether freehold or leasehold? What rights do private tenants have? Who would pay for such alterations to social housing? The time for warm words and vagueness is definitely now over; in terms of damage and indeed safety, we need firmer action. Do the Government have plans to scale up the expectations of local councils—backed by the necessary resources—to review, report on and deal with factors that expose residents to flood risk?

Then there is Thames Water. Ultimately, as I said, residents feel that Thames Water let them down catastrophically. One typical comment was:

“Thames Water were extremely slow in dealing with this emergency and when they made an appointment either didn't turn up or if they did were several hours late. They then arrived with a dust pan and brush and a bottle of bleach and were quite unhelpful commenting always how it was not the fault of Thames Water and what a wonderful company they are.”

My constituents believe they deserve compensation for the damage caused, although Thames Water has already been quick to deny liability. Will the Minister assist my constituents and me in pressing Thames Water to ensure that the already somewhat foot-dragging independent inquiry is now completed as a matter of urgency, so that we have absolute clarity on the sequence of events on 12 July? How can my constituents hold Thames Water to account more effectively given the obvious imbalance in power and resources between them—me—and a private company of such size enjoying a monopoly position as a provider? I and hundreds of local residents need the support of the Government if capacity is to be increased, people protected and Thames Water held to account. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

11:14

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

As ever, it is a delight to see you in the Chair, Sir David.

I thank the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) for securing this important debate. The issue has clearly affected so many people’s lives, as we saw in the news during the summer. I pay tribute to all those who helped: the emergency services, and in particular the Environment Agency and the fire services, who really led on this emergency.

My heart goes out to all those people who suffered; I come from Somerset, so I know about flooding. I have also visited a great many people around the country, so we know how devastating flooding can be for people. I do not underestimate what it is like, and nor do the Government: we have doubled flood funding to £5.2 billion in the next spending period, which will put in place more than 2,000 new defences around the country.

The hon. Member for Westminster North has focused very much on surface water flooding, and in the new Budget we have escalated the importance placed on that issue. Approximately a third of that spending will be on surface water flooding schemes, so although it did not help the hon. Lady this July—although there are some schemes within her constituency—that issue is going to receive much greater emphasis going forward, and rightly so. Surface water flooding is the most widespread form of flooding in England, with around 3.2 million properties at risk. As the hon. Lady pointed out, the effects of climate change combined with population growth mean that we are expecting more of these related issues.

However, everybody—not just the Government—has a responsibility for managing water effectively. In England, the statutory responsibility for managing flood risk falls to the risk management authorities, including the Environment Agency and the lead local flood authorities. The Environment Agency has a strategic overview role for all sources of flooding, and although it does not lead on surface water flooding, it does provide support and advice on risks and facilitates effective partnerships.

I have just been on a visit to Merseyside and West Yorkshire, and have seen some very good examples of those partnerships working to get over some of the problems that people are facing. The lead local flood authorities—county and unitary councils—have the lead operational role in managing all local flood risks, including surface water, and are responsible for identifying the risks and managing them as part of the local risk management strategy. Alongside this, the highways authorities have responsibility for the road network, which includes highway and road drainage maintenance, and water and sewerage companies are responsible for maintaining the public sewer network to ensure that the area is well drained.

As the hon. Member for Westminster North said, we saw devastating flooding this summer, not just in Westminster but around the world. Here, we had those incidents in July and August: the Met Office recorded over a month’s worth of rainfall in just a few hours, and the localised nature of the downpours meant that certain areas were incredibly badly affected while neighbours were not affected at all. It was quite extraordinary, as I think the hon. Lady will agree. The flooding witnessed in north Westminster was primarily due to surface water. This kind of event occurs with extreme rainfall, where the water simply cannot drain away as quickly as it is arriving.

[Ms Buck]

I want to stress one of the central points of the argument: Thames Water built a £17 million flood alleviation scheme, completed just six years ago, to deal with exactly this problem in exactly this area, yet it failed catastrophically. We have been unable to get Thames Water to properly respond to us about why that happened—whether it was a planning issue or an operational one. That is one of the key things that I would like the Minister to help me get Thames Water to respond to.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention, and I hear what she says. Measures were put in place when the Met Office gave its warnings, but of course it was all so quick: the fire brigade swung into action, but those things that the Environment Agency could whizz into place, such as trash screens, just could not cope with that flooding or the sewage overflows and so forth. That is what the Thames tideway tunnel project is going to address, and I have a meeting with those involved later this afternoon. However, the hon. Lady is right that questions need to be asked about that new development. As she referred to, a big public meeting was held with Westminster City Council after the flooding.

[Andy Slaughter]

Will the Minister give way?

[Rebecca Pow]

I will just finish this bit and then give way. There were lots of people—the council, Thames Water, the Environment Agency and so forth. They have committed to doing this independent review, which is crucial. As Minister, I need to wait until we hear the consequences of that review and the Westminster section 19 investigation before making any further comments. I will be looking at that with interest and I will be happy to have a conversation with the hon. Lady when we have got that, because we do need to get these things right.

Of course, Ofwat is the regulator and Government set the policy. We are working on our draft policy statement to Ofwat for the next period and will be highlighting surface water flooding more than ever before, along with things like water quality and the whole sewage issue. We are doing a lot on that in the Environment Bill, as I am sure the hon. Lady knows.

[Andy Slaughter]

I am grateful to the Minister for allowing me to intrude. Thames Water has told me that the tideway tunnel, which is very welcome in preventing pollution going into the Thames, would not have helped in this situation. It would only have helped properties very near to the river, because this was high tide and therefore some water would have been let through. It would not have helped my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North or most of my properties that way.

What would have helped is the Counters Creek flood alleviation scheme, the £300 million project which went down the middle of Kensington and Hammersmith and would have protected those two boroughs. That was cancelled by Thames Water and has not taken place. Will the Minister accept that we need an inquiry into why that did not happen and what can now be done to prevent exactly the same properties flooding on a regular basis?

[Rebecca Pow]

Of course, many different schemes are underway, but the Thames tideway tunnel is the biggest scheme we have taken part in for decades. It will address serious issues around mixing of the waters and sewage overflows in times when we get these extreme weather events. It will make a big difference. I will put your points to them this afternoon.

All flooding projects are ranked and rated according to properties protected, delivery and so forth. There is strict protocol for that. The Environment Agency is involved in trying to find out what happened at this incident. It took part in a resilience forum after this event and is very engaged in advising and helping.

I want to take the opportunity to talk about surface water. It is pertinent, because we just published an updated report on surface water management, setting out progress in delivery of our surface water management action plan. David Jenkins did an independent report on surface water and drainage responsibilities. Key highlights include Government funding to provide better surface water flood risk maps in 28 lead local authority areas by summer 2022. That site list will be crucial to the areas mentioned and those across the country, so that people know what is happening. That is what the hon. Gentleman is getting at, I think. We need a clear view of what the situation is on the ground, what is working and what else needs to be done. These flood risk maps will be really important. Improved mapping will provide over 3 million people with more detailed information about local surface water flood risk.

The Met Office and the EA are scoping out a new approach to provide faster communication for surface water flood forecasts when an incident is deemed likely, which would be helpful since people need to react very fast. Water and sewerage companies are working with other risk management authorities to produce drainage and waste water plans, ensuring that drainage and sewerage systems are resilient to withstand these future pressures. Again, Thames Water will have to do that, and it is working on that now. The Government are making these plans a statutory requirement through the Environment Bill. Weirdly, that was not statutory before, and it will be important to looking at the issues the hon. Member for Westminster North is dealing with. We are considering right now the guidance and reporting necessary to ensure timely action in areas with greater surface water flooding problems.

Alongside all that, the Government are investing more in actions to mitigate surface water flooding overall. In April 2020, we made a change to the partnership funding arrangements, which are already having an effect. In July, we published our investment plan over the next six years, which includes £860 million in investment this year to boost design and construction of more than 1,000 schemes. We are aware of the big issue and more than a third of those will tackle surface water flooding, including in London, with two schemes in Westminster. They are the Kilburn Park Road surface water scheme, which should be completed by March 2022 and will better protect 44 properties, and the Upbrook Mews surface water scheme, which should be completed by March 2025.

Alongside that, I have been given assurances that Thames Water is also taking action through its surface water programme. That is investing £3 million in partnership with five local authorities and will be investing a further £1.5 million through a wider call for projects. That project could come under the scope of the reference made by the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter). It will help better manage surface water entering the sewer network and enable the implementation of a sustainable drainage system, while also creating green spaces and amenity value, because a lot of that is also linked to the schemes. I have seen some of the schemes and they are extremely welcome in neighbourhoods; they make the whole neighbourhood look and feel better while having the double-whammy achievement of helping to sort out the flood risk, the drainage and so on.

We are also working with 25 local authorities across England, investing £150 million in place-based resilience innovation projects. Some of those will include mitigating surface water and flood risk, and the outcomes will be shared with other local authorities and risk management authorities, so they can learn from those projects and—if we find something that particularly works and would apply, for example, to Westminster or Thames Water—adopt some of those measures.

In addition to the Government’s investment, water companies will be investing more than £1 billion between 2020 and 2025 to reduce the impact of flooding on communities across England and Wales. They have proposed an additional £2.7 billion of environmental investment through the Government’s green economic recovery fund. Some of those projects have been accelerated, partly owing to the impacts of covid and the lockdown, because there were so many spin-offs from those sorts of projects. A lot of those include measures such as blue-green infrastructure, natural flood management and partnership working at a catchment scale, which is important. It is not just about what is happening outside our door, but where that water is coming from and what has affected it further up the catchment. That still applies to all the London areas as well.

The Environment Agency works with lead local flood authorities to manage surface water flood risk through strategic planning, supporting the development of projects, access to Government flood and coastal erosion risk management funding and access to regional flood and coastal local levies. The regional flood and coastal committee levy plays an important role in the financial support for the development of the lead local flood authorities—all those titles are very wordy, are they not, Sir David? That can help fill the funding gap outside the direct legal lead local flood authority funds and the grant in aid, as well as paying for Thames flood advisers to provide additional service on scheme development. I know the EA teams are working with the Greater London Authority, Thames Water, Transport for London and the local authorities on sustainable urban drainage systems, flood risk, water quality and all those measures.

Our ambition is to make a nation more resilient to future flood and coastal erosion and work to manage and mitigate the effect of surface water flooding will continue at pace. I hope I have demonstrated that I mean business about this, as do the Government, contributing towards implementing the flood and coastal risk management policy statement. We are working with stakeholders on all of this. We will be undertaking a review of maintenance responsibilities to examine whether existing local buyers are efficient in ensuring local assets are maintained and expertise is shared across authorities. I think the hon. Member for Westminster North will be interested in that.

We are also reviewing with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government the policy for development in areas of flood risk. Finally, the storm overflows taskforce will make recommendations on lots of those issues as well as sustainable drainage and the sewage outlets. I hope I have demonstrated my commitment. I am always very happy to talk to the hon. Lady and I thank her for raising the subject today.

Question put and agreed to.

11.30 am

Sitting suspended.

Nuclear Fuel Manufacturing

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Westminster Hall

[Mr Clive Betts in the Chair]

14:30

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

Welcome, everyone, to this session at Westminster Hall. It is good to see you all in person. To begin with, I need to remind everyone of the guidance. It is not my guidance; it is Government guidance and guidance approved by the House of Commons Commission, encouraging all Members to wear masks when they are not speaking. Please will Members and members of staff give each other space when seated, and when entering and leaving the room? Also, could Members’ speaking notes be sent to Hansard by email, please? Similarly, could officials communicate electronically with Ministers? I understand that Ministers can read emails and texts, so that should not be a particular problem, and it helps to make sure that we follow the guidance. Thank you all for your co-operation.

14:30

[Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered continued nuclear fuel manufacturing in the UK.

It is a pleasure to move the motion under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I know that you are very passionate about manufacturing and skills, so I cannot think of a more appropriate person to be chairing today’s debate.

Springfields nuclear fuel manufacturing plant is located in my constituency of Fylde. It is not just a nuclear fuel manufacturing plant; it is the United Kingdom’s only nuclear fuel manufacturing plant, so by any definition that makes it a key UK strategic asset. That is a theme that I want to touch on later in my speech. Beyond that strategic importance, over 800 people are employed directly at Springfields, with employees hailing from the full breadth of the north-west’s nuclear arc, and with the wider supply chain employing countless thousands more. Indeed, Government estimates indicate that fuel fabrication facilities in the north-west support over 4,000 direct and indirect jobs, including roughly 400 people at Urenco in Capenhurst, who are likely to be impacted hard by any drop-off in demand at Springfields.

Among these employees, roughly a third of those who work on site began their career as apprentices, jumping at the chance of what were jobs for life, as 2,000 people have done since apprenticeship schemes started at Springfields 71 years ago. Among those was the current managing director, Brian Nixon. I hope that demonstrates that these are secure, well-paid jobs, of the kind that must be at the heart of the Government’s levelling-up agenda, particularly in a sector that has at its heart the north-west’s economy with its industrial base.

Beyond the local economy, our nuclear industry is also helping to forge the UK’s path towards achieving our net zero ambitions, having already produced the nuclear fuel that has powered the equivalent of 20 years’ energy consumption since 1946.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

I am sure the hon. Gentleman shares my concerns that the UK had to fire up West Burton A yesterday, and that we are now 3% dependent on coal this year, at a time when the Government are talking about phasing out the use of coal for electricity generation by 2024. If we are to achieve our green credentials, particularly in the year of COP26, we have to look at all the options, and nuclear is inevitably among those options.

[Mark Menzies]

The right hon. Lady has made a very powerful point that I think everyone present would agree with. As we look to build towards that low-carbon future, with the backdrop of an ever more uncertain world, we must also strengthen our energy security. Sovereign manufacturing capability must be at the heart of that, particularly that of our sole civil nuclear fuel manufacturing site, which of course is Springfields. One lesson that the pandemic taught us is that when countries—including our closest allies—meet obstacles, they will seek to protect their own interests. It is simply inconceivable that in the thriving nuclear industry of the future, we may be reliant on overseas markets for the core parts of our reactor supply chain.

From an environmental perspective, it is also believed that existing uranium stocks could be enriched and used to make fuel. Existing stocks are sufficient to power Sizewell C throughout its lifetime, and Springfields Fuels Ltd has built an industry hub, working closely with bodies such as the National Nuclear Laboratory.

Let us look at the challenges. Although the future is full of promise for Springfields and the wider UK nuclear sector, significant and urgent challenges remain—namely, a short-term drop-off in fuel orders that risks causing redundancies and, more worryingly, the irreplaceable loss of skills. At the heart of this is the likelihood of early closure and uncertainty around Dungeness B, Hinkley B and Hunterston. With 70% of site income related to advanced gas-cooled reactor fuel manufacture, that uncertainty has seen a sudden drop-off in demand. Given the possibility that manufacturing on existing orders will end as early as 2023, this really is an urgent situation, and retrospective action cannot resolve the issue.

We are also waiting on decisions from the Government about the next generation of reactors—the small modular reactor fleet—with Sizewell C and other proposals still to be approved. Even with approval, construction will take several years, which means a lengthy gap until Springfields-manufactured fuel is in use. That ambiguity is causing delays in ownership-level decisions about the future, adding to the uncertainty, particularly among the workforce.

In the short term, to cope with the drop-off in demand, Springfields needs to find sources of income to support continued work and employment. To date, the redundancies have been voluntary, but that will likely not be the case going forward for employees, management and the unions. I pay tribute to Unite and Prospect for the incredible way in which they have engaged on a cross-party basis to represent the interests of their workforce. I have corresponded with constituents working on site, who have made their feelings clear. Some other opportunities in the wider nuclear sector are also proposed, such as decommissioning, but the site’s unique selling point is its ability to produce nuclear fuel, and that must be protected.

So what are the solutions? As the Minister knows, I come to this debate not with challenges but with key asks. First, it is important to say that this is not a company or a sector in decline. The need is just for support to help bridge the gap before the new technology comes into play and we usher in a golden age of new nuclear. There is a world-class skills base at the site, with plenty of opportunities on the horizon, particularly in the latter part of the decade. The Government need to take a long-term view of the industry. Given that no similar facility exists in the UK, those skills will be impossible to replace. Many of the people who have taken voluntary redundancy were there as apprentices, and the collective knowledge among those people really is quite something. To lose that is shocking.

The vision for net zero looks to 2050, and to lose a key component in a low-carbon industry in the mid-2020s, at the start of our net zero journey, due to a short-term approach is incredibly counterproductive. In the long term, it is essential to have a holistic approach that incorporates as much UK involvement in new deals as possible. For example, Lancashire is already at the heart of SMR—small modular reactor—manufacturing in the UK, and that technology of the future creates huge export potential.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way; he is being very generous with his time. Trawsfynydd in my constituency is widely recognised as one of the best sites, and the first of its kind, for SMR. I am sure he will welcome the Welsh Government’s appointment of Mike Tynan to Cwmni Egino, the company that will bring this forward. His point about the risk of losing skills relating to fuels and generation per se is critical. If the Government are serious about looking at nuclear among our options, we have to maintain those skills.

[Mark Menzies]

Indeed. If I may comment without embarrassing the right hon. Lady, she is a true champion of the workforce in her constituency, and she never misses an opportunity to make the case for investment in her area and champion that technology.

However, this new technology can be achieved only if the Government set out their vision for the UK’s future SMR fleet, including a regulatory framework and site proposals.

On SMR and AMR, I welcome the investment, particularly from the United States, but a way for investors to demonstrate their commitment is for them to promise to manufacture fuel in the United Kingdom. I strongly believe that a commitment to produce UK fuel for UK reactors must include all future UK projects and the possible transition of existing EDF contracts to Springfields. To achieve that, it would be a huge step forward if the Minister held meaningful discussions with EDF and US investors to work towards gaining such assurances on future contracts and to move some of the present contracts to the UK.

There are many ideas about the next phase, but one is that Framatome could manufacture at Springfields under licence, or that Westinghouse could manufacture Framatome fuel under licence, which would help to bridge the gap without a major renegotiation of EDF contracts. Indeed, having discussed this possibility—only yesterday, in fact—I know that EDF would be open to having a requirement for UK-manufactured fuel written in to contracts, as it works to solidify the long-term future of its key UK operations. EDF actually wants that clarity and certainty, which would go some way to securing Springfields.

As mentioned, there are huge opportunities on the horizon, but without the go-ahead from the Government, they remain something for the future. Therefore, it is key that the Government affirm their backing for UK nuclear and approve proposals for new reactors. With the spending review coming up and COP26 rapidly approaching, I cannot think of a better time for them to do that than now. However, we cannot just think about Sizewell C, which will provide opportunities for Springfields to fulfil the required contracts; we also have to consider the future, over the next 60 years, of what reliable nuclear energy looks like.

Support for other future opportunities, such as reprocessed uranium, is currently a growing area, and countries such as France rely on fuel imported from Russia. We are a neighbour and strategic partner of France, with a strong nuclear safety record, so with Government support and investment, this is something that Springfields has the expertise to commence work on in earnest.

To conclude, I cannot stress enough that, given the time-sensitive situation we find ourselves in, decisive action is needed at the earliest opportunity to protect this strategic national asset, and the Government must do whatever it takes to safeguard that asset’s future. Mr Betts, coming from Sheffield, you will know that Sheffield Forgemasters was regarded as a strategic national asset, and thank goodness action was taken to protect it. To stall further on nuclear would lead to irreplaceable skills being lost and facilities potentially closing. This is an industry with a great future, but it needs the certainty that Government support on investment and future projects can give.

The employees who I have discussed today are genuinely world-class; many of them are unique in this country in terms of what they do. However, they are ready to take on the new challenges that exist. Government must work with industry to guarantee that UK nuclear fuel will be produced in the UK, and give the go-ahead to the projects that will create those orders. If we do that in a timely way, both the workers and the plant would have a future, a national strategic asset would be protected, our journey towards low carbon would be a safe one, this country would achieve energy security, we would be able to export fuels, with the AMRs and SMRs, to many other countries around the world, and we would truly be heralding a golden era. I call upon the Government to seize this opportunity.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

I think we have five hon. Members who want to catch my eye, which gives them about nine minutes each. I am not imposing a time limit, just giving guidance on how long to speak for.

14:44

[Sir Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies) on securing this important debate at such a critical time, when we need to secure a carbon-free UK as soon as possible.

The UK’s civil nuclear sector is among the most advanced in the world. Fuel production, generation, new build, and research through to decommissioning are key components of that. They provide tens of thousands of highly-skilled jobs, many in the north-west, particularly in Lancashire near my constituency of Preston, where fuel production is concentrated.

Nuclear power is one of the largest and most reliable sources of low-carbon energy and electricity in the UK. It has an essential role to play in the transition to net zero. The UK currently has only one new power station under construction. Without rapid progress, we will have what is referred to as a nuclear gap. The nuclear gap currently means that the UK’s only domestic nuclear fuel manufacturer, Springfields in Lancashire, is facing a very uncertain future. It was a pleasure to meet the trade unions on College Green today and discuss the problems that the industry faces. It was nice to see them and great that they are fighting for the industry in the way that they are.

The UK has something like 15 existing reactors, generating about a fifth of the electricity in the UK, with 13 others at various stages of construction or planning. The majority are due to reach the end of their operating lives and be shut down before 2030. In September 2016, the Government gave the final go-ahead to Hinckley Point C, which will be the first new nuclear power station for a generation. There is no doubt that we need new build if we are to have that carbon-free future.

A new nuclear sector deal was passed in the Government’s industrial strategy, and £200 million was promised by the Government to support the industry. However, since then, major events have put that future in doubt. In November 2018, there was a collapse of private sector support for a new plant at Moorside. In 2019, the Hitachi project at Wylfa in north Wales was suspended, which cast doubt on the future of nuclear plants per se. I know that the Government have consulted on alternative finance models for the new reactors and are currently in negotiations with EDF about a new nuclear plant, but it is essential that they give these industries that firm support—the hundreds of millions of pounds that was talked about originally—so that the jobs and technology remain in this country.

A number of factors have contributed to the decline in construction. Obviously, up-front costs are a big barrier, but once they are out of the way, it starts to look far more viable. The meltdown of Fukushima, the closure of THORP—the thermal oxide reprocessing plant—and nuclear waste disposal are all problems that are being overcome and, with further research and development, can be overcome, I think, in a reasonable time.

A push for faster action on nuclear is needed, which includes bringing forward legislation for the new funding model. Springfields, as the hon. Member for Fylde said, is the UK’s only civil nuclear manufacturing site. It is a source of high-value employment in the north-west and is critical, along with aerospace, to the Lancashire economy moving towards a carbon-neutral future. That carbon-neutral future is at risk. There is a possibility of anything up to 120 redundancies at the site, which currently employs around 800 people and supports around 4,000 jobs across the wider supply chain. Prospect and Unite, the trade unions, have since said that axing more than 10 roles would put that carbon-neutral future at serious risk. The Government urgently need to bring forward a mixed-energy policy, which should include carbon-free nuclear.

In addition, nuclear technology plays a part in many other areas, particularly in industry and higher education. Some universities across the UK are offering courses related to the nuclear industry, including my local university, the University of Central Lancashire. The National College for Nuclear is a cornerstone of the Government’s policy. Courses are being offered by five education providers, including two near my constituency of Preston, at Lancaster & Morecambe College and the Lakes College in west Cumbria.

I also understand that an advanced nuclear skills and innovation campus, which has an eight-month pilot launch from June this year, is now based at the Springfields site, with leaders from industry and academia, including UCLan, the University of Manchester and the University of Sheffield. I was pleased to hear the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) refer to Mike Tynan. I have known Mike for years, from when he was based at Springfields. I understand he is now at the University of Sheffield, which I am sure is not unknown to you, Mr Betts. UCLan also offers modules on decommissioning waste and environment management on the nuclear fuels cycle.

There is a lot of controversy around the industry at the moment concerning the involvement of China and China General Nuclear, which owns a significant stake in Hinkley Point C, and our involvement with France. One thing is certain: we have to co-operate with China to develop a carbon-free world. China is a huge country with a huge population and must be part of the solution, not just seen as a problem, as in the case of the very poor debate and decision over Huawei. We can either stay in the 20th century or move forward, with partners such as China and France, who have got so much to offer the industries. In conclusion, investing in new nuclear is a no-brainer, so let us get on with it.

14:51

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies) on securing a vital and timely debate. I pay tribute to the unions who welcomed me and my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Chris Green) to the Springfields plant a few weeks ago, so that we could see for ourselves the role it plays in that community. I also pay tribute to the workers down the years—60 or 70 years—at Springfields, many of them my constituents. Along with Capenhurst and Calder Hall, the site has been one of the key drivers of our nuclear industry in the post-war era, underpinning so much of our economic development.

The domes of Dounreay might be more worthy of heritage protection but they relied on Springfields. The current fleet of nuclear reactors also relies on Springfields in the here and now, but the footprint and the numbers employed at the site have declined over time. Employment is now in the hundreds, not the thousands, and cannot afford to be lowered further.

We need to look at Springfields’ future. We know that the ultimate parent owners have uncertain intentions, at best, about the future of the site, so policy needs to move at pace. We have heard that advanced gas-cooled reactor closures are likely to be brought forward, creating a gap around 2024 before demand for nuclear fuel increases once more, as new reactors come on stream.

I know that the Government have a nuclear fuel working group. I welcome that, but working groups come in many forms and shapes. Every Department has a multiplicity of them. Some of them operate without a Minister even being aware. I know from my own time as a Minister that, if it was moderately important, I might try to attend the initial meeting to set the agenda and make it clear that it mattered to me. If it was really important, I attended every single meeting. I urge the Minister to send a signal to and sit on the shoulders of her no doubt fantastic officials to attend every single meeting. This is really important, not just for Springfields but for our future national security.

We rightly hear a lot about net-zero, green recovery and the levelling-up agenda—sometimes too much for my personal taste—but here in the Lancashire countryside is the living embodiment of those three agendas. I have always argued as an MP for more high-quality, high-skilled jobs on the Fylde coast, near my relatively deprived coastal town of Blackpool and Cleveleys. Here they are, just a few miles away, in the Lancashire countryside. There can be found the National Nuclear Laboratory and a clean fuels technology pod. The site trains many apprentices, as we have heard, including for firms in my constituency, such as Victrex.

We are in a state of concern because we do not know what the future holds. We risk losing it, like the British empire, in a fit of absence of mind. But it is a vital national capability. It cannot be recreated from scratch. If we lose the golden thread, the continuity of the skills base, we will end up dependent either on the French Framatome or—in my view, unlike that of the hon. Member for Preston (Sir Mark Hendrick), even worse—on the Chinese.

Framatome already supply Sizewell B. They already have the contract for Hinkley Point C. In my view, there should be a guarantee of UK fuels for UK reactors written into all future contracts. Framatome already get through processed uranium from Russia. Springfields could do that. The site cannot just be mothballed in the hope that a future Government might wake up. If Springfields really is seen by the Government as a piece of critical national infrastructure, as I firmly believe that it should—and I would welcome a commitment to that effect from the Minister—that has to mean something in practical policy terms. Warm words today will not be enough for my constituents, who want an action plan to bridge the nuclear gap, secure their own jobs and secure the nuclear future of this country.

14:56

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies) for raising this important issue. We are all interested in this issue—that is why we are here—but it is also an issue that we cannot ignore, because of the importance of the subject matter. I have raised this topic on a number of occasions, and my position on it has been clear. I am pleased to see the Minister in her place, and I look forward to her response, as I always do. I should put on record that I have supported nuclear power all of my political life, in this Chamber, in the Assembly and formerly in the council as well.

My position has been solidified by the push, the correct push, for greener energy where possible, within the confines of the cost, which we cannot ignore either. I was reading in the press recently that, if you ask people whether they are in favour of green energy, the majority will answer, “Yes, we are.” When you tell them that supporting green energy may mean a 10% or 15% increase in their energy prices, all of a sudden what it means for people becomes much more real. It is important that we pursue green energy, but—it is a debate for another day, to be fair—we cannot ignore the implications of some of our decisions.

I recently read, in a briefing by EDF Energy, that nuclear is the only proven, reliable low-carbon electricity source and that it is vital to achieve our climate targets and create highly qualified jobs, mostly outside London, as part of the Government’s levelling-up agenda. I see some Members here who are very supportive—indeed, we are all supportive—of the levelling-up agenda, but we want to see what it will mean for our constituents. I would very much like to see Northern Ireland being part of the levelling-up agenda on this issue, as part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland—as I always say, Mr Betts, better together. I know that the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) would wholly endorse that; I am surprised he has not said, “Hear, hear!” That is facetious, but he understands the circumstances. There are occasions when we can do better together, and this is one of them. We need to see similar investment and equality of spending across all of the regions of the United Kingdom, in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as well. I wish to see that happen.

The only thing I would add to the motion is the word “safe”—we need to make sure that nuclear fuel manufacturing in the UK is safe. Safe nuclear is the only proven, reliable low-carbon energy source that we have. I have always made it clear that we can and should use nuclear energy, but only to the highest safety standards. That does cost money. There is a cost implication, as there always is. It means ongoing investment, which is why I was interested to learn that currently over 85% of the UK’s nuclear fuel is manufactured within the UK, predominantly by the existing advanced gas-cooled reactor power stations. Fuel fabrication will decline, with seven out of eight of the UK’s current nuclear fleet, responsible for around 20% of the UK’s zero-carbon electricity, currently scheduled to be offline by 2030.

I am sure we have all heard the selling points regarding the potential opportunity that Sizewell C in Suffolk presents to secure a future for UK nuclear fuel manufacturing, should that project be approved. It is right and proper that it is explored, and that we have all the information necessary to take it forward. The hon. Member for Preston (Sir Mark Hendrick) referred to China’s position. I cannot agree with him. I am not anti-China—it would be wrong to be so—but we need to know about China’s intentions. We need to know what they are about: if their investment could be used to our advantage as well as to their advantage, that is good, but not if it is solely to their advantage. It is our land and our country, and we need to have the last say on what happens. If protections are in place, we will want to see them before this project can be fully considered.

Hinkley Point C in Somerset has already supported around 71,000 jobs, so we cannot ignore the jobs that are created through these projects. It uses a supply chain of more than 3,600 businesses, and has an estimated economic value to the UK of £18 billion. Those jobs in small and medium businesses throughout the supply chain, and the economic value that this project has to the UK, cannot be ignored. That skilled workforce and supply chain need a clear future; they need to know what is happening as well. I want Northern Ireland to be part of that supply chain, so perhaps when the Minister sums up, she can give us some indication of how Northern Ireland can play its part in that. I would certainly like that to be part of the Government’s commitment; I do not doubt that it will be, but I just want to hear it for Hansard and on the record, please.

Together, Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C will produce enough zero-carbon electricity to power 12 million homes—again, that is incredibly important and cannot be ignored. EDF is building the UK’s first nuclear power station in a generation at Hinkley Point, and I am given to understand that the electricity generated by that plant will offset some 9 million tonnes of carbon emissions per year, or 600 million tonnes over its 60-year lifespan. Again, those figures cannot be ignored, and we should be encouraged by them.

The Energy Technologies Institute has identified the two key cost drivers of new nuclear power stations as construction and financing, and building this series is key to lowering both. Hopefully, we can address both of those drivers by having the series and plan in place; I believe the Government are committed to that strategy and that plan. I have been told that the cost of financing Sizewell C will be lower because of the reduction in risk through building the second project in the series, and because the funding model—the regulated asset base model—enables investors to receive a steady return on their investment during construction, meaning that they will be able to provide capital at a lower cost. I am a great believer in ensuring that investors have a return; I would respectfully suggest that we want to see a return for them, but not an exorbitant one. However, we have a responsibility to the taxpayer to ensure that investors can invest their money and get that return.

I look to Government, and in particular to the Minister, to provide a response setting out their vision—and her vision—of low-carbon energy, and how this can be achieved for all of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland by using safe nuclear power, with a viable financing option in legislation and in operation. If we can do that, I believe we will all benefit.

15:03

[Chris Green (Bolton West) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts, and to follow the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who has articulated so many of the arguments and points in this debate so well. It was a great pleasure to visit the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies) to see the amazing facility at Springfields, and to get such a strong sense of how key it is—not just to our nuclear future, but in the framework of our energy future—and the importance of nuclear as a reliable form of energy. This, after all, is what the debate is about.

I not only met the organisation there; the National Nuclear Laboratory is sited there as well. I heard the powerful representations and views of the trade unions, Unite and Prospect. Their championing of the workers there, and the clear collaboration and close relationship between the management of the site, the workers and the union movement, is such an important thing for the future of any organisation. Working together is such a key part of the success and, hopefully, the ongoing future success of the site, but we need to understand what ought to be a fairly straightforward debate.

Fundamentally, we need clean, reliable and affordable energy to meet not only our current needs but our future needs as well. We do not know what the future will bring, but I would certainly like to see far more industry being located in Britain. China, India and many other countries around the world have been very competitive. We have been losing a great deal of heavy industry, and we need an energy supply that industry and heavy industry can use in an affordable way to be competitive with those countries, and with Germany as well. Germany is going down in terms of nuclear, but by doing so it is going up in terms of coal and other fossil fuels. That does not really fit in with what we normally hear about our European neighbours, which is that they are far more environmentally friendly than us. By turning their back on nuclear, they are embracing carbon emissions.

With our ambitions for COP26 and our leadership in this area, we ought to be looking at those sources of power that can reduce carbon emissions. It is the Government’s agenda; it is the international agenda. Nuclear is a key part of that, but we have to think about the steps that we need to take to get there. There was a bit of controversy recently about coking coal being produced in Cumbria rather than being imported for the British steel industry. It is so important that we take the effective and right judgments, and not only for the short term for British industry. Whether it is the Minister or the wider Government, we have to reassure industry and the nuclear sector that we have a future here, and will not export our industry overseas and feel good about exporting our carbon emissions to countries that perhaps have slightly lower expectations and standards than we do.

We need to support British manufacturing industry. We also therefore need to support reliable energy, baseload or firm energy, as I think the term is now, where we know, day or night, whatever the day of the year, we will have the energy that we need for industry and for homes—for cooking and for heating. We ought to be able to rely on that. As highlighted earlier this week in The Daily Telegraph, the UK produced a record of 14,286 MW of energy on 21 May, which is extraordinary, but earlier this week or last week we dipped down, just from wind, to 474 MW. That is not reliable energy that people wanting to keep a warm home in the middle of winter can rely on. It is not what industry can rely on, especially the steel industry. The next generation furnaces will be reliant on electricity. How can the steel industry run an arc furnace if it cannot rely on the energy supply?

It all goes together and the nuclear industry is key. This is technology that we have at the moment. We know how nuclear energy works. We know that we can produce stations that are reliable and cost-effective. We often hear about wind and solar energy, but there are significant technological problems with those forms of energy when it comes to providing firm energy. Until we have storage of that energy, so that when the peaks happen we can store the energy to take us through more difficult times, those forms of energy will not be as reliable as industry and homes need.

It is very positive that the Government have an increasingly strong hydrogen agenda. Again, that relies to a significant extent, it seems, on carbon capture and storage and that is not yet at scale or cost effective. Again, this is more technology that will probably be quite expensive and has not yet arrived. Perhaps in the longer term, we will need those technologies, but in the shorter term, we need more reliance on nuclear. That is where Springfields plays such a key part. It produces the fuels now and will produce the fuels in the future, but there is a short-term gap that needs to be bridged.

With more of our nuclear fleet being decommissioned in the very near future, we need to secure the future of the Springfields site. As My hon. Friend the Member for Fylde highlighted, we should perhaps renegotiate with the French nuclear industry to make sure that we can manufacture in the UK, perhaps under licence or whatever kind of relationship. We can do that. We also have the promise of massive investments in the nuclear fleet, because they are very expensive projects. That is some level of leverage we can use with the French, and I am sure we will be able to get a deal that ensures that we can keep those skills. That is such a key part: having Springfields there for the short, medium and longer term means we keep the skills in the United Kingdom.

Not only my hon. Friend but the team in Government and the COP 26 President have to have that ambition. We need to speak out more consistently. It is disappointing—I do not know how true it is—that the sense in Glasgow is that the nuclear industry is not being welcomed to participate in COP 26. It ought to be a key part of it. I hear the COP 26 President speak passionately on a regular basis about other forms of energy, but I do not hear the same passion about the nuclear industry. For the nuclear sector, for long-term investment, we need to hear far more about the British Government’s commitment to the sector—not just Springfields but the sector more widely—because that is what creates confidence. If people, whether from my constituency or more likely my neighbours’ constituencies of Fylde, Blackpool North and Cleveleys or even Preston, are to take up an apprenticeship, they must have confidence in the future. There are other companies—British Aerospace and others—that can take that talent, but Ministers need to give confidence to the next generation of engineers and scientists and other people coming through that this is a career for them.

We have to see the sector also within the framework of national security and strategic national interest. If we lose the skills and the businesses, it is very difficult if not impossible to bring them back. It is also a question of Hinkley C and the skills there. We need to have that certainty about building the rest of the nuclear fleet, when that is going to happen and what type of nuclear fleet we are going to have. If those engineers and that talent at Hinkley C do not have jobs to go to, they will use their talents in other projects around the country. When we get around to building the next nuclear power station, that talent will be gone. For reliability and effectiveness in terms of delivery, we have to secure that talent, just as we need to secure the talent in Lancashire. It ought to be seen as a key part of the levelling-up agenda, not just for championing Lancashire, the north west and the border, and the north of England, but even for Derby North. I do not know what kind of next-generation nuclear fleet we are going to have, but Derby is going to be a key part if we choose to have small modular reactors, perhaps of the Rolls Royce design. I am sure we have a strong voice in Government championing the cause. It would be lovely to hear it a bit louder.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

Finally, but not least, Richard Graham. Just to say that we need to start the wind-ups at 3.28 pm at the latest.

15:14

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Betts. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies) on securing this debate and colleagues from around the House on joining in what might be called a celebration of nuclear, to which I know the Minister will respond positively.

My hon. Friend made absolutely clear his views of the future of civil nuclear fuel manufacturing in the UK at Springfields in his constituency, and made the case as strongly as any of us could have expected him to do, with a crucial role for Sizewell C. In the remaining minutes before the wind-ups, I want to touch on that crucial aspect of this debate, but then widen it fairly swiftly into the role of nuclear in the United Kingdom, as hon. Members have tended to do.

The crucial thing is that the case for nuclear has to be restated again and again, because it has not always been clear that this Parliament has supported it. Whereas nuclear energy itself has continued to deliver consistently throughout the past 60 years, political views have ebbed considerably over that time.

Ultimately, although the 103,000 jobs and important supply chains are clearly vital to the economy, that is not the fundamental reason why we need nuclear, which is, in summary, the only proven low-carbon power that does not raise emissions, even in extreme weather. Over the past 60 years, it has consistently delivered more than 20% of the UK’s electricity needs. We know that those needs will rise so it is crucial that we plan for the future. If the criticism of democracy is sometimes that we only think in terms of five-year election cycles, it is vital that nuclear is the exception to that short-term thinking.

I listened with interest to the thoughtful comments made by the hon. Member for Preston (Sir Mark Hendrick) about the sector about which he knows so much—engineering, nuclear and skills—but the fact is that unfortunately his own party’s failure to do anything for the best part of a decade led to a loss of skills, the sale of British Energy and our dependence thereafter on foreign investment and skills. Much has changed since 2010, of course. Crucially, with the construction at Hinkley Point, we have the opportunity for the first time in a very long time to build up domestic skills, which can then continue at Sizewell C. I hope very much that the Minister will indicate that there will be further opportunities in the future to build additional nuclear power stations, thus taking on the skills from generation to generation, reducing the cost, increasing our skills, possibly enabling us to become exporters of skills again, and reducing our dependency on foreign skills.

The mood music at the moment is encouraging. None the less, I understand that the 18 GW proposal at Sizewell C has not yet reached financial agreement. Anything the Minister can say on that would be welcome. Meanwhile, we have all been slightly sidetracked by the huge opportunities in renewable energy, not least offshore wind and the sector I have spent a lot of time on—marine energy. I encourage all hon. Members who are supporters of nuclear to look at what is being achieved by Orbital Marine Power off Orkney in the north of Scotland. It is a remarkable generation of marine energy. In a sense, all that complements what we can do with nuclear, because it opens another great opportunity, which is to generate hydrogen at or very close to our nuclear power stations. I would welcome it if the Minister commented on what progress we might make on that over the next two or three years.

My constituency of Gloucester has been the nuclear operational headquarters for British Energy and now EDF Energy for a long time, operating all the existing nuclear power stations in Britain. Of course, we hope to take our nuclear skills in a new and different direction with a bid to become the hub, at Oldbury and Berkeley, for the development of nuclear fusion. We are very keen to see the operation at Barnwood play a major role in the development of Sizewell C. As colleagues have mentioned, the opportunities for skills, careers and well-paid jobs in a sector that is so vital to everything we do is enormous.

Can the Minister give us any update on Sizewell C? When will the Government consider the next project thereafter and how fast we can take forward the development of hydrogen at our nuclear power stations? I hope that my comments supplement and complement what colleagues from around Westminster Hall have said in support of a sector that is so vital to our future.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

We now move on to the Front-Bench speeches. We have slightly more than the normal 10 minutes. We will allow two minutes for the mover of the debate to wind up at the end, so you have about 12 minutes. You do not have to take that time, of course. I call Alan Brown of the SNP.

15:20

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

Thank you, Mr Betts. Thank you for your guidance. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I have a funny feeling that it might not be a pleasure for other hon. Members to listen to my contribution, because, not for the first time, I might be presenting a minority and contrary view in the room. That said, I congratulate the hon. Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies) on initiating the debate. It is only right that an MP fights to retain and create jobs within his or her constituency. He has been ably supported in that by the hon. Members for Preston (Sir Mark Hendrick), for Bolton West (Chris Green), for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) and by—from the adjacent constituency—the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), as well as the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham).

It is clear that Springfields has been an important employer through the years, with highly skilled jobs that are well paid. It is clearly very important to the north-west region of England, which I appreciate. However, if we are looking forward, when we consider the need for the production of nuclear fuel within the UK, we need to look at the strategic picture. In that strategic picture, we have to ask whether nuclear energy is required at all.

Even more important, we need to understand the cost and risks of nuclear energy and the state of the nuclear energy generation market. There are too many false narratives from the nuclear industry, though it is very successful at lobbying. Briefings from EDF argue that it is the only proven reliable low-carbon technology—many hon. Members have said that today—but, by way of an example, last year, Scotland generated 97% of the equivalent of its electricity demand from renewable energy.

Looking ahead to Sizewell, EDF argues that, with Sizewell being a copy of Hinkley Point C, there will be cost savings in that building. That might be the case design-wise, but there are different access and construction logistics to consider at Sizewell and the fact that it is still mired in the planning and environmental impact assessments, before it can proceed on to detailed design, means that nothing is certain in terms of cost at Sizewell.

It is also nonsense to say that these projects are cost-comparable with other technologies. The reality is that Hinkley Point C has a strike rate of £92.50 per megawatt-hour, for a 35-year concession contract, compared with offshore wind, which now comes in at £40 per megawatt-hour for just a 15-year concession contract. At the moment, nuclear is roughly four or five times more expensive than onshore and offshore wind. Even if the Government agree a regulated asset base funding model for Sizewell, that will not account for such a cost differential.

[Chris Green]

I do not want to debate whether the hon. Gentleman ought to approve of nuclear, but there is a question about the reliance on wind or solar panels. Perhaps there is a surge or abundance of energy at one point, but if at night we have high pressure and no wind, how do we power things at that point? At the moment we would typically be reliant on gas or coal. What will the source of power be in those times?

[Alan Brown]

I will come on to that. The hon. Gentleman himself touched on carbon capture and storage. It has not been proven at scale yet, but it is nearly there. We are looking at hydrogen. The Government have their own hydrogen production targets, as have the Scottish Government. Hydrogen can clearly be used from storage. The regulatory regime should be changed for the capacity market so that storage can be collocated with renewables and used to access the capacity market. The Electricity Act 1989 should be changed so that electricity released from storage is not double charged as a generator, which happens at the moment. There are other things in terms of Government strategy and regulation that would help advance the situation.

[Chris Green]

It is not quite the same as nuclear fusion, which is always 50 years away—or that is what is always said. On the other technologies, be it battery storage or carbon capture and storage, is there any certainty about the dates when these will become viable technologies?

[Alan Brown]

I have to admit that there is not absolute certainty, but it is predicted that the first key carbon capture and storage plant could be up and running before another nuclear power station will be constructed. We are getting very close to the final investment decisions on these carbon capture and storage plants. That in itself will give the market an indication of where that is going. We will be looking at the next year or two for the final investment decisions.

Turning to the recent history of the nuclear sector in the UK, it is obvious there has been a market failure as well as a failure of Government strategy. Clearly, that has impacted Springfields in the demand for nuclear fuel. Hinkley point C is the most expensive nuclear project in the world. When the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) became Prime Minister, she threatened a U-turn on this project, but then caved in and signed the deal anyway. The cost for Hinkley is now estimated at £22.5 billion, which is an increase of 25% on the estimated cost when the deal was signed. The Government tell us that cost increases are tied up in the risk and that EDF carries that burden. The reality is that no company can afford losses of £4.5 billion or 25% of the original cost estimates, so electricity bill payers must be paying for it somewhere along the line.

The sign-off for Hinkley was supposed to send signals to the market to allow other sites to be developed to generate competition and bring down prices. Since then, we know that Toshiba has walked away from developing Moorside and Hitachi pulled out of Wylfa and Oldbury. The good news for us electricity bill payers is that £50 billion to £60 billion of expenditure has not been committed. From a UK Government perspective, that should have been the realisation that their nuclear aspirations were in tatters. Unfortunately for Springfields, that is three pipeline projects that they could have accessed now lost. Worse, Hinkley point C is now predicted to come online in June 2026 instead of 2025, but it is a possible 15 months away on top of that, so it could be September 2027 before unit 1 of Hinkley comes online. We will have to bear in the mind that the European Pressurised Water Reactors system has still not been shown to be successful. Flamanville in France is expected to generate in 2024—12 years late. Finland’s project is due to come on to the grid next year, but that is 13 years late.

[Sir Mark Hendrick]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Alan Brown]

I have to watch my time, I apologise. I can come back maybe. Taishan in China was held up as an exemplar when it went online, but it has now been taken offline because of safety concerns. If China General Nuclear Power Corporation is involved at Hinkley and the consortium for Sizewell, the fact that Taishan has got safety concerns should be ringing alarm bells for the Government. We talk about energy security, but the reality is that we have a reliance on France’s state-owned company EDF and on China’s state-owned company China General Nuclear Power Corporation. That kind of blows our energy security argument. I have not heard any answers alternative to that in here.

[Sir Mark Hendrick]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Alan Brown]

Very briefly.

[Sir Mark Hendrick]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He consistently mentions France. President Macron recently said that by generating more than 41% of the energy in France, “nuclear makes us autonomous”. Macron also said,

“It preserves French purchasing power, with a kilowatt-hour 40% cheaper than our European neighbours.”

[Alan Brown]

That is what Macron said worked for France. In actual fact we are helping France by paying EDF, effectively helping to subsidise the French nuclear market, so that does not make sense to me. It is by the by. We will also have interconnectors coming from the EU, including France, that do not pay grid charges. In the north of Scotland Scottish renewable energies pay the grid charges, so French nuclear energy comes here at no charge, whereas Scottish renewables have to pay charges to connect the grid. The actual system is not thought through properly and that is why we need a much better strategic look at things.

Going back to the timeframe before Hinkley is operational, it is certain that seven of the existing eight nuclear power stations will be offline, because we know that the advanced gas reactor stations are all closing earlier than planned. We heard that Dungeness went offline seven years early. Four more stations will go offline in the next three years. Nobody is going to bet on Torness and Heysham making it to 2030. The existing market demand for nuclear fuel production in the UK all but ends before Hinkley comes on stream. That is why it is so critical to think about and debate the future of Springfields.

That is why, for me, the UK Government should have a nuclear diversification or transition policy to help to save jobs or create new jobs as alternatives. We have the North sea transition deal; why not something similar for nuclear? Communities all over the UK have financially benefited from the jobs created by nuclear, but they need replacement jobs. These communities need to be supported, not left behind. That is what I suggest the Government need to look at.

We hear that Hinckley has created a lot of jobs, but a £22 billion project should create thousands of jobs. It is not difficult with that level of expenditure. If we look at the £20 billion that the Government may commit to Sizewell, I would argue that this money could be better spent in creating other jobs UK-wide. We are truly world leading in wave and tidal energy development, and floating offshore is getting there. Why not invest in the future? As I said earlier, hydrogen development is getting close to a commercial reality. These considerations need to be part of that transition.

The nuclear baseload argument is an outdated concept. That was confirmed by the former chief executive of the National Grid in 2015. Can the Minister confirm that taking these existing nuclear stations offline will not increase the risk of the lights going out? Moreover, going forward, a report by Good Energy and the Energy System Catapult has demonstrated that net zero can be achieved without the need for new nuclear. I suggest that the Minister needs to look at that.

Although we hear about renewables and fluctuations, large-scale nuclear is inflexible. Indeed, having more large-scale nuclear in tandem with renewables is a problem. That is why we have the constraint payments for renewables as well. I refute the arguments about baseload and energy security. I am not sure that the future is therefore nuclear, in the way that we keep hearing, because that argument has not held up to date. I ask the Government to revisit their strategy, please support these communities around the UK, and look at diversification and a fair transition.

15:32

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

We have had a good debate this afternoon, with some good contributions from hon. Members, on the subject of Springfields nuclear fuels. I congratulate the hon. Member for—

[Mark Menzies]

Fylde

[Dr Whitehead]

I congratulate the hon. Member on securing what is an important debate, not just for the future of the plant in his constituency, which we are talking about this afternoon, but for the wider question of our strategic future, when we look at the future of nuclear at all.

I do not want to be a party pooper, but this debate is about Springfields nuclear fuels. There is a lot I could say about all sorts of things, such as the role of hydrogen in the economy and whether, when the wind does not blow very well, other forms of thermal power may be needed. However, we need to concentrate our minds not on the future of our entire nuclear programme, but on Springfields nuclear fuels. What is unique about Springfields nuclear fuels is that it has single-handedly held up the entire UK nuclear programme for four or five decades now. It has provided pretty much all the fuel for the Magnox systems. It now provides the fuel for advanced gas-cooled reactors, and it should hopefully be able to provide the fuel for the new nuclear power stations coming on stream.

The role of fuel is usually unsung, but it is crucial to the whole process of nuclear power. There is a popular perception, which I am sure is not shared among hon. Members here, that using nuclear fuels means finding some uranium, enriching it a bit and sticking it in a pot to make the energy. That is very far from the truth. It is a highly skilled operation, requiring intensely developed engineering skills, which are involved in making the rods and the pellets, which must have the right specification and order for the particular form of nuclear reactor for which they are being made.

There is also a whole load of ancillary activities, some of which have been mentioned, such as the reprocessing of uranium to go back into the rods. That is another very highly skilled enterprise, far from the perception of this being a pretty simple journeyman activity that anyone can do. No, not anyone can do it. In the case of the UK, there is only one company that can do it—Springfields nuclear fuels. We need to see Springfields nuclear fuels not just as part of the nuclear landscape generally, but as a vital national strategically important component of whatever our nuclear programme was and whatever it will be.

It should be a cause of enormous alarm for hon. Members if there are suggestions that somehow this strategically important national asset will either be downgraded or lost in the not too distant future. There is a very real prospect of that because, as hon. Members have said, despite its crucial and honourable history backing up the nuclear industry in the way that it has, it is finding it difficult to get contracts for the continuation of its excellent production activities. I think there was some work recently for the Norwegian nuclear corporations, but there is a real gap in what is coming up—what we know will be an important requirement, particularly of Hinkley C and certainly of Sizewell C when they eventually come on stream. There is a substantial gap between that time and now. There is a real prospect, therefore, of that company—which is owned by Westinghouse, a private US company with no great feeling for UK national strategic interests—dying, not for lack of praise but for lack of an immediate future between new nuclear and modular nuclear reactors coming on and where we stand now.

[Alan Brown]

What kind of timescale does the hon. Gentleman envisage for small modular reactors or even Sizewell C coming on stream?

[Dr Whitehead]

The hon. Gentleman himself mentioned that Hinkley C is coming on stream in 2026—maybe even later than that. I will come to the arrival of Sizewell C in a moment, which is probably at the heart of his questions, should we develop modular nuclear reactors that are even further off.

[Sir Mark Hendrick]

When does my hon. Friend think that carbon capture and storage will be done at any significant scale in this country?

[Dr Whitehead]

I try to set myself a self-denying ordinance of not straying too far into wider issues such as firm power, but I would say that carbon capture and storage is very well developed already, and is up and running. I have actually been to see a carbon capture and storage plant operating at full scale in Canada.

However, it is not a question of whether carbon capture and storage can actually do the work, and it is not that the technology has not been developed to make carbon capture and storage perform the entire chain of activities—sequestration, storage, transport, and so on. It can do all those well and at scale; that has already been proven. It is a question of how quickly we can develop carbon capture and storage and put it into operations, so that it works from the day they start, with carbon capture and storage on the back of them, rather than developing operations that are carbon capture and storage-ready, but where carbon capture and storage is not on the back of that process. That is really a question of planning and investment, more than anything else, but it needs to be done in the right place at the right time. That is the end of my diversion.

The issue for Springfields nuclear fuel, therefore, is that there is clearly a substantial valley of death before what Springfields can reasonably expect for its work for the future. If we leave it at that, it is inevitable that, even if it eventually survives that gap and comes through well in the end, that may well be at the cost of all the skills in that organisation and most of the workforce; and, at a time when Springfields’ services absolutely will be required in the national interest, its ability to spring back may well have expired in the meantime.

As a country, we cannot let that happen. I therefore congratulate the unions, Prospect and Unite, for campaigning strongly for that view of Springfields as a company. It is beholden on the Government to take that view as seriously as the workforce do—and, I think, all of us in this Chamber do—in their responses and reactions to this particular issue.

When looking at the nuclear sector deal that was signed in 2018, I was interested by this statement from the Government on securing fuel capabilities:

“We will work with the UK nuclear fuel industry to ensure continued, commercial operation of their facilities and secure the long-term future of these important UK strategic national assets to deliver future energy security as well as ensuring the UK nuclear fuel industry continues to deliver long-term UK economic benefit”.

That is what they committed themselves to in the nuclear sector deal. However, as far as I know, nothing has yet been done about that.

Therefore, my first question to Government is: does the Minister intend that that nuclear sector deal commitment will actually be carried out? Are the Government looking seriously at ways in which Springfields nuclear fuels can be properly supported during this period of its existence and assured of remaining in existence as we move to whatever the next stage of our UK nuclear programme is?

My second issue is also important. Are the Government serious about moving on the programme for the already existing nuclear facilities and bringing in arrangements to give greater certainty on the development of Sizewell C? I refer to what hon. Members have also mentioned this afternoon: the regulated asset base arrangement or similar. If the Government do not like that arrangement, an alternative could give certainty to the development of Sizewell C in the next period. As I am sure the Minister knows, there is a row going on between Departments about whether the regulated asset base should be introduced for Sizewell C. That needs resolving. Something needs to come out shortly to get that programme under way. That is also relevant to the future of Springfields nuclear fuels in the way I have described it this afternoon.

I have two direct questions for the Minister, both relating to the future of Springfields nuclear fuels, which we want to see secured. We want to make sure that the Government play a full role in securing that future, so that we can say that that national asset is in good shape and in good hands. In passing, there is a question mark about the future ownership of Springfields nuclear fuels. As a national asset, perhaps it should be a Government agency, so that we can secure its activities for the future in a way that befits its importance to the country.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

If the Minister could allow a minute at the end for the mover of the motion to comment, that would be helpful.

15:47

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Amanda Solloway)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies) for securing today’s really important debate and my parliamentary colleagues for expressing their support for the UK’s nuclear sector and future.

I will start by reaffirming the strategic importance of maintaining our sovereign fuel manufacturing capability, as set out in the 2018 nuclear sector deal. As many hon. Members have said, the UK is a world leader in the nuclear fuel cycle, which is a testament to the highly skilled workforce currently employed at the Springfields and Capenhurst sites and in the wider UK supply chain. Maintaining and developing that skilled workforce will be critical to delivering our net zero ambitions. I welcome the Westinghouse launch of the clean energy technology park last year. Such commercial ventures support collaboration and low-carbon research. Development and business are central to the UK’s transition to net zero. I am aware of the short-term challenges facing the Springfields site as the UK’s advanced gas-cooled reactor fleet retires. However, as we look forward to the 2030s, I agree with my hon. Friend that the site could and should have a bright future. That leads me to the Government’s commitment to nuclear power.

The 2020 energy White Paper sets out our vision for the transformation of our energy system, continuing to break the dependency on fossil fuels and moving homes and businesses to clean energy solutions. We have not yet made the full transition away from coal, let alone decarbonised our energy system, but “The Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution” highlighted the key role of nuclear power in delivering the deep decarbonisation of our electricity system alongside renewables and other technologies.

This is an exciting time for the nuclear industry. This Government are clear that nuclear has an important role to play in decarbonising the electricity system, and in meeting carbon budget 6 and net zero targets. In the energy White Paper and “The Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution”, this Government committed to advancing large, small and advanced nuclear projects as part of our future low-carbon energy mix, heralding what my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde called a golden age of new nuclear across the regions and nations of the UK, thereby contributing to the levelling-up agenda.

That includes at least one large-scale nuclear project, and in December 2020 we announced that negotiations with EDF on Sizewell C had begun. Those negotiations are already well under way. Moreover, as the Secretary of State has said in the House, we will bring forward legislation in this Parliament that will further commit us to creating more nuclear power in this country.

[Alan Brown]

What does the Minister think is a realistic timescale for our Government agreeing a deal with EDF on Sizewell C?

[Amanda Solloway]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question, and I will come on to that issue later.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) noted, nuclear could have a role in beyond grid applications such as low-carbon hydrogen production. Last month, we published the UK’s first ever hydrogen strategy, confirming our support for low-carbon hydrogen production across the United Kingdom. In addition, we have announced up to £385 million in the advanced nuclear fund to invest in the next generation of nuclear technologies, with an ambition to employ small modular reactors and to develop an advanced modular reactor demonstrator as early as the 2030s.

I also recognise the importance of developing our fuel-manufacturing capabilities to support these ambitions. My Department, in co-operation with the National Nuclear Laboratory, has delivered a £46 million advanced fuel cycle programme, aiming to develop world-leading skills and capabilities in advanced fuels and recycling. Recently, we announced a short extension to the programme, which will focus on advanced nuclear fuels for use in small and advanced modular reactors. The programme has been delivered at the National Nuclear Laboratory facility located on the Springfields site in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde.

I will also touch on the Government’s levelling-up agenda. We remain committed to addressing the economic disparities across the whole of the United Kingdom. The civil nuclear supply chain is playing an important role, currently supporting over 59,000 jobs across the United Kingdom in the areas where high-skilled, high-value jobs are needed most, including, for example, in the north of England and north Wales. As we develop the next generation of nuclear technologies, with the emphasis on high-quality manufacturing, I agree with the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) that it would be excellent if the skilled workforce in Northern Ireland could play a part in that process.

I was delighted to hear that nearly 2,000 apprenticeships have been delivered on the Springfields site over the last 70 years. These kinds of training opportunities benefit not just the site and its workforce but the surrounding communities. Westinghouse and Springfields Fuels Ltd should be proud of their impressive achievement.

We keenly anticipate the outputs of the trial of the advanced nuclear skills and innovation campus at the Springfields site, which the hon. Member for Preston (Sir Mark Hendrick) drew attention to. We hope to see the successful collaboration between industry, academia and the National Nuclear Laboratory to support skills development. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Chris Green) rightly pointed out, the objective should be to create careers, not just jobs.

As previously mentioned, the Government recognise the importance of maintaining and developing a strong nuclear skills base in the United Kingdom. I am aware of the plans for redundancies on the Springfields site this year. My Department has been working with Westinghouse, the National Nuclear Laboratory and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority to explore opportunities to support the workforce on the Springfields site. We will also continue to encourage vendors and developers to maximise their UK supply chain content, including fuel, wherever that is possible, in order to support the economic growth of the UK nuclear sector’s supply chain.

Finally, I will reflect once more on the strategic importance of our sovereign fuel manufacturing capability and on the ability of the United Kingdom, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West reminded us, to provide cost-effective support to reduce our reliance on imports, which may have a bigger carbon footprint. This Government would like to see the UK continuing to pioneer nuclear technologies in the lead-up to net zero. Our success will be underpinned by the capacity of our civil nuclear supply chain, including fuel manufacture. We are already considering, along with operators, fuel producers and the research and development community, how best to meet the needs of future nuclear power stations, including the opportunities provided by small and advanced modular reactors.

We also continue to work closely with our nuclear fuel industry and trade unions via the nuclear fuel working group, as noted by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard), to explore ways to secure the industry’s future. Those discussions are wide ranging, and I understand that EDF and Framatome are actively involved. Further Government support is under review as a part of the spending review. Further communications on the subject can be expected following the settlement.

In the meantime, the nuclear fuel working group that we have set up will meet again this month and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys said, it is important that we continue the dialogue and make sure that opportunities and ideas are given proper consideration. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Business, Energy and Clean Growth is taking a very active interest in this important issue.

The Government have made a clear commitment to nuclear as part of our future low-carbon energy mix. The UK’s success in achieving our net zero ambitions will be underpinned by the critical work carried out in the civil nuclear supply chain. We will continue to work with the nuclear industry to maintain our sovereign capability and the benefits that it brings for the local workforce and surrounding communities.

15:56

[Mark Menzies]

I begin by thanking you, Mr Betts, for the way in which you have chaired today’s very important debate. I also thank colleagues on both sides of the House for the very constructive way in which they have contributed to today’s debate, particularly the hon. Member for Preston (Sir Mark Hendrick), my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard), the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), my hon. Friends the Members for Bolton West (Chris Green) and for Gloucester (Richard Graham), and of course both Opposition spokespeople for their very important contributions.

I thank the Minister for her very thoughtful reply to today’s debate. There are many audiences who are listening. There are investors who are looking potentially to invest in the UK, and they will take some heart from what she has said. There is the workforce and the trade unions, which are concerned about their jobs, and they will have heard a clear commitment from the Minister and the Government to work in a constructive way to secure a future for Springfields and invest in the next generation of nuclear reactors, which obviously will be fuelled in the UK. There are also those who are involved in the nuclear working group, and of course EDF are key partners in that.

I encourage all parties to work, in the days and weeks ahead, in a constructive way, with one mission: what do we have to do to secure jobs and skills at Springfields, and what do we have to do to get key decisions taken in a timely way to secure that plant’s future and ensure that we have the bright nuclear future that all of us are confident that we can have?

Next week is nuclear week in Parliament, and there will be many events throughout the course of the week. We have got that off to a fabulous start today. We have certainly made the case for Springfields, but the work will continue.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered continued nuclear fuel manufacturing in the UK.

Affordable Housing in the South-West

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Westminster Hall

15:59

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

Before we start the debate, I have to advise Members, in line with recommendations from the Government guidance and that of the House of Commons Commission, that they are encouraged to wear masks when they are not speaking and to give proper space to each other when seated or leaving the Chamber; that Members’ notes should be passed to Hansard by email; and that officials should communicate with Ministers electronically. That is the advice that I have to give, so I have given it.

Before I invite David Warburton to move the motion, are any other Members intending to speak in the debate? No? Obviously, Members can intervene, if their intervention is taken, but they can speak only with the mover’s permission.

16:00

[David Warburton (Somerton and Frome) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the supply of affordable, good quality housing in the South West.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Minister, and indeed to Members from the south-west, for being here for this important and timely debate. I would also like to put on the record my thanks to the House staff for making this debate possible on the very first day of our welcome return to Westminster Hall proceedings.

I have been contacted by many constituents, across a kaleidoscope of different jobs and situations, who are struggling to get on to the housing ladder. I hope that this debate will show the extent to which good quality, affordable housing is needed in the south-west, and that we will be able to highlight some practical solutions for addressing this issue. Of course, it is particularly important at the moment, when the pandemic has hit people’s finances and house prices are rising quickly: house prices in the south-west have risen by an average 8.4% in the past year. The pandemic has led to an explosion in home working, which itself has accelerated the flight from cities to rural areas as homeowners rethink their lifestyles. Some areas in my constituency have seen house prices rise by more than 20%, so far too many people, especially young people, have little chance of owning their own home, and the supply of truly affordable homes is just not sufficient to meet that demand.

I believe that everybody deserves a place to call their own: a place for families to raise children, and for people to build lives. As such, I very much welcome the efforts of this Government, and the success of Homes England, in trying to make home ownership more accessible to more people. At the last election, we pledged to level up every part of the United Kingdom through investment in infrastructure, skills and jobs, and by reducing health inequalities. There has been some great progress so far, but there is still much more to do, especially when it comes to housing in the rural south-west. I stood on a manifesto that committed us to building at least 1 million more homes over the course of this Parliament, and in Somerton and Frome, house building will be critical to the long-term recovery from the pandemic and addressing the generational gap in home ownership.

[Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on having secured this important and timely debate. Over many years there has been an incredible increase in demand for housing in the south-west, including, I am sure, in his constituency. Does he share my view that it is impossible to build enough houses to meet the demand, and that we have to take other measures to intervene in the market to manage the demand for houses as well as the supply?

[David Warburton]

My hon. Friend makes a tremendously apposite point. It is a very good point indeed. The answer is yes, we do: the demand is such that the supply is always going to be vastly outstripped by it, so we need to look at other measures. I hope that when the planning Bill comes forward, it will help us towards that route and show that there are other opportunities out there.

The region’s job market has been among the worst hit by the pandemic, sitting alongside the rocketing house prices that I have mentioned, with affordability only expected to worsen. That means overcrowding, homelessness and a generation of young people unable to move out of their parents’ home or live near their workplace.

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this very important and timely debate. Does he agree that part of the problem is that there seems to be a culture of Members of Parliament across the House instinctively opposing planning applications for new homes? It seems to be in the DNA of some of them. In fact, we should get excited, especially as Conservatives, and be enthusiastic about the opportunity, aspiration and hope that a new home provides. Obviously, we have a very great social need.

[David Warburton]

My hon. Friend makes a tremendously good point. It is important that planning applications are seen in the round. As I will go on to describe, we need to maintain the beauty and special qualities of our rural towns and villages, while at the same time providing the homes that people so badly need.

In 2019-20, the total housing stock in England increased by about 244,000 homes. The number of new homes each year has indeed been growing for several years, but still not quickly enough to meet the demand. Estimates put the number of new homes needed at up to 345,000 per year. That means 42,000 new homes are needed each year in the south-west alone, and yet we are building fewer than half the homes required to plug the gap. We must do more, not only to match supply to demand but crucially to ensure that new homes are genuinely affordable and built where they are needed most—and, yes, that does mean protecting our rural villages from overdevelopment.

As Mrs Thatcher said, borrowing the words of the Scottish Unionist Noel Skelton, Britain should be a “property-owning democracy”. Back in the 1960s, when the Government were building more than 300,000 new houses a year, that ambition was achievable, but the same is not true today. Annual supply needs to increase by a further 23% by the mid-2020s to meet the Government’s own housing target, and by another 39% to reach the National Housing Federation’s recommendations.

There is general agreement that we need more homes, but there is less agreement, both in politics and in the housing industry, about how best to achieve that step change. I believe that there are three key areas where the Government and industry can work together to meet housing need. The first is public sector land reform. Priority for public land sales should change from maximising cash to the provision of public housing.

Secondly, we must adequately invest in building new affordable and sustainable homes where they are needed, creating jobs across construction and the supply chain and building the confidence of consumers, investors and developers. The recent £8.6 billion funding allocation from the affordable homes programme is a good start, but it does not cover the long-term funding gap and the structural barriers that have to be addressed.

Thirdly, there needs to be greater flexibility in the delivery of affordable homes. The most effective way to do that would be for the Government to allow developers to decide what tenure their homes should be on completion of a property so that we generate solutions that respond to the latest local need and allow the building of the right homes to continue in all economic conditions.

[Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate. Does he agree that in coastal constituencies such as mine, it is about not just building homes but the people living in those homes? At least one in five new properties becomes an Airbnb or a second home, and we are increasingly looking at ghost towns in the winter. We need to address that in the planning Bill.

[David Warburton]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The growth of second homes that are rented out and do not become family homes is a problem throughout the south-west. That is precisely the opposite of what we require, so I could not agree more.

I hope that the reforms in the forthcoming planning Bill will have a significant impact on that and much else, and a positive one on housing delivery. There is anxiety in rural Somerset, where we suffer from predatory applications by developers. Our current planning system has too much bureaucracy and too little engagement with local communities, and too much advantage is given to large property developers to the detriment of local businesses and our town and village communities.

The way to address the housing shortage is through developing brownfield sites and easing the process determining change of use designations, rather than through giving an automatic zoned presumption in favour and removing mechanisms for democratic oversight.

There also needs to be greater clarity in the three land categories, with stronger safeguards against unwanted development. The permission in principle approach must be improved, with a final say from our local planning authorities, to protect our communities. I look forward to the Bill being published and will look at it closely, because at the heart of planning are the homes we live in, the schools for our children and the protection of our countryside.

This debate is about the entire south-west region, but across most of Somerset there is a particular and urgent issue preventing almost all new housing delivery. Somerset is in the midst of a phosphate neutrality crisis, which is preventing housing development and creating a significant backlog. This issue, which relates to the protection of the Somerset moors and levels under the Ramsar convention, is costing the Somerset economy millions of pounds and derailing house building in our county. However, it is also of broader national importance, with nutrient issues affecting 34 local authorities in England, delaying the construction of 30,000 to 40,000 homes at the last count.

The publication of a phosphorous budget calculator, which has been approved by Natural England, is a positive step, but the issue very much still rumbles on. In the short term, it looks as though Somerset would benefit from the development of a phosphorous trading auction platform, like that being trialled for nitrates in the Solent, to give small and medium-sized developers a mechanism to provide mitigation. I know that efforts in this area are already under way, but providing mitigation typically involves nature-based projects that take land from agricultural production. This land-hungry approach would negatively impact the farming industry and be slow to become operational. In Somerset, for example, the construction of a colossal 630 hectares of wetland would be needed to offset the 11,000 homes currently delayed across the four affected local authorities. It can take at least three years to construct an established wetland and assess its effectiveness before anyone would be able to move into their new homes, creating more delay and worsening the local housing crisis.

It appears that the more expedient solution is rapid capital investment in sewage treatment works to capture nutrients closer to the source before they enter our watercourses and reducing the mitigation required for new developments. I would ask the Minister to work closely with his colleagues in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, as I am sure he is doing, to find a solution to this problem as a matter of urgency.

The south-west has suffered from a historical fiscal concentration on London and the south-east, alongside soaring house prices, so if we are to rebalance our economy and properly level up, investment in genuinely affordable housing will be key. I am ready to work with groups such as Homes for the South West, a coalition of the south-west’s largest housing associations, to help to facilitate that and generate not just new homes but the jobs and investment that our region and communities need so urgently.

16:13

[The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts; we normally meet in other circumstances—equally pleasurable, I may say. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (David Warburton), who is a determined and doughty campaigner for his constituents, on securing this debate and on seeing so many colleagues here from the south-west, including my hon. Friends the Members for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti), for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) and for North Devon (Selaine Saxby), as well as an interloper from Oxfordshire, my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell), who is never knowingly under-represented. It is very good to see them all here in this important debate.

The Government are committed to increasing the supply of affordable housing. We have been doing that since 2010. We have delivered some 542,000 new affordable homes in that time, including 382,000 affordable homes for rent, of which 149,000 are homes for social rent. In the south-west, an area that my colleagues know well, we have delivered over 83,000 new affordable homes, including 25,800 affordable homes for ownership and nearly 55,000 affordable homes for rent, so we are committed to driving up affordable home ownership.

We all know that the housing sector is a bellwether in our country for our economy and growth. That is why we have done all we can to keep the industry, more than any other sector, open and active during the pandemic. It is also why we are investing £12 billion in affordable housing—the largest investment since 2010—and that includes £11.5 billion in our affordable homes programme, which will deliver, economic conditions permitting, 180,000 new homes across the country. Approximately half of those will be for affordable home ownership, supporting aspirant homeowners, as my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome made clear should be a Government priority. It will also double the number of social rented homes, with around 32,000 supplied through this programme.

We have already made significant progress with the programme. Just last week we announced the first allocations for strategic partnerships under the programme, committing around £8.5 billion to boost home ownership and build homes that the country needs, including more social and affordable rental homes. In the south-west we are placing more than £1 billion—one of the largest allocations—to deliver 17,500 new affordable homes across the region. We are confident that that investment will support our determination, not just to build more homes but build more homes of the right type in the right places for local people.

We know that in the end that it is not just about supply, it is about quality. Most of us want to live in strong communities, with a unique character, heritage and culture, that is reflected in the buildings, streets, neighbourhoods, parks and places in which we pass our daily lives. The national planning policy framework has been amended to make it easier for residents and planners to embrace beautiful, practical design, while rejecting the ugly, unsustainable and that of poor quality.

An expectation has been set that all councils should develop a local design code—an illustrated design guide that sets the standard for a local area—with input from local people. We have published a national model design code, a toolkit to empower councils and local people to set these standards. In addition to the changes that Government are making to improve design quality in the current planning system, we believe design performs a key component of the fundamental changes that we have set out in the “Planning for the Future” White Paper. I will say a little more about that in a moment.

We are also committed to improving the energy performance of all properties, not just new build, not only because it will help us achieve our ambitions to reduce emissions as well as reduce fuel poverty, but because warm homes mean healthier homes. The data published by the English housing survey on the condition and the energy efficiency of homes show a marked increase in the energy performance certificate ratings of houses across England over the past 10 years, reflecting the continuous improvement of energy efficiency across our housing stock.

Since 2009, the percentage of homes with an energy performance certificate rating of C or higher in the south-west has nearly doubled. That is a success of which we can be truly proud. From 2025, homes built to the future homes standard will be expected to have at least 75% lower carbon emissions and be zero-carbon ready, without the need for expensive retrofitting. That is no easy task, but it is vital if we are to keep up the momentum. It will mean better quality homes, and homes that are of a higher energy efficiency standard, and it will mean homes that will not have to be changed further as our electricity grid changes and improves.

My hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome mentioned levelling up. As we all know, that is at the heart of the Government’s agenda. We are committed to raising productivity and growth in all places, increasing opportunity for everyone and improving public services. That is why, alongside the investment through the affordable homes programme, the Government are investing over £400 million to support levelling up in the south-west, through the getting building fund, the future high streets fund, and the towns fund. From Glastonbury to Penzance, we are investing in infrastructure to improve everyday life.

In the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome, we are investing £800,000 in the Bruton enterprise centre—I suspect that he knows this as well as I—to provide modern high-quality office and light industrial space to help the next generation of small and medium-sized enterprises to grow and thrive, and to give his local community jobs and income commensurate with their desire to have good homes that they can afford to live in. Slightly further afield, his constituents will also benefit from the Yeovil western corridor, which is supporting the delivery of 1,160 much-needed homes for local people, and about 1,670 new jobs. We want people across places to feel that they can get on in their lives in their local areas, and we want people in places such as Somerton and Frome and the rest of the south west to have confidence that the Government are delivering their economic and social priorities.

My hon. Friend raised home ownership, and quoted Noel Skelton. This Government are as committed as Margaret Thatcher’s to helping to make the dream of home ownership a reality. We are operating a range of different schemes to achieve that. More than 734 households have been helped to purchase homes since spring 2010 by the Government-backed Help to Buy and right to buy schemes. We are now introducing First Homes, which will be sold to first-time buyers with a discount of at least 30% on full market value, making deposits and mortgage requirements cheaper and opening up the dream of home ownership to more people. The discount is set in perpetuity. It is passed on to future buyers, so the local community can benefit in the long term. When I say local community, I mean local community, because we know that local first-time buyers find it difficult to afford homes in the areas where they want to live and work.

Key workers can find themselves unable to live in the communities they serve, so crucially with new homes local authorities will be able to set local connections for key workers through the First Homes base criteria, based on the needs of their local communities. We will deliver 1,500 First Homes via a nationwide pilot, the first of which will be available towards the end of this year. Beyond that, we have introduced an expectation that a minimum of 25% of all affordable homes secured through developer contributions should be First Homes. That will deliver at scale 10,000 new first homes every year for local people to benefit from. We have also introduced a new type of exception site, so that sites wholly focused on delivering First Homes will be able to come forward for planning permission outside local plans. That means that in local communities where the ability to buy is challenging and communities are struggling there will be more opportunities to purchase homes.

My hon. Friend and others also raised second homes. We all recognise the benefits that second homes can bring to local economies. During the staycation of 2021, large parts of the south-west benefited from a lot of people coming to spend their money in the area, but I recognise that large numbers of second homes can have an adverse effect on some areas. That is why we have introduced a series of measures to help to mitigate those effects. In 2013, the Government removed the requirement for local authorities to offer a council tax discount on second homes. Some 96% of second home owners are currently charged at the full rate. That means that the owners of those properties will be paying 100% council tax, contributing fully to their local communities. In 2016, the Government introduced higher rates of stamp duty land tax for those purchasing additional properties at three percentage points above the current rate, which are part of the Government’s commitment to support first-time buyers.

I am very happy—in fact, keen—to discuss with colleagues other measures that we may sensibly employ to ensure that there are adequate homes available to local people in such a way that we are mindful of unintended, undesirable consequences, such as the increase in house prices. I am very happy to discuss those ideas with colleagues.

My hon. Friend also raised the issue of phosphates and asked that we work closely with DEFRA to deal with the challenge of nitrates and nitrate neutrality in developing the right number of homes in the right places for local people to enjoy. The Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) and I set up a taskforce between DEFRA and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to find short, medium and long-term solutions to the problem, such as providing nutrient neutrality calculators and better local catchment maps, provided by Natural England, as short-term measures to help local authorities plan ahead; medium-term measures, such as better waste water treatment; and longer term measures, such as changes in agricultural practices, to ensure that we reduce nitrate and phosphate issues to enable us to build the sorts of homes that we need to build. He is quite right that the issue affects significant numbers of potential planning applications, which has a negative consequence for local authorities in terms of council tax and fees forgone. It is an issue beyond the bricks and mortar that people want to live in.

I strongly share my hon. Friend’s passion for the supply of affordable, good quality housing for his constituents, the south-west and the rest of the country. It is a key priority for our Government. As I have said, we have made some real progress and continue to invest in the supply of new, good quality, affordable homes, but we must not be under any illusion that our work has stopped or can stop soon. We will continue to improve standards. We will continue to reform to ensure that good quality, healthier homes are delivered as fast as possible as we exit the pandemic. We have an ambitious housing agenda that underlines our determination to build the homes that the country needs, build back better, build back stronger and ensure that people in the south-west and in Somerton and Frome have the homes they want and deserve, so that they can have a great quality of life with their friends and families.

Question put and agreed to.

Global Britain: Human Rights and Climate Change

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Westminster Hall

14:30

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

I remind hon. Members that the guidance from the Government and the House of Commons Commission is that Members should wear masks when not speaking and give each other space both when sitting and when leaving the room. Members should give their notes to Hansard by email and officials should communicate with Ministers electronically as well. That is the guidance I have to pass on. We now move on to the matter in hand.

16:29

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Global Britain, human rights and climate change.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I am delighted to have secured this debate—a timely debate, given the circumstances—which will consider the interacting and integral relationship between the Government’s declared ambition for developing a global Britain, universal human rights and the ramifications of climate change, which are obviously global in their nature. I hope that today’s debate will further our shared hopes and wishes for the forthcoming COP26 summit, and that it will be a meaningful success. I think we all wish the Government well in that enterprise.

More than 20 years ago, the Government proposed the idea of what was then called an ethical dimension to foreign policy, famously announced by Robin Cook. I was a Member at the time and I remember Robin Cook on the steps of the Foreign Office declaring that there would be an ethical dimension to foreign policy, I suspect, to the dismay of some of his colleagues and possibly also to some of the professionally straight-faced officials standing behind him. I hope I am not being too sceptical in saying that.

That policy made it explicit that in the modern world

“foreign policy is not divorced from domestic policy but a central part of any political programme.”

Robin Cook said very clearly:

“Our foreign policy must have an ethical dimension and must support the demands of other peoples for the democratic rights on which we insist for ourselves.”

That must be the yardstick, must it not? What we would want for ourselves is what we would want for other people.

Those are fine words, and I do not need to entertain the Chamber with the outcome, or perhaps the lack of outcome. Tellingly, looking at the four priorities that Robin Cook outlined, I have picked out some words that give something of a flavour. He used words such as “security”, “disarmament”, “prosperity”, “exports” and “jobs”. He talked about improving the quality of life in the UK and the quality of our environment, and as I said a moment ago, said:

“Our foreign policy must have an ethical dimension”.

We can see the direction of travel in his remarks.

Looking at the present, with a commitment to delivering unparalleled socioeconomic change by achieving net zero by 2050, it is clear that domestic policy is, at least rhetorically, geared towards fighting climate change. Yet, the Government and UK foreign policy in general have unfortunately undermined the climate effort, tarnishing the UK’s international credibility and, in some instances, exacerbating rather than lessening the decarbonisation challenge.

I have to concede that many other countries are doing no better. There was a report today from the Clean Air Fund that noted that between 2019 and 2020, Governments in the world gave 20% more in overseas aid funding to fossil fuel projects than to programmes to cut air pollution, which those very projects cause. However, it is the Government who have delivered unprecedented cuts to our international aid budget. It is also the Government who have continued support for hydrocarbon projects that undermine our collective climate goals, and it is the Government who have largely missed the unique opportunity of being both the COP26 co-host and president of the G7. That challenge, which has largely been missed, is one of delivering leadership and securing climate action in a decade that will make or break our collective future. It is, indeed, an emergency.

From addressing climate change to the debacle in Afghanistan, it is quite clear that we must revisit the aims and the claims of global Britain, which is in the title of this debate. We must ask fundamental questions about what the UK Government’s foreign policy priorities are and how they intend to deliver them.

Against the backdrop of the climate crisis, rather than sending gunboats or aircraft carriers overseas, or securing some fairly marginal trade deals at present, the Government should revisit the notion of an ethical human rights-based foreign policy. By beginning with such a policy framework we can capture the human rights challenges posed by climate change; we can establish responsibility and frameworks for action. We can use existing international law and thus promote and enable collective buy-in by the global community. It is an extremely practical way to start.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate. I am glad he mentioned Afghanistan, because I believe it was a turning point for our thinking on global Britain, whatever than means. The US is going towards a more isolationist position, which leaves the UK somewhat stranded. The rational course of action is to improve our links with Europe, especially on security and defence. Does he share my concern that the incumbents of very important Ministries in Whitehall are probably the last people to rebuild those important bridges?

[Hywel Williams]

We are in danger of going off on somewhat of a tangent, but I agree with the hon. Gentleman. As far as our party was concerned, when the votes came in on the invasion of Afghanistan and the military action there, I was one of the 17 who voted against. I think I am the last person standing of that group. The point that we made at the time was that we should internationalise the response to the conflict by drawing in actors who were not involved in military action in the first place. That is a fine aim for action on climate change—drawing people in is obviously the way to do it, rather than sending gunboats.

The climate crisis has been described as the biggest threat to our survival as a species, and is already threatening human rights around the world. Rising global temperatures are driving unprecedented harmful effects, from drought to floods, rising sea levels to heat waves, extreme weather events and the collapse in biodiversity and all ecosystems. In both its scale and its devastation, climate change is the ultimate threat to the freedom and rights of human kind and to our environment—they all come together.

Most directly, environmental instability threatens basic human rights—the right to life, the right to health and the right to development. The World Health Organisation believes that between 2030 and 2050 alone, climate change will cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths every year. That is the scale of the effect. Those deaths will occur from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress—a multitude of effects with one overriding cause: climate change.

Life will be harder for millions of the most vulnerable people in the world, especially children. By 2040, one in four children—around 600 million—living in areas of extremely high water stress, will be vulnerable. The World Bank believes that an additional 100 million people could be impoverished by 2030 due just to climate change. The potential for increased migration is obvious, and our response needs to develop. In the short term, we have our strategies, debates and disputes, but we must look properly at development in-country and in neighbouring countries.

Other freedoms, including the right to self-determination and political freedom are also threatened. It is no surprise that in some of the countries which are most threatened by climate change there are the most despotic regimes and the most conflict, death and disease.

Rising sea levels, which take no account of sovereignty, so prized by the Government, now affect the very existence of several island countries. That is the scale of the problem. Conflict is made more likely by climate change, as I said a moment ago. In Syria, sustained drought brought about by changing weather patterns is widely seen to have been a substantial contributing factor to the brutal civil war there; a conflict that has claimed 500,000 lives and has already led to mass displacements and migration. I concede and congratulate the Government—the previous one, at least—on the huge spending that the UK made in response; there was 500 million almost immediately. That is certainly a very good thing but, again, it provides an idea of the scale of the problem.

I am glad that these dangers are recognised, and I welcome previous ministerial comments calling on countries to ensure that climate action complies with human rights obligations. I hope that in his closing remarks the Minister will expand on these comments and detail how the UK Government are seeking to hold countries to their climate change commitments in a manner that respects and builds on human rights, especially given the UK’s current status in world affairs.

It is clear that we simply cannot say any more that we did not and do not know the consequences of our actions, which have become abundantly clear, if we continue to degrade the environment and pollute our atmosphere. As the UN Secretary-General has noted, we are

“on a code red for humanity”.

We must act accordingly, yet I fear that the Government are failing to meet the challenge. Prime Ministerial slogans about world-beating global Britain have not generated significant success ahead of COP26 and the UK’s performance as president of the G7 has been disappointing. One such failure was the inability to secure a definitive ban on the use of coal by the world’s largest economies at the G7 summit in Cornwall, and the promise of $100 billion climate-change assistance for developing countries has been largely unfulfilled.

More reports abound about the isolation of the Prime Minister in his own political group. His recent policies, ranging from international aid cuts to promoting domestic coal production, have gravely undermined his diplomatic efforts ahead of the summit in November. The Foreign Secretary yielded to the Chancellor with his savage cuts to the UK’s aid budgets, and actual world-leading programmes crashed because of fiscal circumstances—that was the real effect. However, as leading commentators have noted, the Chancellor managed to increase the UK’s defence budget, including finding money for nuclear weapons.

Worryingly, the UK has pledged £720 million of UK exports finance to support an offshore liquid gas project in Mozambique, at the same time as hosting COP26 and chairing the G7. Taken together with the domestic climate-change record and continuing Back-Bench opposition to net zero commitments, the Government have largely failed to present a credible climate-change action strategy to outside partners, which could be leveraged to inspire global action at COP26.

To close, as we head into the final straits before COP26 in November, the UK’s diplomatic efforts compare poorly with, for example, the French, who co-ordinated the Paris agreement. Their co-ordinated Government-wide approach led to the global success of the Paris agreement in 2015. The French-negotiated agreement could be the basis and the solution for this Government’s performance, and the reason for that is quite obvious.

The 2015 Paris agreement was the first universal, globally agreed, legally binding climate-change agreement explicitly to include human rights, requiring parties to “respect, promote and consider” their human rights obligations as they address climate change. That is why today I urge the Government to revisit the concept of an ethical foreign policy, particularly after the bloody events in Afghanistan, and for the Government to become an actual green force for good.

The public understand and value human rights, international law provides definitions, obligations and parameters, and existing international organisations can be a guarantor. The frameworks and the opportunities to do the right thing are there. This Government just need to seize them.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

We have 24 minutes and seven speakers, so there will be an initial time limit of four minutes. I ask Members to be as brief as they can. If Members take interventions, I will have to allow a minute extra, which will come off somebody else’s time. That is just the reality of the situation.

16:45

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. The title of the debate is of interest to me as the leader of the UK delegation to the Council of Europe. I will try to touch on the three elements of the debate: global Britain, human rights and climate change.

I stress that the global Britain aspect of the debate starts and continues with Europe. We may have left the European Union, but we have not left Europe. The Council of Europe is an organisation of some 47 member countries. It is almost twice the size of the EU and it does a tremendous amount of work. A good example of its work is the Istanbul convention, which looks after the rights of women and tries to prevent domestic violence. Although we have not yet ratified the convention, it is changing the law in this country to ensure that we can ratify it; we have signed it. The Council of Europe is an important organisation, of which we are a part, and I play a particularly prominent role in it, not only as the leader of the delegation but as a vice-president and, effectively, as a deputy speaker.

The question of human rights is allied to the Council of Europe. Both the Foreign Secretary and I are keen on human rights and the Council looks after the European Court of Human Rights. That is not an EU body. It is owned by the Council of Europe. The countries that have had the most cases brought against them there are Russia, Turkey and Romania, in that order. The UK does very well in terms of cases brought before the Court, and something like 92% or 93% of them are dismissed before they even get to a hearing before a judge. Our continued membership of the Council of Europe is an important aspect of the role that we play in human rights.

In climate change, the Council is also playing a good role. At the Council of Europe, I have supported John Prescott’s paper on the role of climate change in estuaries in a cross-party effort to take it forward and to deal with the elements of climate change across the board. On 29 September, there will be a whole-day session about climate change. Speakers include a Belgian, a Greek, a Turk, a Portuguese chap and a German chap. We have another person from Portugal, as well as people from Switzerland and France and, of course, myself.

That is an important measure for us to play a part in. After all, another member of that organisation is Russia. If we can keep the pressure on Russia to follow the climate change agenda that we have all set, we will have achieved a tremendous amount in global terms. I am confident that we can bring Russia to heel when it comes to fulfilling its obligations on climate change and that we will be able to take that forward and sit back in a few years’ time and look at it with great confidence.

16:50

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I thank the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) for securing this incredibly important debate.

As we speak, Madagascar teeters on the brink of what the United Nations has described as the world’s first famine caused solely by climate breakdown. Four years of drought have left more than 1 million people reliant on food aid, while 30,000 people in the south of the island are suffering from what the World Food Programme categorises as the most severe level of food insecurity. Whole families are forced to survive on a desperate diet of locusts and wild plants, and the worst may be yet to come. In a country that is responsible for at least 0.1% of all global emissions, we see most clearly the devastating potential of the climate crisis to strip people of their most fundamental rights, from the right to a livelihood, sanitation, food and housing to the right to even life itself.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s most recent report predicts that the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Madagascar will be repeated across the globe as we barrel towards 1.5° of warming above pre-industrial levels. No country will be spared the devastating consequences of environmental meltdown, but the fallout will be felt hardest by poor countries such as Madagascar, which bears the least responsibility for the crisis with which we are grappling. Within the next decade alone, our planet will be rocked by rising levels of starvation and water scarcity, escalating violence and civil unrest, the erosion of civil liberties and democratic institutions, and mass displacement on an unprecedented scale. That is why Amnesty International, along with many other leading human rights advocates, is so unequivocal in its belief that the climate crisis is also a human rights crisis.

Time is fast running out to ensure that future generations do not have the precious rights that we take for granted snatched away from them. If the Government are serious about global Britain being a force for good in the world, they must recognise the debt that our country owes to the communities who exist on the frontline of environmental collapse. After all, few countries have benefited more from the exploitation of fossil fuels and countries in the global south than the UK has. That is why in November the UK must lead the way with its international partners and work to deliver a comprehensive and appropriately ambitious package of support to help developing countries in decarbonising their economies and building up their resilience to extreme weather events.

We also need to improve accountability in this field. Too often, giant multilaterals in western nations are allowed to wreak devastation on vulnerable communities with total impunity. That has to end. I want to see the Foreign Secretary working towards the establishment of an independent international body to assess the effects of climate change on human rights and to hold the state and private actors to account.

We also need an urgent reassessment of our own practices, such as the offshoring of plastic waste abroad. Finally, all of that will mean nothing without a commitment of support for those living with the fallout of climate chaos now. The Government’s decision to do away with the Department for International Development and slash overseas aid spending was a cowardly abdication of their responsibilities, which could have life or death consequences for communities in Madagascar and across the world who so badly need that support. If we are really serious about being a world leader in climate action and human rights, we must urgently restore the original target of 0.7% of GDP in overseas aid spending.

16:53

[Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship today, Mr Betts. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak and I commend the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) for securing today’s debate. Although we might not always see eye to eye, I hope he will indulge me a few minutes to draw attention to the fantastic initiatives that the Welsh Labour Government have implemented and committed to. I will start with the steps being taken specifically to tackle climate change.

We all recognise that there is work to be done, but I am immensely proud of the bold actions that the Welsh Labour Government have taken, which have often eclipsed both in time and ambition the policy announcements and seemingly endless consultations undertaken by the UK Government. From plans to tackle single-use plastics, including straws, stirrers, cotton buds and cutlery, to their commitment to extending the national forest to promote landscape and sustainable tourism and support the green economy, it is clear that the Welsh Labour Government have a vested interest in protecting our planet for future generations. The same can be said of the Welsh Government’s commitment to sustainable housing options. In 2019, the Welsh Government introduced mandatory regulations on new housing developments to help reduce flood risk and improve water quality. We have all seen the terrifying effects that flash flooding can have on communities across the UK; my own community was hit by devastating flooding last February and is still recovering, a year and a half on. Colleagues across the political divide support sustainable options, particularly when it comes to flood prevention, yet sustainable urban drainage systems are yet to be introduced to planning regulations in England. This is despite the science showing that these systems can have a huge positive impact.

It has been said before, and I am almost certain it will be said again, but it really is the case of where Wales leads, England follows. I am a proud Unionist. Our United Kingdom is at its strongest when our cultural differences are acknowledged and celebrated, not used to incite division. I support steps taken to sustain the United Kingdom’s position on the global stage, both in terms of upholding human rights and tackling climate change. However, I must also highlight the worrying impact that the UK Government’s half-baked trade deals are having across the country. This week, The Guardian reported that exports of food and drink to the EU have suffered a disastrous decline in the first half of the year due to Brexit trade barriers, with sales of beef and cheese hit the hardest. Far from global Britain, we are now at risk of resembling little Britain—at best.

Frustratingly, the same can be said of the UK Government’s tackling of modern-day slavery. A decade of cuts to policing has led to a situation that is regularly reported to be out of control. In 21st-century Britain, I am shocked and appalled that the number of victims of modern slavery has been rising year on year, with over 10,000 people referred to the authorities in 2019.

As a Member of Parliament representing an area with a devolved Government, I am extremely passionate about sustaining Wales’s position on the global stage, but that does not need to come in the form of separation from the United Kingdom. Instead, if we are to truly tackle the impact of climate change, the infringements on human rights and the myriad other issues raised here today, then surely a united approach involving the devolved nations is the most productive way forward. The UK Government can and should do better, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to these pressing concerns.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

I will leave it at four minutes for now, but it will drop down to three minutes after the next speaker.

16:58

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the chair, Mr Betts, and I also thank the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) for highlighting the urgent need for Government leadership, not least at a time when we see the G7 intersecting with COP26. In my city of York—the only human rights city in the UK—we weave human rights together with climate rights; we believe that together they deliver a just agenda.

The events in Afghanistan this summer have ricocheted through the Government, demanding that the Government seriously question their priorities. The UK Government have spent around £37 billion on a war that has resulted in a shattered country, now on the edge of a humanitarian crisis due to crop failure caused by climate failure—or should I say human failure. The country is now so fragile that we fear that to talk about human rights seems understated, since the right of humans just to exist there is the only thing we can focus on. The UK has spent the equivalent of just 10% of the war’s cost on development aid in Afghanistan. If the balance between development and defence had been reversed, if we had chosen to use our soft power to support the region rather than destroy it, if we had spent our time building bridges not conflict and instead of provocation chosen reconciliation, what a difference we could have made. If we had traded in ethics and ethical goods, not arms and aggression, what lasting good we could have done alongside others.

The term global Britain, in itself, imposes a colonial superiority from a nation that has over the centuries used its influence to extract wealth, resources and even people for its own economic advantage. When we examine our shameful history, we soon realise our part in driving global destitution, climate degradation and international instability. Our export portfolio hardly causes us to lift our heads from this shame; trade has been at the expense of rights and the climate—not in aid of it. It has been transactional, not relational and transformational. Arms sold to nations such as Saudi Arabia—which protect neither human rights nor the climate—are one such example that shows that trade, rights and climate are interwoven.

We should harness a different approach—one that seeks to advance equality and reparation, and economic and climate diplomacy—and lead a new dialogue on peacemaking and trade justice. We should collaborate with others, not exert power over them. Hardwiring simple principles will demand a different emphasis on our trading priorities, but will leave a more stable and equal planet. A carbon border adjustment mechanism or a border tax would ensure that we minimised carbon use through trade, instead of offshoring climate destruction activity, while keeping our country clean. It would ensure that we took responsibility for substandard practices in making all the products we purchase. Fundamentally, it would shift us from a consumerist approach to a collaborative one that advances values and enhances the people and planet we interact with.

In a post-Afghanistan world, the UK must never again return to its hard imperial roots, but instead must find its soft power as one of many collaborators, not as global Britain but as Britain humbly repaying the debt we owe this planet and all who inhabit it.

17:00

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I congratulate the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) on securing this debate.

Climate change is inherently a human rights issue. From the right to housing, food, water and sanitation, to the right to development and cultural and political rights, climate change is already damaging the rights of countless people across the world. Human rights must be the principle that underpins our approach to COP26. That means making progress on the issue of loss and damage. Nations have been ravaged by the covid pandemic while facing climate impacts that are causing devastation. Those vulnerable communities deserve new and additional finance to compensate for the irretrievable non-economic loss. It also means reversing the heartless cut to foreign aid, including climate finance projects. It means solidarity with those worst affected by climate change, including the rights of indigenous people. Collectively, indigenous people protect about 80% of the world’s biodiversity. They manage 25% of the Earth’s land surface and a third of the carbon stored in tropical forests. We must listen to their voices, needs and concerns, and ensure that their rights are respected in the decision-making process.

Under article 6 of the Paris agreement, countries are able to sell their over-achievement of the Paris goals to other countries that have fallen short. That allows countries to maximise emissions reductions without concern for indigenous people’s lands. It has been six years since the Paris agreement. This year, the UK must go further than the Indigenous People’s Pavilion. It is absolutely vital that the UK ensures that at COP26 human rights language is put back into article 6.

The Government must also get their own house in order on human rights. In the year that the UK hosts COP26, the Government are pushing through a Bill that the charity Liberty describes as one of the worst and

“most serious threats to human rights and civil liberties in recent”

UK history. The Bill is a thinly veiled reaction to the climate protests that we have seen over the past few years. Grassroots activism has played a critical role in getting the climate emergency on the political agenda. Let us not forget that it was thanks to the right to protest that there was a moratorium on fracking in England.

The climate emergency has evoked strong feelings, especially among young people. It is their generation that will bear its brunt. It is their generation whose human rights are threatened most unless we significantly reduce emissions. Curtailing their voice and their right to be heard before and during COP26 is simply the wrong thing to do.

17:03

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) on bringing this issue to the Chamber. Human rights is an absolute passion of mine, and the most fundamental right is the right to life. The right to life and quality of life are impacted by the environment and increasingly by environmental change. This is not a phenomenon impacting the third world alone, although we all agree that the impact of climate change is devastating in the extreme. Nations are suffering droughts or floods, and just a few weeks ago Texas experienced dire shifts in their cold snap that saw a loss of life and a cost of $21 billion.

The problem is caused by us all, and therefore the remedy must be from us all—those in this Chamber, those in this place and those outside this place. I believe in a sovereign God. I believe that He knows the end from the beginning, that our days are numbered and that He will call us in time with that eternal plan. However, I also believe that He has appointed us to be good stewards of this Earth, and that when we fail in that duty, we reap the consequences. We have failed in that duty, and my granddaughters’ and grandsons’ generation will reap the consequences, with extremes that will impact on their future quality of life. I accept this, but I also accept that we can still make a change. We can use this change to improve the outcome, and that is what we must do.

It is clear to me that climate change and human rights are intrinsically linked, and it is right and proper that our legislation reflects this view. I welcomed the Government’s commitment to the Paris climate agreement in 2015, and I believe that we must do better to fulfil our commitments to that agreement. That is one reason why I was shocked and upset to learn that the Government were reducing overseas development aid from 0.7% to 0.5% of national income. That, too, has an impact on how we battle climate change and fulfil our obligations. Respectfully, I will use this opportunity to again request that the Minister understand that the Government cannot come close to honouring our word without honouring this commitment. I know that the Minister is an honourable man—I am not saying that he is not—but we really must deliver that.

I support the calls by my colleagues who have spoken—and the hon. Lady who will follow me—for less talk and more action. We are calling for our obligations to be fulfilled and not reprioritised, and for us to do what we can to leave this world better than we found it. What a responsibility we have, as MPs in this House, to do just that and deliver. I understand that we need China, India and so many other nations to buy in, but their excuses do not excuse us from doing what we need to do. I ask the Government to increase international aid, recognise the firm link between our environmental and humanitarian obligations, and do what we can, now, in this House, in Westminster Hall today, through our Minister, to effect positive change.

17:06

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

Diolch yn fawr, Llefarydd. It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). First, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) for securing this debate, and for his welcome remarks on the need to move to an inclusive global human rights-orientated foreign policy approach. He rightly draws attention to this Government’s failure to take full advantage of the UK’s roles, both as co-hosts of COP26 and as current president of the G7, to secure definitive climate action ahead of November.

Equally worrying is our relative failure compared to the efforts of the French Government in 2015 to secure conclusive global engagement, or even to mobilise a common cross-Government approach to the upcoming summit. “GB: Global Britain”, as a slogan, has frankly failed to mean anything tangible in Whitehall, let alone to our partners abroad. Alliteration is not the same thing as action.

However, I would like my remarks today to focus on the broader issue of migration and displacement that is attributable to climate change, as referred to by my hon. Friend. That is, of course, an issue that is real and pressing, both here in the UK and abroad. The UN Refugee Agency believes that already, due to increasing intensity and frequency of extreme weather events, more than 20 million people, on average, are being internally displaced annually. Despite such suffering, appropriate descriptions, such as the term “climate refugee” are yet to receive a solid legal basis that would, following accordingly, give them international protection and rights. I therefore invite and would welcome a comment from the Minister today on the Government’s approach to the rights of people displaced by climate change, and on how the Government will be raising this point at the upcoming COP26 summit.

Displacement due to climate change is also happening here, in the UK. In my constituency lies Fairbourne, and the UK’s first community facing decommissioning. These are people who do not know where their homes will be, and what the value of their community is, per se. Will they be kept together? How will the infrastructure be dealt with, and what remains of that community? What are the rights of these people? All of the legislation that we have in place overrides their rights. Until we know what their rights are here, it is difficult for us to talk about those abroad. They have been left in limbo, by both the UK and the Welsh Government, and by our wider modern economy and social safety net. Their plight demonstrates that if we, even as one of the world’s wealthiest nations, cannot properly respect and look after our own, we cannot expect developing nations, who will be more affected by climate change than the UK, to do so?

To close, I hope that the Minister and the Government will take on board my hon. Friend’s call for an ethical, human rights-based foreign policy that acknowledges the importance of international law, the role of international institutions, and the inviolability of human rights, both here and abroad.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

We now move on to the Front Benches: five minutes for the SNP, five minutes for the Opposition, and 10 minutes for the Minister.

17:09

[Chris Law (Dundee West) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts, and I thank the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) for securing this hugely important debate.

Let me begin by saying one thing about which there is no doubt—we are living through and experiencing the beginning of a climate emergency. The effects of global climate change, which scientists have predicted for the past three decades and more, are happening now. July was the hottest month on record and across the world we witnessed extreme weather events: deadly wildfires spread across Europe and north America, and devastating flooding caused chaos in Germany and China. Those are but a few examples.

Last month’s IPCC report was damning, with the UN Secretary General António Guterres describing the situation as

“code red for humanity”.

If emissions continue at their current rate, global temperatures will rise more than 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels by 2050. There is still time to stop that from happening, but emissions must be cut dramatically by the end of this decade and not a moment later. As we approach COP26 in November, the UK Government must lead from the front, ensuring that new and ambitious targets are agreed on to avert this unfolding climate disaster.

Sustainable development goal 13 calls for

“urgent action to combat climate change”.

Without that, the devastating consequences of climate change will undo hard-won development gains. Let there be no doubt: the poor and the wealthy are not affected equally by climate change, and that is true of nations as well as individuals. The cruel reality is that despite the world’s poorest and most vulnerable contributing the least to climate change, they are most at risk from its negative effects and the least equipped to withstand and adapt to it.

Oxfam has calculated that the richest 10% of the world’s population were responsible for more than half of the cumulative emissions between 1990 and 2015. The wealthiest 1% were responsible for the emission of more than twice as much CO₂ as the poorer half of the world combined, which is something for all of us to consider and reflect upon.

The climate crisis disproportionately affects individuals and groups who are already marginalised as a result of structural inequalities. The World Bank has predicted that climate change will push over 130 million people into poverty in the next 10 years. Additionally, the World Health Organisation predicts that climate change will cause a quarter of a million additional deaths a year through malaria, malnutrition, diarrhoea and heat stress.

Climate change fundamentally impacts human rights—the right to life, to food, to water and sanitation, to health and to housing, among many others. It exacerbates inequalities between the poor and the wealthy, between ethnicities, between genders and between generations. Climate change is a human rights crisis.

We know that the G20 countries are responsible for almost 80% of global annual emissions. Net zero emission targets by 2050 are, frankly, too little, too late. Wealthier countries must take the lead by decarbonising more quickly. Before, during and after COP26, a human rights-focused approach is essential to tackle the climate crisis and to secure a just transition.

Sadly, at a time when we need international co-operation to tackle climate change, those who lead us in the UK Government espouse an empty slogan of “global Britain” that goes against just that. As warned, the decision to slash the aid budget is fundamentally undermining the UK’s efforts to show any leadership in tackling international climate change. For example, in May the COP26 President visited Indonesia and called on others to move forward with plans to reach net zero. Yet just weeks later, the same UK Government cancelled a highly effective green growth programme that was designed to prevent deforestation in Indonesia. Similarly, in Malawi the Promoting Sustainable Partnerships for Empowered Resilience, or PROSPER, project, which focuses on training farmers in climate-smart and adaptive agricultural practices, has been cancelled by this Tory Government, halfway through its implementation. That not only breaks trust with those communities but sends a message to those countries yet to determine their contribution to the Paris agreement that the host of COP26 does not take its obligations on climate change seriously. Frankly, it does not care.

Global Britain, if it is to mean anything, should be about listening to and supporting these marginalised communities in tackling this climate emergency, and not about cutting their funding and shutting them out. Tragically, with just over 50 days until COP26, those communities will not have their voices heard, as vaccine inequity means they cannot attend, and once again decisions will be made for them, rather than with them, a further indication that so-called global Britain is, under the Tories, nothing but a poor and nasty little Britain.

Finally, in the last Westminster Hall debate that I attended in person, I called on the UK Government to follow the Scottish Government’s lead in placing human rights at the centre of their climate justice fund response and to establish a climate justice fund. Since then, the Scottish Government have doubled their world-leading fund to £24 million over four years, in stark contrast to the UK Government, I would like to hear from the Minister today whether he is willing to initiate such a fund now.

17:14

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Betts. I thank the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) for securing this important debate—diolch yn fawr iawn—which is, as has been said, appropriately timed, following some of the worst years of environmental catastrophes and the unequivocal evidence from the IPCC ahead of the crucial COP meeting. The hon. Gentleman will know how seriously the Welsh Government take these issues and how they are incorporating them at the heart of their policies.

Let us remind ourselves of the two key facts in the IPCC report. The last decade was hotter than any period in the last 125,000 years, and scientists can now link specific weather events to human-made climate change.

I commend the speeches made by a range of hon. Members, in particular my hon. Friends the Members for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley), for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) and for York Central (Rachael Maskell). There was also a typically passionate speech from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon).

Human rights were rightly referenced in the 2015 Paris agreement, because the fortunes of all aspects of life, including that of humanity, are inevitably intertwined with the functioning of ecosystems on this small blue dot, whether that is access to food and land or to water and sanitation, or the prospects of women and girls, right through to the implications of conflict driven by climate change. In 2015, the UN Environment Programme executive director described climate change as one of the greatest threats to human rights in a generation. If global Britain is to mean anything—we have seen the concept starkly drawn into question in recent weeks—we have to ensure that climate sustainability is at the heart of all of our international policies, from trade, through business and development assistance, to our defence and our diplomacy. That is why it was so disappointing to see such little reference to it in the recent Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office human rights report.

I have just a few examples from recent weeks—we have heard many today. Just a few weeks ago, Haiti endured another devastating earthquake, and on top of that, the impact of a hit from Tropical Storm Grace. Thirteen thousand Rohingya refugees were forced to relocate after intense rainfall and landslides in Bangladesh. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead about the situation in Madagascar and potentially one of the first climate famines, with families forced to survive on eating a handful of insects. In Ethiopia and South Sudan—we will discuss the situation in Tigray tomorrow—hundreds of thousands face starvation, with the implications of climate change coming on top of conflict in the region.

Climate change not only physically threatens lives, but potentially unwinds decades of progress in other areas, such as education, infrastructure, access to clean water, food, sanitation and healthcare. Five hundred million people rely on ecosystem services worldwide as a source of income and to put food on their tables. The total number of people affected by natural disasters over the past decade has tripled to 2 billion and the WHO speaks of the impact on infectious diseases and an additional 250,000 deaths.

For some countries, particularly small island states, sea level rises could threaten their very existence. That applies in our British family, in our overseas territories. The British Virgin Islands experienced a devastating hit from Hurricane Irma, which cost £2.3 billion in 2017, with public schools destroyed and others rendered unusable. Yet, because of Brexit, they have lost €7 million in funding from the EU global climate change alliance plus and are yet to get answers from the Government on how that will be replaced. I hope the Minister can answer that question. What role will our overseas territories and our wider family play at the upcoming COP? What representation will they have?

Many hon. Members referenced migration as a result of climate change. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre reported that more than three times as many displacements happened in the years 2008 to 2018 as a result of environmental disasters than from conflict. Let us not forget that that is a period that includes the disasters in Syria and north Africa. If what we are seeing from climate change dwarfs that, we should all be deeply concerned.

Climate change is of course a threat to the amazing progress made in the last decades on the rights of women and girls, because environmental hazards that lead to crises often mean girls dropping out of school to help their families to engage in the daily search for drinking water, as well as other aspects such as forced marriage.

In the face of the climate emergency and the impacts that we have heard about in powerful speeches today, it is deeply disappointing that the FCDO has been cutting its support for key programmes as part of the official development assistance cuts. That has been criticised by the director of the International Institute for Environment and Development, not just for the cuts themselves but for the impact they will have on our diplomatic position at the COP conference. Here are two examples: the Plastic Pollution Free Galapagos programme and the Green Economic Growth programme in Papua, which had been described as highly effective, have been cut. That is absolutely absurd. Will the Minister set out how much of the cuts to ODA has hit programmes with climate change as a key or majority component? Conversely, how much funding is still going into fossil fuel projects, directly or via other agencies?

The Government have yet to come forward with how they will allocate or spend the £11.6 billion that has been promised. Can the Minister give us some details? How will that be scheduled over the next few years? What discussions has the Minister been having with the Home Office and other colleagues about the implications on migration changes and refugee flows as a result of climate change?

The Labour party would put human rights at the heart of our foreign policy, and climate change at the heart of all our policies. As has been said, those two things are absolutely intertwined. We would seek the action needed to tackle them.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

Will the Minister please allow the Member who tabled the debate a minute to make some final remarks? That will be appreciated. I call the Minister.

17:20

[The Minister for Asia (Nigel Adams)]

I will. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I start by thanking the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) for securing this important and wide-ranging debate, and I thank all hon. Members for their contributions. I will try to respond to all the points raised, and I note that I need to give the hon. Gentleman a couple of minutes at the end of the debate.

Let me begin with Afghanistan, because a number of hon. Members rightly mentioned it as uppermost in our minds. Incredibly brave human rights activists and project partners were among the 15,000 people that the UK evacuated from Kabul between 15 and 29 August. The Foreign Secretary has led work with other countries in the region to ensure safe passage to the UK for those eligible. That is our immediate priority. We have committed to resettle 20,000 Afghan nationals most at risk from human rights violations and dehumanising treatment, under the Afghan citizens’ resettlement scheme, which includes 5,000 in year one.

We are continuing to work for human rights in Afghanistan. The Foreign Secretary has set out a plan and is building an international coalition to that end. He has been clear that holding the Taliban to account on human rights, particularly their respect for the rights of women and girls and members of minority groups, which hon. Members are passionate about, must be one of the four touchstone priorities for any future international engagement. Hon. Members are right to be concerned about the rights of women and girls under the Taliban regime. That is why we are working to ensure that we have maximum moderating influence over the Taliban, and to ensure that the gains of the past two decades are not lost.

As hon. Members will recall, when the Government published its integrated review in March, we put the UK’s role as a force for good in the world front and centre of our security, defence, development and foreign policy. Our work on human rights and the environment are two areas where that is particularly evident. As part of the integrated review process, the Prime Minister set out that in 2021 and beyond the Government will make tackling climate change and biodiversity loss their No. 1 international priority. In the birthplace of the Magna Carta, with one of the world’s oldest and strongest democracies, we are deeply committed to the promotion and protection of human rights. It is in the DNA of this Government and has been of successive Governments from both sides of the House. It is not just about doing the right thing; it is evident that climate change, as described eloquently by many hon. Members, and human rights abuses and violations pose a significant threat to our national interests, our economy, our borders and our security. Tackling those is a huge priority.

The recent working group contribution to the sixth assessment report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change removes any doubt that human activities have warmed the planet and caused widespread and rapid changes to the climate. The report shows clearly that without immediate and drastic action, the impacts will be severe. We know that some of the changes to the planet are irreversible. It is clear that we must decarbonise the global economy faster. We can only achieve that through more ambitious national actions and international collaboration.

Every conversation that I, as Minister for Asia, and my colleagues at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office have with our counterparts involves deep discussion on ensuring that countries come forward with ambitious nationally determined contributions. As we approach COP26, we have a clear plan to deliver a comprehensive, ambitious and balanced set of negotiated outcomes that can halt rising temperatures and help those most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. We have heard about many of those this afternoon.

We are focused on four priorities for the summit: mitigation, adaptation, climate finance and collaboration. As I have said, we are asking all countries to come forward ahead of the summit with ambitious commitments on reducing emissions, increasing climate finance and scaling up adaptation. We need every country to commit to net zero and we would like to see 2030 emissions reduction targets as part of their nationally determined contributions. We are working across governments, businesses and civil society to make real progress in the largest emitting sectors of power, road transport and land use, and to bend the curve on biodiversity loss and deforestation.

We have lobbied donor countries to step up their climate finance commitments in order to meet the goal of $100 billion a year that was agreed, as has been mentioned this afternoon, as part of the Paris agreement. The hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) referred to the £11.6 billion we have committed to double our climate finance over the next five years. We are doing all we can to deliver a summit that will be a turning point, and we are working closely with our public health officials, the Scottish Government, Glasgow City Council, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and all our partners to ensure that we have an in-person event to enable all those who need to to participate on an equal footing.

The hon. Member for Arfon was right to speak passionately about both climate change and human rights, as did many other hon. Members. We are alert to the potential for climate change to undermine the enjoyment of human rights. As the hon. Member for Dundee West (Chris Law) mentioned, without action on climate change, according to the World Bank and other organisations, 143 million people could be displaced by 2050. We are calling on countries to ensure that any action they take to respond to climate change and environmental degradation complies with their human rights obligations. It is also imperative that the actions we take globally to tackle climate change will support those countries where humanitarian needs are greatest. That was amplified by the contribution from the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley), when he referenced the issues facing Madagascar.

Women and girls are an example of those who are affected disproportionately by the consequences of climate-related displacement, which has been a theme of many speeches this afternoon. For that reason, since 2018 we have committed to both the global compact on refugees and the global compact for safe, orderly and regular migration. By realising global climate finance targets and supporting credible strategies to help the vulnerable adapt to climate change, we can prevent and mitigate its impacts on lives, livelihoods and the human rights of those most affected.

We are committed to using COP26 to amplify the concerns of countries vulnerable to climate change and to agree actions to address their concerns. Briefly, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell), who was right to highlight the role of the Council of Europe on human rights, on his sterling work as a senior member of the Council.

We are committed to delivering a carbon-neutral COP26 summit and I thank the hon. Member for Arfon for his good wishes to the Government on delivering it successfully. I am conscious that I need to give the hon. Member a few moments to sum up, and I apologise that I have brought it down to about 80 seconds.

17:28

[Hywel Williams]

I thank all hon. Members who took part. The debate has been a rich source of comment, analysis and points for action. In fact, the debate should be of interest to anyone who is concerned about climate change. That should be everyone, not just anyone.

I cannot summarise what has been said in just one minute, but there is a breadth of interest, knowledge and information, from the Council of Europe to Madagascar to Fairbourne. That should give people pause for thought. I am glad to give credit where credit is due, of course, but the burden of my speech was that we should start from a specific point and that should be human rights, from which other actions will flow. We are in the Westminster Hall Chamber and outside, in the other Westminster Hall, there is a plaque that people look at every day as they pass. That is the spot where Sir Thomas More stood trial and, of course, was condemned. He is famous for lots of things, but he is famous for five words: “no man is an island”. No island is an island, for that matter, so let us have some action from this island.

17:30

Motion lapsed, and sitting adjourned without Question put (Standing Order No. 10(14)).

Written Statements

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Written Statements

Tuesday 7 September 2021

Role of Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Written Statements

[The Minister for the Constitution and Devolution (Chloe Smith)]

As set out in a previous statement to this House (HCWS100), the Government have proposed a series of measures in the Elections Bill that seek to maintain public confidence in the effective and independent regulation of the electoral system by empowering the UK Parliament to hold the Electoral Commission more effectively accountable. As the independent regulatory body charged with upholding the integrity of free and fair elections, it is right for the public to expect that the Electoral Commission should be more fully and duly accountable to the UK Parliament for the way it discharges its functions.

The Electoral Commission is the independent body which oversees elections and regulates political finance in the UK. The commission is made up of electoral commissioners, including a chair, who are appointed by Her Majesty via an Address in Parliament. The electoral commissioners govern the work of the Electoral Commission.

The commission is already accountable, but to a limited extent, to Parliament via the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission. The Speaker’s Committee is a cross-party, statutory Committee chaired by the Speaker of the House of Commons. The Speaker’s Committee is responsible for:

determining and overseeing the procedures for selecting candidates to be put forward for appointment or reappointment as electoral commissioners;

examining the Electoral Commission’s five-year plan and annual financial estimates (considering the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and advice from the Treasury) to decide whether they are consistent with the economical, efficient and effective discharge by the commission of its functions. Following this, the Speaker’s Committee lays the documents before the House of Commons, with or without any modifications as necessary;

reporting to the House of Commons at least once a year on the exercise of its functions.

It is important to note that the measures in the Elections Bill do not amend the Speaker’s Committee’s current duties nor do they alter the other existing accountability arrangements of the Electoral Commission: the commission will remain accountable to the Llywydd’s Committee and the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body in relation to financial matters and its business plan where it relates to devolved functions. Our proposals will also maintain the statutory role of the Comptroller and Auditor General in his examination of the commission. The Government’s measures will build on these current arrangements to enhance the commission’s accountability to Parliament. This is primarily being done in two ways.

Strategy and policy statement

We will make provisions within the Elections Bill for the introduction of a strategy and policy statement. The statement, if approved by the UK Parliament, will set out guidance and principles to which the commission will have a legal duty to have regard in exercising its reserved and devolved functions. However, that legal duty does not replace or undermine its other statutory duties. It is commonplace for the Government to set a policy framework, as approved by Parliament, which independent regulators should consider.

An illustrative example of a statement and policy statement for the Electoral Commission will be published during the passage of the Elections Bill to aid parliamentarians. We will also be engaging with the Parliamentary Parties Panel and other interested parties on how a draft statement might be framed.

The role of the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission

We will expand the functions of the Speaker’s Committee to give it the power to examine the commission’s compliance with the duty to have regard to the strategy and policy statement. The Government intend:

to enable the Speaker’s Committee to perform a scrutiny function similar to that of parliamentary Select Committees, in that it will be able to retrospectively examine the Electoral Commission’s activities in light of the regulator’s duty to have regard to the strategy and policy statement;

that as part of its existing yearly reporting requirements on the discharge of its functions, the Speaker’s Committee will be able to draw to the attention of the House any matter of interest relating to the Electoral Commission’s compliance with its duty with regards to the strategy and policy statement;

that the Speaker’s Committee will also be able to set out its own procedures to outline, if it wishes to do so, its workings under its expanded remit in any way it sees fit;

that the Speaker’s Committee will have the ability to request information (for instance via a public evidence session) from the Electoral Commission that the Speaker’s Committee may require to discharge its scrutiny function;

that the Speaker’s Committee will not be expected to examine individual complaints from members of the public and others against the Electoral Commission. Members of the public can already complain to the commission and the parliamentary and health service ombudsman.

It is right that the commission remains fully operationally independent and that it continues to be governed by its electoral commissioners. Therefore, with this new power the Speaker’s Committee will not be able to proactively direct the commission’s decision making. Our measures will not affect either the governance structure nor statutory provisions for the Electoral Commission’s board and commissioners.

With these two measures the Government will empower the UK Parliament to hold the Electoral Commission effectively accountable—crucial in maintaining public confidence in our electoral system—while also respecting the commission’s investigative, enforcement and operational independence.

I have placed an infographic with this statement in the Libraries of both Houses.

Attachments can be viewed online at:

https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-statements/detail/2021-09-07/HCWS269.

[HCWS269]

Spending Review 2021

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Written Statements

[The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Rishi Sunak)]

Today I can inform the House that I have launched spending review 2021 (SR21) to set departmental resource and capital DEL budgets from 2022-23 to 2024-25 and the devolved Administrations’ block grants for the same period. SR21 will be presented to Parliament alongside autumn budget 2021 and the economic and fiscal forecast from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) on 27 October 2021.

[HCWS268]

Pilot No-Interest Loans Schemes: Contingent Liability

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Written Statements

[The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (John Glen)]

It is normal practice when a Government Department proposes to undertake a contingent liability in excess of £300,000 and for which there is no statutory authority, for the Minister concerned to present a departmental minute to Parliament, giving particulars of the liability created and explaining the circumstances.



I wish to notify Parliament of a contingent liability that has been created by the Government from the introduction of the pilot No-Interest Loans Scheme. The pilot No-Interest Loans Scheme was announced at the Budget on 3 March 2021. The loans will support consumers in vulnerable circumstances who would benefit from affordable credit to meet unexpected costs and will provide an alternative to relying on high-cost credit. Fair4All Finance, who were founded to support the financial wellbeing of people in vulnerable circumstances, have been appointed to run the pilot and will enter contracts with lenders to deliver the loans, including to provide a partial guarantee against default losses. To facilitate the lending to consumers in vulnerable circumstances, HM Treasury will reimburse Fair4All Finance for eligible default losses they incur under eligible guarantees.



HM Treasury will reimburse Fair4All Finance for up to 80% of eligible default losses incurred as part of the pilot. HM Treasury will reimburse losses on loans made from 22 September 2021, but the liability will not be incurred until Fair4All Finance enter guarantees with eligible lenders and defaults occur, which is not expected until financial year 2022-23.



The maximum amount to be paid under the contingent liability is £10 million, with expected payments totalling £1.8 million. HM Treasury will reimburse Fair4All Finance for eligible default losses on loans initiated after 22 September 2021 and will stop reimbursing costs by 31 March 2026. If the liability is called, provision for any payment will be sought through the normal supply procedure.



It is normal that any contingent liabilities should not be incurred until 14 sitting days after Parliament has been notified of the Government’s intention to incur a contingent liability. There is an exception in cases of special urgency. This is one such occasion.



In order to make timely progress with this policy, it is important that lenders have the certainty of the HM Treasury’s funding commitment to the pilot in good time before the November and December periods, which for many social lenders is the busiest time of the year. As such, HM Treasury’s grant agreement with Fair4All Finance has been signed to enable contract negotiations with lenders to commence.

I note that HM Treasury’s intention to develop such a pilot has been in the public domain for some time, and that the pilot has received broad support from across both Houses of Parliament since the Government funding was announced at Budget 2021. Given this support I hope the House is in agreement with my assessment that to delay signing the aforementioned agreement until the House returned would have been inappropriate and to the detriment of the beneficiaries under this scheme.



I will also lay a minute today on this matter.

[HCWS267]

Establishment of the Office for Environmental Protection

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

As the Environment Bill starts Report stage in the House of Lords today, I am making this statement on the actions taken and commitments made to establish the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) as an independent body, given the significant interest from Members of both Houses.



This Government were elected on a manifesto that committed to setting up a new independent environmental body in the OEP, which will help ensure that our high environmental standards are upheld.



OEP independence



The Environment Bill includes several provisions to enshrine the OEP’s independence in law. These include a specific duty on the Secretary of State when exercising his or her functions to have regard to the need to protect the OEP’s independence.



The Bill also states that the OEP must prepare its own strategy that sets out how it intends to exercise its functions. The OEP is required to lay this strategy before Parliament to allow for proper scrutiny and transparency. The Bill also requires the OEP to act objectively and impartially. In addition to the protections that the Bill provides, the Government have made several commitments to ensure the OEP’s operational independence.



OEP appointments



The Office for Environmental Protection will be included in the schedule to the Public Appointments Order in Council and non-executive members will be independently regulated by Her Majesty’s Commissioner for Public Appointments. The Bill also requires that the OEP Chair be consulted on all non-executive appointments.



The Equality and Human Rights Commission took a similar approach as its board members are appointed by Ministers. The Commission has had an “A” rating as a national human rights institution from the United Nations since 2009, based partly on its independence and autonomy from Government.



The appointments of the OEP chair designate and non-executive members designate have already been made, following a regulated public appointments process, which will also be followed for future appointments.



The Government took the necessary steps to ensure that the role of chair was listed as a significant appointment with the Commissioner for Public Appointments, providing an added level of scrutiny and independence in the recruitment process. The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and Environmental Audit Committees conducted a pre-appointment scrutiny hearing before the appointment of Dame Glenys Stacey as OEP chair designate. I am happy to confirm our intention that future chair appointments should follow a similar process, ensuring fairness, accountability and independence in the future.



The appointments that have already been made demonstrate that the OEP will have the relevant expertise it needs to operate as an effective independent body. As a further safeguard, Parliament can choose to call any member of the OEP board to provide evidence in relation to their suitability for appointment once they have taken up their post. The Bill also requires that the OEP chair be consulted on all non-executive appointments, and that the executive members be appointed by the OEP board alone, with the chief executive appointed by the non-executive members—or the chair in the case of the first chief executive—after consultation with the Secretary of State.



OEP finance



To give the OEP robust financial certainty over the coming years, the Government have committed to providing it with an indicative five-year budget which will be ringfenced within each spending review period. This approach follows the model of the Office for Budget Responsibility and is consistent with international best practice, strengthening institutional independence through delegated budgetary autonomy.



I have agreed with HM Treasury the budget for the OEP’s first year of operation. This will be reviewed after the first 18 months of operation, which will ensure an evidence-based approach to the future OEP budget. The OEP must also include an annual assessment in its annual report and statement of accounts whether it has received sufficient sums to carry out its functions, which must be laid before Parliament.



OEP guidance



The OEP has an unprecedented remit: its principal objective will be to contribute to environmental protection and the improvement of the natural environment, and it will be able to take enforcement action against all public authorities, including local authorities, regulators and central Government Departments. It is for this reason that the Government feels that a guidance power is necessary—the OEP must be impartial and independent, but not unaccountable.



This guidance power will not be used—indeed, it cannot be used—to intervene or direct the OEP in decision making about specific cases. Furthermore, recognising the strength of feeling from Parliament on this issue, we have introduced an amendment for Lords Report to enable additional parliamentary scrutiny of any draft guidance. Under the new amendment, the Secretary of State will be required to lay a draft of any guidance before Parliament and respond to any resolutions or recommendations made by either House and parliamentary Committees before producing the final guidance. This would supersede and strengthen the provision in clause 25(4), which currently requires the Secretary of State to lay before Parliament and publish any guidance.



This Government are committed to establishing the OEP as an independent body to contribute to environmental protection and hold public authorities to account. It will be a body built on international best practice and tailored to our domestic context, and we are committed to ensuring it can be legally established as soon as possible following Royal Assent, to begin delivering benefits for people and the environment.

[HCWS265]

Protecting the Public and Justice for Victims

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Written Statements

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Robert Buckland)]

Today I would like to update the House on how the Government are protecting the public and providing justice for victims following the Opposition day debate of 9 June 2021.



Impact of covid-19



The covid-19 pandemic has had a truly unprecedented effect on our courts system. Bringing people safely into buildings for trials and hearings—especially jury trials—has been challenging. That is why we have done so much to keep delivering justice in these difficult times.



The Government are committed to getting justice firing on all cylinders by ramping up our work to enable judges to safely hold as many hearings as possible over the coming year. In the Crown Court, disposals continue to exceed receipts and we have seen the outstanding caseload stabilise at around 60,000, and hopefully turn a corner, while our outstanding cases in the magistrates’ court are now at the lowest level since the pandemic began.



We will continue to maximise capacity across the system, reopening 60 courtrooms by September 2021, extending 32 Nightingale courtrooms until March 2022, giving judges the option to open courtrooms for longer—sitting a session in the morning and another in the afternoon—and the flexibility to conduct non-trial work, like pre-trial preparation hearings, remotely. We have lifted the limit on sitting days in the Crown Court this year, enabling us to maximise the use of the courts estate, and every available judge. All this activity taken together will help get more cases heard, more quickly, so that there is timely access to justice.



How we supported victims over the last year and through the pandemic



While the impacts of covid-19 on the courts have been profound, supporting victims to seek justice remains a top priority. We are acutely aware of the risk of victims dropping out of the justice process and are monitoring the impact of covid-19. In recognition of the impact of covid-19 on victims, the Ministry of Justice established the Victim and Witness Silver Command Group in March 2020 in order to identify and assess developing risks and issues that may have an impact on victims of crime, including in their journey through the criminal justice system. This group continues to meet on a fortnightly basis and its comprehensive membership consists of representatives from across Government, criminal justice agencies, external stakeholders, and the third sector.



This year has seen record investment across government of over £300 million in specialist victim services and we have made over £92 million available since the start of the pandemic to ensure victims had access to critical support services, including counselling and advice. Independent sexual and domestic violence advisers are a key component in support through the criminal justice system, which is why we have made a £27 million investment over two years, resulting in the recruitment of nearly 700 new posts, an increase of 44% on existing provision.



Earlier this year we also published a new victims’ code focused on 12 key rights for all victims of crime. The new code is the culmination of two years of extensive work, including hearing from victims and the groups that support them, to ensure that we have a clear and comprehensive framework for victims’ rights. This vital work has laid the necessary foundations for effective legislation in this area, and it is our intention to proceed without delay.



Alongside this, the Government have demonstrated their continued commitment to tackling violence against women and girls (VAWG) and domestic abuse. We have published new VAWG and domestic abuse strategies this year to help drive a step-change in the response to these crimes, and we have committed to undertaking a review of sentencing in domestic homicide cases to understand sentencing practice and consider whether there is a need for change. These build on our landmark Domestic Abuse Act, which received Royal Assent in April, and is being brought into force as soon as possible. Measures brought into force since the debate on 9 June include the offence of threatening to disclose private sexual photographs and films; extending the extraterritorial jurisdiction of England and Wales in relation to certain violent and sexual offences; ensuring those who are homeless as a result of domestic abuse and are eligible for local authority accommodation have priority need status; and also to enable a pilot using polygraph tests to protect domestic abuse victims. The vast majority of the remaining measures in the Act will be in force by spring 2022.



How the Government have dealt with rape and serious sexual violence cases through the pandemic



While criminal justice agencies and the judiciary are prioritising serious cases, including rape, to provide certainty to victims and defendants, reducing the outstanding caseload will take several years. We are working to ensure that these cases will continue to be prioritised by all involved while dealing with the impact of the pandemic.



The Government have long recognised that far too few victims of rape are seeing justice and that more must be done to support them to take their case through the criminal justice system. The recently published rape review sets out a robust programme of work to improve how the criminal justice system responds to rape—increasing the number of cases reaching court to 2016 levels, reducing the number of victims withdrawing from the process and ultimately putting more rapists behind bars.



Last year we passed legislation to ensure that serious sexual and violent offenders sentenced to a standard determinate sentence (SDS) of over seven years serve at least two thirds of their sentence in custody. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill will extend this change to more offenders. Those sentenced to an SDS between four and seven years for certain serious sexual or violent offences—where that offence attracts a maximum penalty of life—which includes rape, will serve two thirds of their sentence in custody instead of half. The Government are committed to driving this agenda to give victims confidence in the system.



Wider support for victims



We want to continue transforming the experience of victims in the criminal justice system today. That is why the Government have committed to passing a victims’ law—to put the rights in the victims’ code into statute. This will help to guarantee victims they will be seen, heard and helped at every point in the justice process.



We will consult not only on the rights of victims, but on the provision of community-based domestic abuse and sexual violence services, as well as a statutory underpinning for the roles of independent sexual and domestic violence advisers to ensure that victims receive a high standard of care.



I look forward to setting out a timetable for bringing the victims’ law on to the statute books and working with victims, campaigners, and Members of Parliament from across the political divide to make a success of this landmark piece of legislation.



We know there is further to go, and we should not underestimate the scale of the challenge ahead of us. Victims, witnesses and defendants are still waiting too long and we need to take action to address this.



This year has been incredibly difficult in the courts, as it has in so many areas. But through a monumental collective effort the system is recovering.

[HCWS266]

Northern Ireland Protocol

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Brandon Lewis)]

My noble Friend, the Minister of State in the Cabinet Office, the right hon. Lord Frost CMG, yesterday made the following written statement:

The Government set out in their 21 July Command Paper, “Northern Ireland Protocol: the way forward”, proposals to find a new balance in the operation of the protocol.

The Government proposed to the EU on 23 July a “standstill” arrangement to maintain the operation of the protocol on the current basis, and to pause current legal actions, to provide space for discussions on those proposals. The EU announced on 27 July that it was not, at that stage, moving to the next stage of the legal proceedings it started in March. There have since been initial technical talks between the UK and the EU. These will continue in order to determine whether a constructive process can be established for discussing and addressing the issues identified with the protocol.

Following on from this, to provide space for potential further discussions, and to give certainty and stability to businesses while any such discussions proceed, the Government will continue to operate the protocol on the current basis. This includes the grace periods and easements currently in force. Operational and other guidance will be updated to reflect this approach. We will ensure that reasonable notice is provided in the event that these arrangements were to change, to enable businesses and citizens to prepare.

[HCWS262]

Draft Renewable Transport Fuel Obligations (Amendment) Order 2021

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Rachel Maclean)]

I have today published the draft statutory instrument, the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligations (Amendment) Order 2021, and accompanying explanatory memorandum.



Renewable transport fuels already make a substantial contribution towards meeting UK carbon budgets and will continue to play an important role in meeting the UK’s increasingly ambitious future carbon reduction targets. In 2019, the use of renewable fuel supplied under the RTFO saved approximately 5.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, equivalent to taking 2.5 million cars off the road.



This statutory instrument amends the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligations Order 2007 (SI 2007/3072). The statutory instrument will help further increase carbon savings by increasing renewable fuels targets and expanding the RTFO to sectors with limited alternatives to decarbonise, such as maritime.



The statutory instrument is published in accordance with the procedure required by schedule 8 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 and agreed with Parliament. This is because it includes amendments to the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligations Order 2007, parts of which were previously amended by SIs made under section 2(2) of the European Communities Act 1972. The statutory instrument is being published in draft at least 28 days before being laid for affirmative debate.



The Department consulted on these proposals between March and April 2021 in the paper “Targeting net zero—Next steps for the Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation”. The Government response to that consultation and associated cost-benefit analysis are available here.

[HCWS264]

Motorway Safety

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Grant Shapps)]

I have on several occasions announced to this House the importance of road safety to me and my Department. After hearing the public’s concerns about smart motorway safety, I commissioned an evidence stocktake and set out recommendations to raise the bar on safety. This was one of my first acts as Secretary of State.

The subsequent evidence stocktake was published in March 2020 and showed that ALR motorways are in most ways as safe as, or safer than, conventional ones. I was determined to make sure they were the safest roads in Britain, and to this end I announced a package of 18 measures, costing £500 million, which includes the faster rollout of a radar-based stopped vehicle detection (SVD) across the ALR network, including an additional £5 million on national and targeted communications campaigns to ensure drivers receive the right advice to help them keep safe.

Other actions included an update to the highway code to include new information about driving on high-speed roads, which has been achieved this year, six months earlier than scheduled. We have also changed the law to enable automatic detection of vehicles driving in closed lanes, known as red “X” violations and National Highways is upgrading specialist cameras to help better identify violations so those drivers can be prosecuted.

A year on, I commissioned a progress report from National Highways to set out progress on those 18 actions, and to develop proposals about how several of them can be accelerated, going above and beyond what was originally committed to. The progress report was also an opportunity to review updated data since the 2020 stocktake. Crucially, the data contained in the National Highways progress report published in April 2021 continues to show that fatal casualties are less likely on all lane running motorways than on conventional ones.

The National Highways progress report drew its evidence from data and analysis of the 2019 STATS19 official statistics and produced by National Highways. I know that there has been considerable public and media interest in understanding motorway accident and fatality data, and in March 2021 I commissioned the Office of Rail and Road to independently review the data to provide further analytical assurance and ensure that the conclusions arrived at are robust.

The ORR’s report, “Quality Assurance of All Lane Running Motorway data”, is published today. I welcome the ORR’s review and their conclusion that they found no errors in the underlying calculations, and all the products and processes reviewed are in line with established practice. This was a thorough undertaking; the ORR drew on its expertise as the monitor of England’s strategic road network. The ORR analysed detailed information, interviewed relevant staff at both National Highways and the Department for Transport, and reviewed the evidence submitted to the Transport Select Committee inquiry, which commenced in February 2021. To provide additional expertise and challenge, the ORR took independent analytical advice from a specialist consultancy and involved the non-executive chair of its National Highways committee. This was done to ensure the conclusions and recommendations arrived at are as robust and comprehensive as possible. The report supports National Highway’s findings that smart motorways are the safest roads in the country in terms of fatalities.

The ORR’s report contains several recommendations for improvement that will strengthen our understanding of road safety. National Highways have agreed to all its recommendations and developed an action plan in response which is already under way.

My commission for assurance into smart motorway safety data by the ORR is another step towards improving road safety and instilling public confidence in the safety of our roads, which make a crucial contribution to economic and social development in this country.

[HCWS270]

Adoption Provision

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Education (Gavin Williamson)]

Every child should have the opportunity to fulfil their potential. Children thrive in loving, stable families. However, some face challenges which most of us can only imagine. They will often have experienced abuse and neglect. Where a child cannot live with their birth parents, the best alternative home will often be with other family members or within loving foster families. For some children, adoption is the best alternative.



We cannot overestimate how important a new family is to an adopted child. Their security comes from knowing that they are safe and cared for, that they will get the love and support they need and will be supported to make the most of life’s opportunities. That is why we published our new adoption strategy “Achieving Excellence Everywhere”. A copy of the strategy can be found at: www.gov.uk.



In 2015 the adoption system was highly fragmented, with around 180 agencies recruiting and matching adopters; most of these were operating at a very small scale. This caused delays in the recruitment of adopters and in the matching of children with approved adopters. Since then, we have moved successfully to a regionalised approach with 31 regional adoption agencies covering 145 local authorities across the country. Regional adoption agencies are delivering adoption services more effectively at a greater scale with the regional leaders collaborating to improve services and address challenges.



In 2015 we introduced the Adoption Support Fund to help children who have experienced abuse and neglect to get the therapeutic support they need. Since then, over 36,000 individual children have been supported and had their lives transformed.



We have reduced the number of children waiting from 5,000 in 2010 to 2,600 now, and children are moving in with adoptive families faster, with more families now getting the adoption support they need. This is good progress, but we need to do more. Two thousand six hundred children waiting is still too many. One thousand children are still waiting over 18 months to be matched; this is too long. This typically includes older children, children from ethnic minorities, sibling groups and children with additional needs. This is unacceptable.



Our strategy sets out a bold and ambitious vision which will see regional adoption agencies building on their collaborative approach to deliver a framework of national standards and working with other agencies across health, education, and justice so that high-quality provision is available everywhere across the country. This will help to ensure that adopted children and their families can access the services and support they need to flourish wherever they live.



A new framework of national standards will mean services delivered to the same high quality across the country. It means that best practice will drive services as part of a culture of continuous improvement.



The strategy will see us recruiting adopters from all communities and from all walks of life so that we recruit all those who are able to provide loving homes to the children who are waiting to be adopted—a service where children are matched seamlessly across organisational boundaries with families that can provide a loving home without unnecessary delay.

Our strategy sets out how we will radically improve adoption support from the moment a match with a family has been approved. This includes not only direct support in the home, but also by schools and local health services, and support which continues throughout their childhood whenever it is required.



Sector leaders will build on their collaborative approach to ensure that all services are delivered to the same high standards across the country, developing the new national standards. Where it is most effective, we will look to deliver services on a national scale, for example on adopter recruitment or some elements of support.



To ensure that the needs of adoptive families become a high priority for all, sector leaders will develop strong partnerships with local authority children’s services, voluntary adoption agencies, education, health, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, the judiciary and voluntary and community groups.

We are making significant investment in 2021-22 as part of the strategy:

£1 million for regional adoption agency leaders to collectively improve recruitment and the adopter approval process;

£500,000 to increase early permanence arrangements, whereby a child is placed with prospective adopters when first removed from their birth family;

£46 million to continue post adoption support for families through the Adoption Support Fund;

£500,000 to employ a national regional adoption agency strategic leader and a support team of two project workers to progress collaborative working on agreed priority areas;

£100,000 funding to commission research on outcomes of children who left care on an adoption or special guardianship order.

Our ambition is to deliver adoption swiftly and effectively when adoption is the right path for the child. They and their families deserve the very best services we can offer to help them thrive and to achieve the best possible outcomes. Our strategy will help them to do so.



A copy of the strategy will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses.

[HCWS274]

House of Lords

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Lords Chamber

Tuesday 7 September 2021

14:30

Prayers—read by the Lord Bishop of Oxford.

Climate Change

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Lords Chamber

Question

14:36

Asked by

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis, published on 9 August.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lord Callanan) (Con)]

The Government are deeply concerned about the findings of the IPCC’s latest report, which shows that there is no doubt that human activity has changed the climate. The report is a further warning of the need for urgent global action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade and reach net zero around 2050. This reinforces the importance of achieving the Government’s COP 26 objectives and the necessity of a UK transition to net zero.

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Non-Afl)]

I thank the Minister for his Answer. Bearing in mind that he has indicated the Government’s concerns around the findings in the report, what new governmental, governance and statutory measures will the Government bring forward, in terms of amendments to the Environment Bill on Report and other means, to deliver on climate change and greenhouse-gas reductions? What plans will therefore be brought to COP 26 in Glasgow later this year, outlining that necessary climate-change stabilisation scheme?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I totally understand the noble Baroness’s point, but of course we have already legislated for the greenhouse-gas emissions, as covered by the Climate Change Act. It is therefore our position that we do not need to cover any further measures within the Environment Bill, as it is at the moment. Before COP, we will publish our net-zero strategy to set out our plans to meet these ambitious targets, and we have also engaged regularly with devolved Administrations.

[The Lord Bishop of Oxford]

My Lords, we all agree, I am sure, that the climate emergency is an immensely complex subject with many different facets. There is an urgent need and responsibility to educate and engage the public in responsible ways on the urgent priority of public and private action. Does the Minister agree that investment and a serious programme of public engagement are needed to combat climate change deniers, climate change delayers and those who say that there is no hope and nothing can be done? What are the Government’s plans for this?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The right reverend Prelate makes some good points, and of course tackling climate change must be a shared endeavour. Our ambition puts affordability and fairness at the heart of our efforts, and that goes hand in hand with supporting economic growth and prosperity. We support a number of campaigns to do exactly that, such as the Simple Energy Advice campaign and Together for Our Planet.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I congratulate the intergovernmental panel on a serious and thorough piece of work and the action that our own Government are taking. How confident is my noble friend that countries, such as India and China, that are not yet doing enough will actually step up to the plate on the basis of the scientific evidence before us today?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

That is the £6 billion CO₂ question, in that we will have to wait and see. A tremendous amount of diplomacy is going on. My right honourable friend Alok Sharma, the COP president, is obviously engaging extensively, and we hope that they will publish realistic NDCs before COP.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, the UK still has no fully costed plan to reach net zero. The Office for Budget Responsibility has made it clear that the cost of delaying will increase dramatically the longer we do so, and then we will not get the benefits of a more sustainable society and a greener economy. This vacuum of clear policies is now giving space to those who have vested interests in delaying and continuing subsidies for polluting fossil fuels—so can the Minister give the House assurances that he will act swiftly to address this misinformation and ensure that, in the forthcoming spending review, there are long-term investment commitments that take full account of all these costs and benefits?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

We are certainly committed to action. We have published a number of strategies—the hydrogen strategy and the transport decarbonisation strategy—and the net-zero strategy will be published before COP. The noble Baroness will understand that I cannot give commitments for the Chancellor in the spending review.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

In the face of the IPCC red card to all of us, will the UK Government commit to a faster date than 2050 for achieving net zero and more ambitious targets than the emissions reductions of 68% by 2030 and 78% by 2035? The IPCC report definitely pointed those out as needed.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

Achieving the targets that we have already set will be difficult enough. I like the noble Baroness’s ambition to go even further and faster, but I think that we will stick with what we have got for the moment.

[Lord Oates (LD)]

My Lords, a year ago when I asked the Minister whether it was not about time that the Government had a credible short-term action plan to tackle the climate emergency, he replied:

“Indeed, and we will be setting this out in due course.”—[Official Report, 6/10/20; col. 517.]


In light of the IPCC report, which makes it clear that global warming of between 1.5 and 2 degrees will be exceeded this century without drastic cuts in emissions, when can we expect to see that credible short-term action plan? I emphasise “credible”.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

As I said in response to the previous question, we have published a number of our strategies. The heat and buildings strategy is to be published shortly; the net-zero strategy will be published before COP. We need to set an example, and we intend to do just that. These are difficult decisions involving a lot of different players within government, but we will endeavour to do so as quickly as possible.

[Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con)]

My Lords, can my noble friend confirm Her Majesty’s Government’s assessment of the likelihood of meeting the Paris Agreement’s target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees centigrade?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

Yes, our assessment is that it is still possible by the end of the century, but only with immediate and significant reductions in global emissions over the next decade and net zero by around 2050. It would be a challenge, but given concerted action across the world, we could still do it.

[Lord Grantchester (Lab)]

The IPCC report underlines the statistical proof of man’s footprint across the globe and that climate breakdown is already well under way and accelerating, with ocean acidification and glacier meltdown baked in for centuries to come. Does the Minister agree that the biggest threat that the world now faces is not climate denial but climate dither and delay? Will the Government now revise their NDC pledge to cut carbon emissions, on which my noble friend Lady Young sought clarification, and bring forward a more ambitious programme for action before COP 26?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

As I said in response to a previous question, I admire the ambition of the noble Lord and his noble friend, but we have already achieved more than the vast majority of countries in the world. We have one of the most ambitious policies and one of the most ambitious reduction targets. We have made some of the fastest progress among all the G7 countries. Of course, it is right for the Opposition to keep pushing us to go further and faster, but we have done a lot.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, if anybody still has any doubts about the scale of the climate crisis, this report must surely put those to bed. As president of the CBI, I am very proud that one-third of the largest businesses in the UK with a market cap totalling £650 billion have already committed to net zero by 2050, but does the Minister agree that, although the UK’s 10-point plan is ambitious, we need to see more detail and clear timeframes for delivery?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

Indeed. I can agree with the noble Lord on the first part of his question. It has been encouraging to see the number of major businesses that have joined us in the race to net zero. I pay tribute to the work of the CBI in helping us to do that. But we have already set a number of quite ambitious targets. We have legislated in this House for the carbon budgets, and we will produce the net zero strategy before COP, which will see further progress.

[Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con)]

My Lords, as the European continent in the Middle Ages warmed up by 1.5 degrees centigrade and then reverted to normal temperature after a century, can the Minister tell the House of two scientific facts that show that we can stop or reverse climate change?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Lord invites me to indulge in a long debate about the validity or otherwise of the various reports and the IPCC report. Perhaps we could discuss it separately outside. However, the IPCC report was a major piece of work taking on board many of the assessments from world-leading scientists, and we would do well to take it seriously.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, since 2007, the IPCC has rapidly increased its assessment of potential sea level rises. When will the planning process reflect the fact that siting nuclear power stations in coastal areas is not a viable option?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Baroness raises a valid point, because the effects of climate change include rising sea levels, but they are consolidated, considered and adapted throughout the lifetime of nuclear power stations. As the noble Baroness is of course aware, we have a robust regulatory framework. Planning permissions and environmental permit requirements mean that no site can be built or developed unless all these factors are taken fully into account.

[The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)]

My Lords, all supplementary questions have been asked, and we now move to the next Question.

Afghanistan: Women and Girls

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Lords Chamber

Question

14:47

Asked by

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to protect the (1) freedoms, and (2) rights, of women and girls in Afghanistan.

[The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)]

My Lords, we are deeply concerned by reports of serious human rights violations and abuses, as well as a reduction in rights and access to services and public spaces for Afghan women and girls. On 18 August, the Prime Minister announced a bespoke resettlement scheme focusing on the most vulnerable, particularly women and children. The United Kingdom will continue to work with international partners to press any future Afghan Government to adhere to international obligations, including safeguarding human rights.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, we share the same concern. I pay tribute to the brave women of Afghanistan, including those who have protested for the right to work and an education and have been met by violence. Before the Taliban took over, 3.6 million girls were going to school, in many of whom and their futures we invested. The Taliban spokesmen say that girls can go to school, but in many areas they allow them to do so only up to grade 6 and in other areas not at all. The chasm between the statements and what is happening on the ground is wide, so how will we ensure the safe passage to the UK for women who have worked on rights and education and who are still in hiding, including former Chevening scholars? Many women were identified as being at risk, but how and when will they get out, including members of the young women’s orchestra?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness, and I am sure I speak for all noble Lords in paying tribute to those brave women. We have managed to ensure that many women have been part of our evacuation programme, but many remain, including the girls’ orchestra, which I know well, and I will continue to work with all noble Lords on facilitating the safe passage of those particularly courageous women in Afghanistan.

[Baroness Sugg (Con)]

My Lords, can we hear some more specific detail on how we are going to provide support to the women human rights defenders who are at such high risk? Are we helping, for example, with targeted documentation, advice on safe routes, specific support at the border and extraction to the UK?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I can assure my noble friend that we are working on all the particulars that she mentioned. I have travelled to the region with my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary to look at the issue of borders. The other matters that she mentioned are getting our full attention.

[The Earl of Sandwich (CB)]

My Lords, a number of Arab countries already encourage the participation of women in the economy as a whole, and in business. Is the FCDO doing enough in preparing for its future relations with the Taliban to work closely with those countries?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I assure the noble Earl that we are doing just that. Sir Simon Gass and Martin Longden are in Qatar, in our temporary embassy to Afghanistan. From an operational standpoint, we are working with the Taliban to ensure safe passage—but also, importantly, to make sure that they uphold the guarantees they have given.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the voluntary sector plays a huge part in promoting women’s rights across the world, including in Afghanistan? Does he also agree that reproductive health rights are important to promoting women’s freedom? What proportion of the Government’s new and welcome increase in humanitarian aid for Afghanistan will go to support those brave organisations and women who are defending and promoting human rights and, especially, women’s reproductive rights?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with what the noble Baroness says on the specifics of the additional funding, which has been worked out to ensure that we provide funding directly to those most in need, including to the very groups that she mentioned.

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his readiness at any time of day or night to receive details of those who have been made very vulnerable in this situation and to do what he could to help them. However, all the cases that I have referred to him, including the woman MP, are still in hiding, even those with permission to settle here. Since the bomb went off at the gates of the airport, the Government went silent in relation to them, and with them. What will be done to help them and how will they be reassured in this terribly dangerous circumstance?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, in thanking her for her work on this issue as well, I assure the noble Baroness that for those who received a letter under the ARAP scheme, or those called forward under the leave outside the rules, that letter will continue to act as a prioritisation. All those under the ARAP scheme will be guaranteed access. The issue remains in-country, and with safe passage, and I assure the noble Baroness that we are working on channels to ensure that we can guarantee safe passage through the country as well.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

On that question of safe passage, yesterday the Foreign Secretary acknowledged the vulnerability of the LGBT community in Afghanistan. Of course, he said that he was talking to the Home Secretary about how the resettlement scheme will address that issue but, as the Minister is aware, safe passage to countries that are also a hostile environment for the LGBT community is extremely difficult. How is the department addressing this issue and ensuring that the LGBT community can get safe passage to safe countries?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I totally understand the point that the noble Lord raises. He and I have discussed this matter, and I shall continue to work directly with him and other colleagues, because it is important that we encompass all expertise to ensure safe passage for all vulnerable minorities, including the LGBT community.

[Baroness Helic (Con)]

My Lords, as the Taliban consolidate their power, we see them making promises to western media and western Governments. Considering that the civic space in Afghanistan has been shut down, that journalists, reporters and NGOs have dispersed, and that 36 million live in Afghanistan, many of whom are women, does the Minister agree with me that an international UN-mandated mechanism must be established so that the Taliban know that someone is watching and documenting this, and that promises made are promises kept?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend rightly points out a particular issue. What the Taliban desire the most is international recognition; that is why it was right that we worked with France to ensure the UN Security Council resolution, so they are basically held to account for the promises they have made. I assure her that we are working directly with UN agencies on that very issue.

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, many valid concerns have been raised, but does the Minister agree with me that a note of caution is also necessary? The Government’s pressure on the Taliban to allow all those who wish to do so to leave the country could lead to a massive outflow. Indeed, the numbers could run into millions, as they have in the past. Meanwhile, the EU and Turkey are effectively closing their borders. Will the Government focus on those for whom we have a direct responsibility as employers, and will they stick to the limit that they have announced for 20,000 over five years for any other applicants?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

I assure the noble Lord that we are focused very much on the priority of those who work directly with us. Of course, there are people within Afghanistan who are British nationals or are their dependants and those special cases—and that is where the Government’s priority is.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, on specific actions, on 17 August, Gender Action for Peace and Security wrote to Boris Johnson and to senior members of the Cabinet about the imminent danger and serious risk of violence that Afghan women are facing, especially those who, at our urging, engaged in peace processes or in journalism or delivered programmes to meet women’s needs. I am sure that the Minister is aware of that letter—in fact, I know that he is—and he almost certainly agrees with the actions that it urges on the Government. Which of those actions have been advanced in the three weeks since it was received?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

I assure the noble Lord that we are working on the specifics of what was proposed, and from other groups as well. I know the organisation very well, and in coming weeks I shall certainly look to meet colleagues in the organisation directly to discuss actions further.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, will the Minister tell the House what support and advice is being given to vulnerable women who could be eligible to come to the UK under the ARAP scheme but have not yet been called forward and do not have a male guardian? They are, perhaps, among the most vulnerable, and advice would be most welcome.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

If we were to identify such individuals, with all sensitivities considered, we would see what support could be offered. The noble Baroness points to a very vulnerable category; I agree with her, and we continue to work with all channels, including international partners, to reach that particular group.

[Lord Flight (Con)]

To what extent are the Government potentially willing to use the provision of overseas aid to Afghanistan as a lever to put pressure on the Afghan Government to grant the freedoms and rights of women?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, overseas aid is an important part of our package, but the Taliban must live up to their promises, and no aid will be directed through those channels. We need to work with agencies on the ground to ensure that those who most need the aid receive it.

[The Senior Deputy Speaker (Lord Gardiner of Kimble)]

My Lords, all supplementary questions have been asked, and we now move to the next Question.

Cash Network

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Lords Chamber

Question

14:57

Asked by

[Lord Holmes of Richmond]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to amend competition law to enable collective action to ensure an efficient, effective, accessible, and sustainable cash network across the United Kingdom.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office and the Treasury (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government have not set out plans to amend competition law. However, we are committed to legislating to protect access to cash. The Government are consulting on legislative proposals to protect access to cash withdrawal and deposit facilities. Together with this, the Bank of England has brought together industry to design a new model for wholesale cash distribution. The Government will explore how they can best enable and support an efficient, sustainable and resilient model.

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that, although the future of payments is digital, the case for cash remains material—material for millions, for individual financial inclusion and national financial resilience for the foreseeable?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

I agree with my noble friend that cash remains a very important measure of exchange in this country. It is now the second most important—it is less important than it was—but we are committed to supporting it.

[Baroness Bryan of Partick (Lab)]

My Lords, in answer to a Question on 19 July this year, the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, stated that

“industry is best placed to develop the most efficient and sustainable solutions for access to cash”.—[Official Report, 19/7/21; col. 3.]

If that is the case, can the Minister explain why 8,000 ATMs—13% of the total—have disappeared in the past 18 months, making access to cash even more difficult?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

To reassure the noble Baroness, there are still some 40,000 ATMs in the country at the last count, and we remain committed to supporting their continuation. Link, the payment services provider for cash machines, has restated that a number of times. The other side of the coin is that the percentage of transactions using cash has declined dramatically; it was 56% of all transactions in 2010, and is now down to 17%. The usage is declining, which is why some of these facilities are going.

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, post offices are highly valued by the communities they serve. Will the Government consider committing to the Post Office’s future by developing it as “The People’s Bank”, providing cash withdrawal facilities in the communities that need them?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, the Post Office plays a vital role in supporting payments across the system. There are some 11,000 post offices, and some 95% of business customers and 99% of personal banking customers are able to deposit cheques, check their balances and withdraw and deposit cash. The banking framework allows banking via post offices.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister’s answers seem to me to fail to sense the problem for minorities and people who are poor. My real concern about access to cash is how poor people will manage. For poor people, frequently cash is the only way they can budget—they are not up to systems and that sort of thing. There are not many of them, but society must be responsible for them. I have read the document on this that the Treasury has pushed out; it seems pretty reasonable when you read it, but the key issue is the charging. The system is losing free-to-use cash machines. To us, the charges look trivial, but when you are taking small amounts of cash out, proportionately they are eye-watering. Will the Government insist that the free-to-use network is maintained and possibly enhanced?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, to reiterate my earlier point, there are some 40,000 cash machines that are free at the point of use; they are sustained through an interconnection charge between the banks. As for what the Government are doing, in the Financial Services Act of this year we legislated to allow cashback without purchases. That became law in June this year, and it is something where everyone’s interests are aligned: the retailer gets the opportunity to increase footfall into their shops and to reduce the cost of having to bank cash, which is expensive. We are optimistic that this will provide a wide range of additional outlets for cash.

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

I declare my interest as an independent non-executive director of Link. What are the Government’s plans to ensure that an effective hub network of physical access to financial services is maintained right across the country in the future? Amid the increasing tension that exists between banks, post offices, the banks’ attempts at hub pilots and local shop services such as cashback, what are the Government doing to co-ordinate the picture to ensure we have free access to cash?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, the Government welcome industry efforts to develop solutions to provide continued access to financial services. The community access to cash pilots are an industry-led initiative, taking place in eight locations in the UK at the moment. These are trialling and testing sustainable solutions for ensuring that communities can conveniently withdraw and deposit cash. The Government’s proposals for cash will enable firms to use a range of solutions, including existing facilities, to provide access to cash for the purpose of meeting geographic requirements, provided they are judged to be delivering reasonable access by the responsible regulator.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, I accept that change will come but it is vital we protect those who rely on cash. It is people on tight budgets, but it goes beyond that: it is also people who are cared for in their own home, with carers who do the shopping. I declare an interest: I was shielding for months last year. Three people were doing the shopping, with cash provided sometimes before the shopping and at other times after. What was I supposed to do? Cash was absolutely vital for those transactions. You cannot give a cheque or give your plastic cards out, so the idea that it affects only a few people, and that change is on the way in digital, is nonsense—we are going to be a cash society for a long time to come.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

I agree with the noble Lord that we are going to remain a cash society for a considerable time, but I reassure him that, as of the first quarter of this year, over 99% of the population was within two kilometres of free cash withdrawal.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, in July I asked whether unbanked pensioners could be issued with debit cards, topped up with their monthly pensions, which they could use in shops—a facility already available to universal credit claimants. I was told that this service was widely available, but when I asked the DWP it told me that only 350 pensioners have these cards. As more and more retailers refuse to accept cash, should not more unbanked pensioners be issued with these cards?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

As my noble friend is aware, the DWP payment policy is to pay benefits and pensions into a standard bank, building society or credit union. The DWP encourages customers to provide standard bank account details, to give them greater choice in where and how they collect their money. Customers who receive their payment into an account of their choice are financially included and can benefit from a wide range of financial services, such as direct debits. A standard account allows customers to access cash payments via post offices, as I mentioned in a reply to an earlier question. The DWP payment exception service is a small-scale scheme where vouchers are uploaded to a card or sent electronically by SMS or email. It is available to that small minority of claimants who cannot open or use a standard bank account. It is not a prepaid card and cannot be used to purchase goods and services.

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the Minister knows that the ending of the Post Office card account, with the Government refusing to renew the contract, is going to really hit those very poorest pensioners who depend on that cash—that is practically all they have to take out each week. Week after week they are now getting letters telling them they must get a bank account or some other kind of digital banking. Why will the Government not accept that the Post Office card account should be retained to help those very poorest pensioners who rely on it, without the bureaucracy of a bank?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, it is not difficult to open a bank account. What we need to do is keep encouraging these elderly people who do not have an account yet to open one.

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

I congratulate my noble friend on the work he is doing in this regard, but surely we should keep from retailers the costs from the banks themselves for handling cash, which seem to be an impediment. Does my noble friend agree that there is still some reluctance, following the Covid crisis, about handling cash? Is anything being done to reassure the public that it is safe to handle cash?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, I think what has happened is that people have discovered the ease of not using cash for a number of transactions. Indeed, retailers would not be turning down cash if their customers were objecting to it.

[The Senior Deputy Speaker (Lord Gardiner of Kimble)]

My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed.

Railways: Bridge Strikes

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Lords Chamber

Question

15:08

Asked by

[Lord Berkeley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to reduce the risk of vehicles hitting railway bridges in order to improve rail passenger safety and reduce disruption.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Vere of Norbiton) (Con)]

My Lords, reducing bridge strikes involves interventions from the owners of bridges—usually Network Rail—highways authorities and the owners and operators of vehicles. Network Rail raises driver awareness and offers advice on avoiding low bridges. It has published Prevention of Bridge Strikes: A Good Practice Guide on GOV.UK.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for that Answer and I commend the work that Network Rail has done, but my Question arises from an incident in Plymouth, on bank holiday Monday, which closed the west of England line for three days and affected tens of thousands of passengers, when a Tesco lorry hit a bridge. According to Network Rail, 43% of drivers do not know the height of their lorries. That is pretty frightening. According to Network Rail again, there are something like five bridge bashes every day, and clearly there will be occasions when there could be very serious accidents. Will the Minister, in addition to supporting Network Rail’s work, encourage it to claim all the costs from every bridge bash, including the cost of delays to trains, the cost of rebuilding and of course the cost of the delays to passengers? At the moment, it is costing the taxpayer £23 million a year, which seems rather a lot of money.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I am not wholly sure where the noble Lord got the figure of £23 million a year, but I would point out that costs are not necessarily met by the taxpayer; it depends on the circumstances. If liability rests with a vehicle driver, the costs will be recovered through insurance, and Network Rail has been successful in recovering large amounts for both infrastructure repair and compensation in the past.

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

The Road Haulage Association promotes the use of specialised lorry satellite navigation devices, which give bridge heights. Do the Government plan to take any steps to help promote their use more widely, or even make it a requirement that they be fitted and used in a similar way to tachographs? If they do not do so already, could such devices not also be adapted to give a warning to drivers approaching bridges that are lower than the height of their truck and trailer?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I agree with the noble Lord that technology will provide at least some of the answers to the problems we currently face. As he will know, Network Rail often installs special technology on some of the more bashed bridges that measures the height of the approaching vehicle and then flashes up “Turn Back” signs. Of course, we are very happy to work with the freight associations—and indeed we do—on ensuring that HGV drivers are fully aware of the technology available to them both in their cab and on the roads.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, without the quick-acting response of a local resident calling the emergency phone number by the bridge in Plymouth in the incident referred to earlier, a high-speed derailment was highly likely. I went to visit the site the day after it happened. As Plymouth had just had a very severe event associated with a fire alarm, I am delighted that nobody was hurt in this incident. However, there must be more that we can do. The south-west rail network has been significantly under-invested in; there are only two lines, one going one way and one the other, from Plymouth to Cornwall. This results in overcrowded trains, resulting—particularly with Covid—in the risk of cross-infection, as we have recently seen in Devon and Cornwall. So I ask the Minister not only about the safety of bridges but about safe and sufficient trains.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

The noble Baroness has taken the Question a little more broadly than the brief, and I am afraid I will not be able to comment on the capacity of trains in the south-west. However, I agree that bridge strikes are dangerous, disruptive and costly. The solution does not lie in any single intervention; we must maintain our focus on getting bridge owners to put up the relevant signage and getting highways authorities to put up warning signs ahead of these bridges, and of course we must double down on our efforts to communicate with HGV drivers and bus drivers to ensure that they know exactly how high their vehicle is—indeed, by law they must know this, and it must also be displayed in the cab.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister has already noted that the Government support Network Rail in recovering costs from operators of HGVs involved in avoidable crashes. Network Rail also said that it will report bridge strikes to the Traffic Commissioners for Great Britain, the regulator responsible for licensing professional drivers, who have the power to suspend or revoke licences. Will Her Majesty’s Government support Network Rail in its pursuance of the suspension or revocation of HGV licences in this situation?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

Absolutely, and I can reassure the noble Baroness that I have already been on the case in this matter. Bridge strikes have not suddenly arrived on our doorstep recently, although I am pleased to say they seem to be coming down in number, which is a relief. I wrote to the Traffic Commissioners on 17 September last year, after a terrible bus crash—noble Lords may remember it—where the top of the bus, which had children on board, went into the bridge. It was a very serious matter. I asked the commissioner to remind all operators of their obligations, and he wrote me a very helpful response just a week later setting out a range of measures he would take, not only communicating with the drivers and operators but setting out what steps must happen when an event has occurred—there is usually a public inquiry, the driver may face suspension or revocation in more serious cases, and the operator can face sanctions relating to their licensing. So the Government do take this matter very seriously.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Berkeley has highlighted a very important issue. Is the noble Baroness satisfied that the signage as set out in the Highway Code is as clear as it should be? I lived in the east Midlands, in Derbyshire, where there are a number of bridges. It is about not only the height of the vehicle but its width; sometimes the lorry arrives and the signage has not been put out properly for it to see the problem in advance. Can we look at that? If the noble Baroness is going to tell me that the signage is correct, what procedures are there to review the advice from time to time to ensure that the prevailing view is actually correct?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

The regulations setting out what signs are needed are actually set out in chapter 4 of the Traffic Signs Manual, which is published by the DfT. We set out comprehensive advice on signage approaching a bridge to make sure that reduced height clearances are clearly set out in advance. It is up to the highways authority, under Section 41 of the Highways Act 1980, to make sure that the signage is appropriate. If noble Lords are aware of signs which they feel are insufficient, they should get in touch with the local highways authority, which has a responsibility to make sure the signage is correct. We feel confident that the Traffic Signs Manual sets out exactly what is required.

[The Senior Deputy Speaker (Lord Gardiner of Kimble)]

My Lords, that concludes Oral Questions for today.

Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act 2020 (Coronavirus) (Extension of the Relevant Period) (No. 2) Regulations 2021

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Lords Chamber

Motion to Approve

15:16

Moved by

[Lord Callanan]

That the Regulations laid before the House on 21 July be approved.

Relevant document: 8th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Considered in Grand Committee on 6 September.

Motion agreed.

Armed Forces Bill

2nd reading
Tuesday 7th September 2021 Lords Chamber

Second Reading

15:17

Moved by

[Baroness Goldie]

That the Bill be now read a second time.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Baroness Goldie) (Con)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to be speaking to the Armed Forces Bill this afternoon. Without this Bill, the Armed Forces Act 2006—the legislation that maintains the Armed Forces as a disciplined body—could not continue in force beyond the end of this year.

This Bill is for the Armed Forces. We have the best Armed Forces in the world; their professionalism and dignity has recently and vividly been displayed to us with the evacuation of over 14,500 people from Kabul airport to the safety of the UK. That draw-down operation was no easy undertaking, with the ever-present risk of attack and the emotionally charged, hostile environment that our service personnel found themselves operating within. It is their professionalism, integrity and resolute fortitude to get the job done that shone through.

The Government acknowledge their responsibility to the new arrivals from Afghanistan; as such, Operation Warm Welcome is fully under way to support and provide the necessary assistance where required. We owe an immense debt to those arrivals, and this Government are determined that we give them and their families the support they need to rebuild their lives here in the UK.

I acknowledge that many of us have questions about what has happened in Afghanistan. As the Prime Minister said,

“the events in Afghanistan have unfolded faster, and the collapse has been faster, than I think even the Taliban themselves predicted.”—[Official Report, Commons, 18/8/21; col. 1254.]

As the Defence Secretary said, “the die was cast” when President Trump struck a deal with the Taliban, paving the way for our exit. However, I reaffirm to your Lordships that we will now use every diplomatic and humanitarian lever at our disposal to restore stability to Afghanistan, and the Prime Minister has been clear that that will require a concerted and co-ordinated effort from the international community. None the less, this must not overshadow what our brave service personnel have achieved in Afghanistan, nor indeed their tireless efforts domestically at the forefront of the battle against the global pandemic. Therefore, I ask your Lordships to join me in commending and saluting their manifold accomplishments, and we can do that in tangible form by supporting this Bill.

This leads me to the integrated review. During the passage of the Bill in the other place, questions were raised over prospective reductions in service strength and, in turn, whether such reductions have negatively impacted our operational ability; for example, in Afghanistan. The integrated review is about the future; it is not about the past, and our military operations in Afghanistan are now at a close. Furthermore, it would be disingenuous to suggest that any variations in the overall Armed Forces strength figures could be directly and meaningfully linked to delivery of specific outputs. It is simplistic to say that there is a direct correlation between overall Armed Forces strength figures and capabilities. I reassure your Lordships that the UK Armed Forces continue to meet all their operational commitments, and we expect them to continue to do so, and our capability will be designed to meet a new age of threat.

Finally, before I turn to the Bill, I wish to say a few words about the recently published report from the House of Commons Defence Committee on women in the Armed Forces. I extend my gratitude to the members of that committee for their well-balanced and thoughtful report. I reassure your Lordships that we are giving the report serious consideration and the Ministry of Defence will publish its response soon.

Your Lordships will also be anticipating the outcome of the review led by Sir Richard Henriques, which was announced last year. We are very grateful for the comprehensive work Sir Richard has been undertaking. I expect to be able to update your Lordships in early course, and certainly in time for your Lordships to consider the matter during the passage of this Bill.

Without further ado, I now turn to the Bill. There is an Armed Forces Bill every five years to renew the legislation that governs the Armed Forces. This is currently the Armed Forces Act 2006, which contains nearly all the provisions for the existence of a system for the Armed Forces of command, discipline and justice. The requirement for renewal of the 2006 Act is based on the assertion in the Bill of Rights 1688 that the Army—and now, by extension, the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy—may not be maintained within the kingdom without the consent of Parliament.

I wish to be quite clear that this Bill must pass to renew the 2006 Act by the end of this year, because current legislation does not provide for the 2006 Act to be extended beyond 2021. Your Lordships will understand that if we fail to effect that renewal, there would be serious consequences. For example, if the Act expired, members of the Armed Forces would still owe allegiance to Her Majesty and would have a legal duty to obey lawful commands, but there would be no penalties for disobeying orders or for other types of indiscipline. Service offences would cease to exist, commanding officers and service police would lose their statutory powers to investigate offences and enforce discipline, and the service courts would no longer function.

Discipline in every sense is fundamental to and underpins the existence of our Armed Forces. Indeed, it is the reason for their success in the discharge of their remarkable range of duties. That is why renewal of the 2006 Act is so important, and renewal is the primary purpose of this Bill. That is what Clause 1 provides for: the continuation of the 2006 Act for a year from the date on which this Bill receives Royal Assent. It also provides for renewal thereafter by Order in Council, for up to a year at a time, until the end of 2026. The Bill also provides us with a regular opportunity to update legislation for the Armed Forces.

I turn to service courts, summary hearings and jurisdiction. In 2017, in preparation for this Bill, the MoD commissioned an independent review of the service justice system to ensure that it continues to be transparent, fair and efficient. The review, led by His Honour Shaun Lyons, made a significant number of recommendations for improvement and this Bill deals with the small number that need primary legislation to be implemented, including changes to the constitution of the court martial and a power to correct mistakes, which is called a “slip rule”. Clause 7 deals with the issue of concurrent jurisdiction. For offences committed by service personnel in the UK, justice can be delivered through the civilian criminal justice system or the service justice system.

Importantly, the service justice system review found that the service justice system was fair and robust. But it also proposed that some of the most serious offences should not be prosecuted at court martial when they are committed by service personnel in the UK, except where the consent of the Attorney-General is given. To be clear, the review was not saying that the service justice system should stop dealing with certain categories of cases which occur in the UK. Rather, it was saying that, when such cases come up, controls should be introduced if they are to be tried in the service justice system. Meanwhile, jurisdiction would remain to deal with such cases overseas. I reassure your Lordships that the Government considered this recommendation fully and carefully and concluded that concurrency of jurisdiction must remain.

We have highly skilled, capable and effective service police, who have equivalent serious crime training to civilian police. They also follow procedures and processes used by civilian police, and, so far as investigations are concerned, are independent from the chain of command. Indeed, a process audit which was part of the Lyons review found that the service police have the necessary training, skills and experience to investigate any crime.

The Service Prosecuting Authority is headed up by a civilian, Jonathan Rees QC, who is a leading criminal silk and eminently qualified to lead the Service Prosecution Authority in prosecuting these and all types of offences. When he took up the position of director, he seconded, to lead on rape for the SPA, the former head of the Thames and Chiltern CPS rape and serious sexual offences unit, with all the experience and knowledge that brings. The judges who sit in the court martial are also civilians who frequently sit in the Crown Court. So we are confident that the service justice system is capable of dealing with all offences, whatever their seriousness and wherever they occur. But we agree that the current non-statutory protocols and guidance around jurisdiction must be clearer. That is why Clause 7 places a duty on the heads of the service and civilian prosecutors in England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to agree protocols regarding the exercise of concurrent jurisdiction.

We believe that such decisions on jurisdiction are best left to the independent service justice and UK civilian prosecutors using guidance agreed between them, but the Bill ensures that the civilian prosecutors will have the final say should a disagreement on jurisdiction between the prosecutors remain unresolved. I want to be clear here: this is not about seeking to direct more cases into the service justice system and away from the civilian criminal justice system or vice versa. It is about guaranteeing that both systems can handle all offending and are equally equipped to deliver justice for victims.

I turn to the Armed Forces covenant, which the Bill takes important steps to strengthen. Clause 8 imposes a duty to have due regard to the three principles of the covenant on certain public bodies across the UK. It is perhaps helpful to remind your Lordships of the three principles of the Armed Forces covenant: first, the unique obligations of, and sacrifices made by, the Armed Forces; secondly, the principle that it is desirable to remove disadvantages arising for servicepeople from membership, or former membership, of the Armed Forces; and, thirdly, the principle that special provision for servicepeople may be justified by the effects on such people of membership, or former membership, of the Armed Forces.

Clause 8 inserts new sections into the 2006 Act to impose the duty in each of the four nations of the United Kingdom. The new duty will apply where particular types of public bodies or persons are exercising certain of their public functions in key areas of housing, education, and healthcare, which are vital to the day-to-day lives of our Armed Forces community.

In the area of housing, the duty covers bodies that are responsible for developing housing allocation policy for social housing, homelessness policy and the administration of disabled facilities grants, which can be vital for injured veterans.

In education, we know that our service families sometimes face challenges, due to their service-related lifestyle, in accessing suitable school places for their children. Specific challenges may present themselves in relation to service children with special educational needs or disabilities—as it is described in England—when attempting to maintain continuity of provision to meet their needs. We know that some service children have specific well-being needs and this duty will target those who are responsible for this, ensuring that they understand and consider the specific needs of our community’s children.

In healthcare, much has already been achieved, but service families and veterans may still experience disadvantages, often caused by their mobility or healthcare requirements resulting from military service. This duty will apply to all bodies that are responsible for commissioning and delivering healthcare services across the UK.

At this point it would be useful to remind your Lordships that health, education and housing are all matters for which the devolved Administrations are responsible, and they are administered as best suits those nations. However, the Government have been delighted with the proactive support we have had from colleagues in the home nations for the covenant as a whole and for this legislation in particular.

Guidance will be crucial to ensure that bodies subject to the new duty understand the principles of the covenant and the ways in which members of our Armed Forces community can suffer disadvantage arising from service. Clause 8 provides that the Secretary of State may issue guidance in relation to the duties imposed to which those subject to the duty must have regard when exercising a relevant function, and he must consult with the respective devolved authorities where this is relevant, and other appropriate stakeholders, before issuing the guidance.

The Bill also provides for the covenant duty to be extended in the future. The Secretary of State may, by regulations, widen the scope of the new duty to include additional functions and bodies in other areas. However, before doing so, he would be required to consult the relevant devolved authorities and other appropriate stakeholders, and any amendment—this is important—would have to be made by way of affirmative regulations, requiring the express consent of Parliament.

Clause 9 deals with a new continuous service commitment that will enable members of a Reserve Force to volunteer to undertake a period of full-time or part-time service. This offers a more flexible suite of engagement options for reservists, incorporating seamless movement between full and part-time service under the Reserve Forces Act 1996, and empowers defence with greater freedoms to introduce further modernising changes to reserves commitment types.

Clause 10 creates a power to change the minimum time limit for submitting an appeal against a first-level decision in a service complaint from six weeks to two weeks. It also provides the ability to restrict the grounds on which someone can appeal. There are good reasons to make these changes.

Currently, the 2006 Act provides for a minimum time limit for submitting appeals of six weeks, and this is the time limit set in regulations. However, we believe that in most circumstances two weeks is adequate for someone to submit an appeal. Not all service personnel are engaged in the same type of work; many are engaged in roles such as working in offices, where a two-week deadline would be appropriate. This approach is in keeping with other public sector complaints systems. However, of course, we recognise that there are circumstances in which it would not be appropriate to restrict the time to appeal to two weeks, such as for those deployed on operational duties or those in poor health. In such cases, an extension can be sought.

We also need to ensure that people have good reason to appeal. Currently a complainant need only say that they are unhappy with the decision. We believe that appeals should be permitted only where there were procedural errors or where new evidence is provided that may change the outcome of the original decision. Where a complainant’s request to move a service complaint to the appeals stage has been deemed inadmissible, they are entitled to ask for a review of that decision by the Service Complaints Ombudsman.

Clause 10 and Schedule 3 are part of wider reforms to support service personnel through the complaints system, to increase efficiency and to reduce delay within the service complaints process. Other reforms, which do not require primary legislation, will provide guidance agreed with the Service Complaints Ombudsman on the criteria and grounds for appeal, early access to an assisting officer, mandated offers of informal resolution, easy-read guides for complainants and respondents, and improvements to forms for lodging complaints.

We have to ensure that we modernise and reduce delay in the service complaints system, creating where we can a consistent experience across defence, and following best practice from other parts of the public sector. It is crucial that our service personnel feel confident that complaining will not adversely impact on them. Therefore, complaints must be dealt with appropriately and in a timely fashion to build that trust further.

Clause 11 amends the 2006 Act to create a new regime for complaints against the service police and related matters. It does so by establishing the service police complaints commissioner and enabling the creation of a regime for complaints, conduct matters and death or serious injury matters which is modelled on the regime for the civilian police in England and Wales. The clause also contains powers that will enable provision to be made in relation to both super-complaints and whistleblowing, which will be modelled on the regime for the civilian police in England and Wales.

The new independent service police complaints commissioner will oversee the new complaints regime and will carry out investigations into the most serious allegations against the service police. The commissioner will also have overall responsibility for securing the maintenance of suitable arrangements for making complaints and dealing with other serious matters. The creation of this new oversight regime brings the service police into line with their civilian counterparts.

The Bill also addresses sentencing and rehabilitation. It would enable the court martial and the Service Civilian Court to disqualify offenders from driving in the UK and deprivation orders to be made in the service justice system. The Bill also makes some minor technical adjustments to the rehabilitation periods for reprimands.

Finally, among the main provisions in the Bill are steps to right the wrongs of the past which ensure that posthumous pardons for those who were convicted of historic service offences relating to their sexuality also apply fully to convictions under older legislation governing the Army and the marines.

This Armed Forces Bill makes important changes to the service justice system, bringing forward the sound recommendations of the Lyons review that require primary legislation. The Bill ensures that our service justice system remains fit for purpose, and, importantly, it will strengthen the legislative basis of the Armed Forces covenant to help ensure that those who serve and have served, and their families, are treated with fairness and respect in the communities they serve.

I look forward to the detailed scrutiny which we shall give the Bill in Committee and I commend it to the House.

15:38

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her usual clear and helpful introduction to this legislation, which the House will appreciate. It is a privilege to speak for Her Majesty’s Opposition on this Armed Forces Bill, so I join the Minister in her comments.

The Armed Forces Bill provides Parliament with an essential opportunity every five years not only to renew the legal underpinning for the Armed Forces but to examine how we can improve the lives of, and protections and support for, personnel and their families through legislative change. I make it clear that Her Majesty’s Opposition stand firmly behind our brave service personnel and their families, and we strongly believe that the law should be on their side. That is why I say to the Minister that we support the principles behind the Bill and indeed the Bill itself, and welcome steps to create a legal duty to implement the principles of the covenant and the key elements of the Lyons review.

However, there are many both in and outside the House who believe that the Government could and should go further. Therefore, our main priority will be to work with others cross-party to improve the legislation where appropriate and to challenge the Government on certain points in order to seek further clarity. Our forces communities are themselves determined that the Bill should not be a missed opportunity, so we will bring forward amendments in good faith to reflect these calls where we believe the Bill could be strengthened.

First, we need to place the Bill in context. The UK is currently facing a rapidly changing security environment, threats are multiplying and diversifying, democracy itself is under pressure and technology is changing warfare for ever.

As the Minister acknowledged, we also debate this legislation on the back of the Afghan withdrawal. Afghanistan, whatever the rights and wrongs, has demonstrated how quickly situations can change, with serious consequences for the UK and our allies. I join the Minister and, I know, everyone across the House in noting the bravery of our personnel and their professionalism during the evacuation, which has been incredible and, once again, awe-inspiring. Alongside them were embassy staff, diplomats and many other personnel, including many of our Afghan colleagues who stayed with us until the end. We are used to this brilliance, but we must never take it for granted. We thank them for everything they have done and recognise that our troops are a great source of pride for our country, as they should be.

However, as the Minister herself acknowledged, we cannot escape what has happened, as withdrawal has raised questions about the future and what the Government’s Global Britain actually means, nor how the trauma of recent scenes will not end for our personnel and Afghans now that the main evacuation is over. As I said, we owe them a huge debt of gratitude, along with a moral obligation to continue to support serving personnel, veterans and former local staff. Combat Stress pointed out recently that, not unexpectedly, perhaps, calls to its helplines doubled in August. In the light of that, we will work with the Minister to suggest where the Bill may be strengthened and, in particular, to look to ensure how the Ministry of Defence continues to provide additional mental health support for those who have been affected by the Afghan withdrawal.

As we turn to the Bill, I am reminded that sometimes the Government’s rhetoric may not match the reality of their actions. The Prime Minister promised not to cut personnel, but the integrated review defence Command Paper is a plan for 10,000 fewer troops. The overseas operations Act promised to end repeat investigations, but focused only on prosecutions, not shoddy investigations, nor a duty of care for troops.

We need to ensure under the Armed Forces covenant that the law fits what we all want to achieve. The Bill introduces “due regard to principles” of the covenant, but what will that mean in practice. How will it be measured? What will enforcement look like? What redress is there for Armed Forces personnel who feel let down? Many of us, including me, would argue that this commitment needs to be broadened. At the moment, it focuses only on healthcare, housing and education. Of course, all of those are important, but the Government need to ask themselves: why not social care, why not employment, why not pensions or, indeed, immigration?

That oversight has been raised by not only people such as me but many service charities and organisations. The Army Families Federation said:

“This limited scope will address only a small proportion of the disadvantages that Army families face”,


while the Royal British Legion said that the scope should be widened to include all matters affecting the Armed Forces community. Help for Heroes said that, as many issues of vital concern to veterans will be excluded, the Bill risks creating a two-tier covenant.

I am sure that the Government will point to proposed new Section 343AF, which allows the Secretary of State to add later by regulation other policy areas and additional persons and bodies to which the “due regard” principle applies, but how often will that be reviewed? What will the consultation process look like?

I was also surprised to see that, while the Bill creates new responsibilities for a wide range of public bodies, from school governors to local authorities, central government is not included. I remember that the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, for example, questioned that oversight during the Afghanistan debate late last month. Why are Ministers not including central government within the Bill?

The Armed Forces covenant represents a binding moral commitment between government and service, but also between the public and our Armed Forces and communities, guaranteeing them and their families the respect and fair treatment their service has earned, suffering no disadvantage. That is why the scope of the legislation must be wide enough to ensure that all areas of potential disadvantage are addressed, and we will be tabling amendments to probe the Government’s thinking.

What about the Government’s stated objective to improve the service justice system, ensuring that personnel have a clear, fair and effective route to justice wherever they are operating? That is on the back of the Lyons review, which, as the Explanatory Notes state, was carried out with the aim of ensuring the service justice system's effectiveness. We welcome efforts to implement key recommendations of the Lyons review, particularly the creation of an independent service police complaints commissioner, which will ensure greater oversight and fairness in service justice cases. But the Government should clarify—to be fair, the Minister attempted to do this in her remarks—why they have not adopted the Lyons recommendation that civilian courts should have jurisdiction in matters of murder, rape and serious sexual offences committed in the UK. The Minister will know that the MoD’s own figures show that between 2015 and 2019, the conviction rate for rape cases tried under courts martial was just 10%, while, during the same period, the conviction rate was 59% in civilian courts, with considerably more cases being tried each year.

Indeed, in evidence in other place, the Victims’ Commissioner, Dame Vera Baird QC, said:

“Rape and sexual assault are hugely under-reported, and it is all the harder to report something when you are inside a system that is hierarchical and you may be jeopardising your own career”.


The report from the Sub-Committee on Women in the Armed Forces, chaired by Sarah Atherton MP, stated:

“We do not believe that the problems highlighted by the Lyons Review in the handling of sexual offences in the Service Justice System have been fully resolved.”


Again, we will need to explore the Government’s thinking on that in Committee. Therefore, we will be seeking an amendment to the Bill to ensure that court martial jurisdiction should no longer include rape and sexual assault with penetration, except where the consent of the Attorney-General is given. Given that reports such as the Wigston review have highlighted unacceptable levels of sexism, we shall be looking to see how we can strengthen the Bill in that area.

There are many other amendments under which we will seek to pursue the Government and to clarify their thinking in later debates: visas for Commonwealth and Gurkha veterans; a review of the number of people dismissed or forced to resign from the Armed Forces due to their sexuality; the role of Reserves, which I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Lancaster, will touch on, given his excellent report; and building on the creation of a representative body for the Armed Forces.

Finally, the Minister highlighted those who were dismissed in the past because of their sexuality. I think all of us in this House welcome the Government’s commitment to do something about that. It was a historic wrong which has been too long in the undoing, and I think we would all compliment the Government on doing something about that, but there are many other important issues that we need to discuss.

Her Majesty’s Opposition remain wholeheartedly committed to working across the House to doing all we can for our Armed Forces. Our service communities deserve nothing less. I know that view is shared by everyone, so let us work together to try to achieve it.

15:49

[Lord Thomas of Gresford (LD)]

My Lords, I associate these Benches with the tributes paid by the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, to the expertise and professionalism of the British forces in the recent withdrawal from Afghanistan.

In February 1997, Lance-Sergeant Alexander Findlay of the Scots Guards, a veteran of the Falklands campaign and the Battle of Mount Tumbledown, successfully appealed to the European Court of Human Rights against his conviction for assault. Suffering from PTSD, he had held members of his own unit at pistol point and threatened to kill himself and them. The court held that the constitution of courts martial in the UK was such that they were not an independent and impartial tribunal, as required by Article 6.1 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The march to reform the system had begun. I declare my personal interest as chair of the Association of Military Court Advocates.

This Bill means that we have nearly reached the conclusion of that march. I pay tribute to the excellent review of His Honour Judge Lyons, who comprehensively covered the ground and made recommendations on the composition of the panel that tries these cases, including on numbers, on the need for more than a simple majority to convict and on the extension of membership to chief petty officers and their equivalent. He also proposed that a board need not be of single service composition in general discipline matters. I raised all these issues as amendments to the then Armed Forces Bills of 2006, 2011 and 2016, in step with the evidence given to the Commons committees by the highly experienced former Judge Advocate-General Jeff Blackett. Something once bitterly opposed by the Ministry of Defence, under Governments of every stripe, is now seen as uncontroversial and commonplace; I am grateful to the Government for that and to the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, for the way in which she opened this case and has been open to discussion and consideration of these proposals.

The one recommendation of Judge Lyons that the Government rejected is that court martial jurisdiction should no longer include murder, manslaughter and rape when these offences are committed in the UK except when the consent of the Attorney-General is given. The judge thought it important enough to make it his first recommendation. In 2006, I moved an amendment to negative this novel extension of jurisdiction, introduced in the then Bill. My excuse for quoting myself is that my remarks were quoted in Judge Lyons’s review. I said:

“The purpose of my amendments is to maintain the present position. The present position traditionally has been that if a serious offence of treason, murder, manslaughter or rape is committed in the United Kingdom, as opposed to abroad, by a soldier or serviceman or a civilian subject to service discipline, those offences cannot be tried by way of court martial but can be tried only in the Crown Court”—


that is if the offences are committed in the United Kingdom. I continued:

“That is the position today. For some reason, which has not been adequately explained, although I have pressed the matter both in Committee and on Report, the Government think that it is right to extend the jurisdiction of the court martial court to encompass any criminal offence.”—[Official Report, 6/11/06, cols. 599-600.]


I lost the Division by 63 largely Liberal Democrat votes to 165 Labour votes. The Conservatives abstained.

What, then, is the reason given by this Government to reject Judge Lyons’s primary recommendation to restore the pre-2006 position: that cases should normally be heard in the civilian courts, as they always used to be? If a really exceptional case arose, an application could be made to the Attorney-General to transfer it to the court martial system; I suggest the possibility that a manslaughter case involving the failure of equipment or the exigencies of training might be such a case. I had a look at the justification given by Mr Leo Docherty in the other place in answer to the Labour amendment. He suggested:

“If the AG had to give consent, the process would be slower … there would be no easy way to transfer that case to the civilian system.”—[Official Report, Commons, 13/7/21, col. 251.]


The noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, tried to expand on his explanation by suggesting that it shows confidence in the service system if it can try everything. I do not think that is the right position. I am not aware of any case of a murder committed in the United Kingdom and involving service personnel that has been tried by court martial since 2006.

However, on rape, the Government’s position has been completely undermined by the Defence Sub-Committee’s report Women in the Armed Forces, published on 25 July—barely a month ago—and to which the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, referred. As it happens, the review was chaired by my own Member of Parliament, Sarah Atherton—the only Conservative in recorded history ever to represent the constituency of Wrexham. She said:

“Sexual assault and rape are amongst the most serious offences committed against female service personnel … It is difficult not to be moved by the stories of trauma, both emotional and physical, suffered by women at the hands of their colleagues. A woman raped in the military often then has to live and work with the accused perpetrator, with fears that speaking out would damage her career prospects … From our evidence, it is clear to us that serious sexual offenses should not be tried in the Court Martial system. It cannot be right that conviction rates in military courts are four to six times lower than in civilian courts. Military women are being denied justice.”


To underline those comments, Judge Lyons’s review contains a telling statistic: in 2017, of the 49 charges of rape preferred before a court martial, there were two convictions. This means that up to 47 victims and their families have been failed by the system. What does that do for the recruitment and retention of women soldiers? I leave it to your Lordships’ imagination. It undermines the trust and public confidence on which the whole criminal justice system, whether military or civil, depends.

Here, we have a number of factors coming together. Giving jurisdiction to courts martial to try murder, manslaughter and rape charges for offences committed in the UK was an aberration introduced by the Labour Government in 2006. It is not a hallowed part of service history. The Conservative Party did not support it at the time. In considering this Bill, the Labour Party has called for its removal in the other place. The jurisdiction has not been utilised, save for rape cases in a highly unsatisfactory way. As I said, the Conservative chair of the Defence Sub-Committee, after the investigation, stated:

“Military women are being denied justice.”


She is right. The Government, which cannot give a sensible explanation for its retention, should heed the voices from Wrexham and follow Judge Lyons’s recommendation.

Another issue that remains is that of sentencing. I have argued during the passage of each Bill that sentencing is a complex process resulting in varying disposals. I suggest again to your Lordships that it should be left to a professional judge to determine sentence, not to a panel whose members may well be making such a decision in respect of a defendant for the one and only time in their lives. Whereas they can impose sentences of up to life imprisonment, magistrates with lengthy experience of the judicial system can do no more than pass a sentence of 12 months. It is true that, these days, a judge sits in on and participates in the decision, but he does not have a casting vote.

Of course I pay tribute to our armed services—they are very close to all our hearts in this House—but we must have a justice system that is perfect. We have moved strongly in that direction. My noble friends Lady Smith of Newnham and Lady Brinton will deal with the important aspects relating to the military covenant, while the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, will deal with pensions. I fully support what they will say.

16:00

[Lord Astor of Hever (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the Armed Forces Bill 2021 and support the principle of strengthening the Armed Forces covenant in law. As the Lords Defence Minister at the time, I was responsible for the passage through this House of the Armed Forces Bill 2011, which received Royal Assent in November 2011. It amended the 2006 Act, most notably by requiring an annual Armed Forces covenant report to be presented to Parliament—which has been done each year since. Following the present Government’s manifesto commitment, this Bill makes provisions to further incorporate the Armed Forces covenant into law. I very much welcome the Government’s stated support for this position, and I am grateful to Poppyscotland for the briefing that it sent me.

Maximum advantage should be taken of this golden opportunity to enhance the delivery of the covenant to the Armed Forces community and ensure that it is fit for purpose for the next 10 years. During the consideration of the Bill by the Commons Select Committee, a wide range of oral and written evidence was received from those who regularly work with the Armed Forces covenant, often daily. They included Armed Forces charities, representatives of local and devolved governments, the Veterans Commissioners in Scotland and Northern Ireland, and the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman. The committee also undertook its own online survey of the Armed Forces community. The evidence repeatedly highlighted the desirability of the Bill being enhanced, and in particular the need to apply the same legal standard to national government as would be applied to local government.

Members of the Armed Forces community access public services through national, devolved, regional and local bodies, so it is important that there is a consistent approach, so that all public bodies recognise their responsibilities under the covenant. However, the Bill as introduced largely applies only to local government and some education and health bodies. National government should be subject to the same legal standard on the covenant that it seeks to apply to councils.

Many of the policy areas in which members of the Armed Forces community experience difficulty are the responsibility of national government or are based on national guidance provided to other delivery partners. This is particularly relevant to ensure that serving personnel, for whom many services are the responsibility of the MoD, benefit from the Bill’s provisions along with the rest of the Armed Forces community. I also suggest that the Scottish Government, in addition to Scottish councils and certain public bodies, should be within the scope of the new “due regard” duty. Many issues affecting Scotland’s Armed Forces community are the responsibility of the Scottish Government. Without the application of the Bill’s covenant provisions to all aspects of devolved government, national policies developed in Scotland will not be subject to the duty of due regard, as will be the case at the local level. On this point, I welcome the view expressed by the then Scottish Government’s Minister for Parliamentary Business and Veterans in evidence to the Select Committee, indicating that he would be content with such an expansion.

The overwhelming backing for widening the Bill’s scope would suggest that improving the Bill in this way would be an uncontroversial step for the Government that would command widespread support and consensus.

16:04

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

My Lords, I too welcome this Bill. I wish to speak about the service justice system, and in particular the courts martial. It is important that we put this on a firm and clear basis, because the bravery of our Armed Forces, shown recently in particular in Afghanistan, demands no less. I therefore welcome the recommendations and their acceptance by Judge Lyons in matters such as the type of majority that is required for a court martial jury to convict, and also the slip rule. These are welcome and have been long advocated by Judge Jeff Blackett, who did so much to bring the courts martial system into line with the ordinary courts.

However, I too take the view that the best solution would have been to adopt the recommendation of Judge Lyons in relation to the concurrent jurisdiction point. I will say nothing about two factors which are important, namely the independence of the investigation and the experience of prosecutors, until we have the report of Sir Richard Henriques. That is crucial to these issues and I would be grateful if the Minister could indicate when it might become available.

Two critical matters do arise at this stage. First, why do we retain special juries in serious cases in respect of murder and sexual offending for the military? These were abolished in the rest of our justice system many years ago and it is difficult to see why they should be retained, save in exceptional circumstances. Why is a member of the Armed Forces not entitled to the protections that the rest of us have? It will be interesting to hear what the Minister has to say about that fundamental point. Secondly, I assure the House that sentencing is an incredibly difficult exercise that requires a great deal of experience. There is therefore no reason for differentiating the court martial system from the ordinary justice system. I very much hope that the Minister will think again on these points, and I look forward to speaking in support of what it has been indicated that the Opposition might move in relation to Judge Lyons’s recommendation.

Perhaps I may say two words about the proposed solution to the concurrent jurisdiction issue. First, if this is the route we go down, it will be easier to see whether the details have been got right when we see the report of Sir Richard Henriques on the matters. There are three matters that I will briefly mention. The first is the question of supervision or the provision of factors that should influence the protocol. We are delegating very considerable powers to two law officers. Should Parliament consider setting into the Bill the factors that they should take into account, or should Parliament approve the protocol? Secondly, the choice of jurisdiction is quite unlike the choice of a prosecutor as to whether to prosecute or not. I respectfully ask the Minister to consider whether there should not be a right of appeal to a judge of the Court Martial Appeal Court if the defendant or the complainant feels that the wrong choice has been made. This seems to be a far preferable route to seeking judicial review of the prosecutor’s decisions.

The third point, which is possibly a technical mistake in the Bill, is that the protocol will deal only with offences committed in the United Kingdom. However, there is concurrent jurisdiction for certain offences, wherever they are committed, murder being the clearest example. Therefore, if we are to go down the protocol route, it seems to be a technical error to have left out dealing with the issues in relation to the commission of serious offences overseas. I merely put on the record that this was one of the issues that arose in the Blackman case, and it is accepted that that trial could have been conducted if a different decision had been made in the ordinary courts of the land—just as any British citizen accused of murder can be tried here. This is a problem that should not be left out of the Bill. It is not dealt with satisfactorily at present.

16:09

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I too want to pay tribute to our Armed Forces. In repaying their service, it is right, as the Armed Forces covenant states, that

“those who have served in the past, and their families, should face no disadvantage compared to other citizens”.

I welcome the provisions in the Bill enabling greater legal enforcement of the covenant in achieving this parity.

At the same time, however, the Government must pay attention to the unique working environment of military service and the accompanying higher risk prevalence of a variety of health-related issues that occur both during active service and when readjusting to civilian life. Numerous studies over the years have identified a higher prevalence of alcohol misuse in military service personnel compared with the general population. The Ministry of Defence explicitly recognised this reality back in 2016 when it introduced the AUDIT-C questionnaire for alcohol screening during routine dental inspections by defence primary health care dentists.

Despite this positive public health approach in the past, last year I asked the MoD about the success of its existing programmes in the military to stem gambling-related harm. I was surprised by the response that it had seen no evidence that service personnel were more prone to problem gambling than any other group. I am tempted to say that it cannot have looked very hard. There is a raft of studies from the United States of America analysing the gambling habits of both serving personnel and veterans. Those studies have found far higher rates of pathological gambling and lifetime gambling disorder in both those serving and in veterans, and in both genders. Based on this evidence, the United States of America introduced screening for gambling in Section 733 of the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act.

Of course, the conditions that give rise to problem gambling and the nature of the addiction itself may differ between the UK and the USA, but that alone does not mean that the possibility of higher than average levels of gambling disorder in the military can be dismissed. One of the few UK studies of problem gambling, from 2018, using data from the 2007 Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey, recorded UK veterans as being eight times more likely to be problem gamblers than the general population—a trend that broadly mirrors those found in the United States of America.

Currently, little research has been done on the gambling habits of serving UK personnel but, since similar trends in UK veterans and their American counterparts have been found, there is good reason to believe that the gambling habits of American service personnel broadly correlate to those in the UK. In fact, the UK has had a much more relaxed attitude to regulating online gambling. If ever research were undertaken into the gambling habits of UK service personnel, it is likely that it would reveal levels of gambling disorder that exceed those in the USA military. I believe that screening for gambling disorder is as important as screening for alcohol misuse. Both are destructive; both ruin lives.

It is part of our care for those who go into these dangerous situations and are put under huge psychological pressure that we screen them and make sure they have proper support. For this reason, I am minded to table amendments to the Bill in Committee including provisions that mirror those the USA already uses when screening for various disorders in the military, including gambling disorders.

On a final note, I simply want to add my support to the Government in not forgetting those who served their country and have long since passed, and I welcome the extension of posthumous pardons for now abolished service offences.

16:14

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, I echo other noble Lords’ words of support for and admiration for our Armed Forces. I have the highest regard for those who serve. From their work on the front line of the pandemic to operations around the world, such as Operation Pitting, daily they earn our admiration and deserve our gratitude. As my noble friend Lord Coaker has so clearly and articulately explained, Labour has made clear at every stage of the Bill that it is our intention that they be given the support they need and deserve, both during service and thereafter. It is the Government’s duty to look after the Armed Forces. As my noble friend said, and as has been echoed, the Armed Forces Bill presents this Parliament with its best opportunity to improve the lives of our service personnel, veterans and their families, and it should not be allowed to become a missed opportunity.

For that reason, my Labour colleagues and I support the principles that underpin the Bill. There are welcome steps in the Bill, including the creation of a legal duty on public bodies to have regard to the principles of the covenant, but I too urge the Government to go further. That is why, in the other place, Labour put forward amendments to strengthen the Bill so that it offers the support and protection identified as needed now by many of our service personnel. Disappointingly, all of them failed to attract government support, and I was appalled to read in the debates the disrespect with which some of these amendments were treated by the Minister who predominantly responded for the Government.

The legal duty to have regard to the principles of the covenant imposes new legal responsibilities which appear, certainly in the main, to apply only to councils and some limited public bodies delivering certain aspects of housing, health and education. As has already been said—I commend the noble Lord, Lord Astor of Hever, who made a persuasive and compelling case for the principal point I wish to make here—it would appear that these amendments do not apply to the Government; they are absent from this commitment. In moving an amendment that placed the same legal responsibilities for the Armed Forces covenant on central government, my honourable friend Stephanie Peacock in the other place asked the Government to show leadership in at least holding themselves to the same standard that they are imposing on others.

Interestingly, the Bill, which was published in January, was the subject of a substantial piece of work by the Government, on 21 January, on the pages of the Government’s website aimed at those who are entitled to the protection of the covenant. A four-page document entitled Armed Forces Covenant—Proposed Legislation was posted. On page 2, under the heading “aims of the legislation” the Government’s stated that it was intended

“to increase awareness among service deliverers and policy makers of the unique obligations and circumstances facing the Armed Forces Community”.

Service delivery and policy—not alternatives, but complementary purposes. So I ask the Minister, for whom I have the most enormous regard, just how it is hoped that the legislation will increase awareness among the relevant policymakers if it does not apply to them? Or were we to infer from her words about the devolved Administrations that it applies to policymakers in the devolved Administrations but not to policymakers in our own Government? Either the Bill needs to be amended to meet the Government’s own aims, or, in all honesty, they must go back to those web pages and erase the reference to policymakers, because it is not served by the Bill.

In July, leading military charities joined together to urge the Government to improve the Bill by extending its scope to make sure that greater protections are given in employment, pensions, social care and immigration—issues that are currently affecting the Armed Forces community—and the Government’s response was to vote down attempts to do just that. At the same time, some Afghanistan veterans struggling with the scenes of chaos in Kabul and of the unchallenged Taliban seizure of power across the country have had their own trauma from their experiences come back to them, but this time, in the context of a public narrative of failure.

Many young soldiers involved in a Kabul evacuation operation will need different forms of counselling in the coming months, but published targets for mental health care for members of the Armed Forces community are routinely missed. A formal review of the standards of mental health care available to service personnel was called for; the Government did not agree in July, but should now consider it, in the face of the evidence that is emerging. I regret also that the Armed Forces Minister James Heappey, in unforgiveable errors yesterday, has done nothing to instil confidence that the Government have a grip on this important issue.

Finally—I apologise for slightly overrunning the advisory time—I plan to revisit an issue I raised first on the overseas operations Bill and signposted that I might return to in this Bill, which is the protection and guidance that Armed Forces personnel need to ensure they comply with the law, including international humanitarian law, and explaining how international and domestic legal frameworks need to be updated, all because of the use of novel technologies that could emerge from or be deployed by the Ministry of Defence, UK allies or the private sector, which is now routinely deployed with our Armed Forces in overseas operations as part of multinational force deployment. On this point, I commend the Minister and her officials for their generous and helpful engagement with me and other noble and noble and gallant Lords on the complexity of these issues since I first raised them. That discourse will continue and I am grateful for it.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)]

My Lords, the next speaker will take part remotely. I call the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton.

16:20

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I will focus my speech on Clause 8 on the covenant. I support the comments made by the noble Lords, Lord Astor and Lord Browne. The creation of the covenant is a serious and enduring undertaking by Ministers and Parliament on behalf of the people of our nation, who understand the sacrifice that we are asking of those serving and their families when they undertake the obligations of protecting our nation and our interests in the world. It is vital because it also recognises that those sacrifices continue beyond the time that they serve, understanding that many of our veterans and their families also face barriers to living what the rest of us would regard as a normal life.

As health spokesperson for my party from these Benches, I will particularly raise the difficult and sensitive subject of the practicalities of delivering the covenant for access to health services, especially but not only mental health. Over recent weeks, I have talked to family and friends who are current or former service personnel deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. The recent shocking events in Afghanistan have brought back the most difficult memories and experiences for many of those who made sacrifices for us and, they believe, for the Afghan people. For some, their PTSD has been retriggered; for others, there is a sense of helplessness about whether their deployments and the sacrifice of friends’ lives and health over the past 20 years were worth it.

Our service personnel, being ever practical, always just accept the order to “fill their boots”—service speak for “Go ahead and carry on with the task”—and they do. Here, I give a special shout out to the Sandhurst Sisterhood, which has worked tirelessly using and finding contacts to help senior Afghan women at high risk from the Taliban to get to safety. I mention it because much of the recent publicity has focused on our servicemen and far too often we forget that women were deployed to Afghanistan too. They suffered injury, physical and mental, and some did not come home at all.

The long-term mental health difficulties that many service personnel face are intended to be covered by the covenant, with responsibilities for our clinical commissioning groups, GPs and secondary hospital sector. The Minister, in her usual gracious way, helpfully explained the new duty in this Bill for housing, education and health, but the reality is that this new duty is only to “have due regard”, and without any similar duty for central government it is unlikely to be able to be delivered. It does not put a duty on those public services to actually provide the help that is needed. No duty and, as important, inadequate funding from central government mean that, too often, for individual current or former service men and women the covenant is not being fulfilled.

Combat Stress has said that it has had a doubling in calls to its 24/7 helpline from veterans struggling with their mental health. Its specialist clinics are hearing veterans say, “When we went there, we fought a war. Friends died, we struggled, we got blown up, and now they’ve given the country away.” One veteran, Dean, has attended 13 military funerals since he left the Army in 2008, including eight killed in Afghanistan; the others have subsequently taken their own lives. Dean said:

“it just feels as though it was all for nothing.”

Combat Stress is partnering with the NHS on Op COURAGE, but it struggles to support more than 1,600 veterans with severe complex needs a year. Some 75% of Combat Stress’s funding is from voluntary donations, and it believes that there are at least double the veterans needing this key expert service. We know that NHS mental health services are very stretched with extremely long waiting lists at the moment, so the capacity of local services to provide support is limited without guaranteed extra funding.

This last month has reminded all of us of the long- term problems that too many service men and women face. After Afghanistan moves out of the headlines, the covenant’s specialist health services commitment will probably be needed for the rest of our veterans’ lives. It must be a statutory duty, properly funded, including covering central government, to ensure it is not just lip service. I ask the Minister: what costings have been made for the help support needed under the covenant? Will the Government provide that funding?

Finally, in the debate on Afghanistan in August in your Lordships’ House, I said that the Armed Forces covenant needed to be extended to those who served alongside our troops in Afghanistan. The interpreters and members of the Afghanistan army who have been given the right to resettle here under ARAP stood and fought alongside our troops and faced exactly the same dangers. This group should also be able to access the services under the covenant in the same way.

The covenant is a key part of the duty of care that we owe our service men and women. They have and do fill their boots without question. It is time that Ministers, Parliament and our nation filled our boots to deliver a covenant that really works for the men and women who keep us and our world safe.

16:26

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the very clear way she introduced this very important Bill. I join those who have spoken already very eloquently in thanking the Armed Forces. Sometimes that is particularly important on issues that they may feel have not been particularly successful. I think of those who gave their lives in Afghanistan and those who suffered very serious injuries there. Today they sometimes wonder just exactly what it was for. I do not know whether your Lordships are always able to answer that question; I must say that I find it quite difficult to know, except in relation to the idea of keeping out of existence a safe place for the development of terrorist organisations.

I associate myself very much with all that has been said in appreciation of the Armed Forces. We are extraordinarily in debt to the Armed Forces of the Crown and those who support them in every possible way. The Armed Forces covenant is some token of that. It is important that it is sufficiently specific to make it really worth while. For example, it is questionable whether it will be successful without incorporating central government, with its policy responsibilities, into the three principles mentioned that apply to local authorities to come up with possible results. Why they should not apply also to central government and the devolved Administrations I do not feel confident to answer, but I look forward to hearing an answer from the Minister in due course.

This Bill is an important reminder of the principle of our constitution that the Armed Forces of the Crown are not authorised by a statute that has no end. The statute that authorises the existence of the Armed Forces is one that always has a terminus. That is an important part of our constitution, and the need for this particular Bill is a very important reminder of that.

The last thing I want to say is that in relation to the previous Bill—the veterans Bill—the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, and his colleagues pointed out the very difficult situation that some members of the Armed Forces have encountered as a result of experiences they have had in the course of their service that raised issues of possible criminality. I was not alone in being very moved by that account, and I wish that we could have done something about it then, but it was obviously very important to get that Bill through and therefore the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, and his colleagues graciously decided not to press that amendment at the end of the consideration here. I am glad that the Government have fulfilled their promise to bring it forward now, and I sincerely hope that the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, who will follow me, is pleased with that.

16:30

[Lord Dannatt (CB)]

My Lords, it is now 10 years since the informal military covenant developed by the Army was converted into the Armed Forces covenant for the benefit of all three Armed Forces, and incorporated into the Armed Forces Act 2011. At the time, its incorporation was seen by some as something of a politically expedient device by the then Cameron Government because it lacked bite. I am therefore very pleased that this Armed Forces Bill provides many of the teeth that were missing, especially in the areas of housing, education and healthcare.

The well-being of our Armed Forces personnel once again came into sharp focus as we witnessed the extraordinary efforts of our service men and women in and around Kabul Airport last month. As Brigadier James Martin, commanding 16 Air Assault Brigade, said a few days ago, British soldiers cannot unsee the horrors of Kabul and will need help to recover from that deployment, which he described as “harrowing”. I would be grateful if the Minister would reassure the House that such help is being made available. I am considering an amendment to the Bill to ensure that such help is indeed forthcoming in full measure. I see this as an extension of the duty of care to our service- people—a topic debated and endorsed by your Lordships’ House earlier this year in the context of the overseas operations Bill but which was rejected by the government majority in the other place.

The non-combatant evacuation operation at Kabul raises other issues pertinent to the Bill. Given that one of the stated aims of the operation was to assist the evacuation of interpreters and other locally engaged Afghan civilians who had helped the British over the past 20 years, can the Minister provide any information about how many interpreters we have been able to bring to this country? My information is that we directly employed some 2,850 interpreters up until 2013 when the service was contractorised, but that only 440 interpreters benefited from the ex gratia scheme until the introduction of the Afghan relocation and assistance policy in April this year. My concern, which I believe is shared by many of the 45 senior retired officers who signed an open letter to the Government in July, is that many of the other 2,400 interpreters have not yet been brought to this country. Can the Minister provide an up-to-date figure on how many of those 2,400 interpreters were brought here between April and mid-August? Presumably all those disembarking from RAF evacuation flights were asked who they were and what they did to qualify.

I am sure that noble Lords will want to thank local councils around the country for making homes and education available to these Afghan people, and I also congratulate charities, such as Help for Heroes, which are agreeing to treat Afghans who stood shoulder to shoulder with us in the same way that they are supporting British veterans of recent conflicts. Among those who have recently arrived in this country are former members of the Afghan special forces. It has been suggested that some of them might wish to continue to serve in the British Armed Forces. I would welcome that, provided that normal nationality regulations are followed, or perhaps an exception should be made via another amendment to the Bill. Is this something that the Government are considering?

It was heartening to see the way in which the Government pragmatically put aside the rules regarding indefinite leave to remain to aid the resettlement of recently evacuated Afghans. This relaxation of the rules is part of Operation Warm Welcome, which will see individuals who worked for British forces and their families granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK. Unfortunately, this generous treatment is in stark contrast to how we currently treat our foreign and Commonwealth veterans. For them, many of whom will have served in Afghanistan, military service confers no such privilege. Indeed, when those individuals leave HM forces, they are treated the same as any other foreign applicant seeking indefinite leave to remain. Foreign and Commonwealth service personnel also miss out as they cannot apply to bring their families to the UK while serving unless they meet the income threshold, while under the new Afghan schemes the whole family can come notwithstanding income levels. We will therefore shortly face the bizarre situation where veterans of the Afghan National Army arriving here have greater residency rights than some veterans of the British Armed Forces. If we agree with the aspiration that the UK should be the best country in the world in which to be a veteran, we must ensure that we treat our veterans as well as we treat those to whom we give refuge. It is high time we extended the warm welcome to our foreign and Commonwealth veterans. Can the Minister update the House on the Government’s thinking in this regard?

While we are dwelling on anomalies, there are two other groups of veterans who are being disadvantaged. One is the dwindling ranks of servicemen who were excluded from the Armed Forces Pension Scheme 1975. Recently a petition signed by more than 30,000 people was handed to the Government requesting pension equity with those who benefited from the post-1975 scheme. It should be acknowledged that some of those discriminated against served in Northern Ireland, Aden and Borneo. Can the Minister update the House on progress to eradicate the pre/post-1975 pension inequality? Of course, the Northern Ireland veterans are eagerly awaiting the tabling of legislation to terminate the endless questioning of their operations during the Troubles. Are we any nearer to knowing when that legislation will be tabled?

Finally, it will not have escaped noble Lords’ notice that the other group of veterans currently being discriminated against—Gurkha veterans who retired from the British Army before 1997—have been on hunger strike outside Downing Street. This is shameful. Successive Governments inevitably carry some responsibility for the actions of their predecessors, and although many approved of the popular decision some 10 years ago to allow Gurkhas who had retired before 1997 to have residency rights in the UK, doing so without an uplift to their pension was shameful. A solution to this entirely predictable problem must be found before a Gurkha veteran dies on our streets. Does the Minister have an update on the resolution of this issue? The Armed Forces covenant is for all serving and veteran personnel, including minority groups whose voices often do not get heard.

16:37

[Lord Browne of Belmont (DUP)]

My Lords, we all owe a great debt of gratitude to the brave men and women who have served and continue to serve us so valiantly in our Armed Forces at home and in combat overseas. In my part of the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland, we will never forget their efforts and, in many cases, their sacrifices during the height of the Troubles. For that reason, I welcome, and will always welcome, moves by Her Majesty’s Government to give greater standing to the Armed Forces covenant across the entirety of the United Kingdom. It is important to state that there should be no impediment that would block veterans from being treated fairly and equitably in any part of the United Kingdom.

In Northern Ireland, the New Decade, New Approach agreement committed the Government to legislate to incorporate the Armed Forces covenant further into law and to support its total implementation. It is right and just that the Bill before us today should treat Northern Ireland veterans and service personnel in exactly the same way as those in other parts of the United Kingdom, with full implementation of the military covenant. The failure to implement the covenant fully in Northern Ireland up to this point has let down our brave veterans. It is right that this injustice should be brought to an end.

Veterans across this nation should have full access to a full range of services. We owe it to our Armed Forces to do better. We owe it to them to provide a duty of care for legal, pastoral and mental health support. It is a historical fact that were it not for the bravery and courage of our Armed Forces and security personnel there would never have been a peace process in Northern Ireland and we would not have the relative peace that we enjoy today. We therefore have a duty here and in the other place to protect those who have protected us.

This stretches further, beyond the provision of the vital health and mental health services under discussion. We must also protect our brave men and women from malicious charges and questionable legal claims. We should value the principle that access to justice remains open for us all. To that end, it is worth noting in the strongest terms that there should never be any question of a blanket amnesty being offered. Where a murder has been committed, the law does and must apply equally. Equally, cases that have already been thoroughly investigated, and in some cases reinvestigated, and for which no new evidence has been brought forward, should not be continually reopened to satisfy a particular agenda.

There can be no moral equivalence between terrorists, or those accused of terror offences, and people accused of having committed offences when they were members of the Armed Forces trying to protect us from the terrorists. Those who served our country valiantly deserve some form of legislative protection against continual cycles of reinvestigation when they have been previously investigated and no compelling evidence has been brought. Where service personnel have been fairly judged to have carried out their duties, often in extremely difficult circumstances and at great risk to themselves, their actions should not be second-guessed years or decades later in the interests of political expediency.

British soldiers operate under the highest possible standards and with strict rules of engagement. The vast majority of service men and women act within the law in the service of their country. In any conflict there are of course exceptions to this. However, the majority of victims and veterans do not seek a blanket amnesty from prosecutions; they seek fair and equitable justice.

Regrettably, in recent decades we have witnessed a two-tiered approach to these sensitive issues. In some instances, decisions have been taken to shield the victim-maker rather than deliver justice. As it relates to Northern Ireland specifically, the early release of convicted terrorists under the terms of the Belfast agreement, and the subsequent securing of royal pardons through the on-the-runs scheme, equally perverted the criminal justice system. These are historical examples where dangerous legal precedents have been set.

We must at all times work hard to find proportionate answers to these extremely difficult questions. These answers will not be found if we follow a path that finds any equivalence between brave soldiers and the terrorists and criminals they protect us against when on the battlefield. We stand four-square behind our troops. We must support all efforts to ease the burden for our brave soldiers. Our veterans, and today’s service men and women, do not expect the path they have chosen to be an easy path.

I welcome the work that has been done to date, but it is clear that we have still much work to do. I firmly believe that the passage of this Bill into law will make a significant contribution to the improvement of the welfare of our brave service men and women.

16:43

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I too thank the Minister and join in the tributes to our Armed Forces. I wish to raise two points in connection with this Bill. I recognise that it is a routine Bill, but it gives us an opportunity to raise issues of concern.

My first point concerns the ombudsman. I have been given evidence of a case in which the ombudsman’s ruling was apparently overturned by the very senior officers who were comrades of the object of the complaint. Can the Minister assure us that there is now a cast-iron method of totally impartial complaint in which complaints against senior officers cannot be overturned by the might of the military machine?

I raise my second point because the Bill says it is

“to make provision about war pensions”.

There is virtually nothing about war pensions in the Bill, but the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, has raised some anomalies and I wish to raise another. I am a vice-president of the War Widows’ Association, and the Minister is well aware of—and, I think, sympathetic to—the issue I wish to raise yet again.

Time was when military widows automatically lost their widows’ pensions if they remarried—obviously this edict was made entirely by men; no women, let alone widows, were allowed anywhere near it. It was also a time when the military made no pretence at being caring: wives were tolerated as long as they were camp followers, but woe betide them if they fell out of line. Happily, those days have largely gone. Many widows would be very young; servicemen often die young. The only support and legacy they had from the men who had died in the service of their country was the pension those men had left them. I well remember when my husband—as a young RAF pilot who had seen too many of his comrades meet an early death, and who paid as much as he could into the widow’s element of his pension—told me that if he died, not to remarry and lose all the contributions he had made but to live in sin and be happy. The terminology will tell noble Lords that this was a very long time ago. Of course, for his last three years he was a Member of your Lordships’ House, so happily he did not die as a young pilot.

Then, of course, the Military Police caught up with those living in sin, who we had to then call “cohabitees”, and they too lost the meagre pensions from their dead husbands. How cruel. How mean. For many of those women, that money was the only money that they held in their own account, so what penny-pinching politicians thought this was a caring saving on the public purse? Women who had lost their men—who had died doing their duty—were targeted to lose the pensions that were the last gestures from dutiful dead husbands.

For most military widows this cruel edict has now been cancelled, but there is a small and dwindling group of ageing widows who fell between legislation and who have not had their pensions restored nor any financial recompense. We are told that it is impossible to restore pensions retrospectively, but is it really beyond the brains of the MoD and the Treasury, where we do have some very bright people, to find a way of giving some sort of financial compensation to this last, small group of deprived and elderly widows? We are left with the conclusion that the MoD is waiting for them all to die off, for the problem to go away. Is this really the face of the caring military family?

I once again appeal to the Minister, who I know to be a caring person, to go back to the MoD and the Treasury and ask again for some form of financial help for these widows who lost their men and who, when they dared to find happiness in a new relationship, lost their entitlement to pensions. The total sum would be a pittance against an eye-watering aircraft carrier and would be greeted by such enthusiasm from all military widows, and indeed all the military community that cares. I look forward to the Minister’s response. I continue to live in hope, and I assure her that the War Widows’ Association will not give up on this campaign for justice for their peers.

16:47

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, I start by declaring a familial interest in that my son, who is 24, is serving in the Army and therefore is subject to the Armed Forces Act and will be subject to this Bill, when it becomes an Act. I took the 2011 Bill through the House of Commons; it established the Armed Forces covenant, so I know a little about it. My noble friend Lord Astor took it through the House of Lords, as he mentioned. I recall that it was rather hard work, which is not always my favourite topic.

I will concentrate on one point alone today; it was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, from the Labour Front Bench. The humiliating defeat and disaster that was the withdrawal from Afghanistan has changed the geopolitical spectrum beyond recognition. China, Russia and Iran—all of which, I regret to say, are not our closest friends—are laughing their socks off at the humiliation of the West, NATO, the US and us. The West, western values and western culture are no longer taken seriously around the world. This should deeply depress us all. Our Armed Forces are here to protect us and our interests. I think they have done a pretty good job over the years, but in my opinion this is the worst disaster that NATO has had in its existence. We won the Cold War—I sat in Germany for a year trying to defend the western alliance. The Americans had Vietnam, of course, but NATO is now exposed as weak and rudderless, I am afraid, and we should all address that.

With that in mind, I turn to my noble friend and say that the geopolitical situation has changed. The idea of reducing the Army by 11% and reducing the number of ships and aircraft that we can use is, in these times, absolutely bonkers, and we must revisit it. I pay tribute to the Government for increasing the amount of money they are spending on defence. Yes, what used to be called unmanned aerial vehicles and are now largely called drones are very important, as is AI, but we must have boots that we can put on the ground, ships that we can put in the sea and aircraft that we can put in the air. It is by that that we are judged by potential adversaries.

16:49

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, I too welcome the Bill, which, in addition to sustaining the legal basis for our Armed Forces, brings with it some worthwhile innovations. Inevitably, though, its provisions tend to raise as many questions as they answer. It is on some of these loose ends that I wish to concentrate today.

One of the most controversial aspects of the Government’s approach to the Bill has, as we have heard, been their rejection of the recommendation in the Lyons review that cases of murder, manslaughter and rape committed in the UK should be tried in civilian courts except as agreed by the Attorney-General. I accept that there may be valid reasons for the Government’s decision. The military justice system will continue to have responsibility for dealing with such offences involving service personnel outside the UK, but our military footprint abroad has been reduced significantly in recent years so such cases will probably occur infrequently.

The military justice system may find it very difficult to sustain the skills and experience necessary to carry out its responsibilities overseas if it is unable to prosecute domestic crimes of this nature. If it is to do so, however, it must be demonstrably comparable to the civilian process. There is at the moment a very serious issue of credibility, which must be addressed. Conviction rates in cases of rape brought before service courts are significantly lower than for similar crimes tried in civilian courts. Why? Supporters of the Lyons recommendation might point to fundamental deficiencies in the service justice system. I suspect that the Minister would reject such a proposition but, if so, she needs to set out credible reasons for the stark differences in outcome between the two systems. Perhaps she could take the opportunity to do so this afternoon.

The inclusion of OR7 ranks in the list of those eligible for appointment as lay members of a court martial takes us closer to the idea of a jury of one’s peers, although not all the way. It does, however, raise the question of rank gradient. There is a tendency in the military for juniors to defer to seniors even when wisdom does not necessarily lie with the greater rank. This was in the past a significant issue in aircraft cockpits—not just in the military, I might add—and a factor in a number of avoidable accidents. It took a dedicated programme of training and cultural change across the entire aviation community to address the problem. Does the Minister envisage the need for something similar for lay members of service courts?

My final points concern Clause 8, which places a duty on “specified persons and bodies” exercising certain functions to have “due regard” to the principles laid out in the Armed Forces covenant. I welcome the intent behind this clause. It certainly represents necessary progress but it leaves a number of unresolved issues. The relevant functions that fall within the ambit of the Bill are restricted to housing, healthcare and education. These are undoubtedly the functions about which service personnel, veterans and their families are most concerned but, as we have already heard today, they are by no means the only areas of difficulty.

My other concern relates to the legal implications of Clause 8. As far as I can see, there are none. It requires the relevant bodies to have “due regard” to the provisions of the Armed Forces covenant but it does not specify any outcomes. There is nothing that could be effectively challenged in law, nor are there any potential remedies for a failure to comply with the provisions. The alternative—to specify particular outcomes—is not viable. What outcomes would one specify? In any case, it must be for those most closely involved to determine priorities. Veterans and their families should not suffer from their service, but that does not automatically place their needs above those of others.

So how are we to ensure that the very welcome intent of Clause 8 is delivered in practice? We cannot just rely on veterans to raise concerns. What formal avenues will be open to them? With whom should they register those concerns, and what processes of investigation and judgment would this trigger? In any case, most of those most in need, particularly those suffering from mental illness, will be just those least able to deal with the pressures and demands of an uncertain appeal process. Balancing the need for flexibility and local decision-making with certainty in enforcement is a challenge, but it must be faced if Clause 8 is to function effectively. A comprehensive and proactive audit process would allow us to assess the practical implementation of the clause and to develop recommendations for both closing loopholes and tightening application. Does the Minister agree that this is necessary if the Government’s worthy aspirations are to be given practical effect?

16:55

[Lord Morris of Aberavon (Lab)]

My Lords, I too congratulate our Armed Forces on their conduct in the evacuation from Afghanistan. During my national service—there cannot be many of us still around in Parliament—my command in Germany was a platoon of 30 men. From time to time, I was deputed to take a section of 10 men fully armed on the overnight train from Hanover to Berlin, with all blinds down, in order to maintain our right to travel from the British zone to the British sector in Berlin. Our limited training was for war and the maintenance of peace on the border with the Russians. I make this point to emphasise that our young men had no training in crowd control, let alone receiving babies in arms across wire fencing. I therefore congratulate them even more.

I once prepared a speech for your Lordships’ House detailing the history of British Forces fighting in Afghanistan. I did not make the speech because there were Welsh regiments fighting in Afghanistan at the time and we lost a large number of men, and many lives were permanently changed, including that of the commanding officer of the Welsh Guards.

I want to concentrate on the court martial system. I give notice that I intend to move an amendment to set up an inquiry into the merits of bringing the system into line with civilian courts without endangering military discipline. I first raised my concerns about courts martial as far back as 2017, following the case of Sergeant Blackman. The noble Baroness responded with a speed unaccustomed in the Ministry of Defence and announced an independent and more in-depth look at the service justice system. We are indeed indebted for the report of His Honour Shaun Lyons and Sir Jon Murphy. However, I fear that the report and the Government’s conclusions in the Bill are a missed opportunity to bring courts martial into line with our civil courts.

I am not concerned with the bulk of the work of the courts martial in their dealings with minor offences. The first point I want to make is that the Armed Forces are considerably smaller than in my day as a young soldier, and life in the forces for soldiers and their families is now much closer to life for their civilian counterparts. When I was Attorney-General, I set up a protocol that, if any difficulties arose in prosecutions, the differences should be finally resolved by the Attorney-General. I welcome Clause 7 on the role of the Director of Public Prosecutions; it places him in the senior role and, of course, he will be guided by the Attorney-General.

My concern is with the more serious offences of murder, manslaughter, rape and serious injuries. In the courts, in my professional life, I have had to deal with many of those. I suspect that they are in the minority of cases dealt with by courts martial, and probably quite rare. Judge advocates who preside over courts martial have only limited experience of dealing with such cases in their own courts, although, of course, they sit from time to time in the civil courts. The Bill empowers the Lord Chief Justice to nominate a circuit judge to preside over courts martial as only a minority of circuit judges are licensed to try murder and rape cases. May I be reassured that this power will be exercised in the same way whenever a circuit judge is nominated?

I come to my main point: the Secretary of State should set up an inquiry to consider bringing the whole system of murder, manslaughter, rape and serious offences into line with court procedures. Courts martial now reach their decisions by a majority verdict of their lay members. It is proposed in Schedule 1 that where there are three members of a court martial their decision can be made by a majority of two to one, and appropriately where there are other numbers. I do not think that a majority of two to one is fit for purpose in this modern age—or, as the Minister said as far back as 2017, when she set up the inquiry—as effective as it can be for the 21st century.

Why cannot our servicemen have the same rights as ordinary citizens and have a jury of 12 persons with the detailed control of a majority verdict, whereby it is set out in public how many people have voted one way for a conviction and how many have not? As I understand it—the Minister can confirm this—courts martial do not announce whether there is a majority or whether the verdict is unanimous. In all those circumstances, given the time available I wish to return to the issue in Committee so that we can have a definitive view on why soldiers cannot have the same privileges as their counterparts in civilian life.

17:01

[Lord Hay of Ballyore (DUP)]

My Lords, like other Members I welcome the Bill to the House. I want to briefly focus on two issues: healthcare for our Armed Forces veterans and reinvestigation into service personnel, an issue that my noble friend Lord Browne has already alluded to.

As has already been said, our Armed Forces do a remarkable job to keep the people of this United Kingdom safe and secure in an ever-changing and increasingly dangerous world. We owe them all a debt of gratitude for their courage and devotion to duty. The sacrifices of our Armed Forces at home and abroad must never be forgotten. Across the United Kingdom, there are 2.5 million veterans and it is vital that they are not simply left to fend for themselves once they return from active service. Our Armed Forces veterans continue to need support for housing, unemployment and vital public services such as improved healthcare. It is only right that those who have sustained life-changing injuries in the service of this nation should receive the best medical care available. When our brave men and women return from a tour of duty, many need assistance when reintegrating into society after the physical and mental challenges they have sustained while serving across the world.

Regrettably, too often the promises made have not matched the reality experienced by service communities, from poor housing provisions to veterans’ poor mental health and social care. We must continue to improve these services and, where we can, support sensible, practical and long-lasting protection for our military personnel. I fully support any legislation that will improve the lives of our forces personnel.

In return for their service, the Armed Forces should enjoy our strongest possible support as we work towards ensuring that our brave men and women get the best possible mental health and well-being provisions available, during and after their service. We must also ensure that, across the United Kingdom, they benefit equally—and in full—from the protection within the covenant. Regrettably, there have been attempts to block the full implementation of the covenant as it relates to Northern Ireland. All forces personnel and veterans across these islands should be able to avail equally of the same quality service, protection and support made available via the covenant. There should be no difference between the services offered in different parts of the United Kingdom.

I will focus briefly on equal justice; more especially, the matter of reinvestigation into service personnel. Operation Banner remains the longest continuous deployment in British military history. Without the bravery and long-lasting commitment of our security personnel, the reign of terror in Northern Ireland would have led to the deaths of many more innocent victims. Veterans and victims are searching for fairness and balance in how justice is served. Nobody is suggesting that military veterans, security forces or anyone else should be above the law or able to act with impunity. However, veterans rightly expect to be afforded natural justice and fairness.

Investigations into previous cases ought to be balanced. It is wrong that former members of the security services have been subject to different sets of standards and rules, despite the fact that 90% of the deaths during the Troubles were caused by terrorists. We have the unseemly situation where thousands of innocent victims of terrorist organisations have been denied justice. As we have done in the past, it is important to say again that we oppose any attempt to introduce an amnesty for criminal actions of terrorists or gangs. There should be no amnesty for anyone who perpetrated wrongdoing.

Broadly speaking, no legal or moral equivalence can be drawn between Armed Forces acting under the rule of law and terrorists who set out to murder and clearly acted outside the law. Affording some form of legal protection to Armed Forces in conflicts at home and abroad against repeated historical reinvestigation is one thing; the possible introduction of a blanket amnesty for anybody is another.

We all must work to provide the services and protections that are needed for our Armed Forces and service personnel. However, what recent discussions have there been with the Northern Ireland Executive on the full implementation of the military covenant in Northern Ireland?

17:07

[Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton (Con)]

My Lords, I too welcome the Bill and of course start by declaring my interest as a serving member of the Armed Forces, and so subject to it. I also fear I am a veteran of this process, having served on the 2006 committee and the 2010 committee, and been the Minister responsible in the House of Commons for taking an Armed Forces Bill through in 2016. Of course, the star turn of this Bill is the enshrining of the Armed Forces covenant into law. That is most welcome, although it brought a slight wry smile as I recall saying something similar before, when we were simply enshrining the requirement for the Secretary of State to report to Parliament each year. None the less, this is welcome. Like other noble Lords, however, I wonder whether it goes far enough.

I understand absolutely the Government’s argument when it comes to local authorities; they certainly want to hold them to account while not necessarily restraining them in how they should enforce the covenant. Focusing on healthcare, housing and education is the right thing to do but, at the same time, if I am true to myself, I recall slightly irritating my noble friend Lord Robathan when he was the Minister back in 2011 by proposing a Back-Bench Conservative amendment in Committee that pensions should be added. At the very least, I feel that a role for this House as the Bill progresses will be to explore to what should be included in the military covenant.

Linked to that, since a Second Reading is about what should be in the Bill, there is also potentially a missed opportunity here with the Veterans Advisory and Pensions Committees. As noble Lords know, these are 13 regional committees which advise, advocate and assist. They are very much a conduit between the MoD and helping veterans in the regions, but their role is very much governed by law. There has been talk for some time about whether we should be updating their role, yet we have not done it. As we bring the Armed Forces covenant into law, why are we not looking at those committees? They are desperate to do more. Why are we not allowing them to do more, when it would help us as the Armed Forces covenant is enshrined in law?

It would be wrong, however, not to recognise the progress that has been made in recent years in the world of veterans. Not least, there is the creation of the veterans’ gateway and the one-stop shop of the Office for Veterans’ Affairs. Even last year, we saw for the first time in the census the question about whether or not veterans should be included.

I too want to say a couple of words about indefinite leave to remain. I declare my interest as colonel commandant of the Brigade of Gurkhas. I have lobbied the Government on this issue and know that it was out to public consultation, but I would be grateful if my noble friend the Minister could update us on that. I urge a word of caution to the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, when it comes to Gurkha pensions. We are comparing apples and pears. The Gurkha pension from 1948 enabled a Gurkha soldier to receive an immediate pension after just 15 years’ service, meaning many Gurkhas received a pension from their early 30s for life. A British soldier at that time had to serve 22 years; had they served 21 years, they would get not a penny. Be very careful when calling for equivalence between those two schemes: they are quite different.

I am particularly pleased about Clause 9, which brings in continuous service for the Reserve Forces. I declare my interest as over the last year, I have been chairman of the Reserve Forces review. The headmark is the integration of the reserve and regular forces. We have a vision of a spectrum of service whereby, on the right of the arc, we have a civilian working in industry and we can bring their skills through reserve service into the military. On the left of the arc is full-time service in the Armed Forces, and we enable the individual through their service career to move along that spectrum. This clause removes some of the obstacles preventing that. Terms and conditions of service for both regular and reserves are quite different. In the same way that the 2006 Act brought together the three single service Acts, there are some who call—and I am probably one of them—for the bringing together of the Armed Forces Act and the Reserve Forces Act into a single piece of legislation, as that will enable further integration.

Finally, I want to offer one word of caution, which I have mentioned before. I declare another interest—this is a very happy interest—as colonel commandant of the Cayman Islands Regiment; I look forward to going to visit them soon. I fear we made a mistake last time by excluding Gibraltar from the Act, and it is excluded again from this Bill. Shortly after excluding it, we had the airport incident in Gibraltar and, because of a misunderstanding about whether this Act applied, three members of the Armed Forces were arrested and there is still rancour there. Yes, Gibraltar has now passed its own Armed Forces Act, but as soon as we pass this Bill, Gibraltar will be out of kilter again. I simply do not understand why it, like other overseas territories, cannot be included in this Bill.

17:12

[Lord Craig of Radley (CB)]

My Lords, I am pleased that additions are to be made to the Armed Forces covenant. I know that the Royal British Legion and other forces charities have raised points of substance and I wish to be helpful in tabling and debating suitable improvements.

As the noble Lord, Lord Astor of Hever, mentioned, as Minister he introduced the covenant in the 2011 Act. It added two sections about the annual report, and they were to be inserted, almost as a postscript, into a miscellaneous part of the 2006 Act. I objected to this de minimis approach. First, it did not seem to accord with the importance that Prime Ministers and many others then attributed to the concept of the covenant. Their fine sentiments deserved better visibility in legislation. Secondly, two new covenant sections followed immediately: Section 359 dealt with posthumous pardons for servicemen executed for disciplinary offences in World War I—an unfortunate juxtaposition of veteran treatment. My proposed amendment was resisted but, after protracted discussions, by Third Reading the Government decided that the covenant deserved better treatment and should be given its own separate and distinct part, where it now sits as Part 16A. The Government tabled the relevant amendment but, graciously reflecting my persistence, the Minister asked me to speak first to move his own amendment. Clause 8 of today’s Bill builds on that modest beginning.

When the 2011 and 2016 Bills were debated, I commented that they were large, cumbersome Marshalled Lists for the latest version of the 2006 Act. This 2021 Bill is even larger. There are over 85 insertions of substance and five pages of concurrent jurisdiction— no less than 10 for the Armed Forces covenant—and 15 pages of schedules. When it was introduced in 2006, the Bill was over 340 pages long. Now it is close to 400, thanks to the 2011 and 2016 Acts. I asked in 2011 and again in 2016, without answer, why the Government did not introduce the Bill in the form in which they wished it to be enacted, replacing the 2006 Act in toto. It might be a 400-page Act, but the Bill before us is over 50 pages. Future quinquennial reviews could be considering 50 pages of amendments to a 500-page plus, and growing, 2006 Act.

It might be possible, if the Bill were to be a new one, to tidy up the presentation. It has a plethora of parts, chapters and miscellaneous add-ons. The 2006 Act, which was an amalgam of the single service legislation, was a brand new Bill, replacing the single service Acts: a departure from the quinquennial amendments of past Acts. Is there any reason why this legislation, at least in the future, bearing in mind it has passed in the other place, could not be tabled as a complete Bill? It would be more readable and comprehensible, compared with the cross-referencing now required. Maybe this time the Minister will be able to respond.

The thrust of new Chapter 3A in Clause 7, in particular protocols for directors of prosecutions to follow and arrangements to approve their alteration, worry me. I remain concerned that the march of disciplinary legislation for the Armed Forces has the unintended but most unfortunate implication that Parliament and the Government harbour a lack of trust in the higher ranks of the chain of command and the military courts martial system. Yet trust in the chain of command, both upwards and down, is of crucial and overriding importance to the very life and fighting resolve of the Armed Forces. So too there should be no unintended inference that courts martial, which are an essential part of the Armed Forces disciplinary structure, are inadequate or failing. One should look rather at what steps might be taken to counter or dispel any such impression.

These new protocols are ill-defined. Could not different versions be approved for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland? The view of the service prosecutor may be overruled by the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Lord Advocate for Scotland or the Director of Public Prosecutions for Northern Ireland, as the case may be. The prosecutors are only required to “consult” the Secretary of State, presumably the Defence Secretary, and other named bodies, which differ in each jurisdiction. Is “consult” strong enough to avoid or prevent different approaches to these protocols? Is there a danger that one or more of the final civilian arbiters of the protocols may be personally averse to courts martial, being inconsistent, in their view, with a fair and efficient justice system? What may not be a worry now might be in the future without some strengthening of the protocol arrangements. Is it right that the disciplinary structure of the Armed Forces should be a devolved matter? Is this Bill not a further diminution of courts martial? I look forward to some reassurances from the Minister in winding up the debate.

17:18

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, who made some very good points in his excellent speech. I thank my noble friend the Minister for introducing this Bill and explaining its purposes. We tend not to debate often enough our Armed Forces and the proportion of our national income that they consume. The historical requirement to pass an Act every five years to maintain a standing army ensures that Parliament has more opportunities to debate the state of our Armed Forces than would otherwise be the case. It is particularly welcome that the Bill seeks to strengthen the Armed Forces covenant, which contains the Government’s promise that servicemen and women should not be disadvantaged in any way by their service and that special consideration may be appropriate on occasion, especially for those injured and those who have lost close family members.

It is good that the Bill makes provision for a new legal duty for public bodies to give due regard to the covenant. However, this applies only to local councils and some limited public bodies delivering housing, health and education. Could the Minister please tell the House why the Government and the devolved Administrations are exempted from this duty? Could she also explain why the list of relevant functions covered is so limited? It includes only housing, education and healthcare. The Royal British Legion, together with many other service charities, is asking for the duty to be extended to employment, pensions, compensation, social care, criminal justice and immigration, among other topics.

It is welcome that, with the Bill, the Prime Minister can rightfully claim that he has honoured the second of the three commitments together described as his “veterans pledge”, which he made in his letter to the Sun of 11 July 2019, to enshrine the military covenant in law. The first commitment was:

“To create an Office of Veterans Affairs within the Cabinet Office”.


The third—outstanding—commitment was to introduce legislation

“to end repeated and vexatious investigations into historical allegations against our servicemen and women—including in Northern Ireland”.

I recognise the highly sensitive and difficult nature of achieving this third objective, and I welcome the Government’s Command Paper, published in July, which I think all will agree constitutes progress. It points out:

“The decreasing likelihood of successful prosecutions is supported by evidence, which shows that between 2015 and 2021 just nine people have been charged in connection with Troubles-related deaths.”


It also notes that

“of these nine, just one person has been convicted.”

In particular, proposals for a statute of limitations, which would bring an immediate end to the divisive cycle of criminal investigations and prosecutions, would successfully deliver the Prime Minister’s third objective. Can the Minister tell the House more about the timescale to which the Government are working to achieve this?

As honorary air commodore in the No. 600 (City of London) Squadron of the Royal Auxiliary Air Force, I welcome the provisions introduced by Clause 9, which recognise and give effect to the fact that reserve or voluntary service today comes in many different shapes and sizes and that the legal framework required to support that needs to be much more flexible than has been the case in the past. The “whole force” concept, which blurs the distinctions between regular and voluntary service, also requires modification to the legal commitments required of our service personnel. My noble friend Lord Lancaster spoke wisely about this matter. It is right that reserve personnel are subject to service law for the entire time that they are in service, under continuous service commitments.

Together with other noble Lords, I am full of admiration for the loyal and tireless service given by all those involved in Operation Pitting. Nevertheless, I also agree with the moving speech of my noble friend Lord Robathan, who is not in his place. He was surely right to say that the badly damaged reputation of NATO, as a result of the Afghanistan debacle, means that now is absolutely not the time to make cuts to numbers of military personnel, ships or aeroplanes.

I take this opportunity to ask my noble friend the Minister whether she will also commend the great contribution made by the Reserve Forces to Operation Rescript, in combating the Covid-19 pandemic, which would otherwise have wrought even greater havoc on our lives. I welcome the Bill and look forward to supporting my noble friend in taking it through your Lordships’ House.

17:24

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister started the debate by saying that our Armed Forces are the best in the world. I am proud to serve as an honorary group captain in No. 601 Squadron in the Royal Air Force.

Clause 8 of the Bill would make further provisions for the Armed Forces covenant. I will quote the covenant. It is the nation’s commitment to

“acknowledge and understand that those who serve or who have served in the armed forces, and their families, should be treated with fairness and respect in the communities, economy and society they serve with their lives.”

The House of Commons had its Second Reading on 8 February this year, and many MPs spoke about Clause 8, criticising it for not going far enough in strengthening the covenant. The shadow Defence Secretary said that it was a “missed opportunity”. The Royal British Legion was quoted as well—I am privileged to be chairman of the Memorial Gates Trust, and the Royal British Legion is our partner. The Memorial Gates commemorate the service and sacrifice of the 5 million volunteers from south Asia, Africa and the Caribbean who served in the First World War and Second World War. The problem with this is that it could lead to a two-tier covenant. A committee said that the Bill falls short of what it ought to be and it must have due regard to the covenant itself—it is too weak because it is local and not national. Will the Minister explain why it is not national but only local?

As noble Lords have said, any person with citizenship of a Commonwealth country—other than the UK, of course—who served for at least four years is to be exempted from visa fees. This also applies to those who served for at least four years in the Brigade of Gurkhas. However, there is a shameful scandal: Commonwealth personnel face a fee of £2,389 per person to continue to live in the UK after having served for at least four years, and, to add to this, they are given less than a month—28 days—in which to pay this. This leaves many of them in financial ruin. A suggestion has been made that all they should pay is £204, which is the fee for indefinite leave to remain, instead of £2,389. Does the Minister agree that this should be implemented? The Government say that they are listening to this.

It has been suggested that those of the Afghan special forces who have come to the UK could be absorbed into the Armed Forces and made into a regiment like the Gurkhas. Will the Minister confirm that this has been considered? After all, the bravery that those Afghan troops have shown in the evacuation—going out into the crowds outside the airport, risking capture at Taliban checkpoints—has been absolutely amazing. In the past two decades, the UK special forces have worked alongside the Afghan units, such as Commando Force 333. My friend Tom Tugendhat, the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said:

“We trained and fought alongside many Afghans who are now in the UK. They've proved their loyalty a thousand times. If they want to serve, we should welcome them. I would love to see a regiment of Afghan scouts.”


We must remember that, sadly, 457 people from our country gave up their lives and more than 2,000 were injured in the Afghanistan conflict over the past two decades.

I will conclude by talking about the Gurkhas, of whom there are 4,000 in the British Army. They have served over here for over 200 years. This year is the 50th anniversary of the country of Bangladesh. My late father, Lieutenant General Bilimoria, commanded his battalion of Gurkhas—the 2nd 5th Gorkha Rifles (Frontier Force)—in the liberation of Bangladesh. His battalion received three Victoria Crosses in the Second World War. My father ended up being colonel of his regiment, president of the Gurkha Brigade in India and commander-in-chief of the central army. He commanded his battalion with pride. The person who took over from him as commander of the regiment, Major General Cardozo, has recently written a book, 1971, about the 1971 operation. Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw was the chief of the Indian Army at the time, and, referring to the Gurkhas, he said:

“If a man says he is not afraid of dying, he is either lying or he is a Gurkha.”


We had a sad situation recently where three Gurkhas, representing Gurkha veterans, went on hunger strike outside Downing Street; fortunately, it was called off. It was to do with the pensions that noble Lord, Lord Lancaster, spoke of. My friend Joanna Lumley, who fought so hard with us to give Gurkhas the right to stay over a decade ago, has also urged the Government to meet the brave and loyal Gurkha veterans staging the hunger strike. I ask the Minister: are the Government doing all that they can to resolve the Gurkha pension situation, which seems so unfair? They say that the cost is £1.5 billion, but I would go so far as to say that there is no cost: the contribution of the Gurkhas has been absolutely priceless.

I conclude with this: we must never ever take for granted our beloved Armed Forces, our respected services, which are the best of the best. We will always owe them a debt of gratitude, and that is the covenant that is testament to this.

17:30

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for explaining the purposes of her Bill. Like many others, I am convinced that the system of the quinquennial review, coupled with an annual renewal, is the right one.

When we have just been defeated in a major overseas military campaign, I do not believe that the usual channels have served this country or the House well by providing us with only five minutes of speaking time to deal with all the G1 matters in defence. Unlike my noble friend Lord Lancaster, I no longer have to declare any interest as a reservist, but I have been subject to service discipline, have exercised summary jurisdiction and have once been subject to summary jurisdiction myself. With hindsight, I realise that it was rather more to do with accounting for a lost camp bed than anything I might have done wrong. However, it was in the mid-1970s. Importantly, I have also served on a court martial a few times.

I have three issues to raise. The first is about opening up the membership of the board of the court martial to certain senior NCOs of OR7 rank, which may have unintended and undesirable effects. It might sound a bit more democratic, but the board is not synonymous with a jury—it is a tribunal. Before starting their training, commissioned officers were very carefully selected for having suitable innate and learned characteristics and capabilities. Warrant officers will also enjoy those characteristics in large measure, and they are already permitted to be on the board. It was only when I became a major and a company commander that I dared to suggest to the RSM that he might do something differently or better. My worry is not that a staff sergeant or equivalent might be too lenient but rather the other way: he or she might not have much sympathy or understanding of a weak or poor-quality serviceman. He or she might also lack the wider knowledge and education of an officer or warrant officer. Furthermore, they may lack the capability of standing firm against a judge advocate who advocates a relatively severe punishment against the wishes of the board, a point touched on by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup.

My second issue relates to Clause 7 and follows on from the comments of the noble Lords, Lord Coaker and Lord Thomas of Gresford, and others, including the noble and gallant Lord, who raised the issue of suspicious deaths, rape and sexual assault and any related investigation, prosecution and litigation. I do not believe that the service police or the court martial system are well placed to deal with these matters, as some arise so infrequently while others are extremely difficult to investigate and determine. Moreover, there will always be a suspicion of a cover-up, no matter how unfounded the suggestion is. It would be much better to hand these matters over to a Home Office police force immediately, or as soon as possible, and then exclusively use the civil criminal justice system.

My final point concerns inquests related to deaths on overseas operations. The lawyers, who members of the Armed Forces absolutely love, would argue that we need the inquest system to identify what has gone wrong and prevent a repetition. I suggest that that is a delusional view. If there is a technical failure leading to death, especially with ECM matters, the feedback loop can operate within days. If it is an equipment, tactics or training issue, that weakness is fed back into the training system and to the staff. The idea that an inquest, taking place perhaps 18 months later, is going to add to or improve the process is ludicrous. All it would do is to tie up the staff to no useful effect. As I told your Lordships during the debate on the Chilcot report, the attention paid to each individual fatality incurred on operations is inversely proportional to the number of such casualties.

Media reports of those inquests are an absolute gift to our opponents, who can use them to encourage their own members to take the risk of making further attacks on our people and our friends. These reports could also create a lack of confidence within our own servicepeople and the wider public. I am afraid that the hard fact of life is that “hot” overseas military operations are bound to involve fatalities and serious injuries. The other hard, delicate and unpalatable fact is that the victim—or his or her comrades—is sometimes, sadly, the author of the tragedy. Quite understandably, and for obvious reasons, the MoD and the staff will never make this clear at any inquest. Therefore, there is little chance of the inquest coming to the correct verdict in many of these cases.

I intend to return to these issues at a later stage and will provide strong support on the Clause 7 issues.

17:36

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in rising to speak to the Armed Forces Bill, I can only contextualise our debate, as so many other noble Lords have, with the dreadful events in Afghanistan and the continuing desperate efforts of people who have supported and served with our Armed Forces to escape the country where their lives remain in severe danger. I acknowledge the impacts, as so powerfully outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, of these events on so many who have served there recently and who have served there previously. I share concerns expressed by many noble Lords about inadequate funding and levels of services for veterans and current servicepeople, particularly mental health services.

Many noble Lords have expressed concerns, which I share, about the failure of the Government to adopt the recommendation of Judge Lyons on the treatment of murder, manslaughter and rape charges, and particularly well-highlighted concerns about the management of rape and sexual assault cases. I do not feel that I have a great deal to add on that issue; the view of the House is already very clear. The statutory application of the military covenant to local government but not central government is another area in which the view of the House is very clear. Furthermore, I commend the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, who is not in his place, on highlighting the issue of problem gambling. I ask the Government, as he did, whether they have at least planned an examination of the issue. To be fair, I want to commend the Government on the measure in the Bill to right previous wrongs against LGBTIQA+ servicepeople.

I want to devote my speech to raising two issues, which I do not believe that other noble Lords have raised. The first is child soldiers. It is estimated today that the number in the world ranges from 250,000 to 300,000. The United Nations has an International Day Against the Use of Child Soldiers, also known as Red Hand Day. The UK is remarkably silent in international venues on this issue, when we are outspoken on so many other related issues—and we know why. It is because we have child soldiers. This Bill is a lost opportunity to end the practice of recruiting children into the UK’s Armed Forces, as a coalition of 20 human rights organisations called for earlier this year.

I suspect that many Britons would be surprised to know that one in five new military recruits are under 18, a ratio that rises to one in four in the Army, which recruits more 16 year-olds than any other age, particularly into infantry roles. This argument has been rehearsed over many years, but we are now in a very different situation, given that continuation of education for 16 and 17 year-olds is now standard even among the most disadvantaged groups, where four in five continue in education.

Nearly one in three underage recruits leave the Army or are dismissed. They have left their education early to join up, unlike their peers, and then they are immediately out of a job and not in education. So I have a question for the Minister. Are they covered by the military covenant, and what special provision are the Government making for their obviously very high needs? Have the Government any plans for a reconsideration of the recruitment of child soldiers?

I note the disturbing figures obtained by the SNP MP Carol Monaghan that girls under 18 made at least 16 formal complaints of sexual assault to the Military Police in the last six years—equivalent to one in every 75 girls in the military. That brings me to the second main issue I want to address. Women are about 10% of our full-time military, more than 15,000 in number: a significant minority, serving in virtually all roles and functions, but still very much a minority, bringing in their different experiences from a discriminatory society, subject to particular issues in service life and afterwards. I commend the work of Salute Her in highlighting this issue and the need for specialist support services, with women veterans having experienced significantly higher rates of adverse childhood experiences than civilians: 38% of women veterans report military sexual trauma and 33% of women veterans have experienced intimate partner violence, compared with 24% of non-veteran women.

Since we are addressing the place of our military, I must also raise one broader issue, given the timing of this debate: the role of our Armed Forces being closely interrelated with our arms industry. Indeed, we are speaking now as we are about to see arms fairs in the UK not very far from this place. Our military is working with our arms industry to pump weapons out into a world that is already awash with them. This weekend I will be joining many on the streets to protest and call for an end to such promotion of a dangerous industry that threatens the security of all of us.

I think there is one final question—I suspect that the Minister will not have this in her briefing, but I hope she might consider responding to me afterwards in writing. In that industry since 2008, export licences have been allowed for £150 million-worth of weapons to go to Afghanistan. Can the Minister tell me how many of those weapons are now in the hands of the Taliban—and useably in the hands of the Taliban?

17:42

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I join in welcoming the Bill and paying tribute to the Armed Forces, but I do reflect that, while we make a tribute to the Armed Forces, during the time of Covid the Government made tremendous efforts to get people off the streets. I claim no great role in that, but I did notice the huge number of ex-military personnel who are homeless, who felt left out of society, who were sleeping on the streets and who were part of that homelessness.

I must also say that, as someone who has had a fair amount of dealings with the United States and its legislative assemblies, we pay far less attention to our military than they do in the United States. To be an ex-soldier in the United States is an honourable situation. To be an ex-military person in Britain is something that is referred to from time to time with warm words but seldom followed up very effectively. So one thing I hope can come out of the Bill, the covenant and what follows, is a more humane look at the need to deal with post-service life as well as service life, and to face up to the problems that one gets.

If we are running a military operation, we should be clear what we are doing. We are operating a killing machine. The main purpose of an army is to go and kill people, and, if you bring people into that sort of situation, you get throwback in the sense of not only post-traumatic stress disorder but enormous pressure on people and the way in which they see the world. We have to face up to that. I spent a long time, as some noble Lords know, in the European Parliament and I was for some years vice-chair of its Security and Disarmament Committee. We used to go to NATO and, when it existed, the Western European Union and talk to people from all over Europe. It was very clear, talking to some of our Nordic friends, that they did not want to get their soldiers anywhere near military action that would involve killing the opposition—and they did not want it for quite good psychological reasons. I make this point because I think we sometimes romanticise this, saying “Oh, yes, Tommy soldier, great person”. I cannot remember the quote, but Kipling made it and we all know it: sometimes we love them, sometimes we don’t, but mainly we forget them. I think we need to remember that.

We also need to come to terms with the fact that the whole nature of warfare is changing. While 100 years ago the idea of mass killing was accepted—“Over the top you go” at Ypres or the Somme—that would never now be acceptable. Time has moved on. I predict that we are coming to the end of military operations as we have known them up to now. Afghanistan may well turn out to be the last big operation of its kind, and maybe we are moving forward to operations where drones and targeted killings are much more the case. Let us be honest: it is much easier to sit in a bunker in Lincolnshire and destroy someone on the ground in the Middle East than it is to face them across 300 yards or 300 metres of desert.

So I put it to the Minister, not as part of this Bill but as a consequence of this Bill, that we need to come to terms with how we deal with ex-service personnel, many of whom have severe mental problems partly caused by the situation in which, you can say, they have put themselves, but actually in which we have put them. We owe a duty of aftercare, and if there is one thing that Covid taught me, it is the huge number of people in society, on the streets, who come from a military background. I was actually shocked to learn how many, as a percentage, there were. I notice my good friend opposite—I am not sure whether I am allowed to call her a friend—the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, who lives in Cambridge, the same city as I do. Much of my evidence came from there, where the Government gave Cambridge City Council money to get people housed and people were still on the streets. I spoke to some of them and went round with some of the welfare workers, and I discovered a shocking level of mental incapacity that we also need to tackle.

17:48

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, I am the last Back-Bench speaker in this important debate and I will confine myself to one clause, Clause 18, to which some reference has been made but which I would like to talk about a little more fully. Clause 18 redresses, as far as is possible, the hardship and suffering inflicted in the past on gallant servicemen who happened to be homosexual. I speak not only for myself but also for my noble friend Lord Cashman, who cannot be in his place today, and for our indispensable colleague, Professor Paul Johnson of York University, who has a fuller understanding than anyone else of the laws which, over the centuries, created hardship and suffering for homosexual servicemen.

Five years have passed since the three of us called for the action which Clause 18 will at last now authorise. Back in 2016, during the Committee stage of the Policing and Crime Act, which became law in 2017, provision was made through amendments passed in this House to grant posthumous pardons under certain conditions to individuals convicted or cautioned for certain offences that have now been swept from the statute book. I pointed out in December 2016 that the legislation would not make adequate provision for the Armed Forces. Pardons were made available for offences now repealed under civil law going back to the famous Henrician statute of 1533, but for service offences only the period since 1866 was covered. It goes without saying that all families who want justice for homosexual forebears or relatives should have the same possibilities of redress made available to them.

Some improvement was made in the final stages before the 2017 Act became law. Posthumous pardons for naval personnel were extended back to 1661, but in the time available it was not possible for Professor Johnson to locate all the relevant statutes under which homosexual servicemen suffered for so long. After additional work had been carried out, further legislation to accomplish what had been left undone in 2017 was drafted in the form of two Private Member’s Bills which the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, introduced in this House. Clause 18 represents the completion of a long process for which my noble friend the Minister and her officials deserve sincere thanks. It has been a formidable undertaking. The clause covers a period in which some 300 separate enactments, comprising the annual Mutiny Acts and Marine Mutiny Acts as well as numerous iterations of articles of war, regulated the Army and Royal Marines. We do not know how many servicemen were convicted or punished for engaging in same-sex sexual conduct which would be lawful today. Whatever the number, a posthumous pardon will, so far as is possible, acknowledge and address the grave injustice done to them and wipe the stain of that injustice from their memory.

I would like to say that Clause 18 ends the matter. Unfortunately, it does not. These posthumous pardons cover only those convicted of civil offences under service law. Many Armed Forces personnel were convicted under specific service discipline offences, such as the offence of disgraceful conduct, for engaging in consensual same-sex acts which would be lawful today. Again, we do not know the number, but it is substantial, and for every one of that number a career was damaged or destroyed. Service discipline offences are not covered by the current pardon and disregard schemes first introduced in 2012. Why should the brave people harmed by them be excluded from such measures of redress as have been belatedly devised to help restore the reputations of the unjustly condemned? I intend, therefore, with the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, to table amendments in Committee to address those further historical injustices.

17:53

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, from these Benches as from the Opposition Benches, I support this Bill. As we have already heard, this is the once-every-five-years Armed Forces Bill, following very swiftly on from the annual Bill to ensure that the Armed Forces continue and quite swiftly on from the overseas operations Bill. In recent weeks and months, we have therefore had the opportunity to talk quite frequently about the Armed Forces and as much about our duties to them as about theirs to our country.

I welcome this Bill and certain aspects of it in particular, but as many noble Lords have pointed out, there are some aspects which could go further and some aspects on which we will certainly move amendments. Some will be probing and others very much will not be—they will seek to change the Bill.

While this is in many ways a welcome Bill, which clearly has support across the Chamber—with the partial exception of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, who had a few more caveats than the rest of us—there are two areas where we will want significant change. The first is service justice and a change to Clause 7, while the other is aspects of the Armed Forces covenant.

I do not propose to rehearse the comments made by my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford; the reason I asked him to open for the Liberal Democrat Benches was because I knew that he had the expertise to talk about military justice that I absolutely do not. Please take it as read that I am in complete agreement with everything he said, and that is very much the Liberal Democrat position. Any amendment that my noble friend proposes we will support, but that very much fits with comments that we heard from across the Chamber, including from the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup.

There are questions about why one aspect of the Lyons review was not brought into this Bill. If the Minister is unable to give satisfactory responses on why military justice should differ from civil justice in the areas of rape, murder and manslaughter, a series of amendments will be brought forward. Whether that is in the form of the inquiry proposed by the noble Lord on the Labour Benches or of a series of explicit amendments, something needs to be done to ensure that everybody receives justice—the women who, as my noble friend Lord Thomas pointed out, currently do not receive justice or the service people against whom the allegations are brought. If incorrect or poor decisions are made, that clearly is not right either for the perpetrator or for those against whom offences are committed. We need to ensure that justice is brought for everybody.

I want to talk in particular about Clause 8 and the Armed Forces covenant. Before I do, I pay tribute in his absence to the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, and the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, for their efforts on posthumous pardons. We obviously welcome Clause 18 and will listen to the amendments that they will bring forward.

A key part of this Bill, and where it differs from previous Armed Forces Bills, is the focus on the Armed Forces covenant; all Members are committed to it but there appear to be questions about how far it goes. It is obviously welcome that it is being put on a statutory footing, but what good does that do? As the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, implied, there are no clear legal implications from the duty to have due regard in the areas of health, education and housing. Can the Minister tell the House what that might mean in practical terms?

The phrase “due regard” sounds good and legalistic, but what does it mean in practice? We can say to service personnel who are looking to their future, “It’s fine. The Armed Forces covenant is enshrined in law. The local authority will have to give due regard”. However, if the local authority says, “We have no funds—we can’t make any difference. We’ve paid due regard, but the Covid crisis has left us almost bankrupt. We can’t do anything”, what will central government do about that? I say as somebody who was on Cambridge City Council as a portfolio holder, including for customer services and resources for some years, that there is a tendency for Governments of whatever political persuasion to give duties to local authorities. They may give a small amount of money, but it never covers the cost of what is required.

The areas in the Bill on the Armed Forces covenant are very much ones where local authorities are already under pressure. What will the Government do to ensure that local authorities and public health bodies will be able to do anything more than pay lip service to the duty to have due regard to health, education and housing? As the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, pointed out, veteran homelessness is a significant issue. What support will local authorities be given to deal with that aspect of the covenant? A lot more work needs to be done in the Bill on those areas, and I propose to table amendments on the financial aspects.

However, as several other noble Lords have pointed out, we see the duty to have due regard only at the local level, not at the national level. What assessment have the Government made of creating a duty for themselves to pay due regard to the Armed Forces covenant? Are there particular departments of state that could be looking at the Armed Forces covenant? Should those educational duties be on local education authorities or should the Department for Education be doing something? What is happening at the UK level? What should be happening at the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland levels?

In addition to the aspects on the face of the Bill, like my noble friend Lady Brinton I raise the issue of PTSD—a very particular aspect of the health, particularly mental health, areas of the Armed Forces covenant. This puts it very much in the context that the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, talked about in his opening remarks, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. This Bill must be seen in context. We can see that context in a general way or a very specific one. The general way is, as the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, sought to do—to say that this has been a military disaster and that we in the West are being laughed at. There is a case for looking at the UK’s role in Afghanistan and our role with NATO, but I do not believe that that is for this debate or this Bill. There are lessons to be learned, but they are not issues that we can deal with in this Bill.

What we can do is think about the veterans of Op Herrick and Op Pitting and the service men and women who have been involved, because we have a duty to all of them. As my noble friend Lady Brinton pointed out, the danger is that recent events in Afghanistan are triggering our service veterans, who have in many cases been on several tours of duty there. Can the Government commit to putting more resources into ensuring that PTSD can be treated, and that veterans and current service personnel can be looked after as quickly as possible?

I have no service background, but in the last three weeks I have talked to people who have been involved with the UN, the British Council and our Armed Forces. Talking to people with hands-on, personal experience of those who are currently at risk in Afghanistan is incredibly moving because they are so concerned about the people now at risk of losing their lives—people they have worked alongside and who have worked for them. They feel a personal responsibility, in the way that we as a country and the Government, as responsible for the Armed Forces, all have a duty to the service personnel, as well as to those we are evacuating from Afghanistan.

My final plea is for the Government to think about extending the Armed Forces covenant to those who have come out of Afghanistan under ARAP, and maybe even those who come through the second tier. If that is to be done, I make a further plea on financing. We have already heard the impassioned pleas from my noble friend Lady Garden about widows’ pensions—a very small number, but it would make a huge difference—but the Government have said they cannot do things retrospectively. We have also heard impassioned speeches from the noble Lords, Lord Dannatt and Lord Bilimoria, about the Gurkhas. If we have not been able to look after those people, we will not be able to look after those who will come from Afghanistan, unless we put the resources in. Could the MoD please think about that? If we do not do that, Operation Warm Welcome will be merely warm words and will not deliver. We owe it to our service men and women, and to those whom we are liberating and bringing back from Afghanistan, to ensure that we give them the warmest of welcomes. We must honour our service personnel, as we all owe them a great debt.

18:05

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been an excellent debate, demonstrating not only the wealth of service experience in our House but how all Peers want to work together to get the best for our service communities. Personnel, veterans and their families are a source of great pride for our country and their professionalism is respected across the world. I know many will join me in thanking them for their past and ongoing service, especially those who have been involved in the evacuation in Afghanistan in recent weeks.

As my noble friend Lord Coaker outlined at the start of the debate, we will seek to improve this legislation. We support the Bill’s main principle and welcome steps for the creation of a legal duty of due regard to the principles of the covenant and the implementation of elements of the Lyons review. I have been struck by the cross-party support for the issues my noble friend outlined at the start of the debate: widening the scope of the legislation to ensure that all areas of potential disadvantage are addressed; ensuring a two-tier Armed Forces covenant is not created; including central government on the list of public bodies which must take on the new responsibilities; and giving civilian courts jurisdiction in matters of murder, rape and serious sexual offences committed in the UK.

As we have heard, these priorities reflect the main calls and concerns from service charities. The Royal Air Forces Association said the Bill misses an opportunity to enact the Lyons recommendations, the Naval Families Federation called for widening of the Bill’s scope to include all aspects of the Armed Forces covenant, and the Royal British Legion stated that the list of public bodies subject to the due regard duty should be widened to include national government. We are listening and responding to service charities, so why are the Government not?

The Government have not maximised this legislative opportunity to fix other important issues which continue to blight personnel and veterans. These focus on investigations, visas for Commonwealth and Gurkha veterans, an Armed Forces representative body, and examining dismissals and resignations based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

First, we have heard throughout the debate that issues surrounding repeated and shoddy investigations remain. Noble Lords tried to settle this in the overseas operations Bill; there was a clear consensus in this House that the Bill, now an Act, did not do what was promised to protect British personnel serving overseas from vexatious legal claims and shoddy investigations. There was cross-party support for a duty of care to support troops facing investigation, as well as for conditions to be set on investigations to ensure timely, not time-limited, investigations. I remind the Minister of her words during ping-pong, when she gently encouraged the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, not to press his duty of care amendment, saying that if he was to

“bring back this amendment in the Armed Forces Bill … this House will no doubt debate the issue further. I look forward to continuing these constructive discussions”.—[Official Report, 28/4/21; col. 2347.]

So here we are. I hope the noble Lord will be inclined to bring back this amendment, which we strongly support.

Next, the Government should have made provision in the Bill to stop Commonwealth and Gurkha veterans being subject to eye-watering fees to remain in the country they have served. Under the current rules, Commonwealth personnel face a fee of £2,389 per person to continue to live in the UK after having served for at least four years. It means that someone with a partner and two children could face a bill of almost £10,000 to stay in Britain. We believe that this is dishonourable, unfair and certainly no way to repay their bravery and sacrifice.

In May, the Government announced a consultation that would waive visa fees for those who had served for 12 years or more, but this would apply to just 20 of the 200 non-UK personnel who left the regulars in 2020. Commonwealth service personnel have contributed an enormous amount to our national defence and we owe them a debt of gratitude. However, the extortionate visa fees have left many non-UK veterans facing financial ruin and being abandoned. Therefore, in line with calls from the Royal British Legion, we will bring forward an amendment that would mean that Commonwealth and Gurkha veterans who have served for years would pay just the cost price for an indefinite leave to remain application.

It has been clear for some time that the Armed Forces need independent advice and representation. Witnesses during the Committee stage in the other place reinforced this, since Armed Forces personnel have endured a real-terms pay cut for most of the last decade and concerns about the service complaints system remain. We will therefore explore whether the time is right to formalise representation and support for service personnel on issues such as welfare and pay. To be clear, this would not be an equivalent to a trade union for the Armed Forces, and it would not conduct or condone any form of industrial action or insubordination within the Armed Forces. The body would work with the Ministry of Defence to put in place a form of understanding that could deal with such issues and would be similar to models in the United States and Australia.

We are also saddened to see that the Bill does not include a clause requiring the Government to conduct a comprehensive review of the number of people who were dismissed or forced to resign from the Armed Forces due to their sexuality. Homosexuality was banned in the British Armed Forces until 2000, when the ban was lifted by the then Labour Government. During the ban, many were dishonourably discharged or forced from the service, losing access to pensions and benefits. Some were also stripped of medals that they had earned for their service. Along with the practical impacts of this discrimination, such as the loss of pension, it also caused significant challenges for mental health and well-being. We deeply regret the treatment of LGBT+ veterans under the ban. As organisations such as Fighting With Pride, Stonewall and the Centre for Military Justice have said, we must do more to identify those affected and consider what further compensation might be appropriate. We will therefore seek to amend the Bill to force Ministers to consider the restoration of ranks, pensions and other forms of compensation to honour appropriately those who have served our country.

That is, in a sense, a summary of the position we will take on these Benches, but I ask the Minister to take away three ideas. First, our Front Bench found little reason to disagree with most of today’s speakers; there is consensus across the House on a wide variety of issues. Secondly, at least five speakers were concerned about the failure to embrace all the Lyons recommendations, particularly those relating to murder, manslaughter and rape. Thirdly, no less than 10 Members spoke about their concerns about the covenant. It if comes to Divisions, the Government will lose. I hope that they will start straightaway to think about how they might meet this House’s concerns so that we can work through concessions, not government defeats.

There is much to be commended in this Bill but there is also much to be put right. This type of legislation comes along once in a military session. Let us seize this opportunity. Let us work across parties, including with the Government, and improve the lives of our service personnel, veterans and their families.

18:15

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by quoting my immediate predecessor, the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, who said that this has been an excellent debate. He is absolutely correct—we have heard many thought-provoking contributions. What has left a lasting impression on me from this afternoon’s proceedings is the many impassioned speeches made on behalf of our Armed Forces. I thank your Lordships for that warmth and affection, and for the cross-party support of the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, who opened for the Opposition, of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, and from the Cross Benches. That attitude and those contributions reflect the deep and abiding affection and support that our service men and women, veterans and the broader service community enjoy in this House and beyond.

Of course, as the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, said, we should also remember that a tremendous contribution has been made over decades by our Commonwealth forces and veterans. Bringing it right up to date, my noble friend Lord Trenchard rightly reminded us of the role of our reservists in Operation Rescript, so there is much of which we can be very proud and certainly much for which we are very grateful. In turn, this mirrors the desire of your Lordships to make certain that this Bill can deliver measures that have a profound and far-reaching benefit to those who guard and shield the nation.

As the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, said, support for this Bill is strong and widespread. I appreciate the interest shown and the questions about certain measures and wider issues. I will address as many of your Lordships’ concerns as I can in the time available.

I was interested in the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal. One was perhaps predictable, because her assiduous work on behalf of war widows is, rightly, widely respected and acknowledged. Her plea for war widows, for whom she so tirelessly advocates, is heard. I can say that there is a desire to find a solution and all avenues are currently being explored; I use the word “currently” advisedly. I hope it will be possible to report further on that in the not- too-distant future.

The noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, also asked about overturning decisions of the Service Complaints Ombudsman. That ombudsman is of course independent but, as with other ombudsmen and ombudswomen, their recommendations are taken seriously but are not in themselves binding. However, I was interested to hear the noble Baroness’s contribution.

I also want to deal with one or two important points made by the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, which I noted down. In character, the noble Lord raised a multiplicity of thought-provoking and important issues, and I will look at Hansard and endeavour to respond to him. He referred to the Gurkha hunger strike, which I am pleased to say has now come to an end. My colleague the Minister for Defence People and Veterans, and the Defence Secretary, will meet Gurkha welfare groups shortly to discuss all welfare concerns. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, was also concerned about that.

I was not surprised to find that a lot of the discussion this afternoon concerned the covenant. There was widespread acknowledgement that placing it in legislation is good news; indeed, my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern rightly identified the important message that this sends to our Armed Forces, as did the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt. However, I certainly noted the concerns articulated by a number of noble Lords, not least the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, and the noble Baroness, Lady Smith.

In response to the specific point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, my noble friend Lord Astor of Hever and my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern on why the legislation will not apply to central government, I would say that government is held to account by Parliament and the purpose of the covenant duty is to raise awareness among providers of these public services of how service life can disadvantage the Armed Forces community in accessing these key public services. The MoD is fully aware of issues that impact the Armed Forces community, and we work with other departments and organisations across not just government but the United Kingdom to raise awareness, to access concerns—as best we can—and to help facilitate the resolution of problems. The MoD and central government more widely are already held to account in the delivery of the covenant by the statutory requirement to report progress against the covenant annually to Parliament. That will remain a legal obligation. I realise that that will not satisfy all noble Lords, but I shall anticipate with interest how your Lordships who are concerned about the omission of Governments—indeed, I think it was my noble friend Lord Astor who specifically mentioned the Scottish Government—explore and broaden out these genuine issues.

As in the other place, a number of noble Lords have argued that the scope of duty for the covenant is too narrow and that it should be broadened beyond housing, healthcare and education. We have chosen the scope of the duty carefully and in consultation with the Armed Forces community because we know that these issues will make the greatest improvements to family life. Indeed, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Lancaster for recognising that. Significantly, of course, the Bill contains provisions for us to expand the scope into other areas through secondary legislation at a later date. I was asked for an assurance that this will be reviewed regularly. I am happy to give that assurance: the scope of the provision will be reviewed regularly. This is not the end of our legislative effort; it is the beginning.

A number of noble Lords, not least the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, and a number of others, claim that the new legal duty is not strong enough. They are concerned that creating a legal duty “to pay due regard” to the principles does not go far enough. I know there has been talk in the other place from the Opposition Benches of needing to set “measurable national standards”. I think our challenge throughout this has been one of striking a balance. On the one hand we wanted to ensure delivery against the covenant principles, but on the other we wanted to avoid the sort of prescriptive approach that puts bureaucratic barriers in the way of practical delivery. Your Lordships will understand that when we are dealing with constituted local authorities which are entitled to a degree of government autonomy to make their own democratic decisions about what they wish to do, and with devolved Governments who have legislative competence to deal with delivery of these policy areas, we have to be very careful that we are not setting down a prescriptive approach which could be provocative, inimical and, in that respect, fairly unhelpful. I assure your Lordships that public bodies were consulted extensively, and our decision also reflects the diverse nature of public services across the country, but the Government will monitor responses and we are obliged, as I said earlier, to submit an annual report on the covenant to Parliament.

Predictably, the issue of the service justice system invited significant and extensive comment. I was pleased to hear noble Lords refer to the important reviews of the service justice system. I, too, have considered the reviews of His Honour Shaun Lyons and Professor Sir Jon Murphy, and it is their recommendations that underpin the improvements to the service justice system that we are taking forward in the Bill.

The noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, with his considerable experience in this field, raised this issue. He sought a further explanation about why the Government were adopting the particular course they have chosen. That was, to some extent, echoed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd. As I said at the beginning of this debate, while we accept the need to improve the decision-making process in relation to concurrent jurisdiction, we do not believe that the introduction of an Attorney-General consent function is the best way to achieve it, because Attorney-General consent arises at the end of the investigatory process, when key decisions on jurisdiction have already been made. I find it hard to see what the attorney adds if he or she is endorsing decisions already made. If the attorney were to disagree with those earlier decisions and veto a case being tried in the service justice system, there is no easy way to transfer that case to the civilian system. This could have the undesired effect of making it difficult or impossible to prosecute the case in either system; I think we all need to reflect upon this. The Government believe they have opted for a more pragmatic approach. As I said earlier, Clause 7 ensures that decisions on jurisdiction are left to the independent service justice and UK civilian prosecutors using guidance they have agreed between themselves. I do not consider that politicians should meddle in that. It is the case that the civilian prosecutors will have the final say as to within which jurisdiction the matter will be tried if there were disagreements.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, raised three significant points to which I listened with interest: first, should Parliament approve the prosecutor’s protocol and, secondly, in the choice of jurisdiction, should there be a right of appeal? He also suggested that it must be an error that this applies only in the United Kingdom. The Government seek to go with the grain of existing non-statutory arrangements. There is an existing non-statutory protocol between service and civilian prosecutors, and putting it on a statutory basis will bring clarity and transparency. On the specific points the noble and learned Lord raised, I suggest that there is no need for parliamentary approval for this type of protocol because this follows the precedent for the statutory Code for Crown Prosecutors, and that is not subject to that type of approval. On the second point, the Government see these as decisions for prosecutors. They are not subject to appeal at present; we are not looking to change that. On the third point, no, it is not a drafting error that it applies only to the United Kingdom. The purpose of this provision is to guide how civilian and service authorities within the United Kingdom manage these matters. Overseas matters are different—not least that they are often governed by a status of forces agreement.

I have endeavoured to explain why the Government have not just pulled this out of the air. Careful thought has been given to these proposals. I think it is worth reminding ourselves that the current situation was established by the Armed Forces Act 2006; that is the legislation that Parliament approved back then. I appreciate that that was under a Government of a different hue but, none the less, Parliament approved it and established jurisdictional concurrency by allowing murder, manslaughter and rape in the UK to be tried as service offences. It is that legal principle that the Bill supports, and that is why it is drafted as it is.

A number of your Lordships raised the comparative statistics on conviction rates between the service justice system and the civilian criminal justice system. I have to say—and I have looked at this—that I do not think it is possible to make a meaningful statistical or data comparison between the service and civilian justice systems. The service justice system review makes it clear that it is not possible to make accurate comparisons of outcomes in the systems as the relatively low number of cases and the small database in the service justice system mean that variances have a disproportionate effect on percentage values, which can subsequently lead to false conclusions.

A number of your Lordships referred to the House of Commons Select Committee report, which the MoD is currently considering; we shall publish our response shortly. On some of the criticisms which were levelled by your Lordships about the efficacy of the service justice system dealing with rape and serious sexual offences, we are confident that the service justice system provides an effective and fair system of justice for the men and women in the UK’s Armed Forces. It is interesting to note that the forces themselves do not report a lack of confidence in the system. The latest continuous attitude survey showed that 64% of the service population thought that the service justice system was fair, which compares with around 69% of the civilian population who think that the criminal justice system is fair. I am merely offering to your Lordships some basis for the approach which the Government have chosen.

A number of your Lordships raised the very important matter of mental health and mental health support: the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, spoke movingly about this, and the noble Lord, Lord Hay of Ballyore, referred to it, as did my noble friend Lord Balfe. It is correct that as our service personnel return home from testing operations, there is little doubt that in future years, sadly, an increasing number of veterans may suffer from mental health issues.

The MoD is committed to the mental health and well-being of our Armed Forces personnel and recognises that service life can cause stress. All Armed Forces personnel are supported by dedicated medical services, including mental health support. The MoD works with the single services, the Defence Medical Services and other stakeholders to promote mental fitness, prevent ill-health and try to reduce stigma. A lot of work has been done in that respect, of which I think many of your Lordships are aware.

I emphasise that an online mental health fundamentals course is available to all Armed Forces personnel, and since 2021 an annual mental health briefing is mandatory for all Armed Forces personnel. The MoD provides a 24-hour mental health helpline for Armed Forces personnel and their families, delivered by Combat Stress. That has been one of the most important developments in recent years. Togetherall allows Armed Forces personnel access to its 24-hour staffed digital forum and the Samaritans delivers bespoke workplace training and a peer support pocket guide providing guidance on how to talk to and support colleagues struggling to cope with mental health.

I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, who sought information about resource. From the information I have available, in 2020-2021, NHS England provided £16.5 million for veteran-specific mental health services, which increased to £17.8 million for 2021-22. In addition, the Government are also accelerating a new NHS England high-intensity mental health service for veterans who have acute mental health needs and are in crisis.

I refer to yesterday’s announcement that additional funding will be allocated to a range of projects that will increase capacity in mental health charities. There will be a £5 million boost to help increase the user-friendliness and accessibility of services and better signposting of veterans to the range of services available. I hope that that reassures your Lordships that this is an area in which we are determined to do our very best and that we endeavour to support our veterans in every way we can.

In the time remaining I will address specific points that were raised. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon, is not with us. He explained to me that an urgent domestic matter has commanded his attention, requiring him to leave early, and I thank him for his courtesy. He raised important points, and, although he is not here, I will address them because they concern the courts martial.

His honour Shaun Lyons in the service justice system review concluded that there remained the need for a separate service justice system. The court martial system largely follows the Crown Court procedure, and the Bill takes the court martial system closer to that civilian system. While it is true that the Bill retains the possibility of 2:1 majorities, the intention is that three-member panels will deal only with less serious offending, and serious offending will be dealt with by six-member panels. His honour Shaun Lyons considered but rejected the possibility of voting being announced; voting is not currently published.

My noble friend Lord Lancaster raised the fact that the Armed Forces Act 2006 no longer applies to Gibraltar. I am aware that this is an issue which my noble friend dealt with extensively when a Minister in the Ministry of Defence. While it is true that the 2006 Act no longer extends to Gibraltar, the Bill contains an important provision on Gibraltar. Clause 19 confirms that Gibraltar legislation can apply the Armed Forces Act 2006, which means that Gibraltar can make provision so that the Royal Gibraltar Regiment can make use of the UK service justice system.

The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, raised the important and interesting issue of what I would describe as a statutory spring clean: could we make future Armed Forces Bills more straightforward, easier to read and to understand? As regards spring cleaning, that is a kind of floor-to-ceiling job with the curtains included as well, so I undertake to have a meeting with the noble and gallant Lord to discuss those issues further.

The noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, asked whether we have figures for interpreters returning to this country. During Operation Pitting, between 15 and 29 August up to 5,000 Afghan locally employed staff and families were relocated under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy. Prior to Operation Pitting and between 22 June and 14 August, a further 2,000 were relocated, and in the last six weeks 7,000 locally employed staff and families were evacuated in total. These are the figures I have at the moment. Obviously, they may change on a day-to-day basis, but we have all been aware of the noble Lord’s herculean efforts to keep this matter at the forefront of the attention of government and the British public, and I pay tribute to him for those efforts.

My noble friend Lord Lancaster and the noble Lords, Lord Dannatt and Lord Bilimoria, raised the matter of visa settlement fees. We recognise that settlement fees may place a financial burden on some serving personnel wishing to remain in the UK. The Defence Secretary has met with the Home Secretary to consider how we could offer greater flexibility in the future. As was indicated, a public consultation was launched on 26 May 2021, which closed on 7 July. We are currently analysing the feedback from that consultation and we shall respond in due course.

My noble friend Lord Lexden raised the very important matter of Clause 18, and I am grateful to him for mentioning the significance of that clause. He rightly mentioned Professor Johnson and the noble Lord, Lord Cashman. I wish to use this opportunity to pay tribute to their incredible efforts to bring Clause 18 to fruition, and I think the Chamber would wish to acquiesce in these sentiments.

Finally, an interesting contribution, if slightly not in the mainstream, came from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. She referred to “child soldiers”, which is a term that few of us in this Chamber recognise—it is certainly not one that the Armed Forces recognise. We have a very healthy cadet programme where young people, on their own admission, have marvellous opportunities and thoroughly enjoy the experience, and that seems to be a very positive initiative in this country.

The Armed Forces covenant covers those who have been in regular service. It applies to all service personnel and veterans, and a veteran is a person with at least one day’s service. On the noble Baroness’s specific question about export licences, I refer her to the Department for International Trade, because that is its responsibility.

In conclusion, I thank everyone for their valued contributions. If my memory serves well, back in February I said to this House during the debate on the Armed Forces Act (Continuation) Order that I anticipated an interesting and lively debate on this Bill. In that regard, I am certain that none of us has been disappointed. I have enjoyed the debate and found it stimulating. I look forward to the detailed scrutiny we shall give the Bill in Committee, and I commend it to the House.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Grand Committee.

National Insurance Contributions Bill

1st reading
Tuesday 7th September 2021 Lords Chamber

First Reading

18:40

The Bill was brought from the Commons, read a first time and ordered to be printed.

Public Service Pensions and Judicial Offices Bill [HL]

2nd reading
Tuesday 7th September 2021 Lords Chamber

Second Reading

18:41

Moved by

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

That the Bill be now read a second time.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My Lords, the Public Service Pensions and Judicial Offices Bill consolidates and strengthens a common UK legal framework for pensions across all the main public services—that is, the NHS, the judiciary, the police, firefighters, the Armed Forces, teachers, local government and the Civil Service. The Bill ensures that those who deliver our valued public services continue to receive guaranteed benefits in retirement that are among the best available on a fair and equal basis. In addition, the Bill includes measures that will address resourcing challenges facing the judiciary, recognising the unique constitutional role of judges. The Bill will also lead to the creation of a new UK asset resolution public service pension scheme for the beneficiaries of the existing Bradford & Bingley and NRAM—that is, Northern Rock —pension schemes.

I will start with the measures that relate to ensuring fairness and equality across public sector pensions, but first I will set out the wider context for reform. As your Lordships will recall, in June 2010, supported by cross-party consensus on the need for the greater sustainability and transparency of public sector pensions, the coalition Government established an Independent Public Service Pensions Commission chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Hutton of Furness. The commission undertook a fundamental structural review of public service pensions. This review was underpinned by a set of principles against which the options for reform were judged. These principles were that the measures should be affordable and sustainable, adequate and fair, supportive of productivity, and transparent and simple. These principles are just as important today as they were then, and they highlight the need to achieve greater fairness between lower and higher earners and for the taxpayer, as well as the future sustainability and affordability of public sector pensions.

Following that review, the Government introduced a number of key changes. Pension benefits would no longer be based on an individual’s final salary, but instead on career average revalued earnings. Member contribution rates were increased and the normal pension age was linked to the state pension age for all schemes, except those specific to the police, firefighters and the Armed Forces. These changes achieved greater fairness for low earners by giving many a more generous pension. In addition, the reforms will save taxpayers an estimated £400 billion over the following 60 years.

Having provided this background, I will turn to the Bill’s specific measures on the remedy. Prior to the 2015 reforms, the Government agreed, following negotiations with trade unions, to protect the pensions of those closest to retirement. They did this by allowing those members within 10 years of retirement in most public service pension schemes to remain in the final salary schemes, instead of being moved to a career average scheme. This step was known as transitional protection. However, in 2018 the courts found that this step unlawfully discriminated against younger members. Although the legal challenge was specific to the judicial and fire schemes, the Government recognised the wider implications across all public service schemes. We therefore began a thorough programme of work to identify and implement a robust remedy. This Bill brings that remedy into effect and its measures follow public consultations in 2020 and government responses earlier this year.

For the remedy period—that is, from April 2015, when the reforms were implemented, to 31 March 2022—all eligible members will be given a choice between legacy and reformed scheme benefits. For the majority of members that choice will be made at retirement, when it will be clearer which scheme is most beneficial to each individual. This is known as a deferred choice and was the preferred option in the majority of consultation responses. The exception is the judicial schemes, where affected members will make their choice before retirement in a so-called options exercise.

The local government arrangements reflect that the remedy for the discrimination does not require member choice. Instead, protection will be granted to younger eligible members via the extension of the existing underpin, which gives protected local government pension scheme members a guarantee that their reformed scheme pension will be no lower than it was in the legacy scheme. The local government arrangements also reflect that in England and Wales the scheme reforms were implemented a year earlier than other public service pension schemes—from 1 April 2014. For those members who have already taken pension benefits in relation that period, a choice will be offered as soon as is practicable. This measure therefore remedies the differential treatment of younger members as a result of transition protection.

Although the Bill ensures retrospective fairness, it is also right that we ensure that all pension savers are treated equally in future—the so-called prospective remedy. Therefore, from 1 April 2022 all legacy schemes will be closed to future accrual and all those impacted will be placed in their 2015 reforms schemes or, in the case of the judiciary, moved to a new scheme. This measure guarantees that all members within each scheme will be put on an equal footing and underlines our recommitment to the principles of the 2015 reforms. Local government workers have already moved to career average arrangements and these schemes will continue after 31 March 2022.

As your Lordships may recall, the Independent Public Service Pensions Commission also recommended that the new public service pension schemes should include a cost ceiling to protect the taxpayer from unforeseen increases in scheme costs. However, the Government chose to go a step further and establish a symmetrical cost control mechanism that also maintains the value of pensions to members when costs fall. The mechanism was designed in such a way that, if the cost of a scheme rises above or falls below specified margins, the scheme rules must set out a process for agreeing how costs can be brought back to target. So, where costs rise above a certain level, benefits are reduced, or where costs fall below a certain level, benefits are improved.

It is right that the additional benefits that members will receive as part of the remedy are considered by this mechanism as a cost, by giving members a choice of benefits. The value of schemes to members will increase and therefore costs will rise. This assessment of the costs of member benefits is precisely what the mechanism was established to do. However, to ensure that no members’ benefits are reduced as a result of this assessment, the Bill contains a measure to waive any results that might lead to benefit reductions. This should mean that no member will be worse off. In addition, the Government have committed that, where benefit improvements are due, these will be delivered.

As I have outlined, the Bill builds on the Public Service Pensions Act 2013 to create an overarching legislative framework for all public service pension schemes. While this piece of legislation is comprehensive, I am sure your Lordships would acknowledge that pension schemes are extremely complex and must be tailored to fit each workforce’s individual requirements. As a Government, we intend that our legislation accounts for those differences, many of which are found in scheme regulations. Therefore, given the level of detail involved, these measures will come before Parliament as statutory instruments for further scrutiny. Furthermore, to demonstrate the approach to secondary legislation, I pledge to deposit policy statements in the House Library in the coming weeks for further scrutiny.

Allow me now to turn to the Bill’s next element: the package of reforms to help address the resourcing challenges facing the judiciary, recognising the unique role that judges fulfil in our constitution. The UK justice system is known across the world for its excellence, objectivity and impartiality. This is due in no small part to the exceptional expertise of our courts, our tribunal judges, our coroners and our valued magistrates.

However, as the structure and operation of our courts and tribunals have developed, so has the resourcing needs of the judiciary. The frequency and volume of judicial recruitment has increased considerably in recent years and, despite recruiting about 1,000 judges and tribunal members per annum since 2018, we have not been able to recruit the full number of judicial officeholders needed across all courts and tribunals, putting considerable pressure on judges and the justice system.

I am sure your Lordships will agree that it is vital that we continue to attract and retain high-calibre judges to secure the proper functioning of our justice system. This Bill brings forward bespoke measures to address some of the current recruitment and retention challenges facing the judiciary. It enables the provision of a new, reformed career-average judicial pension scheme. It increases the mandatory retirement age of judicial officeholders to 75, extends the potential for sitting in retirement to the fee-paid judiciary and puts judicial allowances on a firmer legal footing. Taken together, those measures represent significant steps that will allow us to continue to support our world-class judiciary, for which we are so rightly renowned, to meet the demands of the present day and the future.

I now move to the measures to establish new UK asset resolution public service pension schemes for the beneficiaries of the existing Bradford & Bingley and Northern Rock asset management pension schemes—so-called NRAM. These two schemes cover the pension schemes of the former staff members of both bodies, some of whom worked for in the region of 30 years for each company respectively. These measures are an important step in the Government’s careful long-term management of the financial assets acquired as a result of the 2007-08 financial crisis. The new schemes will provide former Bradford & Bingley and Northern Rock staff members with the assurance that their pensions are secure over the long term. Let me stress that members’ pensions and pension promises will be unaffected by this change. In addition, this measure will ensure better value for the taxpayer through the creation of a more efficient structure for the Government to meet their liabilities towards those two schemes.

There is no doubt that the Bill before the House is complex legislation. It is therefore crucial that all technical changes are robust and legally operable across all schemes. As I mentioned, we are committed to getting the detail right and to giving in-depth consideration to each scheme’s specific circumstances. Therefore, to ensure a comprehensive and effective remedy with consistent application of measures across all relevant schemes, it is expected that some technical amendments will be required during the Bill’s passage. In addition, I am pleased that the Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish Governments are considering legislative consent Motions to aim to ensure parity across the UK for the areas where legislative competence is devolved.

Our public servants provide vital services on which we all rely. Their unwavering commitment has been particularly vital during the pandemic. We have an obligation to continue to provide guaranteed pension benefits to reward those workers for their dedicated service, but we must do so on a fairer basis, in a way that ensures that pensions are affordable and sustainable in future.

In conclusion, I believe that the package of measures contained in the Bill will bring about long-term sustainable changes that are in keeping with the original principles of the 2015 reforms and provide fairness for members, employers and taxpayers. I hope noble Lords will recognise the Bill as a clear sign of the Government’s responsible approach to public service pension provision, as well as responding to the specific resourcing challenges facing the judiciary. It is for those reasons that I commend the Bill to the House.

18:55

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

My Lords, first, I need to mention my entry in the register of interests. I have had an actuarial career, largely advising a range of trade unions about their members’ pension schemes, including most public service schemes covered by the Bill, but I am no longer actively engaged in such work.

I very much welcome the Minister’s careful and lucid explanation of what he rightly says is a complicated subject; it was a fine introduction to the work that faces us over the next few months. I also very much welcome the fact that I have a pensions Bill to get my teeth into, and I will be a committed and active member of the Committee when it considers the Bill. I look forward to interesting and detailed discussions.

I ask the Minister to say something about the expected timetable for passing the legislation. Much detailed work is being undertaken at the moment in parallel with the Bill going through Parliament. The government departments and scheme advisory boards are busy implementing the measures in the Bill, and it would be good to have some idea of exactly how that process will work because, clearly, they need certainty about the legislation’s outcome before they can reach final decisions.

My major issues with the Bill arise from Chapter 1, about public service schemes. The problem is that we have here only part of the story. It deals with the consequences of the decisions in McCloud and Sargeant, which, as the Minister explained, ruled against transitional protection. In its place, we have this remedy to sort out what is undoubtedly a significant mess, but the difficulty is that this is only part of the story of what is happening to public service pensions at the moment. These measures can be fully understood only in the context of the other things occurring at the same time, which the Minister did not mention—they are not in the Bill—but I think we need to understand the context in which this particular part of the picture is being considered.

There is a range of matters. The most significant is getting the 2016 valuation concluded. The 2016 valuation—the results of which should have been implemented some years ago—is ongoing and must still be resolved. At the same time, the Government are reviewing the cost-control mechanism. As explained by the Minister, this is highly contentious, because the Government are attempting to make changes which the unions consider go against the spirit of the Government’s agreement made 10 years ago. At the same time, the Government are reviewing the SCAPE discount rate mechanism—a particular element in the cost-control mechanism.

What is the effect of all those changes on the 2020 valuation? You might think that in 2021 the 2020 valuation would be done and dusted but, as I explained, we have not finished the 2016 valuation yet, so there is a certain amount of slippage here. It is difficult to understand. A sequence of events needs to be taken into account and, unless we have some picture of how this will affect the 2020 valuation, it is difficult fully to assess this legislation without putting it in the context of the other things happening.

One significant additional issue which must be resolved is whether the cost of the remedy this Act sets out is to be met by the members. This is taken for granted by the Government; the members contest it. It is currently the subject of a legal process but it is crucially important. When considering the legislation, we must consider the effect of that issue. So, while this Bill is presented to us as a set of standalone measures, it is difficult to be confident that the solution, the remedy proposed here, is just and workable when all these other factors are still in play.

I have gone over the allotted time; I apologise. I will quickly mention some other issues that I will seek to raise in Committee. We must carefully consider the use of Treasury directions. It raises constitutional issues that must at least be clarified. Concern has been expressed by various groups of employees, most notably the police service and firefighters, that the specific way in which the remedy is being implemented has an adverse effect because of their particular past pension structures.

I am heavily outnumbered here by the lawyers, but finally, I will stray into Chapter 2. Clearly, there is a strong case for the special tax treatment being afforded to the judicial pension scheme, but it raises the possibility of circumstances in which other groups of employees deserve special tax treatment as well. These are all issues that we will have to resolve, or at least discuss, in Committee.

19:02

[Baroness Janke (LD)]

My Lords, I too thank the Minister for his clear and succinct introduction. As he said, this legislation is necessary to remedy the effects of the McCloud judgment relating to the Public Service Pensions Act 2013. I rise to highlight some of our concerns in a number of areas.

The first is discrimination. In introducing the remedy, the Government must be certain that new measures will not produce further discrimination, such as placing a greater burden on newer or younger members of the scheme or reducing the right of part-time workers to make up their pensions by working for longer. This particularly affects women who have worked part-time due to family or caring responsibilities. In their responses to the consultations, some have described, with particular reference to the police and the benefits of the legacy schemes, how the Bill must pay particular attention to discrimination to avoid further long and drawn-out legal cases.

Also, as the noble Lord, Lord Davies, said, it is very important that the changes be just, and there must be trust in government to protect citizens. Promises and commitments already entered into by government must be addressed and cannot simply be brushed aside as being too costly. It will be of great importance to many members that promises made by the Government are honoured. Equally, commitments made by the Government, as agreed in the cost mechanism, have not been acted upon—as, again, the noble Lord, Lord Davies, said—following the 2016 valuation, which should have benefited members. It is worth noting here the comments of the Public Accounts Committee:

“HM Treasury should have foreseen the age discrimination issue that gave rise to the 2018 McCloud judgment, and putting things right will take many decades to resolve. HM Treasury wants members to pay to put this right—at an estimated cost of £17 billion—despite it being its mistake.”


The National Audit Office said in March 2021:

“Employee representatives told us that the review of the mechanism”


because of what has happened at the first valuation

“undermined trust between employees and the Government”.

The recommendation of the House of Commons report on public service pensions stated:

“HM Treasury must prioritise work to quickly resolve the challenges presented by the McCloud judgment and cost control mechanism, in order to give certainty to scheme members and employers, and rebuild the trust lost”.


Other concerns relate to the treatment of disbenefits to members of current legacy schemes. These must be fully evaluated before March 2022, when they enter the career-related schemes and the legacy schemes are closed. There are significant differences between the new schemes and legacy schemes such as the police pension—again, that is specifically referred to—which is based on years of service rather than pensionable age. Both these schemes are seen by members as being based on promises made by the Government to the service. Retirement in the career-related scheme is at 60, but as police pensions are based on years of service, members may wish to retire at an earlier age. If they do this under the career average scheme, which allows retirement at 55, they could lose up to 25% of their pension, which is a very significant issue. I am sure that this will be considered in more detail in Committee. There are similar structural issues for fire and rescue services, which were highlighted by the LGA. I would like the Minister to take note of an anomaly in Clause 29 and consider an amendment to recognise the special arrangements of the service where the employer is also the scheme manager.

The complexity of the current position with regard to public service pensions legacy schemes, given the Government’s intention that all be included in CARE schemes by March 2022, gives rise to a lot of practical problems, and I would like to understand how the Government intend to deal with them. It will be extremely important that the proposals in the Bill are workable. It is easy to say that members get to retirement and make whichever choice is best for them, but in some cases, they may have rights built up that fall due at different ages—some at 60, some at 65. So, if there is not a single retirement age, when do they have to make the choice? In some cases, the higher pension at retirement may be under one set of rules, but as retirement continues it may turn out that the other set of rules would have given a bigger total pension. What happens then?

The Government have accepted that people with really complex tax issues can have financial advice, but what about the millions of public sector workers who will have to make these choices? Where is the help and guidance coming from for them? What about financial planning between now and retirement? Presumably, any statement will show rights based on the assumptions of the old scheme, even though some people will opt for the new scheme. Will they have access to both numbers when they are planning and will the pensions dashboard show both numbers? It is going to be an extreme challenge for schemes to unpick, administer and communicate, and members are going to need a lot of help to understand what is happening. What plans do the Government have to resource support systems and enable members to make the best choices? Support for trustees of pensions schemes will also be needed.

The Bill deals with the consequences of government failure to foresee the age discrimination issue which gave rise to the McCloud judgment. The Bill will determine the future means of many public service employees. The Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Davies, said that many complex and difficult matters need to be resolved if members are to have confidence in the competence, integrity and political will of the Government to get it right.

19:09

[Lord Woolf (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome the Government’s action in promoting this Bill, and I hope it will be enacted without delay. In that regard, I was rather concerned to hear the submissions of the noble Lord, Lord Davies, which indicated that perhaps it will not be as straightforward a process as I would hope.

I refer to the entries on the record relating to my judicial career. Before I retired, the Government had, in my view, made two errors that were having an adverse effect, particularly on the position of members of the senior judiciary. The first was to reduce their mandatory age of retirement to 70 from 75, which it had been earlier in my judicial career. The second was to reduce the value of their pension in real terms because of the tax provisions to which the pension was subject.

A further alteration was made at about this time, which meant that very senior members of the judiciary did not have the privilege that I had, as a consequence of my appointment as a senior judge, of becoming a Member of this House. I know that all members of the judiciary who have had this advantage are very conscious of how important it was. I believe that others who had this advantage have made contributions that have been most important to the workings of this House. However, I accept that this change would be difficult to bring about in the course of this Bill, even though I would like to have seen it included.

However, the changes the Bill does make are sensible. Reducing the retirement age from 75 to 70 did not apply to me because it was not retrospective, but it has been made clear by events that have taken place since that time that we have been deprived of valuable judicial contributions by the reduction in age—without, I would say, any accruing benefit to the public interest. There must be a retirement age for judges; we cannot have a situation such as existed at the time of my earlier career, when some would say Lord Denning’s great powers as a judge were beginning to wane but there was no remedy available to cope with that situation. However, bearing in mind in particular current life expectancy, going back to 75 is a wise and sensible move. I hope it will be enacted as a consequence of this Bill with a great deal of rapidity.

With regard to the other changes affecting the judiciary that are my concern, the position as I understand it is that they have been properly taken into account, and therefore I look forward to their implementation as well. To put it shortly, I wish the Bill a speedy passage.

19:13

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

My Lords, I am in a rather unique position, because I was responsible for the introduction of the changes in 1993 that reduced the retirement age from 75 to 70 for most judicial offices. The proposal at that time was generated I think by a desire to make it clear at what stage a judge might be subject to some kind of consideration in relation to his or her health. The system was that, if somebody was getting a little frail in the mental side of their lives, the Lord Chancellor was expected to tactfully suggest that the time to close their judicial work might be approaching.

I did not much care for that sort of idea, because I thought it was a kind of interference with judicial independence—they had to decide for themselves. Of course, ultimately, they had to decide. It was not the Lord Chancellor’s decision; it was theirs. But anyway, the general view was that the retirement age should be reduced from 75 to 70. That was a fairly considerable change from what it had been years back, when there was no retirement age at all for most. Noble Lords may remember that Lord Denning said that he had a lot of the Christian virtues, but not those of retirement or resignation. So, originally, there was a possibility of being in judicial office for quite a long time. Anyway, that matter had been changed and the retirement age was now 75.

I initiated the Bill that reduced it from 75 to 70, with corresponding changes in the pension system, which are also referred to in this Bill. I had to take into account the point that, where a judicial officer is appointed, he is appointed on a secure tenure until he reaches a certain age—when there was an age limit—on condition of good behaviour. Therefore, it seems unlawful to change the arrangements that were made when the person took that on, contrary to his or her interests, unless they agree to it. So the alteration of the date of pension applied only to those who were appointed after that came into force. I remember my noble friend Lord Baker of Dorking saying to me, “James, that will take a long time to come into full force”—but, of course, judicial turnover is rather quicker than he expected, and it came into practical effect within a quite reasonable time.

Now, I entirely support the view that things have changed since that time, and therefore it is appropriate to move back to 75. Generally speaking, the judiciary enjoy a degree of health at that sort of stage in their lives, so it is a reasonable thing to do, and the change would not act against the judges in any way. As I and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, said, there were changes in pensions arrangements in 1993, but an option was given to people who were already appointed to opt in to that, because there were certain advantages that could be taken up in the new pension scheme in 1993 that were not available in the former pensions. So I now have the unique responsibility of supporting a reversal of the change I made 28 years ago. It just shows how quickly you learn.

19:19

[Lord Hendy (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the clarity of his introduction and express my intense pleasure at being listed to speak between two of my judicial heroes—the noble and learned Lords, Lord Mackay and Lord Brown.

For a long time, the police federations and other unions have been pressing the case that many of their members will suffer pension detriment by reason of some of the proposals found in this Bill. Previous speakers, in particular my noble friend Lord Davies of Brixton, have spoken of some of the unresolved issues, but the point to which I wish to draw the attention of the House is the failure of government to negotiate—or at least to consult with a view to reaching agreement—with the relevant police federations to remove or adequately compensate for the further detriments arising from the Bill.

The Police Superintendents’ Association has been making representations to the relevant Treasury Minister —not the noble Lord, of course—for months. I am told that it has been, in effect, stonewalled. In a letter to the relevant Minister dated a week ago, Chief Superintendent Dan Murphy of the PSA asked for confirmation that the Minister had ignored the PSA’s continuous request for the Government to informally engage with the PSA to resolve the taxation detriment suffered by its members and to formally consult with the PSA to resolve taxation detriment, and listed a number of other failures. He concluded by saying that the Police Pension Scheme advisory board was not satisfying the requirements for full and meaningful consultation, and cited some evidence to support that.

I do not wish to contest the merits of these allegations with the Minister, but they are serious. Pensions are not a matter for unilateral employer determination. International obligations to bargain collectively and to consult are engaged. I cite Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights as interpreted by the court in Demir and Baykara v Turkey. The same right is found in Convention 8 of the International Labour Organization, and Article 6.2 of the European Social Charter 1961 imposes on states the duty

“to promote, where necessary and appropriate, machinery for voluntary negotiations between employers or employers’ organisations and workers’ organisations, with a view to the regulation of terms and conditions of employment by means of collective agreements”.

Article 6.1 requires the promotion of consultation as well.

The UK has ratified all these provisions. It is true that each contains an exemption in respect of workers, such as the police, engaged in the administration of the state, but that is a limited exemption and does not extend to the right to bargain collectively. That was made clear in a judgment of the European Committee of Social Rights adopted by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe on 8 October 2014, in a case called European Confederation of Police v Ireland, which held that the Irish police association could not be excluded from public sector pay bargaining. In fact, collective bargaining and consultation are rights of particular importance for our police, who are prohibited by the Police Act 1964 from joining trade unions or going on strike, and whose freedom of association is limited to the police federations established by statute.

I am sure it will not be said that pensions are not pay and not, therefore, susceptible to collective bargaining. Pensions are of course merely deferred wages—part of what lawyers call the “consideration for work done”. They are a classic focus for bargaining. The international provisions that I refer to are of particular relevance because, by Article 399(5) of the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement—the Brexit deal—the Government bound the UK as follows:

“Each Party commits to implementing all the ILO Conventions that the United Kingdom and the Member States have respectively ratified and the different provisions of the European Social Charter that, as members of the Council of Europe, the Member States and the United Kingdom have respectively accepted.”


I hope the Minister will commit to an amendment that requires full collective bargaining with the police federations to meet the pension concerns of their members, before committing the House to regulations to implement the Bill.

19:24

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hendy. I am sorry that he is not noble and learned; he is very learned, except in this House, and it is a great pity that he has never adorned the Bench himself. He must have appeared before generations of lawyers and in supporting the Bill, as I do, particularly the extension of the mandatory retirement age, I can hope only that his experiences of the more elderly generations have not been too disobliging for him.

I spent a total of 28 years on the Bench, although I held none of the great legal offices of state. Finding here the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, an erstwhile Lord Chancellor, my noble and learned friend Lord Woolf, erstwhile Lord Chief Justice and Master of the Rolls, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, another Master of the Rolls, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, Lord President in Scotland and a Deputy President of the Supreme Court, I wonder why I am speaking. But here I am and I support the Bill, both its provisions as to judicial pensions, which I truly believe were necessary to cure the resentments and deep unhappiness felt in the judiciary over some years, but also on the mandatory judicial retirement age—what the erstwhile senior Law Lord, Lord Bridge of Harwich, called the age of “statutory senility”.

There is nothing that I really want to say about pensions. I am not expert in that field, and certainly not in a position to advise on any of the technical amendments suggested to be necessary by the Minister. As to the mandatory retirement age, I seriously think, together with my noble and learned friend Lord Woolf, that this will assist in the process of judicial recruitment, which has been a real problem over recent years. The fact is that in 1993, when the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, introduced the change at one and the same time, if I remember right, he increased from 15 years to 20 years the time to be served as a judge necessary to earn one’s full pension. Overnight, it became necessary to be appointed by the age of 50 if you were to earn a full judicial pension, whereas I, like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, and most others here, was appointed long before 1993 and it was not retrospectively effective. I had the privilege and great pleasure, in fact, of serving until I was 75. I had done 28 years. I am not asking for nearly twice the judicial pension that I then did get but, in fact, I could have retired after 15 years and got it.

I know that there are arguments both ways on this and on judicial diversity and matters of that character. It seems to me that appointment eventually to the Bench becomes an altogether more attractive prospect if, when you are in your late 40s or perhaps early 50s, and if you are in a good way of practice and probably making quite a lot of money but know that you can continue that beyond 50 and still do your stint on the Bench—which I believe for most people is a contribution due to the public weal by practitioners who have been advantaged by the process—after the Bill proceeds, as I trust it will, then you would get a full pension by doing so, quite likely rather later than you would otherwise have had to make your decision.

Nowadays, of course, there is an ever longer expectation of life. There is a longer expectation, too, of good health in one’s later years; there is also, I believe, a parallel inclination on the part of many older people who would like to continue working rather than have imposed upon them ever longer periods of retirement and idleness. Surely it is an attraction to be allowed to continue in judicial office as of right for the additional proposed five years. Those words “as of right”, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, suggested, are of great importance here. Once appointed to the office, now until 75, I hope, by an independent Judicial Appointments Commission that secures the position, you are not thereafter—after 70—at the whim of those who have power periodically to extend day by day, or whatever it may be, your judicial life.

The Judicial Appointments Commission, chaired as it has been for the last five years by the distinguished Cross-Bencher, the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, has fierce independence and an unswerving adherence to the principle of merit above all else. We have a splendid body of independent judges. We currently retire them when most, or perhaps nearly all, of them are at the very height of their powers at 70. Many would want to serve longer and I believe we should let them.

19:30

[Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I intend to touch on matters concerning police pensions, but I stress that I represent no one but myself in the words I say. I do not have a financial interest in this matter, although I do have a police pension from my time in the service of 35 years, reaching the rank of chief superintendent, and from three years as president of the Police Superintendents’ Association.

It was with great sadness in my heart that I heard that the Police Federation had publicly declared that it had lost confidence in Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, and that on 27 July this year, only days afterwards, it felt compelled to write to the Prime Minister and the Chancellor. In that letter, it set out the growing anger among 130,000 police officers of all ranks caused by a number of grievances—not just financial, although the last straw was the offer of a 0% pay increase. It is ironic that this letter was sent on the very day that a reception was being held in Downing Street to thank police officers injured in the pandemic for their selfless work, given the complicated and far from clear legislation, often without proper PPE. As well as a pay freeze as a thank-you, they rightly complained of mixed messaging and a lack of understanding of the police role by the Home Office which put them in an invidious position, leading to them being abused and attacked.

This is about false claims by the Home Secretary that the police were fully consulted on some of the more controversial elements of the new legislation. It is also about the failure, despite ministerial promises, to take seriously their request for early priority for vaccination. Police officers are tired of warm words at conferences with no show of genuine support for the police. In essence, they feel not just a lack of respect but that they are treated with contempt. This is a serious matter because the police are a unique public service who, along with the Armed Forces, are legally prevented, as has been said earlier, from taking industrial action.

Having set the context of where we are, I briefly come to the Bill before the House, which is another source of grievance. The matter of police pensions has of course been touched on by the noble Baroness, Lady Janke, and by the noble Lords, Lord Davies of Brixton and Lord Hendy. Police of all ranks feel that it reduces their pension entitlement. It is seen as yet another change with little consultation, which police officers passionately believe worsens the conditions of service under which they joined. All this at a time when the Government are trying to recruit thousands more police officers in order to hold the thin blue line. When I was president of the Police Superintendents’ Association I had excellent relationships with the noble Lord, Lord Howard of Lympne, and the Home Secretary who followed him, the right honourable Jack Straw. One of the best recruiting sergeants when I joined the service was the excellent police pension scheme. I recall the sergeant addressing the recruits at the training school, imploring all those present to join the scheme— I certainly never regretted it.

We cannot put the clock back, but we can respect those who have risked their health and lives in the line of duty. It is so important for the Home Office to have a business-like relationship with the police staff associations, but the current Home Secretary seems to have difficulty in developing and maintaining cordial relations with those with whom she has to work. I implore the Prime Minister to instruct his right honourable friend the Home Secretary to do what he apparently enjoys doing: to build bridges with the police staff associations, the representative bodies of those who keep us all safe.

I hope that the Minister passes on my message today. A good place to start would be by genuinely listening to the concerns of police officers of all ranks with a proper consultation on this Bill, in an attempt to mitigate their deep concerns with it in its present form.

19:35

[Lord Etherton (CB)]

The provisions in the Bill for reform of judicial pensions, intended to rectify the scheme introduced in 2015, which applied only to younger judges, are welcome. The April 2015 pension provisions were held by successive courts to be unlawful and discriminatory on grounds of sex, race and age. I can say from my own experience, when I was head of the Chancery Division of the High Court, that they were a disincentive for practitioners to apply to become High Court judges. The proposed provisions will ultimately permit and require all members of the judiciary to be on the same new scheme and terms, which is highly desirable.

However, I regret that unlike the distinguished other former judges and judicial officeholders who have spoken—the noble and learned Lords, Lord Woolf, Lord Mackay of Clashfern and Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood—I regard the raising of the judicial retirement age from 70 to 75 as very much a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it will enable experienced judges, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, said, to continue in office when they still have so much to contribute to a high standard of justice. It will also allow for applicants for judicial appointment to apply later in their careers—again, as emphasised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown. That may be attractive to some practitioners. On the other hand, to raise the retirement age in one step from 70 to 75 rather than, say, 72, is highly likely to have an adverse effect on diversity, especially in the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court.

There are far too few women and people from minority ethnic backgrounds in the Court of Appeal and, especially, the Supreme Court. There is universal recognition of that shortcoming. It is possible to progress diversity only if the ranks of those in the top courts are open to new members. However, both courts are relatively young: in the Court of Appeal, for example, the current average age is under 63, which means that potentially there could be a very long freeze, of possibly 12 or 13 years, for any substantial influx of new members. Will the Government think again about that issue, and the potential adverse outcome of raising the age of retirement in one go to 75 rather than to 72, at least in the first instance?

Will the Minister also confirm that, if at all possible, the retirement age increase, whatever it might be, will come into operation on 1 January, as there are judges—including one in the Supreme Court—whose 70th birthday falls between the beginning of January and April next year, when all judges will be moved to a single reformed scheme? If the retirement age increase does not come into effect until April 2022, when the new pension provisions come into effect, such judges, whose 70th birthday would have accrued between January and 1 April 2022, will be able to apply again for appointment. That would complicate the appointments process when they will be competing against other applicants. Alternatively, will the Government give consideration to introducing transitional provisions to address that problem?

19:39

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, the Bill affects many people in public service, but I hope that I may be forgiven for concentrating, like others, on the branch of the public service with which I am most familiar: the judiciary. So far as they are concerned, it seems to me that the Bill seeks to do two things that are to be welcomed.

The four noble and learned Lords who have spoken before me have said almost everything that could be said one way or the other, but I should like to stress one or two points. The first is the correction of the mistake that was made in 2015, when the new pension scheme was introduced, that applied to all members of the judiciary still in service, apart from those within 10 years of retirement. That scheme was significantly less advantageous because it was registered for tax purposes. That had very unwelcome consequences for those who had contributed to their own pension schemes while in practice. The prospect of the large and wholly unplanned-for tax bills that would be the result of becoming subject to that scheme was a severe disincentive.

I have experience of this—although the Bill certainly does not apply to me because I retired eight years ago. I made provisions at a very early stage in my career as a self-employed member of the Bar, with no prospect of becoming a judge at that stage, and indeed for a long time in my career. I sacrificed money that might have been used for other things to build up a reserve for myself and my family. This is what people had done, and now they were faced with these very unwelcome tax consequences—so it is no surprise that it was a disincentive, and it is right that the Government should seek to remove it. I also welcome the fact that the Government have decided, in this respect, to treat all members of the judiciary equally.

The legislation that we are presented with in the Bill is not an easy read, but the policy background is very clearly set out in the Explanatory Notes and the impact assessment, and I am also grateful to the Minister for his very helpful introduction. There is one aspect of the judicial scheme—the only one that will be available for everyone after 31 March 2022—which is especially welcome: the fact that the scheme will be unregistered for tax purposes. As I understand it, compensation is also being offered to those who incurred tax liabilities under the previous scheme—and that too is very welcome.

As has been pointed out, all eligible members will be able to opt for the scheme that is most beneficial to them under the options exercise that is to take place in the autumn of 2022. I hope that the Minister can assure the House that guidance will be offered to all those who are involved in that exercise in good time so that they may be fully informed before they take this decision. Guidance of that kind was offered in the past when I had to make that kind of choice, and it would be very helpful if the Government were to assure us that that will be done in this case.

I see this argument about pensions as the end of a long and, for some, very uncomfortable debate about how to balance the public interest against the reasonable expectations of those who have chosen to serve as members of the judiciary. I have been only on the fringes of these debates, but I wish to pay tribute to all those members of the Bar and the judiciary who have contributed to it, spending many hours, in many cases, in doing so.

The other thing that the Bill seeks to do—I follow the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, and my noble and learned friends Lord Woolf and Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood in welcoming this—is the reduction of the judicial retirement age to 70. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, may remember that some argued that it should be reduced to 65, but that step was fortunately not taken. But it was to overlook the benefits that come with experience.

I was one of those members of the newly formed UK Supreme Court who was able to continue to the age of 75. We tried very hard to persuade the then Government that that age should be retained for the Supreme Court justices—but without success. We pointed out that the new age limit would severely limit the time that some of our newer members could contribute to the work of our court, as was indeed the case, and that the rapid turnover that it would lead to was undesirable.

I noted with great care what my noble and learned friend Lord Etherton said about this, and his suggestion that there should be a phased increase in the retirement age. Perhaps I may continue for a moment or two to reply. The problem we have with legislation of this kind is that often one has only one opportunity. This is an opportunity that may not recur, and there will be consequences whatever happens. I give one example, which is now in the past: my noble and learned friend Lord Neuberger, who became president in 2012, had to retire in 2017, just before his 70th birthday, when he was still very much at the height of his powers. He was succeeded by my noble and learned friend Lady Hale of Richmond, who was already 70—but, because she had been appointed to the judiciary before the change, she could go on until she was 75. One can only guess at what might have happened if the change had been made before my noble and learned friend Lord Neuberger was due to retire.

There is just one other anomaly. There were different retirement ages depending on which part of the judiciary you were serving in. This Bill produces a single retirement age for everybody. As one who had to grapple with complaints about the differences in retirement age and the opportunities for service after retirement when I was Lord President of the Court of Session in Scotland, I very much welcome the uniform approach that this Bill now takes.

19:46

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, I am absolutely no expert on pensions, and I have been absolutely delighted to listen to the speeches today, because there is obviously an expertise in this House that makes up for my very serious lack. I shall look forward also to receiving briefings from relevant groups as we move to Committee, because the Bill has so many technical aspects that I think we will need the help of relevant interests, including the trade unions, to negotiate our way through the remaining phases.

The history of public service pension change is rather littered with unanticipated consequences, and indeed we are here today because of the judgment in the McCloud case on discrimination, which was itself an unintended consequence. I also pick up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Davies, that if we look at the broader context of public service pensions, we see a whole lot of issues that are not covered by this Bill—I think that some of them are meant to be addressed in the next Finance Bill—which makes it very difficult to shape the legislation before us today.

I had the privilege of being at the briefing that the Minister kindly offered to all Peers yesterday and I want to pick up on an issue raised by the noble and learned Lords, Lord Etherton and Lord Judge—although I would never want to put words into the mouth of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge; I think he will speak for himself in Committee. The issue is the impact on diversity of the change in the retirement age of the judiciary. I think that everybody in this House would say that it is important that our senior judges in the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court reflect the society that we live in if they are to be respected and seen as part of our current era. At the moment, they do not. I am very concerned about the block that will be created. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, essentially said that we would not see a lot of turnover in the Court of Appeal for some 12 to 13 years, so the possibility of people from ethnic minority backgrounds and of women being seen in the Court of Appeal will be significantly impacted by the increase in the retirement age—and I do think that matters.

When we discussed this yesterday, the Government took the position that a blockage for somewhere between five and 12 years would advantage women—for example, those who have taken maternity leave will be able to make up the experience to make them more eligible to be put on the court. My answer was, “Have you talked to those women? Have you talked to the ethnic minorities?”—the people who will be impacted by what will be effectively a block on the turnover of appointments.

I understand that there were questions on diversity in the relevant consultation, but we all know that consultations are dealt with by the usual suspects—those are the people who reply. It is incumbent on the Government, if they are going to put in place what effectively is a very significant block on seeing diversity among our senior judges, to go back to that pool of people and talk to them about their views on the impact this will have. That is not a very difficult thing to do, and I hope we will see it.

There are quite a number of issues in the Bill. Again, I wish I had greater expertise, but from looking at the various briefings I have been able to lay on my hands on and replies to the consultation, it appears that there are a number of pension traps. People who find themselves in both the legacy system and the new system may be trying to make career decisions and find that they are disadvantaged in one scheme but advantaged in another and they have no idea how to put the various pieces together. The Police Federation is particularly concerned. It raised the issue of women in the police force who take maternity leave and have been able to work for additional years to make up the lost pension under their scheme. That is now not going to work. People who work part-time will be paying much more into the scheme, pound for pound, than full-time workers.

There is a whole series of flaws here and I would like the Minister to deal with them. There is no point repeating another Bill that has a lot of unintended consequences. I join very much with my colleagues, particularly with my noble friend Lady Janke’s comments. With a system that is now so complex, many people will need advice to know what to do. Surely there ought to be some provision to fund that or at least give them reasonable access.

The noble Lord, Lord Davies, raised on the cost control mechanism. I am appalled that the 2016 valuation is still hanging fire. I know that it will be resolved, but, like him, I am very concerned about how a rational 2020 valuation scheme will be put in place. We are in such economic flux. This is a really difficult time to put in place frameworks for something like a valuation. If you add to that the fact that the change in the scheme presumably means that people will be making all kinds of pension choices which will put pressure on any kind of set ceiling, the notion that the members will all have to pick up the cost strikes me as extraordinary. We need the Minister to elaborate on that and to understand what the consequences will be.

At the meeting yesterday, the Minister said that as a new scheme is developed for 2020 and the review that is currently under way is completed, it will require primary legislation to bring it into effect. I would like some confirmation of that, because if something that significant is going to come to us, either through Treasury direction as the noble Lord, Lord Davies, described, or even through a statutory instrument, it will be very hard for us to get a grip on the way the system works.

Lastly, I will tackle an issue that I have raised many times in this House, which is very relevant to this Bill. The problems judges faced following the changes in 2015 were a consequence of the annual and lifetime pension relief allowances and the taper system included with those changes. When they were initially put in place they were not a problem because of where the thresholds were set, but as those changed over the years they have become a major problem. Indeed, lawyers found that if they became judges, they would lose not only any additional income, but pension as well. That is an impossible situation.

This did not apply just to judges: consultants in the NHS faced exactly the same problem if they worked for a weekend. Because of the way the NHS pension scheme is set up they would have to pay tax that not only wiped out the additional income but went way beyond that. In our Armed Forces—to me this is utterly outrageous and got me involved in this issue in the first place—two-star colonels are basically refusing to become three-star because the consequences would be so bad. They would either have to pay very large tax bills, wiping out any additional income by, or take severely reduced pensions. That is insanity.

The Government dealt with some of that for the NHS and the armed services by changing the thresholds in the last Budget, but it is a sticking plaster, and what we see now for the justices is a permanent way to resolve the problem. Essentially, the scheme will no longer be tax registered and therefore the problem goes away for the justices, but we should be using this Bill to fix the problem for everybody else. If it is not going to be fixed in this Bill, when is it going to be fixed? It is insanity to say to our senior military, “You’re going to be on the battlefield, you’re obviously not going to leave after you’ve done so many hours and come home, and the consequence is that you will find yourself with a huge tax bill that will, frankly, cause havoc for your family.”

We have lost most of our two-star colonels—they have refused to go to three-star and have gone to civvy street—and we have consultants who worked during the pandemic knowing that they would essentially be paying a very large price as a consequence because it would impact on their taxes or pensions, depending on the way they set up their arrangements.

I believe that it is vital to this country that our public servants are properly and fairly compensated with both pay and pensions. The Government really made a hash of reforming these schemes in 2015; the Bill is part of the clean-up, but let us make sure that it brings clarity and fairness to all parts of the public service pension arrangement.

19:56

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, for introducing the Bill. I think I am right in saying that both he and I are laymen on this subject in that we are not lawyers or pension experts.

On the public sector pensions, clearly there is a problem which needs to be addressed following the findings of the McCloud ruling. I note that the Supreme Court denied the Government leave to appeal the finding. The Public Accounts Committee has called the Government’s problem a

“£17 billion mistake on pensions reform”.

I recognise that the remedy the Government have opted for, to be included in this Bill—the deferred choice underpin, the DCU—was preferred by a significant majority of respondents to the government consultation, including main trade unions such as UNISON and GMB. The DCU remedy would give people the choice at retirement as to how their pension should be calculated during the period 2015 to 2022. What measures will be in place to ensure that individuals affected will have the information they need at the point of retirement to make an informed decision? This important question was put by the noble Baroness, Lady Janke, and repeated by the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, and it deserves an answer.

I believe there is a lack of clarity about who will bear the costs of these measures. The noble Baroness, Lady Janke, quoted from the Public Accounts Committee, which has also raised this point about who will bear the costs. Can the Minister explain how these costs will be met, and what impact this will have on future public spending decisions?

Before I move on to the cost control mechanism, I should say how grateful I am for the expertise demonstrated by my noble friend Lord Davies. I also found it particularly interesting that my noble friend Lord Hendy spoke of the context of the police in these proposed changes and how that is impacted within international law. My third noble friend, the noble Lord, Lord Mackenzie, also gave a very interesting and quite alarming explanation of the treatment of the police force regarding these proposed pension changes.

As far as I understand it, there are two problems: the original design of the CCM made it too volatile and the McCloud judgment has created a significant uncertainty, which members have now been living with for more than two years. The Government ran a consultation on the CCM mechanism, which closed on 19 August. When does the Minister anticipate that they will be able to respond to this consultation? Is he in a position to express any view on the key views expressed to the Government in that consultation process?

Clause 80 provides that the breach of the cost cap ceiling in the 2016 valuation will be waived. Trade unions are concerned about where the cost of that waiver will eventually fall and the impact of the McCloud remedy on the 2016 valuation. The impact of the valuation, when we get it, was a point raised by my noble friend Lord Davies and the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer. Separately, can the Minister confirm the Government’s commitment that any benefits improvements due to the breach of the cost floor will be honoured, and further—this was also a point made by my noble friend Lord Davies—that the increased use of Treasury directions for matters that should be subject to parliamentary scrutiny should be at a minimum, because Parliament should be involved as the CCM evolves? Clearly, we will want to scrutinise these things carefully as the Bill proceeds.

I turn to the proposed changes to the judicial retirement age, and here I declare an interest as a serving magistrate. We know that the existing provisions have been in place for 27 years, and we have had a great deal of personal expertise from the noble and learned Lords who have contributed to today’s debate. I will put forward a different view from the one proposed; it is more in line with the views expressed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton.

In the consultation, the overwhelming number of respondents—some 84%—supported raising the mandatory age of retirement. However, a large body of respondents preferred the age of 72 rather than 75. The people who preferred 72 were the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, the President of the Supreme Court, the Lord President in Scotland, the Magistrates’ Leadership Executive, the Chief Coroner of England and Wales, and the President of Tribunals. All these individuals and bodies favoured 72, not 75. There are debates on this, but it is worth exploring a couple of the reasons why 72 is preferable to 75. Diversity is an important issue; I agree with the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, on that. I also agree with her point about the importance of consultation. I do not know whether the Minister can say anything about whether members of the black community have been consulted on these proposed changes; they are liable to disadvantage their prospects for promotion within the judiciary.

I also want to raise a different subject, and here I speak as somebody who appraises magistrates. There are occasions when a small number of people—judges—may experience some level of mental decline. Clearly, there is an appraisal system for trying to deal with this, but it is a sensitive issue. I have probably appraised getting on for hundreds of magistrates over the last few years. One has to be frank: the prospect of mental decline accelerates over the age of 70. There needs to be a mechanism for sensitively dealing with these issues. That also argues in favour of a retirement age of 72 rather than 75, so that these issues of mental decline are not exacerbated.

We in the opposition party support the Bill. We will work constructively with the Government to look at the detail of it, and we wish it well.

20:05

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My Lords, this has been a somewhat short debate but, as always, the experience and knowledge in this Chamber has been extremely insightful on what I think we all agree is a pretty complex subject. I thank all noble Lords for their contributions, not least acknowledging the specific experience of the noble Lord, Lord Davies. I have also counted that out of the 11 or so speakers in this debate, there were no less than five noble and learned Lords—so no pressure there. I will give proportionately a little more time to touching on judiciary matters, because I think it is fair to say that the mood, tone and indeed content of the debate was more steered towards that direction. That is not to say that there are not a number of other questions that need to be answered, which I will attempt to do. There have been some technical and specific issues raised, and I will endeavour to answer as many questions as I can, but it may be that a letter—maybe a longer one than normal—is required to follow up on the technical issues.

I start by answering probably the first question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Davies, on the timetabling for the Bill. To reassure the House, we aim for the Bill to have Royal Assent in early 2022, so that Chapter 4 can come into force on 1 April 2022, as set out in Clause 113, on commencement. However, noble Lords may recall that the Government set out in their consultation response in February this year that schemes would have until 1 October 2023 to introduce retrospective changes, in order to balance bringing the discrimination identified by the courts to an end as soon as possible with giving schemes and administrators the time needed to establish systems to deliver the necessary changes. Clause 113 therefore provides that Chapter 1 will enter into force on 1 October 2023, or earlier if specified in regulations. I hope that goes a little way to answering the question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby.

Before I address the themes and questions raised, I wanted to use this occasion to give a little more background to what we are trying to do in the Bill; in particular, this might help to address some of the concerns the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, expressed about the 2015 reforms. By 2010, the cost of providing public sector pension schemes had increased significantly over the previous decades, with most of this increase falling to the taxpayer. At the same time, occupational pension provision in the private sector had changed significantly; employers were increasingly moving away from offering defined benefit pension schemes.

The commission set up in 2010 found that the existing structure had been unable to respond flexibly to workforce and demographic changes that had occurred over the previous few decades, and that this had led to rising value of benefits due to increasing longevity, the unequal treatment of members within the same profession, the unfair sharing of costs between members, employers and taxpayers, and barriers being put up to increasing the range of providers of public services. The final salary design of schemes was criticised for creating unequal treatment of members within the same employment. The commission’s final report, in March 2011, therefore recommended moving public service scheme members to reformed schemes with benefits calculated on CARE—the House will know that this is career average revalued earnings—rather than based upon final salary.

To control against the risk of rising longevity—which we know is there—the commission recommended increasing the normal pension age to 60 for the Armed Forces, police and firefighters, and to state pension age for all other schemes. In line with wider changes to the use of price indexation in government, changes were also made to the measure of inflation used to uprate pensions, from the retail prices index to the CPI—the consumer prices index. Member contribution rates were also increased across the schemes, other than that relating to the Armed Forces, by an average of 3.2% of pay. The House may well know this, but I think it is helpful to produce this rather complex background as to why we are where we are today.

Overall, the reform schemes were designed to ensure that members would have good pensions which, at a minimum, met the target levels identified by the pension commission of the noble Lord, Lord Turner, for the income needed in retirement. The reform designs should provide many low and middle earners working a full career with pension benefits at least as good as, if not better than, those under the previous arrangements.

I will move on to some of the issues that were raised. The first was the so-called differential treatment of judges. This was raised particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Davies, and touched on by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope. In addressing the point, I will highlight the difference in the recruitment and retaining of judges in particular, which distinguishes them from other public servants. Judges follow a unique career path. They often have long careers in the private sector and take up judicial office at a later stage in life. Many take a pay cut when joining the Bench. Therefore, appointment as a salaried judge in the UK is seen as the culmination of a barrister’s or solicitor’s career, rather than a career path in and of itself. This contrasts with the position in countries such as France, Germany and Italy, which all have career judiciaries, and where the judicial profession is separate from practising as a lawyer. The House may not know that salaried judges in this country may not return to private practice as a barrister or a solicitor.

Reflecting this difference with other public sector workers is important. When we return judges to a tax-unregistered scheme—which is the position that they were in prior to 2015—without these changes there would be continued issues with recruiting judges, threatening the effective functioning of our justice system and its reputation. While the scheme will be unregistered, it is important to note that other aspects of the scheme will be consistent with the principles of the 2015 pension reforms, to ensure its long-term affordability and fairness to the taxpayer.

This matter was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, who asked why this could not be extended to other groups. I hope that I have helped to put our view on that. The noble Baroness raised the matter of military generals and touched on doctors, but I stress, on that point, that the manifesto committed to addressing recruitment and retention issues for doctors through the pensions tax system. At the Budget in 2020, the Government spent £2.175 billion on increasing the annual allowance taper threshold and adjusted income limit. These measures apply to all individuals across the UK and are a significant step in resolving this issue. These changes mean that any public servant whose sole income after deducting pension contributions is less than £200,000 has been taken out of scope altogether. We estimate that these changes have taken up to 90% of GPs and up to 98% of NHS consultants outside the scope of the tapered annual allowance. I am sure that there is more that I can say on that, but I hope that it provides some explanation to the noble Baroness, and to the noble Lord, Lord Davies, who raised the same point.

Moving on to the subject of what might rather loosely be termed judicial diversity, there was quite an interesting debate on this. Many noble Lords touched on diversity, linking it to the mandatory retirement age. I will perhaps give a more expansive response to this. I was pleased to hear the initial debate raised by the noble and learned Lords, Lord Woolf and Lord Brown, and my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay. I was particularly interested that he was the one who originally lowered the age from 75 to 70 and that he is now behind our move to raise it again to 75—that was a very interesting reflection from my noble and learned friend.

To give a little background on this, the Government are absolutely clear on the importance of judicial diversity and of having a judiciary that is representative of society. That is why the Ministry of Justice, as a member of the Judicial Diversity Forum and of the magistrates’ recruitment and attraction steering group, is committed to continuing the work to improve diversity across the judiciary and the recruitment pipeline.

I recognise that concerns have been expressed over the impact on judicial diversity of a higher retirement age. Let me start by saying that we acknowledge that the retention of older officeholders could have an impact on the flow of new appointees to judicial office, which may impact on the rate of diversity change. However, as some noble Lords have recognised, there is another side to the story. As many judicial officeholders do not continue to sit until 70 now, we do not expect that all will wish to continue in office until 75. For that reason, and because of the ongoing demands on our courts and tribunals, we will continue to recruit a high number of new judges and magistrates for some time, so we expect that the overall diversity will continue to improve, reflecting the greater diversity of new appointments. The Government also believe that there will be positive diversity impacts from mandatory retirement at 75, and we expect it to encourage applications from a more diverse range of candidates, including those who may have had extended career breaks to balance professional and family responsibilities, or from lawyers who feel ready to apply to the judiciary later in their career.

I should have mentioned the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, and I noted, particularly from him, that he declared that he was—how should I put it?—less than impressed with the decision that we have taken and has asked us to think again. That came also from the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer. However, I do not believe that we will be doing that, and I hope that this explanation will help.

I will move on to the consultation, which was also raised by a few Peers, including the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, and the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby. I reassure the House that the decision to raise the mandatory retirement age to 75 was taken after careful consideration. The consultation in 2020 received over 1,000 responses and—as was raised this afternoon—84% supported an increase. I acknowledge that there were mixed views on the age at which it should be set: 67% supported an MRA of 75, recognising that the limited diversity impact was outweighed by the retention benefits and the flexibility afforded to judicial officeholders to sit longer. The Government are confident that an MRA of 75 will provide the right balance—and it is a balance—between protecting the need to have a mandatory retirement age and the benefits to the justice system from retaining such valuable expertise for longer and attracting a wider range of applicants. However, as I said in the briefing yesterday, I have pledged to write, particularly to the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, and I will do so to all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate today, with some further detail on the feedback from the consultation, particularly in relation to feedback from women, which was raised by the noble Baroness, and from the black community, as raised by the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby.

Another important subject is the cost control mechanism—the so-called CCM—which was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Davies, and the noble Baroness, Lady Janke; the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, also touched on this. As was mentioned, the Government’s consultation on changes to the cost control mechanism closed on 19 August. The Government are considering all responses received and will publish their conclusions shortly. The aim is to implement any changes in time for the 2020 valuations, and the Government will legislate for any changes once they have responded to the consultation and when parliamentary time allows. However, I want to give a little more detail on this, because it is an important subject—particularly the 2016 valuations.

The cost control element of the 2016 valuation process was paused, as we know, in light of the McCloud judgment regarding transitional protection. The potentially significant and uncertain impact arising from the court’s judgment made it impossible to assess with any certainty the value of schemes to members. In July 2020, the Government announced that this pause would be lifted and the 2016 valuations completed. HMT will, when possible, set out in directions the technical detail of how the restarted 2016 valuations will operate. Outcomes for individual schemes will not be known until the results have been finalised. The noble Lord may not find this answer satisfactory, but I am afraid that it is the only answer I can give this afternoon.

The related issue of member cost was raised, not least by the noble Lords, Lord Davies and Lord Ponsonby. The Government have announced that the legislative remedy should be taken into account when completing the cost control element of the 2016 valuations. This is because, when the cost control mechanism was established, it was agreed that it would consider only costs that affect the value of schemes to members. Addressing the discrimination, giving members a choice of scheme benefits for the remedy period, involves increasing the value of schemes to members. The usual way these costs are managed is through the cost control mechanism. However, as I mentioned in my opening speech, this Bill will waive the impact of any ceiling breaches that may occur, so that no member will see a reduction in benefits as a result of the 2016 valuations—although any floor breaches will be honoured.

I move on to another important subject, the Police Superintendents’ Association, which was raised by a number of Peers, including the noble Lords, Lord Hendy and Lord Davies, the noble Baroness, Lady Janke, and the noble Lord, Lord Mackenzie. As the House might expect, I cannot comment too much on the specifics of any live, ongoing litigation. However, I confirm that this Bill will ensure that all eligible public service workers have access to high-quality defined benefit schemes on a fair and equal basis. From 1 April 2022, all those who continue in service in the main underfunded schemes will do so as members of the reformed schemes, regardless of age. Legacy schemes will close to future accrual, which means that from this point onwards all members will be treated equally in terms of which pension scheme they are a member of. I noted very strongly the points raised in particular by the noble Lord, Lord Mackenzie, and, while I cannot comment too much, I shall pledge to pass his comments on.

I want to say a little more on this point. The Government consulted on proposals to remedy the discrimination identified by the courts in July 2020. Officials met with the scheme advisory boards for the public service schemes, including the scheme advisory board for the police pension scheme. The Government published the response in February this year, and officials have arranged a further meeting tomorrow to discuss the Bill with stakeholders, including the Police Superintendents’ Association. The Home Office will undertake further consultation with employee representatives of the police pension scheme in relation to the scheme regulations, which will set out the detailed changes to the scheme. I hope that gives some comfort that some progress has been made.

I have not really managed to answer properly some of the questions raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Janke. Can I say something about trust? She raises a very important point—that trust between the Government and all the public service sector workers and the operators of the scheme is incredibly important. She made the point that perhaps the trust is not there and, okay, I have noted that and will pass it on. Perhaps we need to work hard on that, but it may be linked to the fact that these matters are extremely technical; there are a number of matters that we need to sort out, as she knows. She herself mentioned that this Bill and this area are quite complicated.

In the same breath, may I answer a point raised by the noble Baroness and by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, about giving information to members to inform them on decisions that they might care to make as a result of the transitional period decisions? As I said at the beginning, statements will be provided so that individuals can weigh up the choices. By the way, that is the case for the judiciary as well, just to reassure the noble and learned Lord on that.

I shall check Hansard, as there were probably a number of other questions, but I hope that I have covered the main themes from this important debate. I finish by thanking all noble Lords for their contributions. It is very important to say that we must ensure that those who deliver our valued public services continue to receive guaranteed benefits on retirement on a fair and equal basis and in a way that ensures that pensions are affordable and sustainable. I commend the Bill to the House.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Grand Committee.

Afghanistan

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Lords Chamber

Statement

The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Monday 6 September.

“With permission, Mr Speaker, I will update the House on the situation in Afghanistan and our enduring effort to provide sanctuary for those to whom we owe so much.

Since the House last met, our Armed Forces, diplomats and civil servants have completed the biggest and fastest emergency evacuation in recent history, overcoming every possible challenge in the most harrowing conditions, bringing 15,000 people to safety in the UK and helping 36 other countries to airlift their own nationals. They faced the pressure of a remorseless deadline and witnessed a contemptible terrorist attack at the very gates of the airport, with two British nationals and 13 of our American allies among the dead. But they kept going, and in the space of a fortnight they evacuated our own nationals alongside Afghan friends of this country who guided, translated and served with our soldiers and officials, proving their courage and loyalty beyond doubt, sometimes in the heat of battle.

The whole House will join me in commending the courage and ingenuity of everyone involved in the Kabul airlift, one of the most spectacular operations in our country’s post-war military history. This feat exemplified the spirit of all 150,000 British service men and women who deployed in Afghanistan over the last two decades, of whom 457 laid down their lives and many others suffered trauma and injury. Thanks to their efforts, no terrorist attack against this country or any of our western allies has been launched from Afghanistan for 20 years. They fulfilled the first duty of the British Armed Forces: to keep our people safe. They and their families should take pride in everything they did.

Just as they kept us safe, so we shall do right by our veterans. In addition to the extra £3 million that we have invested in mental health support through NHS Op Courage, we are providing another £5 million to assist the military charities that do such magnificent work, with the aim of ensuring that no veteran’s request for help will go unanswered. The evacuation, Op Pitting, will now give way to Operation Warm Welcome, with an equal effort to help our Afghan friends to begin their new lives here in the United Kingdom, and recognising the strength of feeling across the House about the plight of individual Afghans.

Years before this episode, we began to fulfil our obligation to those Afghans who had helped us, bringing 1,400 to the UK. Then, in April this year, we expanded our efforts by opening the Afghan relocations and assistance policy. Even before the onset of Operation Pitting, we had brought around 2,000 to the UK between June and August—and our obligation lives on. Let me say to anyone to whom we have made commitments and who is currently in Afghanistan: we are working urgently with our friends in the region to secure safe passage and, as soon as routes are available, we will do everything possible to help you to reach safety.

Over and above this effort, the UK is formally launching a separate resettlement programme, providing a safe and legal route for up to 20,000 Afghans in the region over the coming years, with 5,000 in the first year. We are upholding Britain’s finest tradition of welcoming those in need. I emphasise that under this scheme we will of course work with the United Nations and aid agencies to identify those whom we should help, as we have done in respect of those who fled the war in Syria, but we will also include Afghans who have contributed to civil society or who face a particular risk from the Taliban, for example because of their role in standing up for democracy and human rights or because of their gender, sexuality or religion. All who come to our country through this safe and legal route will receive not a five-year visa, but indefinite leave to remain.

Our support will include free English courses for adults, and 300 university scholarships. We will shortly be writing to local authorities and the devolved Administrations with details of funding for extra school places and long-term accommodation across the UK. I am grateful for everything that they are doing, and, of course, for the work of the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my honourable friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle, Victoria Atkins, who is the Minister for Afghan resettlement. I am delighted—but not surprised—that across our country, people have been fundraising for our Afghan friends, and we have received numerous offers of help from charities and ordinary families alike. Anyone who wishes to join that effort can do so through GOV.UK.

Our first duty is the security of the United Kingdom, and if the new regime in Kabul wants international recognition and access to the billions of dollars currently frozen in overseas accounts, we and our friends will hold them to their agreement to prevent Afghanistan from ever again becoming an incubator for terrorism. We will insist on safe passage for anyone who wishes to leave, and respect for the rights of women and girls. Our aim is to rally the strongest international consensus behind those principles, so that as far as possible the world speaks to the Taliban with one voice. To that end, I called an emergency meeting of the G7 leaders which made these aims the basis of our common approach, and the UK helped to secure a UN Resolution, passed by the Security Council last week, making the same demands. Later this month, at the UN General Assembly in New York, I will work with UN Secretary-General Guterres and other leaders to widen that consensus still further. We will judge the Taliban by their actions, not their words, and will use every economic, political and diplomatic lever to protect our own countries from harm and to help the Afghan people. We have already doubled the UK’s humanitarian and development assistance to £286 million this year, including funds to help people in the region.

On Saturday, we shall mark the 20th anniversary of the reason why we went into Afghanistan in the first place: the terrorist attacks on the United States which claimed 2,977 lives, including those of 67 Britons. If anyone is still tempted to say that we have achieved nothing in that country in 20 years, tell them that our Armed Forces and those of our allies enabled 3.6 million girls to go to school; tell them that this country and the western world were protected from al-Qaeda in Afghanistan throughout that period; and tell them that we have just mounted the biggest humanitarian airlift in recent history. Eight times, the Royal Air Force rescued more than 400 people on board a single plane—the most who have ever travelled on an RAF aircraft in its 103-year history—helping thousands of people in fear for their lives, helping thousands to whom this country owes so much, and thereby revealing the fundamental values of the United Kingdom.

There are very few countries that have the military capability to do what we have just done, and fewer still which would have felt the moral imperative to act in the same way. We can be proud of our Armed Forces for everything they have achieved, and for the legacy they leave behind. What they did was in the best traditions of this country. I commend this Statement to the House.”

20:25

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, just so there is no confusion, the Lord Privy Seal has not repeated the Statement; we have to rely on having heard the Prime Minister say it. I am a little disappointed that the Statement is being considered at the end of business today, given the importance of this issue. The Government made two Statements in the House of Commons; I had expected them to be repeated between the two Second Readings and was somewhat surprised this morning to find that they were so late, as it may affect the number of Members who are able to take part.

Having watched the very distressing evacuation scenes, I think we all have nothing but praise for the heroic work of the British troops, our diplomats and our civil servants, who were operating in incredibly difficult circumstances. They were having to manage a chaotic situation, following a series of failures and miscalculations by the Government. It was interesting that the Prime Minister’s Statement referred to them facing “every possible challenge”; it must be said, one of those challenges was a failure of political leadership, being utterly unprepared for what was to come. That withdrawal had been more than 18 months in the making, but the Government were unprepared, had been unwilling to plan and seemed unable to take a lead. Even in those final weeks before the fall of Kabul, Mr Raab failed to speed up evacuation efforts, failed to issue warnings to British nationals and failed to prepare the department’s crisis response. Even when he gave evidence to the Select Committee, he was rather hazy on the numbers of those, both Afghans and UK citizens, who have been left behind.

The Government have previously said that it was not realistic to stay beyond the US deadline. I think we all accept that, but I have put this question to the noble Baroness—I see she is taking note of what I am saying— I think twice before on previous Statements: what representations did the Government and Ministers make, mainly to the Americans but also others, on the management and timescale of the withdrawal? I am not clear about this and am trying really hard to get to the bottom of it: did the Government ever go back and say to the Americans and NATO, “This will be terrible under this timescale. It will be a disaster. We understand that you are moving US troops out, but can we reconsider how it is done?”

In the final days, as the Taliban entered the city, both Mr Raab and Mr Johnson—the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary—were away on holiday. I am not against Ministers taking holidays—we all need holidays—but there is an issue here of timing and priorities. We know that this is a Government clearly out of their depth, but those chaotic final days of the UK’s role in Afghanistan should not be allowed to undermine in any way the achievements of the past 20 years. The sacrifice of British veterans was not in vain. Their incredible efforts with allied forces facilitated stability and progress throughout Afghanistan, and we should all be proud of their service.

Unfortunately, recent events have opened up old wounds for veterans across the UK. The Government must recognise this and allocate the essential resources and establish the right support structures for them. I say to the noble Baroness, I welcome the additional funding announcement, albeit overdue, but that must sit alongside a strategy to confront the structural barriers that veterans are facing in the employment market, in healthcare and in their daily lives. It would be helpful if she could now confirm whether the Office for Veterans’ Affairs will still face a 40% cut in its budget this year. There must also be recognition for the more than 1,000 UK personnel who took part in Operation Pitting, which airlifted 15,000 people as the country fell to the Taliban. Unfortunately, as she may be aware, troops are not eligible to receive medals as this mission did not meet the 30-day service rule. I think most of us feel that, in these specific and special circumstances, surely that convention should be waived and we should reward the heroic efforts of troops who took part in Operation Pitting.

With the airlift now over, the focus must shift to the lifelong support that we can offer to those Afghans who worked side by side with our troops. I am disappointed that the Government still have not outlined the full details of the Afghans citizens resettlement scheme. We look forward to receiving them. Many of those evacuated are still uncertain and in the dark about their immediate future, let alone their medium- and long-term future. Can the Leader of the House outline when the resettlement scheme will begin and how many people are expected to join it? Can she also say something about how many evacuated Afghans are currently being housed in hotels and other temporary accommodation and how many have been moved into permanent or semi-permanent accommodation? Given that councils—I cite Greenwich Council—have already written to the Government asking for help in supporting refugees and are trying to do their best, what support has been made available to local authorities?

As we look to Afghanistan’s future, we cannot abandon those who have been unable to escape. The Government have to explore all opportunities to support the establishment of viable and safe routes for those who are now in danger. The PM said in his Statement:

“We will insist on safe passage for anyone who wishes to leave”.—[Official Report, Commons, 6/9/21; col. 22.]


I want to probe what “insist” means. Yesterday, the Foreign Secretary said that the Taliban had offered assurances in this area, but he could not expand on that. It would be helpful if the Leader could say tonight what assurances have been received and what degree of confidence the Government have in those assurances.

We also have to confront the reality of the impending humanitarian crisis, where 40% of the crops have been lost through drought. While funding is important, efforts need to be made—perhaps the Leader could say more about this as well—to ensure that food and life-saving medicines are allowed into the country.

On security, human rights and many other issues, the UK needs to work with other countries and NATO to craft a clear diplomatic road map that seeks to protect the gains of the past 20 years. I am thinking specifically, but not exclusively, about the progress on the rights of women and girls. I am sure that, like me, the Leader has seen distressing accounts over the past few days of how women peacefully protesting the basic rights that those of us in this House take for granted have been met with aggression and violence. The efforts of the UK at the UN to secure a Security Council resolution are welcome, but they have to be followed up with prime ministerial intervention. What is the UK’s plan for ensuring that the Taliban are held to their word? What did the Prime Minister agree during his meeting with Secretary-General Guterres? Does he have any plans to continue to engage with the P5 on the implementation of the resolution that was passed at the meeting?

We cannot allow Afghanistan to be a safe haven for terrorism again and neither can we sit by as the Taliban tear down the basic rights that the Afghan people have enjoyed. The Government’s incompetence has let down the Afghan people who have so bravely worked alongside our personnel for two decades. That incompetence also puts us in danger. The security implications of recent weeks are grave and long-lasting and we cannot afford to ignore the risks that we now face. The humanitarian crisis, the displacement of people and the proliferation of extremism can now grow in Afghanistan. While our response should be driven by the need to help the Afghan people, we must also understand that a failure to do that for them will endanger us all.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I echo the Prime Minister’s commendation of the courage and ingenuity of everybody involved in the Kabul airlift. It was indeed the most impressive achievement.

This is a remarkably thin Statement. It does not contain any new facts or commitments to the people of Afghanistan, either in the UK or in Afghanistan. In terms of Afghans who want to come to the UK, in the Statement the Prime Minister repeated two promises: first, that for those to whom we have already made commitments, we will do our best to honour them; and, secondly, that beyond that we will work with the UN and other aid agencies to identify those we should help, as well as

“Afghans who have contributed to civil society or who face particular risk”

because they have stood up

“for democracy and human rights or because of their gender, sexuality or religion”.—[Official Report, Commons, 6/9/21; col. 22.]

I support those commitments, but fear that the first is unachievable in the foreseeable future and that the second offers false hope to many thousands of people. The first is unachievable because we have no means to get people who have a right to come to the UK out of the country. They cannot fly out, and many of the border crossings are, in effect, closed to them. To echo the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, how much confidence do the Government have that the Taliban will give those people safe passage? Do they even know how many of them there are? How are they planning, in the absence of any diplomatic presence in the country, to facilitate their departure?

On the second commitment, the number of people in the categories which the Government wish to help runs into the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands. How does the Government’s commitment to welcoming them into the UK square with their absolute limit of 5,000 refugees over the coming year? How will they decide who to prioritise when confronted with such large numbers of people who they say are technically eligible for visas and who are desperate, for their own safety, to leave the country now, not at some point over the next five years? The Government’s response to requests to take more than the 5,000 is that it is beyond the country’s capacity to do so. This claim does not withstand scrutiny. Even the Prime Minister accepts that the Government are inundated with offers of help from charities and ordinary citizens, and the Government appear to be doing nothing to require the large number of local authorities which are not offering to take a single refugee to play their part. Will they do so now? The fact is that the 5,000 one-year cap and the longer-term 20,000 cap have nothing to do with need. They are, frankly, the minimum that the Government think they can get away with, and they should do better.

The Prime Minister says that the UK will use

“every economic, political and diplomatic lever to protect our own countries from harm and to help the Afghan people.”—[Official Report, Commons, 6/9/21; col. 22.]

Again, that is a positive statement, but what does it amount to? On economic support through development aid, how do the Government intend to ensure that funds can be channelled in an effective way? How closely are they working with the UNDP, which seems to be developing pragmatic working relations with the Taliban? Will they make the disbursement of aid funds contingent on the Taliban keeping its promises; for example, in respect of safe passage or human rights?

On political and diplomatic levers, it is good to see the Foreign Secretary engaging—at last—with the Qatari and Pakistani Governments. In his Statement, the Foreign Secretary sets out some of the issues he discussed in those meetings, but not the outcomes. Can the Leader give the House any specific examples of action that will flow from that series of meetings?

In relation to dealing with the Taliban Administration, the Government say that they will now engage with them, which I am sure is the right approach, and they have appointed a non-resident chargé d’affaires in Doha. While that is welcome, it must surely be desirable to work towards re-establishing a physical diplomatic presence in Kabul. There are clearly challenges in doing so, but to what extent are the Government working with other western Governments, who also need to re-establish their position in Afghanistan, to facilitate that? Have they, for example, spoken to the EU, which is looking to set up a single diplomatic presence in Kabul? There will surely be administrative and security benefits in co-locating with such an office. Are the Government considering that possibility?

More generally, the Afghan debacle has shown the need for the UK to recalibrate its whole foreign policy stance and, in particular, to rebuild relations with the US, through NATO, and with the EU. The Statement is silent on these larger issues, but, frankly, until we address them, much of the micromanagement of the next phase of our involvement with Afghanistan is bound to be more difficult to deliver, making it more difficult for us to deliver on the promises that the Government have already made to the people of Afghanistan.

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Evans of Bowes Park) (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness and noble Lord for their comments. Like them, I pay tribute to all those involved in Operation Pitting. We of course owe a huge debt of gratitude to the 150,000 people who served in Afghanistan and to the 457 who tragically lost their lives.

The noble Baroness asked about withdrawal. As she will recall from the speech that I gave when we came back to discuss this important issue a few weeks ago, we looked at a number of options when the US announced the plan for withdrawal, including the potential for staying longer or increasing our presence. But like our NATO allies, we had to be realistic about what was achievable without US support, and, like our other allies, we did not feel that we could continue the mission without the United States. The noble Baroness will know obviously that the Prime Minister convened a G7 meeting, at which he and other leaders asked President Biden to reconsider the timescale with which the withdrawal was taking place. Unfortunately, as the situation has shown, he was not successful, but efforts were made.

The noble Baroness rightly talked about the importance of the mental health of our veterans. We take this extremely seriously, encouraging anyone who is struggling to access support available, including a 24-hour mental health line. I was grateful for her recognition of the increased funding that we have put into this. Earlier this year, we launched the veterans’ mental health and well-being service, Op Courage, which provides a clear single route for accessing specialist care through the NHS. In the last financial year, NHS England provided £16.5 million for veteran-specific mental health services, which will be increased to £17.8 million in 2021-22, with an additional £10 million to the Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust to distribute to charitable projects supporting veterans’ mental health needs. Of course, funding for the Office for Veterans’ Affairs is a matter for discussion between it and the Chancellor.

On the various questions that were asked around resettlement and relocation, I once again reiterate to the noble Lord and noble Baroness that we are clear that the Taliban must ensure safe passage for people out of Afghanistan—with the ongoing engagement that is happening, we are emphasising this first and foremost. The Afghan relocations and assistance policy for those who worked in Afghanistan remains open, and we will facilitate relocation from third countries, if possible, for those who are eligible. I am sure that my noble friend, who has been involved in conversations, will be able to shed some further light on the discussions that have been going on with Pakistan and Uzbekistan, for instance. I reassure the noble Baroness that the Home Office is working at pace to establish the details of the new Afghan citizens resettlement scheme, which will provide protection for Afghan citizens identified as being most at risk. We have announced that this new scheme will relocate 5,000 vulnerable Afghans in the first year, with this potentially rising to 20,000 over a five-year period.

The noble Lord, Lord Newby, asked about an embassy in Kabul and what we are doing now. At this point, our diplomatic efforts have shifted to supporting the people of Afghanistan from outside the country, but we intend to re-establish an embassy in Kabul as soon as the security and political situation allows, and we are co-ordinating this effort with allies. The FCDO is sending rapid deployment teams to Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to reinforce our embassy staff to process arrivals from Afghanistan, and we have also sent a rapid deployment team of seven to help people to transit through Dubai.

The noble Baroness asked about support for local authorities and the work that they are doing. The support that we provide will be similar to the commitments that we have made under the Syrian resettlement programme, and we have already allocated £5 million of support to local councils to provide housing. Some 100 councils are already working across the UK to meet the demand for housing, and over 2,000 places have already been confirmed. The Communities Secretary is convening a round table with council leaders from across the country in the coming days to talk about how we can further work together to ensure that we can provide safety and security for the Afghans who have made it over here and to make sure that they can settle into local communities.

Both the noble Lord and the noble Baroness asked about the situation on the ground. I can reassure them that we are working closely with the UN and NGO partners to continue to ensure that vital humanitarian aid reaches those who most need it. All UK aid is subject to strict monitoring and verification to ensure that it is used only to help the vulnerable people it is intended for, and any support will be provided outside of all state apparatus. We will continue to provide support through trusted UN and NGO agencies that have a track record in delivering in challenging circumstances. As the noble Lord rightly said, the UN is working on the ground and is currently seeking commitments from the Taliban to enable humanitarian work to continue. These commitments include respect for humanitarian principles accessed in international law, as well as guarantees for female aid workers across UN agencies and NGOs. We continue to support it in that very important work on the ground.

Both the noble Baroness and the noble Lord rightly alluded to the fact that we have said we will continue to use every humanitarian diplomacy lever to safeguard human rights and the gains made over the past two decades. We are working, for instance, on options for convening a meeting in the margins of the UN General Assembly in September. The focus and format are still under discussion, but the objective will be to bring the widest possible group of countries together to discuss Afghanistan and how we can work with our international partners in this very difficult and challenging situation.

20:46

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, the Prime Minister, Dominic Raab, other Ministers and the Chief of the Defence Staff are all very fond of the phrase, “Even the Taliban were surprised at the speed of the Afghan collapse.” They do not use this because we are interested; they use it because it is supposed to support an inference that we therefore should not be surprised that they were caught out by it, and to assert that everyone was surprised by the speed of the collapse. This is not true.

We now know that multiple US intelligence reports in spring and summer warned of the fragility of the Afghan army and the Afghan Government. If that were not sufficient—and it should have been—here in the United Kingdom the visiting professor of war studies at King’s College, a man called Tim Willasey-Wilsey, who spent 27 years in the Foreign Office on these issues, was freely writing blogs on the Cipher Brief, an open-source DC-based website, explaining all the factors in the inept deployment of the Afghan army and the behaviour of the Afghan Government that supported this fragility. The question for the Government is this: why did that information, which was in the public domain and being discussed, not ring alarm bells in the intelligence community and in the UK MoD? If that cannot be answered, why should anyone trust that the Government are being honest about the situation in Afghanistan?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I have to say to the noble Lord that we were working on preparations. The preparations for Operation Pitting, for instance, involved intensive work by many government departments over recent months. It was the huge effort, bravery and commitment of our Armed Forces personnel, diplomats and civil servants in Kabul that enabled us to evacuate more people than any other country, other than the United States. The specific evacuation plan for Afghanistan was revised in January 2021 and kept under review until it was enacted. So we were making preparations as the situation unfolded.

[Lord Campbell of Pittenweem (LD)]

I must begin, once again, by declaring my interest as an ambassador for HALO, a charity that is continuing its mine clearance activities—and related activities, of course—in Afghanistan.

It is easy for all of us to commend the remarkable courage and ingenuity of everyone involved in the Kabul airlift. It was, if this does not overstrain the description, something of a miracle that it went so well. However, I very much regret that I cannot compliment the Government in the same way. Out of these terrible, damaging events, are there not three questions that now must be answered? First, is it not time to stop blaming everyone else? Secondly, is it not time to abandon the mirage of global Britain? Thirdly, is it not time to concentrate on the necessary reinvigoration of NATO and the transatlantic alliance?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I certainly agree with the noble Lord in his last comment. However, I dispute the idea that we have not been working with our international partners. Through the UN Security Council, the G7 and NATO, we have played a leading role in pushing for international consensus to agree a unified approach to the challenge we collectively face; that includes working with those organisations’ partners and our international friends to ensure that we can continue to get people who want safe passage out of Afghanistan out.

I agree with the noble Lord that all this needs to invigorate international action together but we have been playing a lead role. I have already mentioned the G7 meeting convened by the Prime Minister and the work we are doing to convene a potential meeting in the margins of the UN General Assembly. Of course, the noble Lord will be aware that, along with the US and France, we led on the UN Security Council resolution passed in August, which set out our expectations for safe passage for all those who wish to leave, urgent humanitarian access, respect for human rights and the prevention of terrorism. We are playing, and will continue to play, a leading role in these efforts.

[Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I fully commend the Government on the action that they took to support those who served with our forces and supported our people in Afghanistan. However, I have a question, although I do not expect the Lord Privy Seal to have an answer to it now. I want to put on her radar the fact that a question now arises in relation to Commonwealth servicemen, who served with the British forces and are still waiting for indefinite leave to remain. Will the Government address this issue with a sense of urgency because there is a feeling that we are not acting fairly?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her comments. I will certainly make sure that I raise her points with the relevant Ministers and departments; I will ask somebody to get back to her with further details.

[Lord Dodds of Duncairn (DUP)]

My Lords, I join others who have already commended the fantastic work of our troops, diplomatic staff and civil servants in getting so many people out of Afghanistan under very difficult circumstances. However, it is almost 20 years to the day since the events that gave rise to the invasion of Afghanistan in the first place. How confident are the Government that they, along with allies, will be able to prevent Afghanistan once again becoming a training base for terrorists? What action do the Government envisage in the coming months and years to address that serious issue?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

We assess that al-Qaeda is now less active in Afghanistan than it was before 2001 but, of course, we acknowledge completely that the group has not ceased to exist and remains a threat. Obviously, there are the terms of the US-Taliban agreement where the Taliban made commitments on preventing international terrorism within its territory, including its relationship with al-Qaeda. We will continue to hold them to those commitments and to the terms of that agreement. Of course, we will also continue to work with our international partners to ensure that we keep ourselves and our allies safe, and that Afghanistan does not once again become a breeding ground for terrorism, which threatens us all.

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, sometimes very unexpected conversations occur. On my journey down from the north-east this morning, I found myself spending two hours talking with someone who had done seven tours of service in Afghanistan and nearly 10 years’ service in security. It is painful to talk to someone who is showing you on their phone the photos of them in the cargo plane coming out and hear his story.

My first question comes from that conversation and is around the safe routes out. He was clear that he had to leave behind several hundred Afghans who have all the paperwork but could not come out. His words were that to suggest to them that there are any safe routes out at the moment is simply untrue because every kilometre between Kabul and the border has stops where they and their paperwork are checked, so they will not travel that way. His comment was that there must be priority for getting air routes back in as quickly as possible as the only genuine future safe route. My question, formally, is: what are the Government doing to work with international partners to see safe commercial air routes reopen?

I was going to ask something for myself, because I am working with local authorities, with MHCLG and the Home Office on refugee resettlement, both in ARAP and the new scheme, for which we still await the details. Housing is the biggest issue in all those conversations. What are the Government doing to persuade local authorities that private landlords must be used, as well as social landlords? What is being done to ensure that adequate money is paid to local authorities so that they can support those refugees? Civil society is absolutely desperate to help and support, but the local authorities need to know that they will get the backing from the centre too.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I thank the right reverend Prelate. We are certainly working on his first point about air routes. We have been working particularly with, for instance, the Qataris and the US to think about ways we might facilitate that. I can certainly reassure him that we are talking to our international partners about that and, on borders, with Pakistan, Uzbekistan and others to try to see what we can do to create the safe passage we all want. As I have also said, the dialogues going on with the various organisations with the Taliban are reinforcing time and again that this is, first and foremost, something the international community wants to see.

On housing, I mentioned that we are already working with more than 100 councils to meet demand for housing and more than 2,000 places have already been confirmed. We have also made available £5 million of support to local councils to provide housing and are having further discussions.

On, I suppose, not lower-level but other engagement, on 27 August we launched a portal to allow members of the public to submit offers of support for people arriving from Afghanistan. Offers of housing support can currently be submitted through that and work is ongoing to expand it to offers such as job opportunities, professional skills, training and donations of specific items. We are working with our local authority partners and friends, but also with the great generosity of the British public, which we are all aware of. We are providing ways in which they can offer help and support as well, which I know will be extremely welcome.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Browne, talked about open-source material looking at the situation in Afghanistan in the first half of this year. Closer to home, your Lordships’ International Relations and Defence Committee produced a report in January on the UK and Afghanistan in which we outlined considerable concerns. We impressed on the Government the need to talk to the incoming Biden Administration. What effort did the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office put into talking to the American Administration behind the scenes? The fact that the Government were preparing for Operation Pitting from January does not really send the right signals. Surely, we should have been trying to create a situation where we did not need an emergency evacuation. We should have left in a way that left stability, not chaos.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

As I said, intelligence and information were obviously being assessed by the FCDO and the MoD throughout this and plans were being taken. It is a fact that the speed at which the Taliban moved took people by surprise; people, including the Taliban, have admitted that. We did this evacuation thanks to the bravery of our forces. We managed to evacuate more Afghans than any other country, apart from the US. Lessons will of course be learned and we will look at those, but we must also recognise that our forces and diplomats did a fantastic job in extremely difficult circumstances. We must be grateful to them.

[Viscount Bridgeman (Con)]

Does my noble friend not agree that the Prime Minister has at his hand two possible levers: one is the requirement of the Taliban for diplomatic recognition and the other their requirement for international aid? Can we have her assurance that the Prime Minister, within the international community, will make as much use of these two levers as he can?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

Yes, I can assure my noble friend that that is exactly what we will be doing. We will also want to be pragmatic and through organisations and some form of dialogue see whether we can talk to the Taliban and encourage them to do the things that we are talking about, such as providing safe passage. We have a number of levers at our disposal and will use all of them to try to make sure that we can achieve safe passage for those who want to leave Afghanistan and to make sure that many of the gains in civil society and within the country for women and girls and for minorities are not lost in the coming months.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for engaging with the question that I asked earlier, but she did so without dealing with the germane point of the evidence: did the Government have the ability in any form to come to the conclusions reached by other people who were not in the intelligence community? Why did the fact that they were doing that not ring alarm bells with Ministers who had responsibility, with their officials and with the intelligence community?

The noble Baroness tells us anyway that the Government were planning. Dominic Raab told the Foreign Affairs Select Committee that, back in July, the Government were planning for the possibility of an evacuation of British citizens and those who were quite rightly entitled to think that we had a moral obligation to secure their lives. Will the Government share this planning? Did it include the explicit possibility that, unlike with any other evacuation I know of, those conducting it would remove the military before they had removed the civilians? If so, did we discuss this with the United States of America and with our NATO partners and say, “We have to face the possibility that history will look back on us as having removed the source of these people’s security before we could take them out of the place of danger”? Did we do that?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I am afraid that all I can do is once again reiterate the point that the specific evacuation plan for Afghanistan was revised in January 2021 and kept under review until it was enacted. Plans within it included options to support and evacuate our diplomatic team, British nationals and their families, the continuation of the evacuation of those eligible under the ARAP scheme and the withdrawing of remaining military personnel.

Afghanistan: FCDO Update

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Lords Chamber

Statement

The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Monday 6 September.

“With your permission, Mr Speaker, I will update the House on the UK’s international response to the situation in Afghanistan.

As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister set out, over the last three weeks, through a shared effort right across Government and our armed forces, we have delivered the largest and most complex evacuation in living memory. Between 15 and 29 August, the UK evacuated over 15,000 people from Afghanistan. That includes more than 8,000 British nationals; close to 5,000 Afghans who loyally served the UK, along with their dependants; and about 500 special cases of particularly vulnerable Afghans, including Chevening scholars, journalists, human rights defenders, campaigners for women’s rights, judges and many others.

Of course, the work to get people out did not start on 15 August. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office advised British nationals to leave the country in April and again on 6 August; we estimate that about 500 did so. At the same time, the Government launched the Afghan relocations and assistance policy scheme for interpreters and other Afghan staff, getting more than 1,900 out before the airlift began on 15 August. As the security situation deteriorated, we accelerated that process throughout July and early August. In total, since April, we have helped more than 17,000 people to leave.

I place on record my thanks, and I pay tribute to the herculean efforts of our troops, our diplomats and our civil servants, who have done an incredible job in the toughest of conditions. As we remember their efforts, we also remember those in the UK armed forces who made the ultimate sacrifice in Afghanistan trying to make that country a better place for the Afghan people.

Now that the evacuation has ended, we have moved into a new phase. We stand by our commitment to support those who have worked for us and to take all remaining eligible cases. Securing their safe passage out of the country is an immediate priority. We are working through our diplomatic channels to that end, and of course the Taliban have given assurances that they will provide safe passage for foreign nationals and those eligible Afghans who wish to leave. On 30 August, the UN Security Council passed resolution 2593, driven by the UK alongside the US and France, affirming the international community’s expectation and requirement that the Taliban should follow through on the assurances that they have given.

Last week, I visited Qatar and Pakistan. In Qatar, I met the Emir and the Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Sheikh Mohammed, to discuss safe passage alongside the international community’s wider approach to dealing with the Taliban. We discussed ongoing efforts to re-establish flights at Kabul airport, where Qatari technical staff are working on the ground, and to see how we can co-operate in handling the organisation of future flights. I also announced our new non-resident chargé d’affaires for Afghanistan, Martin Longden, who is now working out of Doha.

In Pakistan, I met Prime Minister Khan and Foreign Minister Qureshi to discuss safe passage via third countries and the importance of holding the Taliban to their commitments. I also announced that we are sending £30 million in support to Afghanistan’s neighbours. This will provide life-saving support for refugees, including shelters, household necessities, sanitation and other hygiene facilities.

I dispatched last week a new rapid deployment team to the region, with an extra 22 staff in total. They will reinforce our embassy teams and high commission teams in neighbouring countries, processing British nationals or eligible Afghans who are seeking to leave via third countries. We want to do that as fast as we possibly can once they can leave, subject to the necessary security checks.

I also spoke to the Foreign Minister of Uzbekistan earlier today and the Foreign Minister of Tajikistan last week. Our Minister for South Asia and the Commonwealth, Lord Ahmad, visited Tajikistan last week and will return to the region shortly.

I turn to the wider international strategy. The international community is adjusting, and must adjust, to the new reality in Afghanistan and is recalibrating its approach. The UK is playing a leading role. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister convened G7 leaders on 24 August to discuss a shared response to the situation. That followed a G7 Foreign Ministers meeting, and we are building a global coalition around four key priorities set out in a UK G7 paper that we have shared with those partners.

First, we must prevent Afghanistan from ever again becoming a safe haven or harbour for terrorists. Secondly, we must prevent a humanitarian disaster and support refugees, wherever possible, in the region. The UK has allocated £286 million in aid for Afghanistan this year. We are supporting Afghanistan’s neighbours, as I have set out, and the Home Secretary has set out our resettlement scheme, so we are leading by example, which enables us to encourage others to step up in what will inevitably have to be an international team effort.

Thirdly, we must preserve regional stability, which risks being shattered by the combination of renewed terrorist threat and an exodus of refugees. Fourthly, we must hold the Taliban and other factions to account for their conduct, including and in particular on human rights and on their treatment of women and girls. I am taking that forward through our bilateral partners; we have a G7+ meeting later this week, and the UK is also pressing for further discussions among the permanent members of the UN Security Council. We plan to host an event at the UN General Assembly later this month, as the Prime Minister indicated.

We will not recognise the Taliban, but we will engage, and we will carefully calibrate our actions to the choices that they make and the actions that they take. Given our strategic priorities—the ones that I have specified—we must also set some credible tests to hold the Taliban to the undertakings that they have made on safe passage, on terrorism, on humanitarian access, and on a more inclusive Government. We stand ready to use all the levers at our disposal—political, economic and diplomatic—in that effort. We continue to galvanise the international community and bring together the widest possible group of influential countries to deliver on those strategic priorities, and to exercise the maximum moderating influence on the Taliban that we possibly can. I commend this Statement to the House.”

21:03

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, the events in Afghanistan have shown the absolute best of United Kingdom diplomatic staff and British forces. We can all take immense pride in what they have achieved, especially in their efforts as part of Operation Pitting, yet, as my noble friend highlighted earlier, the Government’s mismanagement has meant that many Brits and Afghans who have worked alongside us have been left behind.

Our focus now must be on two priorities: first and most immediately, helping and protecting the people who remain in Afghanistan and those who have been able to escape, and, secondly, protecting the gains of the past 20 years, particularly those relating to women and girls and education.

The first priority means helping those who are stranded in Afghanistan to leave via a viable and safe route and—as I mentioned earlier today—focusing support for those who are at most risk of persecution, such as women and LGBT people as well as the Hazara Shias. Can the Minister clarify exactly how many British nationals remain in Afghanistan? For the Afghan nationals who have made it to the United Kingdom, there must now be long-term support for those rebuilding their lives and engagement with local authorities to agree a long-term strategy. Details for the Afghan refugee resettlement programme have been incomplete and delayed, and the Government must urgently clarify how they will help fund the scheme and what the overarching strategy is.

The Minister will be aware that Members of both Houses have taken up the cases of Afghans and British nationals who have been desperate to leave. I know the Minister has personally intervened in many of these cases, but the response of both the Foreign Office and the Home Office has been slow, with many MPs’ emails remaining unanswered. The Prime Minister promised that all emails would be responded to by the close of play yesterday, so can the Minister explain why this deadline has now been missed, with hundreds—I repeat, hundreds—of emails still not being replied to?

As we heard earlier in the debate on the previous Statement, there is a very real prospect of a humanitarian crisis in a country of almost 40 million people, and the consequences could be catastrophic. The country is already experiencing its second drought in three years. One in three Afghans is now facing severe hunger, and almost half of children under five are in need of life-saving nutritional support over the next 12 months—something I have constantly raised in this House, particularly as a consequence of the terrible cuts to development support.

The Government must use multilateral institutions in conjunction with aid agencies to monitor the situation and deliver aid directly to those in need. Steps must also be taken to keep land routes open for the safe delivery of food, medicine, water and other supplies, and preparations need to be made for the people being displaced. UN agencies such as the World Food Programme are planning for this possibility, with responses being explored in Pakistan, Tajikistan and Iran. The Foreign Secretary said he had spoken to Jean Arnault, the special representative on Afghanistan, acknowledging that the relationship with the United Nations will be one of the critical factors we consider in shaping the resettlement scheme. What other discussions have taken place to plan support for these UN agencies?

The second priority must be to protect the gains of the last 20 years, and the only way we can do this is with a clear diplomatic road map for the way ahead. We must use every lever we have to prevent Afghanistan becoming, once again, a safe haven for international terrorism. The United Nations Security Council Resolution 2593 is a welcome first step in affirming the international community’s expectation and requirement that the Taliban should follow through on the assurances they have given. The Foreign Secretary said that the UK is pressing for further discussions with the UN Security Council P5. Will these discussions also explore the means to hold the Taliban to their word?

Regional partners will also be central to preventing security threats arising from Afghanistan, and I am pleased that the Government have been engaging with Pakistan. Yesterday the Foreign Secretary claimed to have engaged with all relevant partners. Can the Minister confirm which states the Foreign Secretary was referring to? Can he set out the steps which were agreed during the Foreign Secretary’s meeting with Pakistan’s Foreign Minister on combating terrorism?

Given the importance of protecting human rights when exerting pressure on the Taliban regime, can the Minister detail the steps we are taking multilaterally, including at the UN Human Rights Council? The Leader of the House and the Foreign Secretary said that the UK plans to host an event at the UN General Assembly later this month. Can the Minister tell us what the objectives of this meeting are? The noble Baroness failed to give us an answer on that; I hope the Minister can set out a better context for it. I believe it is the right thing to do, but we must have very clear objectives.

The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan poses a threat to us all, not only from its past relationship with international terrorism but from the conditions it is now creating in the region. It is in everyone’s interest that the United Kingdom step up and support the people of Afghanistan.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Collins, I pay tribute to the service men and women, the diplomats and indeed the Minister himself for the huge efforts put into place under Operation Pitting and in the weeks following the end of the evacuation. But as we heard during the previous Statement, there are some serious questions to be asked about the nature of the evacuation and why we needed to evacuate when we did. A longer-term inquiry may be the time for those questions.

In the shorter term, there are questions about how many people we have left behind. There is clearly the question of how many British nationals who want to leave are still in Afghanistan. My understanding is that all were encouraged to leave back in April; some have chosen not to. If British nationals have chosen to stay, that is their choice, but do the Government have a sense of how many individuals want to leave? Is there a difficulty for people with dual nationality? Will the Taliban make it difficult for people with British and Afghan citizenship to leave? If so, are the Government seeking assurances that people with British passports will have the opportunity for safe passage?

What are the Government realistically able to offer those who have been offered a place under ARAP but have not yet been able to leave the country? The Statements suggest that everyone who has currently been offered a place under ARAP will be able to leave. Is that realistic? Should those of us who are trying to support the British Council and others on individual cases say that, yes, those people will be got out, or do we have to say that realistically we cannot guarantee that?

Beyond those who have already been offered a place under ARAP, what about those second-tier contractors—for example, for the British Council—who have not yet been given the right to come? What hope is there for them? Beyond that, for interpreters and others who worked for the MoD, my understanding is that the MoD has done a great job of getting the interpreters out now, but many others worked alongside our service personnel: the cooks and the people who did the laundry—a whole set of people whose lives are very vulnerable. Where do they feature in the Government’s thinking? Can they be assured of safe passage?

What sort of support will the Government be able to offer, directly or indirectly, to those who are currently away from their homes because they moved towards Kabul hoping to be able to get to the Baron hotel and on to a flight, and who now find themselves without food, shelter or money because they cannot access their bank accounts?

[The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)]

My Lords, I first thank the noble Lord, Lord Collins, and the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, for their questions and contributions during what has been a particularly challenging time. I fully acknowledge the noble Baroness’s remarks about my personal engagement. Simply put, I sought—others will judge—to do my job in the best way I can.

I join the noble Lord, the noble Baroness and my noble friend the Leader of House in acknowledging the real debt of gratitude we owe to our servicemen and diplomats. I know Laurie Bristow very well—I was engaging with him daily prior to his appointment, as he went out, and during that appointment. I know first-hand about his commitment. As my noble friend the Leader of the House said, there are always lessons to be learned, and we all have to look back on what we have achieved with a degree of humility in recognising that, yes, it was a massive operation in terms of the people who were able to evacuate from Afghanistan, but at the same time, I assure noble Lords that at the heart of the Government’s approach is humanity in what we do next.

The noble Lord, Lord Collins, rightly talked about Operation Pitting and comments have been made about the Government’s role and preparedness. My noble friend has already alluded to the fact that plans were prepared and looked at regularly. Undoubtedly, it was clear from the speed at which the Taliban came into Kabul—which was a key point at which the operation was stood up—and the gains that were being made elsewhere in Afghanistan that the Taliban were making inroads very quickly.

That said, from the Foreign Office perspective, as Minister with responsibility for Afghanistan, I was engaging quite directly with the Government of Afghanistan, not for a week or a month before but for many months before. I was in Uzbekistan three weeks or so before the fall of Kabul, with all the key partners— from the Americans to Pakistan, India, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Turkey and other countries, and I engaged quite directly, including with President Ghani and Foreign Minister Atmar, on the situation on the ground.

Notwithstanding the comments made earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Browne, the issue is the joint assessment, which, as the noble Lord will know from his own time, brings together all the intelligence sources et cetera to ensure that we are fully prepared. Something which has not been said in this context is that, had we not been prepared—notwithstanding the heartbreaking scenes we have all witnessed; and I can assure you, I was hearing live stories during the evacuation process—we would not have achieved this if plans had not been in place. We stood up plans and worked together across government. I put on record my thanks to the Minister for the Armed Forces and the Minister for Immigration. Every day during the operation, we were convening a meeting at which we would address every single issue to ensure that the teams on the ground—be they diplomats or the military—the Minister at the Home Office and his Border Force team were trying to meet in real time the challenges we faced during the evacuation.

We owe a great debt of gratitude to everyone, but the job is not done, and I therefore recognise many of the questions that have been posed. The noble Lord, Lord Collins, rightly raised the issues of safe passage, humanitarian aid and human rights, and I thank him for acknowledging the efforts of the United Kingdom, together with France, at the UN Security Council. We are also working in the margins at UNGA through events which will focus specifically on the points made by the noble Lord about minority rights, women’s rights and the LGBT community. I look forward to working with noble Lords to see how we can plan effectively, including in respect of civil society groups.

The UN resolution really does call for safe passage, human rights and humanitarian aid. Regarding the countries we were engaging with, not just during the crisis but beforehand and subsequently, we are looking at safe passage. My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary visited Qatar and Pakistan; I visited Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, and on returning, I visited Dubai to thank the Emiratis, who played a pivotal role in our evacuation process. Although the media may not have covered the operation, it was very smooth in terms of our ability to evacuate through Dubai, and I am grateful to our Emirati friends.

As for holding the Taliban to account, I totally agree with the noble Lord. My views on the Taliban and their perverse ideology are on record, and I speak, as I have said before, as a man who follows the same faith. Their Islam, or their faith, is not one I recognise, and I do not recognise what it presents. In the context of Islam, there are many countries within the Islamic world that have an added obligation, including those near neighbours, but we are working with the United States, the Qataris and others to ensure safe passage. Today, a humanitarian flight arrived at Kabul airport; it was a Qatar Airways flight and it brought in humanitarian aid.

On the specific advice we can give, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, asked about ARAP and those who were given leave outside the rules. We have already made the point that for those who have already received their letters—from whatever route it was secured—we will guarantee that, through ARAP, they will get exactly what they have been promised. The ARAP scheme remains live and will continue to be so. On leave outside the rules, if someone has a letter, when they are called forward they will be prioritised under the new Home Office resettlement scheme. Of course, we await details, but as my noble friend the Leader said, we are working at pace with our Home Office colleagues, and I know the priority the Home Secretary places on ensuring that details are brought forward at the earliest possible opportunity.

The noble Lord, Lord Collins, raised the issue of correspondence. A response was given on 6 September which dealt with a large number of the inquiries that were coming in from MPs about what would happen to individuals who had already received the letter. The intent of that letter was to signpost and reassure. I accept that there are some quite specific cases, and I have certainly said to our teams at the FCDO that, working alongside the Home Office, we will work through these. There are some sensitivities in these cases, and we need to protect individuals, but I am very cognisant of the fact that many individuals in this House and the other place in particular have raised specific cases. There are lots of details on specific cases, and some are split, and we are seeking to provide appropriate signposting. Whether through the FCDO or the Home Office, we will work to resolve particular issues that arise in particular cases. Certainly, I can give that assurance.

On the issue of preparedness, my noble friend alluded to the rapid deployment teams. We are finalising the Home Office policy, and I assure noble Lords that, when I was in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, part of my role was to ensure that our RDTs were embedded—and they are—as they are in Pakistan. I met the team in Dubai on my way back from Tajikistan. We are working in a very sensitive way, recognising the challenge on near neighbours and standing up infrastructure and support. Indeed, the additional funding to Afghanistan, which is now at £286 million, is, let me assure the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, focused not just on providing support for those people we are seeking to evacuate and bring back to the UK but on recognising the burden there will be on neighbouring states, including Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. That is why my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary immediately stood up £30 million, £10 million of which will be applied directly to help support facilities within those neighbouring countries.

The noble Lord asked about holding the Taliban to account. In the previous debate there was a discussion of the levers we have available. I assure all noble Lords that there is one thing above all else that the Taliban strives for, which is recognition. Yes, they may be a much more polished version of what was there before, but we need to hold them to account. That means working with our international partners and those who have influence over the Taliban, but also ensuring that the humanitarian aid gets through. I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Collins, that I have spoken—not just on this occasion but previously—with different UN agencies, and in the last few weeks have spoken directly to Filippo Grandi at the UNHCR and Henrietta Fore at UNICEF, among others. I have engaged directly with Michelle Bachelet to ensure that our focus remains not just at the UN Security Council but at the UN Human Rights Council as well.

21:24

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, I was appointed Secretary of State for Defence at a very difficult time for our engagement in Afghanistan. I visited Afghanistan numerous times, in horrible circumstances sometimes, and I worked there with people who were devoted to the future of that country, both in our military and our diplomatic and development services. They know that I have the highest regard for all of them, because I told them so in these circumstances where they were doing the job. I shared those dangers with them, and sometimes was criticised for speaking in Parliament in glowing terms about them and what they were doing. I know what the military, the Diplomatic Service and others have done in the past few weeks, but they would think less of me—because I have many friends among them, and I lost friends among them—if I did not hold the Government to account, and those beyond the Government who have gotten them into this situation when it was a choice and not an inevitability.

The question in relation to this Statement is what, exactly, does its last page mean? It talks about using the

“levers at our disposal—political, economic and diplomatic”

to deliver our four strategic objectives, which are very bland in one sense but also very challenging. They are set out in the other part of it. What exactly do we think our options are? We are powerless.

The Taliban have their international recognition; they are strutting the streets of cities in Afghanistan after 20 years of war with the most powerful armies in the world, wearing their uniforms and carrying their kit, flying their aircraft and driving their vehicles. The people of Afghanistan are terrified of them, because many of them have been alive long enough to know when they last ruled that country, and they know what they are capable of. They are masters of public relations and have given us the impression that we can engage with them and somehow, with options, lever them into being a civilised Government. That is what we are saying that we are doing, but we cannot do it—and we certainly cannot unless our Ministers can come to the Dispatch Box and tell us what those levers are, how they think they will deploy them and why we as the Parliament to which they are accountable should support them to do it.

The first question is not, “What is the one lever that they provide to us?”, which is their desire for recognition, but what levers do we actually control and which they do not pull, to get them not to deliver the sort of horrible, terrible, oppressive and dangerous Government that they were once before? Secondly, we have just had an integrated review in which the Government told us—and it should have terrified us—that their assessment was that we were going to suffer a successful CBRN terrorist attack by 2030 on these islands. Can we be assured that the Government are recalibrating that, because the situation is now much worse?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, simply put, yes, of course there are levers at our disposal, and I have already alluded to a number of them. “Diplomatic” means how we work together with our key partners, such as the United States and others on the Security Council, but also with other key countries that have influence over what will prevail in Afghanistan, which is in a particularly precarious economic situation. The challenges in that country on humanitarian issues is clear.

In that regard, let me assure the noble Lord and all noble Lords that we have the levers of diplomacy by working with partners, including the likes of Russia and China, which will have influence, and the likes of Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, which are near neighbours. Those are important relationships, which we are invested in. As I already said, I have met directly Foreign Ministers across those countries and am engaging directly with them. It is not just about our ask of them, including on the issue of safe passage for those who get to a border; it is also about recognising that, to build relationships, you have to invest in the. That means ensuring that we stand up support for the refugee crisis that they may face on their own borders, and we are doing just that.

In terms of the Taliban specifically, the support of UN agencies is needed. In my discussions with UNICEF, in particular, and other agencies, we have got a sense that some agencies have increased their footprint on the ground within Afghanistan, and therefore we will be working with international partners, particularly UN agencies, to ensure that we continue to support humanitarian efforts not through the Taliban structures but directly through the agencies which are still operating across Afghanistan.

There are other levers about connectivity. I alluded earlier to the fact that we saw the first flight into Kabul. We are also hearing through our channels on the ground and international agencies that certain airports, such as those in Jalalabad and Mazar-i-Sharif, are being perceived as areas which we can look at not just to provide air routes but to deliver humanitarian aid for other parts of the country.

The noble Lord has wide experience, which I fully acknowledge. I can say at the Dispatch Box that of course we are very cognisant that security is important. The decision was made to withdraw NATO forces, but we recognise that we need to prevent terrorism. The UK Security Council resolution was an important fourth element on counterterrorism. I assure him that we are working through all channels and reassessing our capabilities to ensure that we mitigate against threats and future attacks against this country and any of our partners. It requires a big international effort.

I come back to the point that the noble Lord raised about the internal situation with the Taliban. Some would argue that the Taliban is a different Taliban. The jury is out. My view is clear: it is the same Taliban that was there before. However, what has changed, and where we have a glimmer of hope and opportunity, is that the 20 years of investment, which the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, alluded to on the previous Statement, have produced some great gains. I know a lot of the people we have worked with and the phenomenal women leaders who have emerged. They also provide great hope. Through our efforts and those of our international partners, I can now talk about some of them, such as Shukria Barakzai. More recently, I was pleased to see—in an extremely challenging situation—the likes of Fawzia Koofi, who is known to many people across both Houses. It was heartening to see her still very determined to play her part, albeit that for now she has left Afghanistan. We must see how we can sustain international dialogue and provide hope for people who are working for the future of Afghanistan, including those within Afghanistan. There are lots of areas that we still need to develop. I do not shy away from the challenge in front of us, but we will continue to stand with the people of Afghanistan.

[Lord Campbell of Pittenweem (LD)]

The Minister is being characteristically generous. There were reports that one of the reasons for the collapse of morale among the Afghan forces was that once it was announced that NATO was to withdraw, more senior officers in the forces were withholding the pay of the equivalent of privates. Is there any evidence to support that? Against that question, within the Minister’s understanding and knowledge, what part, if any, does he think that corruption played in persuading the citizens that perhaps the Taliban might not be quite so bad as those who were forming the Government?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I cannot speak for the people of Afghanistan on what they perceive about their previous Government or indeed the Taliban Government. I can say that of course we recognise that the previous Government of Afghanistan were not without major shortcomings, some of which the noble Lord mentioned. He mentioned troops not being paid, and that is a fact. Morale is also done through leadership. One of the challenges that we saw though the events that unfolded in Afghanistan, particularly in the last few days in Kabul, is about when there is no structure—not only not being paid—and no specific command structure. I cannot speak for a trooper guarding a gate and I have never served in the military, but if I was there as a volunteer, I would have been asking: what is my role right now? That was very clear to many, and that is why we saw what happened in Kabul.

I suppose there was a glimmer of hope there in that thankfully, thus far—I add that caveat quite specifically —we have not seen the bloodshed due to an internal civil war that it was perceived would occur. However, again, as I said earlier, the situation is fluid and we do not know what will emerge. We had the situation in the Panjshir Valley earlier this week as well, with Mr Massoud still holding out. However, we have all seen the announcement of the new Government and “inclusive” certainly does not describe them.

[Lord Mancroft (Con)]

I add my voice to the thanks expressed around the House and across the country to officials in the various departments—the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence and the Home Office—for the work they have done over the last few weeks in this ghastly episode; it continues to be a ghastly episode. Their conduct of affairs which have been very difficult has been outstanding and I thank them for that. I also extend my thanks to the two heroes of this terrible episode. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Defence’s management of Operation Pitting, dreadful though that was, has been outstanding, and I thank him for that. I also thank my noble friend the Minister, who has conducted himself outstandingly over the last couple of weeks particularly. I know that he has been fielding texts and emails from colleagues in this House and the other place and far more widely at all hours of the day and night to the best of his ability and with great good humour—I cannot imagine that he got much sleep—while travelling the world, trying to sort this mess out. I thank him for that.

The noble Lord, Lord Collins, talked about some of the groups who are particularly at risk in Afghanistan. I too would like to think about those, and in doing so will not think about the past and what happened, although we will need to talk about that further again in the future. More importantly, I want to think about the present and the future and what we can do now. In particular, the noble Lord, Lord Collins, talked about groups who are at risk, and I think particularly of professional Afghan women—women with professional qualifications, who are apparently not very popular in Kabul at the moment—and what we can do to help them and, indeed, their families. My noble friend the Minister talked about the steps we are going to take, and I would like to focus on two areas in particular: first, how will we help them across the border and, secondly, can we help them with paperwork?

I am aware that one of the issues at the moment has been that those who have been able to get to the borders, many of which are closed, have not been able to persuade people in the neighbouring countries—Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and other places—that they will not stay in those countries. They do not want vast numbers of refugees, but those people are in transit, moving on. What can my noble friend tell us today about how we can make sure that when those people go to those borders, they have the necessary paperwork from our officials to allow them to get into transit and to come on? I realise that some of those people will be not very good people who should not have that paperwork, but an awful lot of them need help, so I wonder what my noble friend can say. Also, how can he make that advice available and communicate it so that the people in that country and others in this country who are trying to help them can pass it on? At the moment, information seems to be limited, and the more we can communicate what we are trying to do, the better.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his kind remarks. On the specifics of his question, there is of course the MPs- and Peers-specific hotline, and so on. I assure him that my approach to testing it is that there is someone within my private office who ensures that at intervals we also ensure that there is efficiency of operation. There is no better way than experiencing it yourself. Those are some of the practices in practical terms that I have deployed.

On the specifics I can share, first, the visits of my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary to Pakistan and Qatar and my own visit to Tajikistan in particular but also Uzbekistan have been focused on that specific issue. As I said to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, as regards people appearing with the right documentation—these are British nationals—or indeed others, such as those on the ARAP scheme, we are working out some of the specific details. These countries are extremely concerned—this is why they have sealed their borders—that people will flock to their borders, which will then result in them having a humanitarian crisis not just on the border but within their own country. We have to recognise that. So it is not just about the ask of safe facilitation over the border; that is why we are standing up funding quite specifically to help infrastructure in the different countries in terms of border support.

A specific that has happened is that Pakistan has already announced a 21-day visa, now extended to 30 days, for transit for those people entering the country, but it has also had to close the border it had opened because of concerns. Nevertheless, we are working in close, detailed proximity with these Governments, and our rapid deployment teams are now in position and collating information specifically from those people getting in touch with them, particularly British nationals on the borders, so that we can have an exact list of who is where, to help to facilitate progress across whichever part of the border they come to. However, I say again that we are operating under the added challenge that each of these countries has issued official statements that the borders are sealed. It is a test of our strength of diplomacy as to how we can provide workable solutions that do not alarm those neighbours that may well take the brunt of refugees.

The other issue that I share with my noble friend is that the issue of safe passage means that there needs to be unison and unity with international partners. He will have noticed Secretary of State Blinken in Qatar today, working with the Qataris. One area is to see how we can facilitate access into Kabul airport, not just for humanitarian support but to open up safe passage for those wishing to leave. The Taliban have given the assurance that those wishing to leave—foreign nationals and Afghans—can leave, but the proof is in the pudding, and that is yet to happen.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, clearly the immediate priority for the Government has to be dealing with the specific crisis as it is now—those who have returned and those we are seeking to bring back. Notwithstanding that, and building on the question from my noble friend, can the Minister say something, even at this early stage, about the Government’s thinking around how they will take forward the whole concept of global Britain and what this will mean for the integrated defence and security review?

We hear legitimate questions in the Chamber about why the Minister does not meet with regional partners, what it means for NATO, what it means for the United Nations and what it means for the trust that this country has with the allies that we seek to work with. The Minister knows that the battle over the next few decades will be between democracy and autocracy. Where does Britain stand on that? How will we deal with it? My noble friend was saying that it is imperative that the Government give their early thinking—and discuss with Members in both the other place and this House, and people beyond—to how we take that forward.

I gently urge the Minister, whose calm demeanour belies the fact that he knows that we do not want to read in our newspapers or see on our televisions different government departments briefing against each other and blaming each other for what is a crisis: we need a united front from our Government, debating with us how we move our country forward within our alliances for the protection of democracy and human rights across the world.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I assure the noble Lord that when it comes to dealing with a crisis, unity is very much at the forefront of my mind. As I have said, I have worked in very practical terms—I have shared my experience and what I have put in place with noble Lords. I pay tribute to my colleagues across the Home Office and the Ministry of Defence; it was about doing the right thing at a time of crisis, and you need to come together as a Government.

I am conscious of the time, but I fully acknowledge that global Britain is about our place in the world, about alliances, about the United Nations and about our strength as a P5 member and a key member of NATO. As we look towards the Indo-Pacific, what does that mean? For now, on this particular chapter, I conclude with two things: we need to show great humility with what we have achieved and show forward-looking humanity in how we act.

House adjourned at 9.44 pm.